Snap Shot
- The question: What does it mean when a witness, complainant, or accused reports memories of an event that return repeatedly and unbidden, and what do such memories say about whether the event occurred as described?
- What the research shows: Unwanted, recurrent memories are a recognized feature of posttraumatic stress disorder and also occur, in milder form, after ordinary stressful events. Prospective studies find that most people with documented trauma remember it, and traumatic memories are often vivid and consistent over years. Laboratory work shows that intrusive memories can be reduced without reducing deliberate recall of the same event.
- What it does not show: Vividness, recurrence, and distress do not establish that every detail of a memory is accurate; people can remember trauma-consistent details they never saw, and some people report more trauma over time as symptoms increase. Persistence as the typical pattern does not rule out incomplete memory or later recall in some individuals.
- The law: Rule 702 and Houser govern expert testimony about trauma and memory, which must stay general and may not vouch for or against a particular witness (Brooks; Lindsey). In Arizona, Salazar-Mercado permits general educational testimony, Chapple and Nordstrom mark the scope of memory experts, and Haskie cautions against categorical claims about typical behavior.
- Issues for each side: Prosecutors can use the research to explain why persistent, distressing memories and reactions to reminders are consistent with trauma, without presenting them as proof of accuracy; defense counsel can show that vivid, recurring memories can contain errors and can grow over time, without arguing that intrusions or distress indicate fabrication.
Most forgetting is a failure to retain or retrieve something a person wants to remember. Persistence is the opposite problem: remembering what a person would prefer to forget. A memory of an assault, a combat event, a fatal collision, or a humiliating confrontation may return without warning, be triggered by a sound, a smell, or a place, and bring with it the emotion of the original experience. In posttraumatic stress disorder, such memories are a defining symptom.
Persistence reaches court in several ways. Complainants in sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse cases may describe memories that intrude repeatedly and may become distressed when questioned; service members may report combat or assault memories bearing on charged conduct or mitigation; and accused persons may describe intrusive memories of the charged event. Counsel and courts then face two questions that pull in different directions: whether the persistence of a memory shows that it is accurate, and whether the research on persistence bears on claims that traumatic events are commonly forgotten. The broader effects of stress and emotion on memory are covered in Emotion, Stress, Trauma, and Memory.
Persistence as a Memory “Sin”
Schacter (1999) grouped everyday memory failures into seven categories: transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. The first three are failures to remember; misattribution, suggestibility, and bias are distortions; persistence is the unwanted remembering of information or events that a person would rather forget. Schacter argued that each sin is a byproduct of features that usually serve people well: a memory system that gives priority to threatening experiences helps people avoid danger, at the cost of keeping a painful experience active long after it is useful. A 2022 update retained the framework and its view that the sins reflect memory’s adaptive functions (Schacter, 2022).
Persistence runs along a continuum, from functional reflection on a bad argument or near miss to recurrent, intensely distressing memories experienced as happening again. Intrusive memories are common in the immediate aftermath of trauma.
Intrusive Memories in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
The current diagnostic manual lists intrusion symptoms as one of the core clusters of posttraumatic stress disorder. They include recurrent, involuntary, and distressing memories of the traumatic event; distressing dreams related to it; dissociative reactions, such as flashbacks, in which the person feels or acts as if the event were recurring; intense psychological distress on exposure to reminders; and marked physiological reactions to reminders (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). The same criteria also include, in a different cluster, an inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event. The diagnosis therefore recognizes both persistent intrusion and gaps in recall, and a diagnosis is a clinical description, not a finding about what happened.
Intrusions are usually sensory, most often visual, and tend to involve brief moments rather than the whole event; in one study they commonly consisted of stimuli present just before the trauma or its moments of greatest emotional impact, which the authors proposed had become warning signals carrying a sense of current threat (Ehlers et al., 2002). Among assault survivors, the qualities of intrusions mattered more than their mere presence: a “here and now” quality, distress, and lack of context predicted later symptom severity considerably better than frequency did (Michael et al., 2005).
