Autobiographical memory specificity in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse
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Updated: Mar 30, 2026

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection
Published on: August 26, 2011
Richard J McNally1, Susan A Clancy1, Heidi M Barrett1
1a Harvard University , Cambridge , MA , USA.
Abstract:
Some psychotherapists believe that adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are characterised by memory deficits for their childhood. Using the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT), we asked nonabused control participants and participants who reported either continuous, recovered, or repressed memories of CSA to retrieve a specific personal memory in response to either positive or negative cue words from either childhood or adolescence/adulthood. The results indicated that participants who believed they harboured repressed memories of abuse tended to exhibit the greatest difficulty retrieving specific memories from their childhood. Neither posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) nor major depression was related to diminished memory specificity.
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