Randomized Trial on the Effects of a Group EMDR Intervention on Narrative Complexity and Specificity of Autobiographical Memories: A Path Analytic and Supervised Machine-Learning Study

Andrea Poli, Angelo Gemignani and Mario Miccoli
Additional contact information
Andrea Poli: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Angelo Gemignani: Department of Surgical, Medical and Molecular Pathology and of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Mario Miccoli: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 13, 1-18

Abstract: Narratives of autobiographical memories may be impaired by adverse childhood experiences, generating narrative fragmentation and increased levels of perceived distress. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) proved to be an effective treatment to overcome traumatic experiences and to promote coherent autobiographical narratives. However, the specific mechanisms by which EMDR promotes narrative coherence remains largely unknown. We conducted a randomized controlled pilot trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT05319002) in a non-clinical sample of 27 children recruited in a primary school. Participants were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent a three-week group EMDR intervention. Subjective unit of distress (SUD), validity of cognition (VoC), classification of autobiographical memories, narrative complexity and specificity were assessed before and after the group EMDR intervention. The group EMDR intervention was able to improve SUD and VoC scales, narrative complexity and specificity, and promoted the classification of autobiographical memories as relational. The path analysis showed that SUD was able to predict VoC and narrative specificity, which, in turn, was able to predict both narrative complexity and the classification of autobiographical memories as relational. Machine-learning analysis showed that random tree classifier outperformed all other models by achieving a 93.33% accuracy. Clinical implications are discussed.

Keywords: EMDR; childhood; psychological trauma; autobiographical memory; distress; cognition; narrative complexity; narrative specificity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/13/7684/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/13/7684/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:13:p:7684-:d:845937

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().