Two influential theories explain these features. Ehlers and Clark (2000) proposed that persistent posttraumatic stress disorder arises when a trauma memory is poorly elaborated and poorly integrated with its context, and when the person appraises the trauma in ways that produce a sense of serious current threat; such a memory is easily triggered by similar cues and is reexperienced rather than recalled as past. Brewin’s dual representation theory proposed that traumatic experiences are stored in two forms: flexible, contextualized representations that can be deliberately retrieved and placed in time and place, and inflexible, sensation-bound representations that are triggered automatically by cues and experienced as present (Brewin et al., 1996). A revision placed these forms within a model of ordinary memory and imagery (Brewin et al., 2010). Both theories imply that the intrusive form of a memory and the deliberately recalled form can differ, a point with forensic implications discussed below.
Involuntary Autobiographical Memory
Intrusions are a special case of a more general phenomenon. Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal experiences that come to mind without any attempt to retrieve them. Berntsen (2010) summarized research showing that they are a basic mode of remembering, common in everyday life, usually triggered by cues, and supported by the same episodic memory system as deliberate remembering, although they tend to be more specific and more emotional at recall. Most everyday involuntary memories are neutral or positive.
This research has produced a scientific disagreement about trauma memory. Berntsen and Rubin (2008) found that recurrent involuntary memories, among tsunami survivors and in a general population, were not limited to negative experiences and typically did not return in a fixed, unchangeable form. Rubin, Berntsen, and Bohni (2008) proposed a memory-based model in which posttraumatic symptoms depend on the current memory of an event rather than on the event itself, so that ordinary principles of autobiographical memory, without special mechanisms, account for the disorder. Brewin (2025) maintains that flashbacks differ from standard episodic memory in ways that matter clinically and for research. A 2025 review of 79 studies found involuntary memories of all kinds more frequent across many mental disorders, and more negative in posttraumatic stress disorder and depression (Shan et al., 2025). The disagreement concerns mechanism; both sides agree that intrusive memories are a real and common consequence of trauma.
The Trauma-Film Paradigm
Researchers study intrusions by showing volunteers distressing film footage and asking them to record spontaneous memories of it in a diary over the following week (Holmes & Bourne, 2008). In one series of experiments, performing a visuospatial tapping task while watching the film reduced later intrusions, a verbal distraction task increased them, and intrusions were largely unrelated to performance on deliberate recall and recognition tests (Holmes et al., 2004).
The paradigm has been used to test ways of preventing intrusions. Building on a proposal that the computer game Tetris might compete with the imagery underlying flashbacks (Holmes et al., 2009), James et al. (2015) found that intrusions were markedly reduced when participants played Tetris after a reminder task given 24 hours after the film, and that both the reminder and the game were needed, which the authors interpreted in terms of reconsolidation, the process by which a retrieved memory becomes temporarily open to change. An independent group replicated the reduction in intrusions with a procedure including Tetris (Badawi et al., 2020). Of particular forensic interest, a series of three experiments found that the interference task reduced intrusive memories while sparing deliberate free recall and recognition of the film (Lau-Zhu et al., 2019), consistent with the view that intrusive and voluntary memory for the same event can be separated.
In randomized trials with health-care staff exposed to trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic, a brief imagery-competing intervention produced fewer intrusive memories than delayed treatment (Iyadurai et al., 2023) and than an active control or usual care (Beckenstrom et al., 2026). These treatment studies did not test the accuracy of participants’ memories.
Rumination
Rumination is repetitive, self-focused thinking about distress and its causes and consequences (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008); unlike intrusion, it is deliberate, if often compulsive. The two interact. In studies of assault survivors, rumination was used as a way of coping with intrusive memories but also triggered them, and certain features of rumination, including a sense of compulsion, unproductive “why” and “what if” questions, and negative emotion before and after, predicted posttraumatic symptom severity both at the time and six months later (Michael et al., 2007). Ehlers and Clark (2000) identified rumination as one of the strategies that keeps a trauma memory from changing and so maintains the disorder.
Repeatedly thinking about an event rehearses some details and adds interpretation and “what if” alternatives. Accuracy-focused retelling can strengthen recall; slanted retelling, repeated suggestive questioning, or exposure to others’ accounts can contaminate it (see “Remembering Changes Memory”). The rumination research concerns emotional consequences; it has not directly tested whether rumination makes particular details more or less accurate.
What Persistence Does and Does Not Show About Accuracy
The research supports two separate inferences, and each has limits.
