Amnesia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Amnesia, including details on memory loss, causes, treatment, brain injury,.

Procedural memory in dissociative identity disorder: when can inter-identity amnesia be truly established?

Huntjens RJ, Postma A, Woertman L, van der Hart O, Peters ML

Department of Clinical Psychology, Research Institute for Psychology and Health, Faculty of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80.140, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands. R.Huntjens@fss.uu.nl

In a serial reaction time task, procedural memory was examined in Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Thirty-one DID patients were tested for inter-identity transfer of procedural learning and their memory performance was compared with 25 normal controls and 25 controls instructed to simulate DID. Results of patients seemed to indicate a pattern of inter-identity amnesia. Simulators, however, were able to mimic a pattern of inter-identity amnesia, rendering the results of patients impossible to interpret as either a pattern of amnesia or a pattern of simulation. It is argued that studies not including DID-simulators or simulation-free memory tasks, should not be taken as evidence for (or against) amnesia in DID.

Published 13 June 2005 in Conscious Cogn, 14(2): 377-89.
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