social services. Valentino, Toth, and Cicchetti published a study in 2009 that examined the type of maltreatment a child experienced and current OGM. Participants were recruited via the local Department of Human Services and included families with a substantiated report of abuse or neglect. Compared to both a nonmaltreated group and the neglected group, children who experienced abuse displayed more OGM. In addition to being the first study to look at current maltreatment and OGM, the idea of trauma as a pathway to OGM is significantly supported here, as depression did not mediate the relationship between abuse and OGM. Additionally, neglected children may not have a specific trauma that they attempt to avoid, thus their memory search may not be affected. Other OGM has been researched in other psychopathological disorders, including anxiety disorder, social phobia, specific phobias, borderline personality disorder and eating disorders without any associations found. It is proposed that OGM is a specific marker of emotional and affect disorders such as depression and PTSD. Cause Initial theories of OGM focused on encoding and retrieval. Memories are encoded based on distinctive traits of what has happened; however, without proper encoding of a memory, the event will not be remembered in any great detail. The hypothesis that stemmed from this idea is that those who have dysfunctional encoding abilities would display greater OGM. With the addition of research on the relationship between depressive symptoms and OGM, the focus shifted. Williams proposed that depressed patients may be more vulnerable to this general encoding style, leaving them with an inability to recall specific aspects of events. However, it was not long until theories on OGM transitioned from a focus on encoding and retrieval to retrieval alone. In 1996, Williams proposed the theory of Functional Avoidance (FA) as the pathway to OGM. When a person experiences a traumatic event that could trigger negative emotions, the person may attempt to avoid that memory as a short-term coping strategy. Over time, this memory retrieval style becomes negatively reinforced and generalizes to other memories that could potentially be connected to the original negative memory, leading to OGM. However, with additional research on memory and OGM, the theory of Functional Avoidance could not be upheld on its own. Current theory In 2000, Conway and Pleydell-Pearce came up with an improved theory of autobiographical memory, inspiring Williams to revise and expand his theory of OGM into the current