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Integration and organization of trauma memories and posttraumatic symptoms
Author(s) -
O'Kearney Richard,
Hunt Aliza,
Wallace Nancy
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of traumatic stress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.259
H-Index - 134
eISSN - 1573-6598
pISSN - 0894-9867
DOI - 10.1002/jts.20690
Subject(s) - psychology , posttraumatic stress , anxiety disorder , autobiographical memory , anxiety , memoria , clinical psychology , psychiatry , cognition
To examine the connection between trauma memory integration in personal memory, memory organization, and posttraumatic symptom severity, 47 trauma‐exposed adults undertook an event‐cuing task for their trauma memory and for a memorable nontraumatic negative event. Measures of integration provided by self‐endorsement, rated by naïve judges, or calculated from the language of the memories, did not significantly predict posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity after adjusting for age, time since the event, anxiety when disclosing, familiarity of the memory, and integration of nontrauma memory. Less use of casual connectives in the trauma memory narrative was associated with higher trauma‐related avoidance (r = .33; p = .03), whereas self‐rating of the trauma memory as disorganized was associated with higher overall symptom severity (r = .42; p = .006).