Autobiographical recall of a stressful negative event in veterans with PTSD

ABSTRACT

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterised by alterations in autobiographical memory for traumatic and non-traumatic events. Studies that focus on event construction – the ability to search for and identify a specific event – have documented overgeneral memory in PTSD. However, the quality of autobiographical memory also depends on the ability to elaborate on an event once constructed by providing additional details. In a prior study, individuals with PTSD generated as many episodic (event-specific) details as trauma-exposed controls when demands on event construction were minimized, albeit the PTSD group generated more non-episodic details. The current study sought to further characterize PTSD-related alterations in event elaboration by asking participants to describe a stressful negative event specified by the experimenter, thus minimizing event construction demands. Narratives were scored for episodic and non-episodic details and relations with measures of executive function and self-reported avoidance were examined. Compared to controls, the PTSD group generated narratives with equivalent episodic detail but greater non-episodic detail, including semantic information and repeated or extended events. Non-episodic detail generation was associated with greater avoidance but not executive functions. Elaborated non-trauma memories may be perceived as overgeneral in PTSD due to greater generation of non-episodic details, rather than diminished episodic detail.

KEYWORDS:

• autobiographical memory
• PTSD
• avoidance
• executive functions

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Clinical Science Research and Development Service of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The contents of this manuscript do not represent the view of the US Department of Veterans Affairs or the US Government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data that support the findings of this study are available on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/eb9um/?view_only=a0200efd34dd40d08764c84144a00d70

Notes

1 One participant without PTSD, who was missing data on the inhibition measure, was excluded from analyses of executive functioning. For one participant with PTSD, the executive composite included data for only one of the two working memory tasks.

2 To further assess support for the null hypothesis, Bayesian analyses were performed using default priors. There was substantial evidence in favour of the null hypothesis for the executive composite (BF₀₁ = 5.13), as well as for the subdomains of working memory (BF₀₁ = 5.14) and inhibition (BF₀₁ = 3.04).