B. Maughan et M. Rutter, RETROSPECTIVE REPORTING OF CHILDHOOD ADVERSITY - ISSUES IN ASSESSING LONG-TERM RECALL, Journal of personality disorders, 11(1), 1997, pp. 19-33
Much evidence for associations between adverse experiences in childhoo
d and personality disorder in adult life comes from retrospective acco
unts, This raises important questions over the reliability and validit
y of long-term recall, The strengths and limitations of different meth
ods for assessing the accuracy and stability of retrospective reports
are discussed, Evidence from cognitive psychology on memory and memory
processes, and on the phenomenon of infantile amnesia, provides impor
tant background for assessing issues more specific to recall in studie
s of risk for psychopathology. Here, topics of particular concern incl
ude: memory for traumatic early experience; the effects of mood state
and symptomatology on recall; recovered or false memories; and the imp
lications of mental representations of early experience for understand
ing psychopathology, Current evidence suggests that while adequately r
eliable accounts of many early experiences can be gained using appropr
iate techniques, further methodological studies are needed, and invest
igations using retrospective methods would be wise to include corrobor
ative evidence whenever feasible.