The Therapeutic Mechanism of Eye Movements in EMDR: the Effect of Interrupting Spontaneous Eye Movements During Recollections
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Li, Yuan-Hua
Abstract
This study examines the role of eye movements in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Previous studies have pointed that eye movements could decrease the vividness and emotionality during imagery. Besides replicating previous studies, this study proposes a hypothesis: bilateral eye movements interrupt the patients’ spontaneous eye movements during traumatic recollections and decrease the vividness and emotionality of imagery. Participants are 132 NTU undergraduate students enrolled in the general psychology course. This study manipulates three conditions of eye movements in order to realize the effect of different interruptions to vividness, emotionality and heart rate during positive and negative autobiographic recollections. It also records the directions of spontaneous eye movements during recall, namely CLEMs (Conjugate Lateral Eye Movements). The three conditions of the experiment are eye movement, gaze and mere imagery conditions. The eye movement condition is divided into horizontal and vertical movement groups and the gaze condition is divided into left and right gaze groups. Results show that the directions of CLEMs in positive and negative recollections are coherent, however the numbers of rightward gazes are more than leftward gazes. The valence-specific laterality hypothesis and the right hemisphere hypothesis of emotion both are not supported by the findings of CLEMs. In addition, the strongest interruption of vividness and emotionality is eye movement condition, followed by the gaze condition, while increasing in mere imagery condition. Vividness and emotionality are not significantly different between the horizontal and the vertical eye movement groups in the eye movement condition, however, the interruption of vividness and emotionality in the right gaze group is stronger than the left gaze group. According to these findings, the special effect of horizontal eye movements is not supported, neither is valence-specific laterality hypothesis. However, The right hemisphere hypothesis may be supported. In negative recollections, the heart rate does not have any trend in the eye movement condition, but increasing in gaze condition and nearly increasing in mere imagery condition. In summary, the results support the hypothesis: bilateral eye movements interrupt the patients’ spontaneous eye movements during traumatic recollections and decrease the vividness and emotionality of imagery. Lastly, the study discusses the theories of eye movements in EMDR, and proposes an integrated perspective.
Subjects
EDMR
eye movement
valence-specific hypothesis
autobiographic memory
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