July 15 1998 Contact Ross West (541) 346-2060 Source: Jennifer Freyd, (541) 346-4950 Editor's Note: Additional information about the Meeting on Trauma and Cognitive Science, including a complete list of conference participants and biographic information about each, can be found on the World Wide Web at http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/traumaconf.html. EUGENE--How do traumatic events such as combat and child abuse affect our thinking, our memories and how we cope with life? An international gathering of psychologists will address these and related questions--including the controversial issue of repressed memory--at the Meeting on Trauma and Cognitive Science on July 17-19 at the University of Oregon. "The aim of the meeting is to share knowledge and theory relevant to understanding the way in which trauma interacts with information processing," explains conference organizer Jennifer Freyd, UO psychology professor. "A particular focus will be on how traumatic information is encoded, stored and later retrieved from memory." Freyd is the author of a 1997 book "Betrayal Trauma, The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse." The book discusses how psychogenic amnesia is brought on and argues that it is necessary for survival if the abuse takes place at the hands of a parent or caregiver. Freyd theorizes that when a person is a victim of childhood incest or sexual abuse inflicted by a trusted authority figure, he or she may block that memory in order to maintain an attachment to the abuser which is percieved as necessary for survival. "At the conference we will address many questions in this important and rapidly developing area of psychology," Freyd says. "The conference will have a research focus, but we believe it is also important to keep in mind the significant ethical, clinical and societal implications of our work." One of the most controversial areas to be addressed at the conference is the topic of recovered memory. Freyd expects the topic to color much of the conference; one conference session will directly address it. Kathy Pezdek, professor and associate chairperson of the psychology department at Claremont Graduate University, will discuss the controversy in her talk on "The Recovered Memory/False Memory Debate." Ira Hyman, co-author of "Guided Imagery and the Creation of False Childhood Memories," will deliver a talk on "False Memories of Childhood Experiences." Jonathan Schooler, associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, will present a contrasting point of view in his lecture "Discovered Memories of Abuse: A Cognitive Corroborative Case Study Approach." Other topics to be covered at the conference include disturbances of consciousness during and after trauma, the accuracy of memory for trauma, the need for multi-level models of memory, the effects of early trauma on subsequent information processing, and inhibitory processes in memory. Specific sessions will take place on a variety of topics, including: "Post Traumatic Stress and Information Processing," "Lasting Effects of Childhood Abuse on Memory and the Hippocampus," "Recovered Memories of Trauma: Cognitive Mechanisms," "Betrayal Trauma Theory and Cognitive Environments" and "The Cognitive Basis of Forgetting and Remembering." -30- #P-7401/Local, OrSci