Does treating emotional memories come at a price? Comparing the effects of Imagery Rescripting, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Imaginal Exposure on memory accuracy

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Imaginal Exposure (IE), and Imagery Rescripting (ImRs) are trauma-focused interventions aimed at reducing trauma-associated psychopathology. Despite their clinical effectiveness, concerns remain about the potential impact of these interventions on the accuracy of memories addressed in treatment. This study therefore examined the effects of EMDR, IE and ImRs on memory accuracy.Two hundred sixty-five healthy participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test and received one of the three interventions or no intervention (NIC) on the following day. Memory accuracy was assessed one week later using a cued recall task.Contrary to expectations, the interventions showed no differences in their effects on memory accuracy; thus, the three interventions led to neither an improvement nor an impairment in memory compared to NIC. This aligns with recent findings indicating that ImRs and IE do not distort memory. Although there are studies suggesting that EMDR impairs memory accuracy, this could not be confirmed in our study. The findings challenge the notion that trauma-focused psychological treatments such as EMDR, ImRs, and IE cause memory alterations, which is particularly reassuring in legal contexts where accurate memory recall by trauma survivors is crucial. However, further research is needed to ensure that the results generalize to risk constellations and more complex, emotionally charged events in clinical samples.