The effect of trauma on autobiographical memory

This thesis presents five studies which investigate the effect of trauma on
autobiographical memory in both adult and adolescent population samples. Previous
literature has found overgeneral recall to the cueing task in both abuse and other
trauma population samples and reduced personal semantic recall in abuse population
samples. This series of studies confirmed that poor semantic recall is a feature of the
aftermath of abuse, both adolescent clinical and adult non clinical. Furthermore
reduced semantic recall was apparent in an adolescent burn injured population
sample.
Episodic recall was measured using the cueing task with emotional cue words
and the Children's Autobiographical Memory Interview, a semi structured interview
based on lifetime periods. Consistent with the adult literature, traumatised adolescents
demonstrated slower response latencies and overgeneral recall to the cueing task.
Deficits were also found in recall to the lifetime periods on the CAMI and in the
adolescent burn population samples these were further analysed in relation to the burn
accident. However, the non clinical adult population sample demonstrated no
significant differences on the cueing task and better episodic recall. In addition, a
preliminary report suggested that the Means End Problem Solving task could be
developed as an indirect autobiographical memory task.
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