Effects Of Eye-Movements In Emdr On Emotional Autobiographical Memories

As a memory of individual’s complex life, Autobiographical memory has fundamental significance to self, emotion and personal experience. Autobiographical memory has been attached importance to by psychologists, because it has close relation with some psychological phenomena such as emotion, emotional experience with events can influence autobiographical maintenance and retrieval. Many studies found that severe unpleasant memories can induce a series of varying symptoms such as anxiety, fear, cognitive dissonance, somatic discomfort and so on, affecting individual’s physical as well as the mental health. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a comprehensive psychological treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can relieve patients’depression, somatic discomfort and negative cognition with bilateral eye-movement stimulates. Recently, a variety of studies found that eye-movement benefits can also be found in non-clinical populations. Mechanisms of eye movement benefits were focused on and there were several accounts of eye movement benefits in EMDR. The Visuospatial Sketchpad Model (VSSP) had gained more acceptance than other accounts. Vividness and Emotionality are subjective ratings for memories, the VSSP was a proper explanation for eye-movements benefits and make predictions on relationships between vividness and emotionality. The objective is to test eye movement benefits of emotional autobiographical memories, and then to explore the of eye movement-related decrease in vividness and emotionality of unpleasant autobiographical memories, in order to verify hypothesis of VSSP.In the study, two experiments were performed. In experiment1, the aim of this study was to examine the effect of eye-movements on subjective measures of vividness and emotionality associated with positive and negative autobiographical memories, and then explore the effects of symptom severity and emotion valance on eye-movements beneficial effects. These memories were’brought-to-mind’whilst engaging in eye-movement or eyes-stationary conditions in a mixed within subjects design, with pre and post eye-condition subjective ratings of emotional valence and image vividness. Participants also rated current negative symptomatology using SAS, SDS and SCL-90. In experiment2, The time-course of changes in vividness and emotionality of unpleasant autobiographical memories associated with making eye movements (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, EMDR) was investigated. Participants retrieved unpleasant autobiographical memories and rated their vividness and emotionality prior to and following96seconds of making eye movements (EM) or keeping eyes stationary (ES); at2,4,6, and10seconds into the intervention; then followed by regular larger intervals throughout the96-second intervention.Results as follows:(1) Eye movement beneficial effects on emotional autobiographical memory were found in non-clinical populations, which support the visuospatial sketchpad model that images held in the visuospatial sketchpad were broken when eye movements use up processing resources. Both positive and negative memories became less vivid following an eye-movement task than following an eyes-stationary task, with less positive emotions evoked with the positive memory, and less negative emotions evoked with the negative memory following eye-movements.(2) This effect was observed independently of symptom severity and emotion valance. Engagement in eye-movements condition resulted in significant reductions on measures of vividness and emotional valence for both positive and negative autobiographical memories of participants with different symptoms.(3) A significant drop in vividness happened at only2seconds into the intervention during eye-movements, and the time-course was non-linear for vividness. Images with less vividness show less emotionality.