Dissociative experiences are related to commissions in emotional memory
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Updated: Sep 26, 2026

Use of a Psychophysiological Script-driven Imagery Experiment to Study Trauma-related Dissociation in Borderline Personality Disorder
Published on: March 8, 2018
I Candel1, H Merckelbach, M Kuijpers
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. i.candel@psychology.unimass.nl
Abstract:
Two rival hypotheses of the link between dissociative experiences and emotional memory were tested: 1) the defence mechanism hypothesis that assumes that dissociation promotes fragmentation of emotional memory; and 2) the fantasy proneness hypothesis that claims that because of its overlap with fantasy proneness, dissociation is related to commissions in emotional memory. Undergraduates scoring high (n = 19) or low (n = 19) on the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) listened to an aversive story. Next, a free recall task was administered. While high dissociators made more commission errors in their free recall than did low dissociators, fantasy proneness did not account for this difference.
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