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CHRISTIAN MORMONT
University of Liège
ABSTRACT. The authors review theory and empirical research on the characteristics
of memories for traumatic versus emotional events, with the goal of bringing together
the cognitive and clinical perspectives on this issue. They consider the most important
approaches to the study of traumatic and emotional memory and summarize the results
of recent studies that have compared autobiographical recollections of traumatic and
nontraumatic emotional experiences (positive and negative), either in nonclinical or
clinical samples. Overall, findings from the current empirical literature are inconsistent.
Although some researchers have found that traumatic memories are retrieved differently
than are emotional memories, others have demonstrated that the phenomenological char-
acteristics of these memory types are highly similar. The authors discuss methodological
issues that could help researchers to interpret the inconsistencies found in the empirical
findings. Last, they suggest possible directions for future research that may advance
researchers’ knowledge of memory, trauma, and emotion.
Keywords: autobiographical memory, emotional experiences, psychopathology, traumatic
experiences
OVER THE PAST 2 DECADES, a growing body of research on memory for trau-
matic and emotional events has emerged (for reviews, see Appelbaum, Uyehara,
& Elin, 1997; Butler & Spiegel, 1997; Christianson, 1992a, 1992b; McGaugh,
2003; McNally, 2003; Reisberg & Hertel, 2004; Schooler & Eich, 2000; Uttl,
Ohta, & Siegenthaler, 2006). The study of this topic has progressively attracted
the attention of scholars from a broad array of disciplines, including cognitive
psychology, clinical psychology, forensic psychology, psychiatry, and neurosci-
ence. Researchers working in these fields have contributed to the understanding
449
449
450 The Journal of Psychology
of how people remember life experiences that are relevant for their well-being
and survival. Although a less frequent occurrence, researchers have also offered
suggestions on how to apply scientific knowledge on human memory to societal
problems, with the goal of supporting clinicians and other professionals interact-
ing with victims of traumatic events (Berliner & Briere, 1999; Koss, Tromp, &
Tharan, 1995; Loftus, 2003; van der Kolk, McFarlane, & van der Hart, 1996).
One of the most important challenges for memory and emotion researchers
is promoting integration between the various disciplines involved in the field of
trauma (cf. DePrince & Freyd, 2001; van der Kolk, Hopper, & Osterman, 2001).
Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that with few exceptions (see Butler &
Spiegel, 1997; Christianson, 1992b), literature reviews on traumatic and emo-
tional memory have usually taken into consideration studies conducted within
very focused approaches, either clinical or cognitive. Also, relevant research in
these areas has been disjointed. Studies conducted from a clinical perspective
have focused on memories of traumatized individuals who experienced highly
stressful or violent events; on the contrary, studies conducted from a cognitive
perspective have focused on memories for artificial or simulated events that were
emotionally arousing but not traumatic. Comparative analyses and syntheses of
the similarities and differences between traumatic and emotional memories are
thus lacking in the current literature.
In the present article, we aimed to review theoretical and empirical research
on characteristics of memories for traumatic versus emotional events. Our effort
was to draw together cognitive and clinical perspectives and point out the com-
plexity of the issue under study. In doing so, we paid special attention to recent
research in emotion psychology. The present article consists of five main sec-
tions. First, we describe the core defining features of traumatic and emotional
events, giving examples of these two types of occurrences and emphasizing
their main differences and similarities. Second, we consider the most important
empirical and theoretical approaches to traumatic and emotional memory, identi-
fying their possible contribution to the understanding of the topic of this review.
Third, we review recent real-life studies that have compared autobiographical
recollections of traumatic and emotional experiences in either nonclinical or
clinical samples. Fourth, we discuss some methodological issues that could help
researchers to interpret the inconsistencies found in the empirical findings. Last,
we highlight some critical points in the current literature, indicating possible
directions for future research that may advance researchers’ knowledge of trau-
matic and emotional memories.
goals, and life changes. Positive emotional events may include the birth of a child,
a romantic kiss, receiving a present, attending a concert, or getting a job. Negative
emotional events encompass critical situations, such as arguing with a close friend,
learning that a family member is ill, being verbally threatened, or failing an exam.
Emotionally charged events elicit specific emotional states, including joy, fear, sad-
ness, anger, surprise, shame, and embarrassment. However, how often these emo-
tions actually occur in everyday life is a matter of considerable debate (Parkinson,
2004; Scherer, 2004; Scherer, Wranik, Sangsue, Tran, & Scherer, 2004; Wilhelm,
Schoebi, & Perrez, 2004).
