Section conclusion and comments

Findings were reviewed which suggested that certain experimental manipulations during the presentation of distressing images might have protective effects against the development of intrusive memories and analogue PTSD symptoms. These were found to be promoting conceptual processing both during and after an event, and impeding the formation of visuo-spatial memories. These were then discussed in the light of two influential theories of PTSD which proposed that certain symptoms of PTSD were produced by processing style, or the operation of a situationally accessible memory system. The discussion then considered broader phenomena of how writing studies suggest that emotional processing can be facilitated through the formation of verbal accounts of experience.

Chapter 2: Experimental Rationale and Methods

2.1 Rationale

After considering the nature of the emotions and emotional processing, the foregoing review considered theoretical frameworks which propose that certain emotional

dysfunctions might be explained through stimulus and event coding/recoding processes operating within a cognitive-affective system. In attempting to explore how emotional processing and memory interact, the review then considered how this differential coding might be reflected in differences in memory qualities, namely its sensory/perceptual as opposed to its semantic/conceptual basis. In conformity with such a view, evidence suggesting that heightened emotional states promote the retention of sensory, vivid elements within episodic memories was presented. Some evidence to suggest that in cases of extreme emotional arousal sensory elements may proliferate in recollection, maintain affective reactions, and be associated with poor semantic memory

contextualisation was considered. We have considered how certain theorists have proposed a causal link between sensory memory formation and the maintenance of emotional disorders; and how others have suggested that conceptual processing of an event may be protective against emotional disruption. Further evidence was reviewed considering how the formation of an account of a distressing experience appears to bring a number of psychological and affective benefits.

In outline, these studies compare poor and effective emotional processors over a range of autobiographical and episodic memory tests. They explore memory performance in terms of groups’ tendency to form and retain sensory-perceptual based memories, and in terms of their tendency to conceptually-semantically process such memories. The rationale for this approach is to explore whether an association exists between poorly processed emotions and sensory perceptual memories. This rationale is reflected in the

hypothesis that poor emotional processors will exhibit a greater tendency to form and retain sensory perceptual memories. The support for this rationale has been outlined throughout the literature review and will be expanded in the following section.

The aim of the studies is to explore if and where such differences exist. For this reason a gamut of memory types within the overarching category of episodic memories is being surveyed. The potential value of such a finding is to provide independent converging support for the psychotherapeutic contention that conceptually processing experience (through writing, talking, analysing, and forming an alternative perspective) brings remedial emotional benefits. It will also provide support for a model of emotional processing that emphasises the role cognitive processing plays in the generation and maintenance of affective disorders.

The status of sensory perceptual memories in affective disorders in the literature surveyed is somewhat unclear. They may be peculiar products of a particular type of experience, and the processing that results from it; they may be confined to traumatic experience, experimental artefacts, or simply epiphenomenal in nature. Before the status, the causal significance of such memories can be explored, additional triangulatory evidence of their prevalence such as this thesis may offer needs to be established.

Accordingly, by discovering their incidence over a broader range of every day memory phenomena, and establishing whether they can reliably be associated with a particular emotional processing style, some step may be made towards establishing their role in the development of emotional processing disruptions.

In brief, if sensory perceptual memories are a persistent feature of poor emotional processors’ memories, and if evidence of conceptual-semantic processing can be found within effective emotional processors, then perhaps these two processes are contributing

to the development of emotional processing disruptions. How this may happen has already been suggested: that it is the case requires further evidence.

A number of assumptions and suggestions have been proposed chiefly to organise and integrate these findings. The fundamental assumption is that a certain sensory-

perceptual encoding style is promoted in emotional situations, likely to be

phylogenetically primitive and functional to the extent that it retains a high degree of unedited information or raw data regarding an experience of significance to the individual. It becomes dysfunctional, it is suggested, through suppressing

semantic/conceptual processing of experience, which latter would render memory, and the information it provides more transferable across cognitive domains, and

susceptible to meaning-based emotional responses, greater integration within autobiographical knowledge, enhanced emotional regulation, and more appropriate affective reactions. Comparatively unprocessed memory forms are more resistant to meaning-based appraisal, more liable to produce emotional reactions on an associative basis, and less tractable to cognitive intervention and modification. It was in the introduction argued that one key aspect of poor emotional processing consists in precisely this sense of emotional responses gaining a relative autonomy, opacity, and automat icity for a range of stimuli and events, which to rational inspection appear comparatively innocuous.

