A meta-analysis of the contribution of eye movements in processing emotional memories

TLDR: This meta-analysis examined current published studies to test whether eye movements significantly affect the processing of distressing memories and indicated that treatment fidelity acted as a moderator variable on the effect of eye movements in the therapy studies.

About: This article is published in Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.The article was published on 2013-06-01 and is currently open access. It has received 263 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing & Eye movement.

Figures

Table 2. Meta-analyses of studies comparing the effects of eye movement with no eye movement during EMDR treatments Study Ncomp d 95% CI Z I 2 a) p b)

Table 1. Study characteristics of investigations into EMDR with or without eye movements within a therapy context

Table 3. Study characteristics of investigations into memory processing with or without eye movements not in a therapy context.

Table 4.

Figure 3. Eye movement versus no eye movement in brief experiments: Standardized effect sizes.

Figure 2. Eye movement versus no eye movement in full EMDR treatments: Standardized effect sizes.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What is the common method of pooling studies?

In this model,studies within subgroups are pooled with the random effects model, while tests for significant differences between subgroups are conducted with the fixed effects model. 

Q2. What is the limitation of this study?

Another possible limitation of this study is that the authors used standard methods to calculatethe confidence intervals around their effect sizes. 

Q3. How many studies were excluded from the study?

Of the 33 remaining studies, which all tested the effects of eye movement on a negativeor trauma memory, 5 were excluded because the eye movements condition was not compared to a no eye movement control. 

Q4. What is the effect of eye movements in the non-therapy studies?

Whilst the effect of eye movements in the non-therapy studies might be accounted forby a working memory model or by the eye movements triggering an orienting response, the key processes in the therapy studies are likely to be more complex.