Does treating emotional memories come at a price? Effects of single-session EMDR, imaginal exposure, and imagery rescripting on forced-choice recognition of event details in healthy adults (Behaviour Research and Therapy)

Does treating emotional memories come at a price? Effects of single-session EMDR, imaginal exposure, and imagery rescripting on forced-choice recognition of event details in healthy adults

This laboratory study addressed concerns of impaired memory accuracy in trauma treatment, and tested whether a single session of EMDR, IE, or ImRs affects forced-choice recognition in healthy adults.

Article Abstract

“Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Imaginal Exposure (IE), and Imagery Rescripting (ImRs) are effective trauma-focused interventions. However, concerns persist that they may impair the accuracy of memories addressed in treatment. This laboratory study tested whether a single session of EMDR, IE, or ImRs affects forced-choice recognition in healthy adults.

Two hundred sixty-five participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and received EMDR, IE, ImRs, or no intervention (NIC) the following day. One week later, memory for the TSST was assessed using a forced-choice recognition task (one target; three plausible foils).

Contrary to expectations, the interventions did not differentially affect recognition performance; the number of correct answers was comparable to NIC across intervention groups. For ImRs and IE, this aligns with recent findings suggesting that they do not impair recognition memory. For EMDR, prior experimental studies linked eye movements to poorer delayed free recall, stimulus discrimination, and yes/no recognition. Here, we observed no impairment in delayed forced-choice recognition, suggesting that previously reported negative effects may not generalize across memory outcomes or task formats.

Overall, these findings indicate that trauma-focused interventions do not carry a general risk of memory impairment. However, conclusions are limited by the laboratory analogue design, exclusive reliance on a recognition task, and the absence of treatment-integrity checks, which raises the possibility that null effects reflect limited intervention effectiveness. Future research should specify conditions under which these interventions may pose risks, clarify mechanisms underlying task- and memory-specific effects, and examine how findings generalize to clinical populations.

Highlights:

This study examined if trauma-focused interventions reduce memory accuracy
We compared the effects of ImRs, EMDR and IE on induced aversive memories
None of the interventions impaired memory accuracy compared to no intervention
Our findings challenge concerns about memory-distorting intervention effects
Future research should replicate findings for clinical autobiographical memories”

—Description from publisher

Article Access

Open Access

Aleksic, M., Ehring, T., Kunze, A., & Wolkenstein, L. (2025). Does treating emotional memories come at a price? Effects of single-session EMDR, imaginal exposure, and imagery rescripting on forced-choice recognition of event details in healthy adults. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 195, 104884. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2025.104884

About the Journal

“The major focus of Behaviour Research and Therapy is an experimental psychopathology approach to understanding emotional and behavioral disorders and their prevention and treatment, using cognitive, behavioral, and psychophysiological (including neural) methods and models. ”

—Description from publisher

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Does treating emotional memories come at a price? Effects of single-session EMDR, imaginal exposure, and imagery rescripting on forced-choice recognition of event details in healthy adults (Behaviour Research and Therapy)