Another distinctive feature of emotional events concerns their duration.
Unlike traumatic events, emotional episodes typically result in intense but short-
lived experiences, lasting for minutes or seconds (Ekman, 1999; Watson & Clark,
1994). As a consequence, their impact on an individual’s health and psychological
well-being (Finkenauer & Rimé, 1998; Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Futterman,
Kemeny, Shapiro, Polonsky, & Fahey, 1992; Tugade, Fredrickson, & Feldman
Barrett, 2004) is less intense and prolonged than that of traumatic events.
Metcalfe and Jacobs, Nadel and Jacobs (1998) argued that traumatic stress has a
differential impact on the hot and cool systems. They reviewed empirical data from
animal and human studies indicating that moderate levels of stress enhance the
activity of the amygdala; in contrast, high levels of stress interfere with the normal
functioning of the hippocampus, obstructing the encoding of the contextual informa-
tion. On the basis of these premises, Nadel and Jacobs concluded that “when stress is
high enough to impair the function of the hippocampus, resulting memories will be
different from those formed under more ordinary circumstances” (p. 156).
Although the trauma–memory argument has gained wide consensus among
memory researchers, it has also been subject to severe criticism, and a second
perspective on the special status of traumatic memories is available. Research-
ers supporting this second perspective have suggested that traumatic and
nontraumatic events are encoded, processed, and retrieved in very similar ways.
After reviewing the clinical and experimental literature, Kihlstrom (2006; see
also Shobe & Kihlstrom, 1997) argued that the empirical evidence concerning
the unique influences of trauma on memory is highly ambiguous and does not
permit concluding that traumatic memories are truly different from other memo-
ries. Other criticism of the trauma–memory argument focuses on the mechanisms
that are supposed to account for the reported forgetting of traumatic events.
Hembrooke and Ceci (1995), for example, observed that experiences of child-
hood sexual abuse “are forgotten as a result of rather ordinary mechanisms and
developmental limitations which existed at the time of their occurrence” (p. 80).
Likewise, Ornstein, Ceci, and Loftus (1998) pointed out that “all events can be
partially or completely forgotten; no evidence exists to indicate that traumatic
events are impervious to such distortion. There is no scientifically compelling
basis for the creation of esoteric mechanisms such as repression to account for
these distortions. Indeed, this is the very stuff that normal memories are made of”
(p. 1002; italics in original). McNally (2003), Goodman et al. (2003), and Loftus
and Davis (2006) have proposed similar arguments.
Beyond the controversies surrounding the nature of mechanisms responsible
for traumatic amnesia, it is worth noting that the debate on the uniqueness of
traumatic memories has stimulated both cognitive and clinical researchers to
conduct empirical studies aimed at investigating the similarities and differences
between memories for traumatic events and memories for other types of events.
In particular, a handful of researchers have compared autobiographical recol-
lections of traumatic events with memories for personal experiences that were
emotionally charged but not traumatic. Because these studies look directly at the
issue at the heart of this article, we now turn our attention to their findings.
Figueredo, Bell, Tharan, & Tromp, 1996). In the study by Tromp et al., a com-
munity sample of women employed in a medical center and at a university
completed a mailed questionnaire survey. The initial part of the questionnaire
permitted the researchers to distinguish participants according to their previous
experiences of sexual victimization (i.e., attempted and completed rape). Women
with a rape experience were asked to recall their most recent or most significant
experience of this kind. Women without such experience were asked to remem-
ber another intense life event, either positive or negative. All participants then
rated their memories on a set of items drawn from the Memory Characteristics
Questionnaire (MCQ; Suengas & Johnson, 1988). Results indicated that rape
memories, when compared to memories for other unpleasant experiences, were
less well-remembered, were less clear and vivid, involved less visual detail, con-
tained less meaningful order, and were talked and thought about less. However,
unpleasant memories and pleasant memories were fairly similar with respect to
many characteristics. In a subsequent study, Byrne, Hyman, and Scott (2001)
asked 113 female university undergraduates to give memory ratings for three
different life events, including the worst traumatic event they experienced (cho-
sen among those mentioned in the Traumatic Stress Survey; Gallagher, Riggs,
Byrne, & Weathers, 1998) and a very negative event and a very positive event
that occurred within 1 or 2 years of the traumatic event. Similar to Tromp et al.’s
study, Byrne et al. assessed participants’ recollections by means of a modified
version of the MCQ (Suengas & Johnson). Comparisons within participants
revealed that the nature of the recalled event affected participants’ memory for
sensory information and their ability to remember some aspects of the event
structure. Positive memories involved more visual and olfactory details than
did traumatic and negative memories. Participants better recalled things that
happened before the event in positive memories than in negative and traumatic
memories. Importantly, there were no differences with regard to other memory
characteristics, such as the overall memory of the event, vividness, emotional
responses, frequency of thoughts about the event, memory for spatial details, and
confidence in memory accuracy.
