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Related Experiment Videos

Directed forgetting between, but not within, dissociative personality states.

Bernet M Elzinga1, R Hans Phaf, Angelique M Ardon

  • 1Section of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Leiden, The Netherlands. elzinga@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

Journal of Abnormal Psychology
|June 6, 2003
PubMed
Summary

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients show selective memory loss between identity states, forgetting words they were told to forget. Implicit memory remains intact across states, suggesting retrieval inhibition plays a key role.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Psychology
  • Memory Research

Background:

  • Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is characterized by distinct identity states.
  • Amnesia between these identities is a core feature of DID.
  • Understanding memory processes in DID is crucial for diagnosis and treatment.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate amnesia between identities in dissociative identity disorder (DID).
  • To assess explicit and implicit memory performance in DID patients during identity state switching.
  • To explore the role of retrieval inhibition in DID-related memory deficits.

Main Methods:

  • 12 patients with dissociative identity disorder (DID) participated.
  • A directed-forgetting task was administered across different identity states.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Explicit and implicit memory recall were measured for neutral and emotional words.

    • Main Results:

    • DID patients exhibited decreased explicit memory performance after switching identity states.
    • Selective forgetting of to-be-forgotten words occurred in the amnesic state, but not to-be-remembered words.
    • Implicit memory remained unaffected across identity state changes, while emotional words were recalled better than neutral words.

    Conclusions:

    • Memory processes in DID may involve significant retrieval inhibition.
    • Selective amnesia between identities in DID impacts explicit memory but not implicit memory.
    • These findings contribute to a broader understanding of memory dysfunction in dissociative disorders.