The first concerns accuracy. Vividness, recurrence, and emotional intensity are qualities of the experience of remembering; they are not measures of correspondence with what happened. In memories of learning shocking public news, confidence and vividness remained high while consistency declined (Talarico & Rubin, 2003). In a trauma-film study, participants who were highly accurate about what they had and had not seen also falsely claimed to have seen 26% of the clips that had been removed from the film, more often the most traumatic ones (Strange & Takarangi, 2012). Among 59 Gulf War reservists, 88% changed at least one of 19 yes/no checklist answers about whether specific combat events had occurred between one month and two years after return (61% changed two or more), and greater posttraumatic symptoms were associated with reporting more events over time; this measured changes in checklist answers, not in a narrative account, and the abstract does not report the share of all answers that changed (Southwick et al., 1997); a study of soldiers deployed to Iraq found a similar link (Engelhard et al., 2008). Research on false memory in people with posttraumatic symptoms is reviewed in False Memory in Trauma and PTSD. People may also be imperfect reporters of their own intrusions: in trauma-film studies, participants were sometimes caught in trauma-related thoughts they had not reported (Takarangi et al., 2014).
Other research points the other way. In a prospective study, traumatic memories remained highly consistent and undiminished in vividness over three and a half to five years, while positive memories declined (Porter & Peace, 2007). In a study of adults with documented child sexual abuse, greater posttraumatic symptoms were associated with more accurate memory for the abuse 12 to 21 years later (Alexander et al., 2005). Persistence is therefore neither proof of accuracy nor a sign of inaccuracy: central features are often well retained, while specific details, especially those reconstructed or rehearsed later, can change.
The second inference concerns forgetting. The prominence of intrusions in posttraumatic stress disorder and prospective studies of documented abuse indicate that traumatic experiences are often, but not always, well remembered rather than typically forgotten. Of 175 people with documented child sexual abuse, 81% reported it when interviewed (Goodman et al., 2003), and some researchers argue on this and related evidence that claims of long-forgotten trauma are not well supported (McNally, 2003; Otgaar et al., 2019). The evidence does not establish that trauma is never forgotten. An earlier study found that 38% of women with documented childhood sexual abuse did not recall it when interviewed 17 years later, more often when they had been younger or knew the abuser, and the author cautioned that a long period without memory is not evidence that abuse did not occur (Williams, 1994). Other researchers suggest that nondisclosure, early age, and ordinary forgetting may account for part of that figure, and Goodman et al. (2003) noted that forgetting could not be ruled out in a subset of cases. Brewin (2021) argues that critics of repression overstate their case and that trauma can be forgotten through ordinary processes such as avoidance and inhibition, while Otgaar et al. (2021) maintain that belief in unconscious repression lacks support. The broader research reflects general agreement that recovered memories are sometimes accurate and sometimes the product of suggestion (Lane & Houston, 2021, pp. 70–71). The fair summary is that persistence is the more typical response to trauma, that incomplete or delayed recall occurs in some people, and that neither pattern can be inferred for a particular person from group findings.
Intrusive Memories, Testimony, and Demeanor
Testifying requires deliberate retrieval under questioning, often in the presence of the person involved, and the courtroom can supply cues that trigger intrusions. Distress or physiological arousal while testifying is consistent with the intrusion and cue-reactivity symptoms in the diagnostic criteria, and avoidance may make a witness reluctant to elaborate. These reactions are consistent with trauma; they are not specific to it, and they do not show whether an account is accurate.
Demeanor, whether calm or distressed, does not by itself indicate whether an account is accurate; that is why the research points to records and procedures. The absence of distress is equally uninformative: not everyone exposed to trauma develops intrusions, and emotional reactions to negative memories generally fade (see Fading Affect Bias). Displayed emotion nonetheless strongly affects credibility judgments; in one study, the emotion a witness displayed, rather than the content of the account, drove credibility ratings (Kaufmann et al., 2003), and police trainees rated an emotional rape complainant as more credible, an effect linked to expectations about how a victim should behave (Ask & Landström, 2010). General testimony on the range of reactions to trauma can therefore assist a factfinder, and the same research cuts against treating emotion as evidence of truthfulness.