Other researchers excluded memories of negative or unpleasant emotional
events from their comparisons, paying special attention only to similarities and
differences between traumatic and positive emotional memories. Berntsen (2002;
Experiment 2) asked undergraduates to record as many details as possible for
memories of their most shocking and their happiest events. Results indicated
that, although memories of shocking events were older than were memories
of positive events, participants reported a higher proportion of central details
for the former relative to the latter. On the basis of these findings, Berntsen
argued against the widespread assumption that the core elements of traumatic
experiences are repressed or dissociated from consciousness. In another study
conducted on a small sample of college students, Butler and Wolfner (2000)
investigated childhood memories of significant traumatic and positive events
Sotgiu & Mormont 457
that participants experienced before the age of 13 years. The authors found that
the two memory types were highly similar with regard to many characteristics,
including ease of recall, vividness, quantity of details, intensity of past emo-
tional feelings, and frequency of event discussion. A few differences appeared in
secondary memory attributes. Participants were more likely to remember a spe-
cific outstanding detail from their traumatic memories than from their positive
memories; moreover, positive memories were associated with stronger present
emotions than were traumatic memories. Porter and Birt (2001) asked 306 uni-
versity undergraduates to provide a narrative description of their most traumatic
experience and their most positive emotional experience and answer several
questions relating to them. Consistent with findings from Byrne et al.’s (2001)
study, positive experiences were associated with more sensory details than were
traumatic experiences. However, traumatic memories contained a greater amount
of information, included more references to emotions experienced at the time of
the event, and were thought about more often. Apart from these differences, the
two types of memories proved to be similar along several key dimensions, such
as vividness, overall memory quality, and logical coherence of narratives.
More recently, Peace and Porter (2004) looked at the consistency of trau-
matic and positive emotional memories over time. The sample examined in this
study consisted of 52 adults who reported having experienced a traumatic event
within the previous year and having moderate to severe levels of traumatic stress
related to that event, according to the Impact of Event Scale (Horowitz, Wilner, &
Alvarez, 1979). Participants were asked to recall both their traumatic experience
and their most positive emotional experience in the past year in two interviews
separated by approximately 3 months. Overall, findings indicated that memories
for traumatic experiences were more consistent than were positive memories.
Vividness and overall memory quality associated with traumatic experiences did
not change significantly over time, whereas a decline was observed for positive
experiences. Porter and Peace (2007) found a similar trend in a follow-up study
of the same sample, investigating consistency of memory reports 3–5 years after
the first interviews.
With the exception of Tromp et al. (1995) and Peace and Porter’s (Peace
& Porter, 1994; Porter & Peace, 2007) studies, all aforementioned researchers
took into consideration samples of students who were not exposed to serious and
impairing traumatic events. To better understand the effects of traumatic memo-
ries on psychological functioning and mental health, some researchers have
focused their attention on samples of trauma victims with a psychopathological
profile. In particular, because it is commonly accepted that traumatic memories
play a key role in the development and maintenance of PTSD (Brewin, 2001;
Brewin, Dalgleish, & Joseph, 1996; Ehlers & Clark, 2000; Golier, Yehuda, &
Southwick, 1997; van der Kolk, 1994), researchers have recruited participants
meeting diagnostic criteria for this disorder or reporting a set of typical symp-
toms associated with it (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In a widely
458 The Journal of Psychology
cited study conducted on a community sample of trauma victims, van der Kolk
and Fisler (1995) asked 46 adult individuals with PTSD to recall the traumatic
event that had had the most effect on their lives as well as a highly emotional but
nontraumatic experience. Characteristics of both memory types were assessed
by means of the Traumatic Memory Inventory, a 60-item structured interview
developed by the authors (for a description of this instrument, see van der Kolk
et al., 2001). In accordance with the trauma–memory argument, van der Kolk
and Fisler found that participants retrieved memories for traumatic experiences
differently from nontraumatic memories. All participants reported that they ini-
tially remembered the trauma as fragmentary, somatosensory flashback experi-
ences without a coherent narrative structure; 78% of the sample reported current
nightmares, whereas a lower proportion of participants claimed having suffered
partial or total amnesia for their trauma. Unlike traumatic memories, memories
for significant emotional experiences (e.g., wedding, vacation, graduation, birth
of a child) did not contain any sensory details; flashbacks, vivid dreams, and
periods of forgetting were also absent in this kind of memory.
