Lateral Eye Movements Increase False Memory Rates

DOI

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a popular treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. However, little is known about the memory effects of EMDR. Using a misinformation paradigm, we examined whether lateral eye movements, as used in EMDR, enhance susceptibility to false memories. Undergraduates (N = 82) saw a video depicting a car crash. Subsequently, participants either performed eye movements or held their eyes stationary. Afterward, all participants received misinformation in the form of an eyewitness narrative. The results indicate that eye movement participants were less accurate and were more susceptible to the misinformation effect than controls. Our finding suggests EMDR may have risky drawbacks in an eyewitness context and therefore urgently needs follow-up research.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.34894/J3HPR4
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702618757658
Metadata Access https://dataverse.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.34894/J3HPR4
Provenance
Creator Houben, Sanne T.L. ORCID logo; Otgaar, Henry ORCID logo; Roelofs, Jeffrey ORCID logo; Merckelbach, Harald ORCID logo
Publisher DataverseNL
Contributor Houben, Sanne T.L.; faculty data manager FPN
Publication Year 2019
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess
OpenAccess false
Contact Houben, Sanne T.L. (Maastricht University); faculty data manager FPN (Maastricht University)
Representation
Resource Type Experimental data; Dataset
Format application/x-spss-sav
Size 6581
Version 1.0
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences