Investigating the frequency of intrusive memories after 24 hours using a visuospatial interference intervention: a follow-up and extension.

Background: There is a need for effective, low-cost, readily available measures for reducing trauma symptoms so that people exposed to potentially traumatic events can receive help more quickly. A previous study reported that performing an intervention including a visuospatial task shortly after a reminder of a series of unpleasant film clips seen 24 hours earlier reduced the number of intrusive memories over the following week. Objective: This study reports a follow-up and extension of the earlier promising finding. The prediction was that participants performing the visuospatial task immediately after the reminder would report fewer intrusions compared to three other groups who 1) performed no task, and novel conditions who 2) performed the task before the reminder, and 3) performed the task 90 minutes after the reminder. Method: A trauma-analogue method was used, where students ( Results: A total of 49 participants did not report any intrusions and were excluded from the analyses. Two more participants were excluded as outliers, leaving a final sample of Conclusions: Possible explanations include the effect not being as robust as expected, a low number of intrusions across groups, baseline differences in attention, and minor but potentially important differences in procedure between this and the original study.