Gray and Lombardo (2001) further explored the hypothesis that traumatic
experiences are retrieved as fragmented memories. The sample in their study
consisted of two groups of undergraduates: 29 with PTSD and 29 without
PTSD. All participants were asked to write narratives about a significant trauma,
a nontraumatic unpleasant experience, and a pleasant experience that they had
had within the past 5 years. In line with the study by Amir, Stafford, Freshman,
and Foa (1998), Gray and Lombardo assessed the complexity of narratives by
reading level indexes and taking into account the number of syllables per word
and number of words per sentence. Results showed that the degree of articula-
tion of the reported memories did not vary as a function of either narrative type
or participants’ PTSD. Thus, traumatic memories were not more fragmented
or disorganized than were either positive or negative nontraumatic emotional
memories.
A somewhat different picture of the characteristics of traumatic versus
emotional memories emerges when considering involuntary autobiographical
memories, or “memories arising spontaneously in everyday life” (Berntsen,
2001, p. 135; for an overview on this topic, see Mace, 2007). In a series of two
diary studies conducted among psychology students with and without PTSD,
Berntsen (2001; Studies 2 and 4) asked participants to record, during an open-
ended time period, a total of 50 involuntary memories about different types of
events: traumatic, nontraumatic (either pleasant or unpleasant), and extremely
positive or peak events. Overall, results indicated that traumatic memories, rela-
tive to nontraumatic memories, were rated as more vivid and emotionally pow-
erful. It was interesting that traumatic memories were reported more frequently
than were peak memories, thus indicating that extremely positive experiences
are less accessible for involuntary recall. However, in contrast with van der
Kolk and Fisler’s (1995) findings, memories for trauma and peak events were
Sotgiu & Mormont 459
Methodological Issues
S. Tromp, M. P. Childhood or adulthood Mailed questionnaire Sample 1 = 1,037 medical center employees (M age =
Koss, A. J. 36.6 years); Sample 2 = 2,142 university employees
Figueredo, & M. (M age = 40.5 years)
Tharan (1995)
C. A. Byrne, I. E. Childhood or adulthood Questionnaire 119 undergraduates (M age = 19.9 years)
The Journal of Psychology
Hyman, & K. L.
Scott (2001)
D. Berntsen (2002; Childhood or adulthood Questionnaire 114 undergraduates (M age = 27.4 years)
Experiment 2)
L. D. Butler & A. L. Before age 13 years Narrative description 48 undergraduates (M age = 19.4 years)
Wolfner (2000) and questionnaire
S. Porter & A. R. Childhood or adulthood Questionnaire 306 undergraduates (M age = 21.8 years)
Birt (2001)
K. A. Peace & S. Past year Interview (various 52 community adults (M age = 38.8 years)
Porter (2004); formats)
S. Porter & K. A.
Peace (2007)
B. A. van der Kolk Childhood or adulthood Face-to-face interview 46 community adults with PTSD (M age = 42 years)
& R. Fisler (1995)
M. J. Gray & T. W. 1 month to 5 years Narrative description 58 undergraduates: 29 with PTSD (M age = 19.4 years)
Lombardo (2001) before the study and 29 without PTSD (M age = 19.2 years)
D. Berntsen (2001; Childhood or adulthood Structured diary Study 2: 12 undergraduates with PTSD (M age = 25
Studies 2 and 4) years); Study 4: 14 undergraduates without PTSD
(M age = 26.3 years)
Conclusion
AUTHOR NOTES
Igor Sotgiu is a research fellow at the University of Turin, Italy, where he earned
his doctorate in psychology. His research interest is the psychology of emotion and
trauma. Christian Mormont is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of
Liège, Belgium, where he is the president of the Violence and Traumatism Center.
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