Despite their speculative and general nature, such assumptions and suggestions have the advantage of integrating rather disparate research drawn from various clinical and experimental approaches each adopting paradigms and explanatory models specific to their field. They aim to articulate a pattern and to organise findings. It must however be conceded that few of the studies here cited aim to support a general account of how emotional responses become dysfunctional and how memory might be implicated

across all cases of emotional processing. PTSD analogue studies, to select an example that has been particularly prominent in the review, address often the development of a particular symptom of a particular pathological condition. Any attempt to generalise their conclusions to broader level of emotional processing failures encounters a number of difficulties. First, the nature of the precipitating event, a trauma or trauma analogue, makes it difficult to separate the characteristics of the situation from the particular features of the memory representation. Thus, extraneous factors which may disrupt the memory trace such as an individual's fight or flight response, or extraordinary aspects of the particular situation, elements of therapeutic measures, may, to name a few,

contribute to formation of certain memory types. This complicates the question of what causal role memory plays in the disruption of emotional processing, as it is possible to see such memories as epiphenomenal to underlying processes of recovery and

rehabilitation.

Thus, an alternative to studying how individuals' recollections of emotionally distressing situations differ from ordinary autobiographical memories, would be to compare how the recollections of individuals with poor emotional processing styles differ from normal individuals using non arousing, everyday stimuli and images.

The rationale adopted is to examine how poor emotional processors and effective emotional processors differ in their episodic memory performance. The specific

measures adopted aim to gauge sensory-perceptual and semantic/conceptual processing.

The studies explore whether poor emotional processing can be associated with a bias towards sensory-perceptual processing. This dissertation attempts to provide the basis for a more global account of the association between memory processes and emotional processing. A central aim is to explore whether mechanisms previously adduced as

active in producing trauma symptoms are continuous with those ordinarily in operation in the everyday assimilation of emotionally disruptive material. The purpose of this approach is thus to triangulate the proposal drawn from previous studies such that differences in conceptual/sensory processing contribute to the genesis of emotional processing disorders, and that these will be reflected in episodic memory

representations.

The studies attempt to provide a sample of different types of episodic memory performance by adopting and modifying paradigms frequently encountered in

conventional episodic, autobiographical as well memory and emotion studies. Whilst exploratory in nature, such research may suggest at what stage of memory formation, whether comparatively early at encoding or during consolidation, sensory memories are preserved. Furthermore, by varying the valence of the material presented or probed whether such a bias exists independent of arousal can be explored. By varying the complexity of the materials, as well as the personal meaningfulness of the materials, the boundary conditions of this memory bias can also be better investigated.

2.1.1.Overview

After considering the nature of the emotions and emotional processing, the foregoing review considered theoretical frameworks which propose that certain emotional

dysfunctions might be explained through stimulus and event coding/recoding processes operating within a cognitive-affective system. In attempting to explore how emotional processing and memory interact, the review then considered how this differential coding might be reflected in differences in memory qualities, namely its sensory/perceptual as opposed to its semantic/conceptual basis. In conformity with such a view, evidence suggesting that heightened emotional states promote the retention of sensory, vivid

elements within episodic memories was presented. Some evidence to suggest that in cases of extreme emotional arousal sensory elements may proliferate in recollection, maintain affective reactions, and be associated with poor semantic memory

contextualisation was considered. We have considered how certain theorists have proposed a causal link between sensory memory formation and the maintenance of emotional disorders; and how others have suggested that conceptual processing of an event may be protective against emotional disruption. Further evidence was reviewed considering how the formation of an account of a distressing experience appears to bring a number of psychological and affective benefits.