If intrusive images and deliberately retrieved memories can differ, a witness’s descriptions of flashbacks and narrative account may not match exactly, and neither can be assumed more accurate without a factual basis. Treatments that target intrusive memories, including trauma-focused therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, raise their own questions about effects on memory reports, discussed in EMDR and Memory.
Limits of the Evidence
Much of the experimental research uses student volunteers watching film of other people’s suffering, which produces intrusions resembling clinical ones in form but does not reproduce personal threat, injury, betrayal, or the stakes of litigation. Clinical studies rely largely on self-report, which can miss some intrusions, and prospective studies of memory change typically compare checklist answers at two times rather than testing a narrative against an independent record. Studies of documented abuse involve samples with legal involvement and may not represent all survivors. Sex differences have been examined mainly for prevalence and hormones: women are more likely than men to meet criteria for PTSD, although less likely to experience potentially traumatic events overall (Tolin & Foa, 2006), and a meta-analysis of studies in naturally cycling women found that higher progesterone levels were associated with more negative intrusive memories (Hsu et al., 2021). The trauma-film and treatment studies reviewed here did not report sex differences in intrusions, the health-care trials enrolled mostly women (Iyadurai et al., 2023; Beckenstrom et al., 2026), and the study reporting 38% nonrecall sampled only women (Williams, 1994). Most important, the research describes tendencies in groups. It cannot determine whether a particular person’s intrusive memories are accurate, whether a particular gap in memory reflects trauma, or whether a particular witness’s demeanor reflects the events alleged.
Questions to Ask About This Research
When Southwick et al. (1997) or Engelhard et al. (2008) is cited to suggest that a complainant’s account has grown because of posttraumatic symptoms, counsel can ask what was measured: group correlations with changed checklist answers among service members, not changes in a narrative account of an assault. When Porter and Peace (2007) or Alexander et al. (2005) is cited for the accuracy of a traumatic memory, counsel can ask how large the samples were and whether consistency was measured against an independent record. When trauma-film studies are relied on, counsel can ask whether watching a film of strangers’ injuries is comparable to personal victimization. When prevalence figures such as the 81% in Goodman et al. (2003) or the 38% in Williams (1994) are cited, counsel can ask whether the figure measures remembering or reporting, because not reporting an event in an interview is not necessarily the same as not remembering it (Goodman et al., 2003). In each instance, counsel can ask whether a group tendency applies to this person. These questions are explained in “Reading Research Claims: A Guide for Attorneys” on this site.
Persistence, Trauma, and the Law
Federal and Military Standards
Under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, as amended December 1, 2023, the proponent must show that it is more likely than not that expert testimony rests on sufficient facts or data, reliable principles and methods, and a reliable application of them to the case. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) established the trial judge’s gatekeeping role, and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael (1999) extended that obligation to all expert testimony, including non-scientific technical or specialized knowledge. In courts-martial, Military Rule of Evidence 702 tracks the federal rule; through Military Rule of Evidence 1102, the 2023 federal amendment became part of the military rule in 2025 (Joint Service Committee on Military Justice, 2025), and practitioners should confirm the current text. Admissibility is assessed under the six factors of United States v. Houser (1993). An expert may not offer an opinion, directly or through statistics, that a witness is truthful or untruthful (United States v. Brooks, 2007), so testimony that intrusions or distress are consistent with trauma may not become testimony that a complainant is truthful.
Arizona
Arizona Rule of Evidence 702 adopted the Daubert standard effective January 1, 2012, and was amended effective January 1, 2024, to track the 2023 federal amendment (Ariz. Sup. Ct. Order R-23-0004). State v. Salazar-Mercado (2014) permits general, educational expert testimony that satisfies Rules 702 and 403, even from an expert who has not examined the witness. Under State v. Chapple (1983), Arizona’s leading case on eyewitness expert testimony, exclusion of a qualified expert was an abuse of discretion on its facts, though admission generally remains discretionary; State v. Nordstrom (2001) approved limiting such an expert to general factors, without opinions on a particular witness’s accuracy. State v. Lindsey (1986) and State v. Moran (1986) bar expert opinion on the truthfulness of a witness or a class of witnesses. State v. Haskie (2017) directs trial courts to confine experts to their expertise and to avoid categorical statements about what is typical without empirical support, a caution that applies to claims about how trauma survivors remember or behave. The limits on counterintuitive-behavior testimony are discussed in the Counterintuitive Testimony resource.
