Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: Individuals with dissociative identity disorder (DID) often report having no access to autobiographical experience encoded by other identities. This study used the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) to determine whether there was transfer of autobiographical memory events across amnesic identities. Eighteen DID, 16 DID simulators, and 41 comparison participants (divided into ‘amnesic’ and ‘nonamnesic’ groups) engaged with an audio vignette of embarrassing scenarios to produce the experience of episodic autobiographical events. Results showed transfer of episodic autobiographical memory across identities that reported no conscious awareness of encoded content in DID. These aIAT results in DID patients were similar to the nonamnesic comparison group and the simulator group, and differed from the amnestic comparison group. These results are in line with previous literature showing transfer of memories, but extends this work to episodic autobiographical memory