traumatic vs. positive events In 2001 he conducted a study with Christina A. Bryne and Kaia L. Scott on "Comparisons of Memories for Traumatic Events and Other Experiences". In this study undergraduate college women were questioned using the Traumatic Stress Survey to identify a potentially traumatic event in their lives, such as child abuse, experiencing a natural disaster or other types of victimization. Students were then questioned further about their 'worst' traumatic event, a different negative event and a positive event. Students were asked to rate the quality of each of their three memories on a scale from 1-7 for vividness, emotionality and importance, surrounding events, order of events within the memory and their confidence as to the accuracy of the memory. Students were then assessed with a post-traumatic stress disorder scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Brief Symptom Inventory (used to determine current distress levels) and the Dissociative Experiences Scale. It was found that contrary to many flashbulb memory hypotheses, traumatic experiences are less clearly recalled than positive experiences. Positive memories contained more sensory detail, and clarity of events surrounding the memory were also better for positive memories, despite the fact that the negative and traumatic memories were more likely to be rated as important. In general, participants reported talking about traumatic events less often than positive events, but this had no real effect on recall, nor did the emotionality of the respective events. Thus these findings support the view of a more limited memory for traumatic events and poor encoding for negative events overall. Children's memories of traumatic and positive events In a related study on "Children's Memory for Trauma and Positive Experiences" in 2003, similar trend was observed. In this study the nature of memory for trauma vs. standard autobiographical events was tested. Thirty children between age 8 and 16, who were being treated for traumatic experiences were asked to identify one positive event, that occurred around the same time as the traumatic event for which they were receiving treatment. They were not asked to describe either event in the course of the study, but they were then given a questionnaire about both events. Therapists were also asked to fill out a questionnaire about the characteristics of the children's memories. It was found that the trauma memories had less detail and coherence than the positive memories, but more meaning. Emotionality had no effect. This suggests that along