Meta-Analysis Shows Trauma Memories in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Lack Coherence: A Response to Taylor et al. (2022)

Taylor et al. reported that in healthy participants, memories of traumatic and comparison films did not differ in coherence. The lack of a group diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and limitations of the trauma-film paradigm mean that their design is unable to directly test predictions made by clinical theories of PTSD. Contrary to what Taylor et al. claimed, there is convincing evidence for trauma memories in PTSD being incoherent or disorganized. Meta-analysis demonstrated a strong positive association between PTSD and memory incoherence/disorganization, moderated by the effect of the methods chosen to assess disorganization.