Characteristics of intrusions in offspring of Second World War victims

Most recent experimental studies of traumatic intrusive images have focused on
factors operating at the time or in the immediate aftermath of the traumatic
event. However, intrusions have been found to sometimes not accurately reflect
an experienced event, consisting of so-called *worse-case* scenarios, that is,
an exaggerated version of what really happened. Moreover, intrusions are not
only reported by people who directly experienced or witnessed a traumatic
event. Also the ones who are confronted more indirectly with traumatic events
report intrusive images. The reports of inaccurate intrusions and intrusions by
people who did not directly witness a traumatic event but received information
indirectly (e.g., by stories from others), point out the need for research into
other factors than factors operating at the time of event encoding to explain
the posttraumatic complaint of intrusions.
Recently, a model has been proposed by Rubin, Berntsen, and Bohni
(2008a), the so-called mnemonic model. In their view, it is the memory of the
traumatic event, not the event itself, that determines post traumatic symptoms.
Importantly, the memory is not fixed, but changes over time due to factors that
characterize all memories in all people, for example factors related to
individual differences, resulting in memories that do not (always) reflect the
experienced event in an accurate way. Moreover, as indirectly experienced
events are also encoded in memory, we hypothesize that these experiences also
give rise to intrusive images, comparable in detail, frequency and severity to
intrusions following directly experienced traumatic events. These intrusions
would not be expected based on models emphasizing the traumatic event, as
event-related processing cannot take place if one is not present during the
traumatic event. In order to evaluate the claims of the mnemonic model, it is
important to investigate groups of patients who report posttraumatic
complaints, including intrusions, but who do not satisfy current diagnostic
criteria for a trauma. Three types of intrusions are investigated, intrusions
reflecting the parent*s war experiences, intrusions reflecting war-related
upbringing, and intrusions following other personally experienced traumatic
events.

The aim of the current study is the systematic description of the occurrence
and characteristics of intrusions and to relate these to several participant
characteristics.

Combination of a quasi-experimental and correlational design

Patients fill in 9 questionnaires on 1 occasion at their own home. Duration:
approximately 1,5 - 2 hours.