Directed forgetting of trauma cues in adults reporting repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

An item-cuing directed forgetting task was used to investigate whether wome n reporting repressed (n = 13) or recovered (n = 13) memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) exhibit an avoidant encoding style (and resultant impair ed memory) for trauma cues relative to women reporting no CSA experience (n = 15). All participants viewed intermixed trauma (e.g., molested), positiv e (e.g., confident), and categorized neutral (e.g., mailbox) words on a com puter screen and were instructed either to remember or to forget each word. The results provided no support for the hypothesis that people reporting e ither repressed or recovered memories of CSA are especially adept at forget ting words related to trauma. These groups recalled words they were instruc ted to remember more often than words they were instructed to forget regard less of whether they were trauma related.