Citation

Kindt M, van den Hout M, Arntz A, Drost J. J. Behav. Ther. Exp. Psychiatry 2008; 39(4): 546-557.

Affiliation

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m.kindt@uva.nl

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jbtep.2007.12.003

PMID

18328462

Abstract

Ehlers and Clark [(2000). A cognitive model of posttraumatic stress disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 319-345] propose that a predominance of data-driven processing during the trauma predicts subsequent PTSD. We wondered whether, apart from data-driven encoding, sustained data-driven processing after the trauma is also crucial for the development of PTSD. Both hypotheses were tested in two analogue experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that relative to conceptually-driven processing (n=20), data-driven processing after the film (n=14), resulted in more intrusions. Experiment 2 demonstrated that relative to the neutral condition (n=24) and the data-driven encoding condition (n=24), conceptual encoding (n=25) reduced suppression of intrusions and a trend emerged for memory fragmentation. The difference between the two encoding styles was due to the beneficial effect of induced conceptual encoding and not to the detrimental effect of data-driven encoding. The data support the viability of the distinction between data-driven/conceptually-driven processing for the understanding of the development of PTSD.

Language: en