Coping style and memory specificity in adolescents and adults with histories of child sexual abuse

ABSTRACT

Individuals with histories of childhood trauma may adopt a nonspecific memory retrieval strategy to avoid unpleasant and intrusive memories. In a sample of 93 adolescents and adults with or without histories of child sexual abuse (CSA), we tested the hypothesis that nonspecific memory retrieval is related to an individual's general tendency to use avoidant (i.e., distancing) coping as a personal problem-solving or coping strategy, especially in victims of CSA. We also examined age differences and other individual differences (e.g., trauma-related psychopathology) as predictors of nonspecific memories. Distancing coping was significantly associated with less specific autobiographical memory. Younger age, lower vocabulary scores, and non-CSA childhood maltreatment (i.e., physical and emotional abuse) also uniquely predicted less autobiographical memory specificity, whereas trauma-related psychopathology was associated with more specific memory. Implications for the development of autobiographical memory retrieval in the context of coping with childhood maltreatment are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• adolescents
• adults
• overgeneral memory
• child sexual abuse

Acknowledgement

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF. We thank Eric Wang for his assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹Researchers have used a variety of terms and operational definitions to index psychological processes relevant to avoidant coping, such as attachment-related avoidance, disengagement coping, distancing coping, repressive coping, and functional avoidance. These constructs have been operationalised in different ways (e.g., attachment-related avoidance concerns the emotion-regulation strategy of avoidance of intimacy in close interpersonal relationships; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007) specific to the measures employed. For the current paper, the possible definitional overlap of interest is in regard to coping and memory. For example, distancing coping on the WAYS of coping measure (which we used in the present study) includes items such as “I tried to forget the whole thing” and “I didn't let it get to me; I refused to think too much about it.” Other coping-related measures may also tap memory processes. For example, attachment-related avoidance theoretically involves “defensive exclusion” (Bowlby, 1980), which includes not thinking and not talking about stressful events that could activate the attachment system (e.g., Edelstein et al., 2005), processes that could also affect memory. Disengagement coping involves not only avoidance but also denial, a mechanism that might affect memory as well. Other measures, such as the Cognitive Behavioral Avoidance Scale (CBAS), are less explicitly about avoidance of memory. One reason for equivocal findings concerning overgeneral memory and coping may be differences in the extent to which coping measures include items of direct relevance to memory.

²Participants also completed a number of other tasks in counterbalanced order (e.g., see Goodman et al., 2011). The order had no effect on results reported here, F_{(1, 91)} = .004, p = .95.

³The CSA Severity Index and CTQ CSA severity scores were highly correlated but because the CSA Severity Index was a stronger predictor of memory specificity scores, it was retained for additional analyses; the CTQ CSA severity score was dropped.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) [grant number 0004369].