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REVIEW article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Forensic and Legal Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1294730
This article is part of the Research Topic The Impact of Internal and External Influences on Memory and their Relevance to Legal Decisions View all 12 articles

Myths of Trauma Memory: On the Oversimplification of Effects of Attention Narrowing Under Stress

Provisionally accepted
Deborah Davis Deborah Davis *Alexis Hogan Alexis Hogan Demi Hart Demi Hart
  • University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    For full guidelines please refer to Author Guidelines The present article addresses claims commonly made by prosecution witnesses in sexual assault trials: that attention narrows under stress, and that these attended aspects of the event are encoded in a way that ensures accuracy and resistance to fading and distortion. We provide evidence to contradict such claims. Given that what is encoded is the gist of one's interpretation of experience, we discuss the way in which attention and emotion can bias the interpretation of experience. We illustrate with issues of memory reports in cases of acquaintance rape, where the primary issue is the presence or absence of consent. We provide some specific illustrations concerning effects of emotion on interpretation of sexual consent. Finally, based on what is known regarding priming effects on memory retrieval and judgment, we conclude with discussion of the potential of some "trauma-informed" interviewing strategies to promote false memories (such as FETI: Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview).

    Keywords: Trauma, Memory, Sexual Assault, memory distortion, tunnel memory, trauma-informed

    Received: 15 Sep 2023; Accepted: 13 Mar 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Davis, Hogan and Hart. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Deborah Davis, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.