Bilateral alternating stimulation of tones reduce recall contents

In eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), patients receive bilateral alternating stimulation while recalling trauma. The most common bilateral alternating stimulus is eye movement, but other bilateral alternating stimuli such as tapping and tones are also used. Previous studies have reported that eye movement during recall reduces the vividness of memory during subsequent recall. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the effect of auditory stimuli - sound in order to perform EMDR for elderly people who have difficulty performing eye movements and for patients with physical limitations. Subjects (N = 15, average age = 21.4 years) memorized the two pictures, and then they recalled and evaluated the impression of the pictures. In the auditory stimulus condition, they recalled while listening to the bilateral alternating tones, but in the non-aural stimulus condition, they recalled without tones. Next, both the two pictures and a new pictures fragment were presented, and they reported whether they saw the fragment or not. After that, they again evaluated the impressions of the first two pictures. The results showed that the auditory stimulus conditions significantly reduced the "vividness" of the image, but did not reduce the non-auditory stimulus conditions. The correct answer rate of the re-presented picture fragment was lower in the auditory stimulus condition than in the non-auditory stimulus condition. It was suggested that auditory bilateral alternating stimulation was effective in reducing impression.

Conference

English

Miho Yamauchi
Hidehiro Iida
Jyoji Nakagawara
Masafumi Ihara
Masafumi Ihara

Yamauchi, M., Iida, H., Nakagawara, J., & Ihara, M. (2021, June). Bilateral alternating stimulation of tones reduce recall contents. Poster presented at the 20th EMDR Europe Association Conference, Virtual