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Dissociation, memory commission errors, and heightened autonomic reactivity.

Timo Giesbrecht1, Elke Geraerts, Harald Merckelbach

  • 1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Maastricht, PO Box 616, 6200 MD, The Netherlands. T.Giesbrecht@psychology.unimaas.nl

Psychiatry Research
|February 28, 2007
PubMed
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High dissociators show heightened emotional reactivity and commission errors when viewing emotional content, challenging the defense mechanism theory of dissociation. This suggests dissociation may not solely function as a defense.

Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Dissociative symptoms are theorized to function as a psychological defense mechanism.
  • This defense mechanism hypothesis predicts lower physiological arousal and memory omissions in individuals with dissociative symptoms when exposed to emotional stimuli.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the physiological and memory responses of individuals with high dissociative tendencies to emotionally provocative material.
  • To examine whether these responses align with the proposed defensive function of dissociation.

Main Methods:

  • Sixty-two undergraduate students viewed a highly emotional video fragment.
  • Correlations were calculated between dissociation scores (Dissociative Experiences Scale, DES) and physiological arousal (skin conductance responses, SCRs) and memory performance (omission and commission errors).

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Main Results:

  • High dissociators exhibited elevated skin conductance responses (SCRs) to the emotional video.
  • While omission errors were not related to dissociation, high dissociators showed a tendency towards commission errors.
  • These commission errors were not attributable to reduced working memory capacity but were linked to fantasy proneness.

Conclusions:

  • The findings suggest that heightened emotional reactivity and commission errors, rather than reduced arousal and omissions, characterize individuals with high dissociation scores.
  • This pattern challenges the prevailing theory of dissociation as a purely defensive mechanism.
  • Further research is needed to understand the complex nature of dissociation and its underlying mechanisms.