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Abstract
Vietnam combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with other psychiatric disorders, or with no disorder participated in an autobiographical memory experiment. Half of the subjects in each group viewed a combat-relevant videotape, whereas the others viewed a neutral videotape. Immediately after this emotional priming manipulation, subjects were asked to retrieve specific autobiographical memories in response to a series of neutral, positive, and negative cue words. The results revealed that PTSD patients experienced difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories, especially after having viewed the combat videotape. Overgeneral memory appears to characterise PTSD as much as it does depression, and a relative inability to retrieve specific autobiographical memories, especially of positive valence, may contribute to the maintenance of PTSD.