Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

The Effects Of Conceptually Driven Versus Data-Driven Encoding On Traumatic Memory Amplification, Kelsey N. Barnett

Student Theses

Our research examines whether the way in which a person encodes a traumatic experience affects their post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and ability to remember the trauma over time. In our first study, we were interested in establishing whether people have any existing beliefs about how encoding processes influence the development of PTSD. In line with Ehlers and Clark’s (2000) theory, we hypothesized that people would be more likely to indicate that exclusively paying attention to sensory details during a traumatic event contributes to the formation of traumatic memories and PTSD. To test this hypothesis, we designed a simple …