Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage, UMR CNRS 7295, Université de Poitiers, Université de Tours, Tours, Poitiers, France.
UMR 1253, iBrain, Université de Tours, CHRU Tours, Inserm, Tours, France.
J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2023 Feb;29(2):172-181. doi: 10.1017/S1355617722000042. Epub 2022 Feb 21.
The present study explored the resources reallocation explanation for memory biases in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), whereby a preferential allocation of cognitive resources to the processing of threatening stimuli could result in both improvements in their memorization and deficits for other types of information.
To this end, 25 participants presenting significant symptoms of PTSD (i.e., total PCL-5 score ≥33) and 32 participants presenting low levels of symptoms (i.e., total PCL-5 score <20) took part in a Remember/Know recognition procedure associated with a dual-task encoding of positive, neutral, negative, and trauma-related words. In order to manipulate the availability of cognitive resources, the encoding of each word was associated with a simultaneous encoding of series of letters and numbers.
Results replicated the increased production of Remember recognitions for trauma-related words in participants with significant PTSD symptoms. However, the dual-task load only impaired remember recognitions for non-trauma-related words.
Contrary to expectations, these findings suggest that the encoding of trauma-related information in PTSD is relatively independent from the availability of cognitive resources. Thus, rather than reflecting an increased allocation of cognitive resources to the processing of threatening information, memory biases in PTSD appeared to be supported by an enhanced efficiency of their processing.
本研究探讨了创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）记忆偏差的资源再分配解释，即认知资源优先分配给威胁刺激的处理，可能导致对其记忆的改善和对其他类型信息的缺陷。
为此，25 名有明显 PTSD 症状的参与者（即 PCL-5 总分≥33）和 32 名症状较轻的参与者（即 PCL-5 总分<20）参加了与积极、中性、消极和创伤相关词的双任务编码相关的记住/知道识别程序。为了操纵认知资源的可用性，每个词的编码都与同时编码一系列字母和数字相关联。
结果复制了在有明显 PTSD 症状的参与者中，对创伤相关词产生更多的记住识别。然而，双任务负荷仅损害了非创伤相关词的记忆识别。
与预期相反，这些发现表明 PTSD 中创伤相关信息的编码相对独立于认知资源的可用性。因此，PTSD 中的记忆偏差似乎不是由于对威胁信息的处理增加了认知资源的分配，而是由于其处理效率的提高。