In outline, these studies compare poor and effective emotional processors over a range of autobiographical and episodic memory tests. They explore memory performance in terms of groups’ tendency to form and retain sensory-perceptual based memories, and in terms of their tendency to conceptually-semantically process such memories. The rationale for this approach is to explore whether an association exists between poorly processed emotions and sensory perceptual memories. This rationale is reflected in the hypothesis that poor emotional processors will exhibit a greater tendency to form and retain sensory perceptual memories. The support for this rationale has been outlined throughout the literature review and will be expanded in the following section.

The aim of the studies is to explore if and where such differences exist. For this reason a gamut of memory types within the overarching category of episodic memories is being surveyed. The potential value of such a finding is to provide independent converging support for the psychotherapeutic contention that conceptually processing experience (through writing, talking, analysing, and forming an alternative perspective) brings remedial emotional benefits. It will also provide support for a model of emotional

processing that emphasises the role cognitive processing plays in the generation and maintenance of affective disorders.

The status of sensory perceptual memories in affective disorders in the literature surveyed is somewhat unclear. They may be peculiar products of a particular type of experience, and the processing that results from it; they may be confined to traumatic experience, experimental artefacts, or simply epiphenomenal in nature. Before the status, the causal significance of such memories can be explored, additional triangulatory evidence of their prevalence such as this thesis may offer needs to be established.

Accordingly, by discovering their incidence over a broader range of every day memory phenomena, and establishing whether they can reliably be associated with a particular emotional processing style, some step may be made towards establishing their role in the development of emotional processing disruptions.

In brief, if sensory perceptual memories are a persistent feature of poor emotional processors’ memories, and if evidence of conceptual-semantic processing can be found within effective emotional processors, then perhaps these two processes are contributing to the development of emotional processing disruptions. How this may happen has already been suggested: that it is the case requires further evidence.

A number of assumptions and suggestions have been proposed chiefly to organise and integrate these findings. The fundamental assumption is that a certain sensory-perceptual encoding style is promoted in emotional situations, likely to be phylogenetically

primitive and functional to the extent that it retains a high degree of unedited information or raw data regarding an experience of significance to the individual. It becomes

dysfunctional, it is suggested, through suppressing semantic/conceptual processing of experience, which latter would render memory, and the information it provides more transferable across cognitive domains, and susceptible to meaning-based emotional

responses, greater integration within autobiographical knowledge, enhanced emotional regulation, and more appropriate affective reactions. Comparatively unprocessed memory forms are more resistant to meaning-based appraisal, more liable to produce emotional reactions on an associative basis, and less tractable to cognitive intervention and modification. It was in the introduction argued that one key aspect of poor emotional processing consists in precisely this sense of emotional responses gaining a relative autonomy, opacity, and automaticity for a range of stimuli and events, which to rational inspection appear comparatively innocuous.

Despite their speculative and general nature, such assumptions and suggestions have the advantage of integrating rather disparate research drawn from various clinical and experimental approaches each adopting paradigms and explanatory models specific to their field. They aim to articulate a pattern and to organise findings. It must however be conceded that few of the studies here cited aim to support a general account of how emotional responses become dysfunctional and how memory might be implicated across all cases of emotional processing. PTSD analogue studies, to select an example that has been particularly prominent in the review, address often the development of a particular symptom of a particular pathological condition. Any attempt to generalise their

conclusions to broader level of emotional processing failures encounters a number of difficulties. First, the nature of the precipitating event, a trauma or trauma analogue, makes it difficult to separate the characteristics of the situation from the particular features of the memory representation. Thus, extraneous factors which may disrupt the memory trace such as an individual's fight or flight response, or extraordinary aspects of the particular situation, elements of therapeutic measures, may, to name a few, contribute to formation of certain memory types. This complicates the question of what causal role memory plays in the disruption of emotional processing, as it is possible to see such memories as epiphenomenal to underlying processes of recovery and rehabilitation.

