Recently the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) published a Position Paper on “Trauma-Informed Training and Neurobiology of Trauma” that sharply criticizes the assumptions, precepts, and methods of trauma-informed proponents. Now, the Center for Prosecutor Integrity has published a separate report that takes a deep-dive into the science behind trauma-informed theory, as expounded in a bulletin written by End Violence Against Women International titled, “Understanding the Neurobiology of Trauma and Implications for Interviewing Victims.”

Following are highlights from the CPI report titled, “A Review of ‘Understanding the Neurobiology of Trauma and Implications for Interviewing Victims:’ Are We Trading One Prejudice for Another?“, researched and written by behavioral neuroscientists Sujeeta Bhatt, PhD and Susan Brandon, PhD. A large part of their review, which contains 250 citations from the scientific literature, documents the “Over-Simplification and Errors in Descriptions of Brain Processes” of the EVAWI report:

• “The impacts of trauma on memories and recall are widely variable. The stress accompanying and resulting from trauma may produce strong memories (McGaugh, 2000; McGaugh and Roozendaal, 2002), impair memories (Salehi, Cordero, and Sandi, 2010), have no effect on memories (Shermohammed, Davidow, Somerville, and Murty, 2019), or increase the possibility of false memories.” (p. 5)
• “The  [EVAWI] authors describe one of the roles of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as being to integrate “memory data into narrative ‘stories’ (p. 9);” however, recent research shows that the neural networks involved in narrative formation are currently unknown.” (p. 5)
• “The description of ‘attachment circuitry,’ defined as that “which allows us to connect emotionally with other human beings,”  does not appear to be based on current findings.” (p. 6)
• “The authors incorrectly name and describe “habitual behaviors” demonstrated by sexual assault victims.” (p. 7)

Bhatt and Brandon caution that an “undue emphasis on brain science increases the likelihood of hindering an investigation”  because it can promote confirmation bias and undue stereotypes, and create a false information effect (pp. 7-9) More fundamentally, the authors argue that criminal investigators do not need to use special interview methods with purported trauma victims:

“Examination of studies across these domains did not reveal any evidence to support the notion that victims of potentially traumatic events require interview methods that are different from those that have been shown to be most effective for accounts of events that are presumably not traumatic. In fact, one of the most robust – and most studied – methods of interviewing victims and witnesses, the Cognitive Interview, was constructed specifically for such interviews, as part of a request to the academic and scientific community by the U.S. Department of Justice to construct an interview protocol that was different from the accusatorial protocols common to American police departments (Kelly and Meissner, 2015; Meissner, et al., 2014). Previous reviews of interview protocols purported to be especially useful to trauma victims (e.g., the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview; Meissner, 2014) also have failed to support the assertion that memory processes (encoding, consolidation, or recall) are so unique in instances of trauma that special protocols are necessary or even useful.” (p. 9)

Bhatt and Brandon conclude their analysis with this stunning critique:

“Unfortunately, the neurobiology of trauma information provided in the Wilson et al. (2019) bulletin does not contribute in any meaningful way to justify the need for trauma-informed interviewing methods….research has indicated that resilience, use of psychopharmacologic substances (e.g., drugs, alcohol), and frequency and type of trauma all affect the subjective experience of trauma, however, none of these mitigating factors are described in the Wilson et al. (2019) bulletin.

“The meaning of our current understanding of the brain, as described above, for investigations of assault is difficult to ascertain because the impacts of traumatic experiences on memories and recall are variable, as noted. This means that an investigator who makes assumptions about the status of an alleged victim risks biasing the investigation in ways that increase the likelihood that either the innocent will be found guilty or the guilty will go free.

“In fact, assertions about brain processes in instances of trauma run the risk of leading an investigator to assume that he or she knows how the case should proceed, what the victim feels, or what should happen with respect to the suspect.” (p. 10)

In short, “Over-generalizations and assertions in the bulletin that cannot be supported by current science make some of these descriptions problematic for the intended audience(s)” (p. 5), and “As written, the bulletin does not provide sufficient evidence to support conclusions reached on the basis of the anecdotes” (p. 3).