Special Issues in Legal Practice
The principles described above apply with equal force to every party in a legal proceeding. The science operates the same way regardless of who is asking the questions, and the research summarized here does not by itself favor either side. What differs between the parties is not the science but the vantage point — the particular places where these issues tend to surface, and the particular errors each party is best positioned to guard against. The two summaries below identify those recurring issues. They are offered for orientation, not as litigation strategy; in every case the controlling question is what the evidence in that case will, and will not, support, and the expert’s role is to inform the trier of fact rather than to advocate for either side.
Special Issues for Prosecutors
The research supports several propositions prosecutors can legitimately present. Recurrent, distressing memories and strong reactions to reminders are recognized consequences of trauma, so a complainant who describes them or becomes distressed when testifying is describing a known pattern. Traumatic events are often, but not always, well remembered, their central features are often consistent over years, and in one prospective study greater posttraumatic symptoms were associated with more accurate memory. Calm testimony is also consistent with the research, because not everyone develops intrusions and emotional intensity often fades, and general testimony on these points can help a factfinder avoid assumptions about how a victim should appear.
The research also counsels caution. Persistence and vividness do not establish that each detail is accurate; studies show memory for trauma-consistent details never seen and increased reporting over time in some people with more symptoms. Because persistence is the typical response, the research does not support presenting a long period without memory as the expected result of trauma, although incomplete or delayed recall occurs in some people. Testimony that presents intrusions or distress as corroboration, or describes trauma survivors’ behavior in categorical terms, risks the limits recognized in Brooks, Lindsey, and Haskie.
Special Issues for Defense
The research supports several propositions defense counsel can legitimately present. A memory can be vivid, recurrent, and confidently held and still contain errors, including event-consistent details that did not occur. In some studies of military samples, reports of traumatic experiences changed over time, and more symptoms were associated with reporting more events; those findings do not show that any particular account grew. Displayed emotion influences credibility judgments although it does not indicate accuracy. Where a complainant reports a long period without memory, the research on persistence is relevant to evaluating that claim. Expert testimony on these principles, with the record of what a witness said at different times, can help the factfinder evaluate an account.
The research also counsels caution about the limits that apply to the defense. Intrusions, distress, and avoidance do not indicate fabrication or exaggeration, and a persistent memory is consistent with the event having occurred. That persistence is typical does not show that a particular gap or delayed recollection is false, because nondisclosure and some forgetting of trauma occur. An expert cannot tell the factfinder that a particular memory is false or a particular witness untruthful. The same principles apply to an accused who reports intrusive memories of the charged event.
This paper is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. The author is a psychologist, not an attorney; summaries of law are general and must be verified against current authority or with a licensed attorney.
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Williams, L. M. (1994). Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women’s memories of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(6), 1167–1176. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.62.6.1167
Legal Authorities
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999).
State v. Chapple, 135 Ariz. 281, 660 P.2d 1208 (1983).
State v. Haskie, 242 Ariz. 582, 399 P.3d 657 (2017).
State v. Lindsey, 149 Ariz. 472, 720 P.2d 73 (1986).
State v. Moran, 151 Ariz. 378, 728 P.2d 248 (1986).
State v. Nordstrom, 200 Ariz. 229, 25 P.3d 717 (2001).
State v. Salazar-Mercado, 234 Ariz. 590, 325 P.3d 996 (2014).
United States v. Brooks, 64 M.J. 325 (C.A.A.F. 2007).
United States v. Houser, 36 M.J. 392 (C.M.A. 1993).
Fed. R. Evid. 702.
Ariz. R. Evid. 702.
Ariz. R. Evid. 403.
Mil. R. Evid. 702.
Mil. R. Evid. 1102.
Related topic papers: Emotion, Stress, Trauma, and Memory · False Memory in Trauma and PTSD · Fading Affect Bias · EMDR and Memory · Recovered and Repressed Memory · Flashbulb Memories
Related topics from Arizona Forensic Services: Counterintuitive Testimony · Courts-Martial