Failing to report details of an event: A review of the directed forgetting procedure and applications to reports of childhood sexual abuse

Abstract

Recent reviews of child sexual abuse (CSA) disclosure indicate that many victims delay disclosing abuse for some period of time (e.g., London, Bruck, Ceci, & Shuman, 2005). During this period of non-disclosure, CSA victims may avoid thinking about or discussing their abuse experiences. Some scholars argue that this may lead to a directed forgetting (DF) effect, whereby later recall of the unrehearsed memories becomes more difficult (e.g., M. A. Epstein & Bottoms, 2002). This paper reviews the DF literature and discusses the potential contribution of DF to silence. The review begins with a description of the basic DF protocol used, discusses underlying mechanisms thought to be responsible for the DF effect, and then examines applications of the DF protocol to memory for emotion-laden word lists and autobiographical events. Overall, the applied studies demonstrate that DF effects generalise beyond memory for innocuous word lists; however, we describe several important avenues of research that require further exploration. Most noteworthy, and particularly relevant to the common application of DF to memory for CSA, are those studies that examine the influence of DF on children's autobiographical memory.

Keywords:

• Children and the law
• Directed forgetting
• Autobiographical memory
• Childhood sexual abuse

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship to the first author, a SSHRC Standard Research Grant to the second author, and a Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) research grant to both authors. The authors would also like to thank Dr Thomas Spalek and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Notes

¹Our objective in reviewing these studies is not to introduce a new theory to explain the DF effect, but rather to demonstrate the effect in a context that is more relevant to DF of CSA memories. In order to review these studies we felt it necessary to introduce the avoidant encoding hypothesis.