The Effect Of Childhood Psychological Maltreatment On Directed Forgetting Of Negative Emotional Memory

Purposes: The main object of this study is to explore the effect of childhood psychological maltreatment on directed forgetting of negative emotional memory.Methods:(1)Cluster sampling was applied in this study while 550 college students were chosen from Harbin Normal University.The Child Psychological Maltreatment Scale was tested in this investigation.(2)Then 29 students with psychological maltreatment and 31 students without psychological maltreatment were selected to take part in all experiments,according to the Childhood Psychological Maltreatment Scale.(3)Experiment 1: Using pictures as experimental materials,the item-method directed forgetting paradigm was applied.The Experiment 1 was used 2(groups: maltreated and controlled)×2(valence: neutral and negative)×2(instruction type: remember and forget)mixed design to explore the directed forgetting of college students who experienced psychological maltreatment for negative textual materials;Experiment 2: The same procedure was applied to Experiment 2,in which neutral and negative pictures were used as materials instead to explore the directed forgetting of textual materials.Results:(1)In Experiment 1,a three-factor analysis of variance(ANONA)was performed after experiment with the material type,recall tests as independent variants,and the results showed that the main effects of instruction were significant(F=130.66,p<0.001).The interaction effect between valence and instructions were significant(F=5.78,p=0.019),in addition,further analysis showed that under the condition of forgetting instruction,the subjects recalled more negative words;The interaction effect among words,instruction and group was significant,and at the same time,it was found that the recall score of negative emotional words was higher in the maltreated group than in the controlled group under the memorized instructions.On the contrary,the controlled group remembered more negative words under the specific instructions to forget.(2)In experiment 2,the recall score were analyzed with a threefactor analysis of variance(ANOVA)and the results showed that the main effects on valence(F=117.99,p<0.001),the main effects of instruction(F=41.62,p<0.001)and the interaction effect(F=7.81,p=0.007)between instruction and group were significant.Further analysis showed that comparing controlled group,more negative pictures were recalled by maltreated group under the specific instructions to forget.The interaction effect between pictures and instruction was significant(F=10.30,p=0.002).Conclusions: Childhood psychological maltreatment had an effect on directed forgetting of negative emotional memory,and had different effects on two different materials of text and pictures:childhood psychological maltreatment enhanced the directed forgetting of text,but weakened the directed forgetting of pictures.