The messy landscape of eye movements and false memories

ABSTRACT

Eye-Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a common treatment for PTSD. However, skeptics like James Ost question the theoretical underpinnings, highlight inconsistency of empirical findings surrounding the efficacy of such therapy, and warn against unknown drawbacks. Little is known about the impact of the eye movements, a critical component in EMDR, on susceptibility to false memories, and the existing literature is contradictory. We review the literature and present new findings to help tell the story of the effects of eye movements on memory. Taken as a whole, this small body of work suggests that eye movements do not reliably affect susceptibility to misinformation, nor do they appear to enhance memory, but they do seem to increase spontaneous false memories.

KEYWORDS:

• EMDR
• eye movements
• false memory
• misinformation

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 see Lee and Cuijpers (2013) and Leer et al. (2014) for empirical review of the relationship between EMDR and vividness.