Adult memory for instances of emotionally stressful and non-stressful repeated events

ABSTRACT

Repeated offences, such as domestic violence, are often distressing for victims. When victims of such offences make an allegation of abuse, they are usually required to report details about specific incidents. Therefore, this pre-registered study examined whether memory for an emotionally stressful versus non-stressful repeated event would differ depending on the instance being recalled. Eighty female participants (M_age = 22.3, SD = 7.4) imagined being involved in four abusive (emotionally stressful repeated event) or non-abusive relationship instances (non-stressful repeated event) over a four-week period. One-week after the last instance, participants completed recall and source memory questions about each instance. We found no evidence that memory for stressful versus non-stressful repeated events differed depending on the instance being recalled. Instead, we found that memory was more accurate for the last instance relative to the other instances (i.e., recency effect), regardless of event stressfulness. We also found that memory accuracy was better across all instances in the stressful than the non-stressful group. The findings suggest that victim-survivors of abuse might find the last instance of abuse particularly memorable when the delay between the offence and report is one-week or less, and the stressfulness of the instance might help them recall more details.

KEYWORDS:

• emotional stress
• eyewitness memory
• repeated event
• repeated abuse

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 For the purpose of this research, we define emotional stress as a negative psychological response (i.e., anxiety, negative mood) that occurs as a result of being exposed to a stressor such as a negatively arousing event (Christianson, 1992). At times throughout the paper, we use the term emotional stress and stress interchangeably.

2 These findings are for a narrow measure of memory accuracy. A narrow measure of accuracy represents the ability to correctly assign event details to the instance in which they occurred (Dilevski, Paterson, Walker, et al., 2020b; Price et al., 2016; Woiwod et al., 2019). In the repeated-event memory literature, memory accuracy may also be defined broadly (Dilevski, Paterson, Walker, et al., 2020b; Woiwod et al., 2019). Broad accuracy represents the ability to remember any event detail that was experienced during the repeated-event series, without needing to recall when it occurred. For the purpose of this research, we are most concerned with participants’ ability to particularise instances of a repeated event, thus we focus our discussion on a narrow measure of accuracy rather than a broad measure.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.