Thus, an alternative to studying how individuals' recollections of emotionally distressing situations differ from ordinary autobiographical memories, would be to compare how the recollections of individuals with poor emotional processing styles differ from normal individuals using non arousing, everyday stimuli and images.

The rationale adopted is to examine how poor emotional processors and effective emotional processors differ in their episodic memory performance. The specific

measures adopted aim to gauge sensory-perceptual and semantic/conceptual processing.

The studies explore whether poor emotional processing can be associated with a bias towards sensory-perceptual processing. This dissertation attempts to provide the basis for a more global account of the association between memory processes and emotional processing. A central aim is to explore whether mechanisms previously adduced as active in producing trauma symptoms are continuous with those ordinarily in operation in the everyday assimilation of emotionally disruptive material. The purpose of this

approach is thus to triangulate the proposal drawn from previous studies such that differences in conceptual/sensory processing contribute to the genesis of emotional

processing disorders, and that these will be reflected in episodic memory representations.

The studies attempt to provide a sample of different types of episodic memory performance by adopting and modifying paradigms frequently encountered in

conventional episodic, autobiographical as well memory and emotion studies. Whilst exploratory in nature, such research may suggest at what stage of memory formation, whether comparatively early at encoding or during consolidation, sensory memories are preserved. Furthermore, by varying the valence of the material presented or probed whether such a bias exists independent of arousal can be explored. By varying the complexity of the materials, as well as the personal meaningfulness of the materials, the boundary conditions of this memory bias can also be better investigated.

2.1.2 Exploratory Nature of the Research

Given the paucity of research addressing this specific field, and the consequent lack of relevant models and hypotheses licencing specific experimental predictions, this programme of research must be understood as exploratory. It is intended to provide a preliminary overview of group differences in memory performance principally in terms of the comparative incidence of sensory perceptual memories and conceptual-semantic processing. As has been stated, the chief interest of the research is to explore if and where differences emerge. If such differences emerge this would provide, in extremely preliminary but significant form, evidence for the status of sensory perceptual data in emotional processing disruptions. Identifying where such differences emerge (in terms of memory type) might better inform speculation as to the mechanisms of the relationship between cognitive and affective processes. Such differences, if found, might provide a basis for more rigorous hypothesis led research. At this stage, the detection and location of differences is the chief preoccupation of the research programme. Furthermore, the exploratory nature of the research, its preliminary status within this particular field, has motivated the decision made to form a preliminary snapshot and survey of different types of episodic/autobiographical memory performance using fairly typical and well-tested paradigms. The research was thus intended as broad in scope, and to generate more specific future research questions.

2.2 General Features of the Studies 2.2.1 Design

These studies in all but one case compare memory performance of individuals grouped according to their emotional processing effectiveness.

2.2.2 The Emotional Processing Scale

The Emotional Processing scale (Baker et al, 2009) is a 25 item tool which aims to measure signs of poor emotional processing. After reflecting on the experiences of the previous week, respondents are presented with 25 statements, and asked to indicate on a ten point rating scale the extent to which the statement is an appropriate description of their affective responses during the previous week, ranging from 0 (‘completely disagree’) to 9 (‘completely agree’).

The scale was originally inspired by Baker’s (2001) model of emotional processing, itself the product of extensive clinical research as well as a series of fact ors identified within clinical literature as crucial indicators of poor emotional processing. The current questionnaire reduces the original scale from 38 to 25 items, merging two of the original eight factors into one and introducing a new factor leaving a resulting scale which measures five factors: suppression, unregulated emotion, impoverished emotional experience, signs of unprocessed emotion, and avoidance. Five items measure each factor.

As a 45 item scale, the current 25 item scale’s predecessor’s concurrent validity was assessed through comparison with related well-established clinical scales probing areas

As a 45 item scale, the current 25 item scale’s predecessor’s concurrent validity was assessed through comparison with related well-established clinical scales probing areas