A blast from the past: Civilians immediate psychological reactions and associative memory of prior events following exploding bus in Israel

This study examined the association between self-report associative memories of prior traumatic events and psychological distress up to 48 h after a terror attack. To date, the number of studies that examined this association is very small and most were conducted weeks or even months post event. For this purpose, we examined the association between self-report associative memories of prior traumatic events beyond factors such as previous exposure to trauma, political shift and sense of safety. The results showed that self-report associative memories of prior traumatic events were significantly associated with psychological distress. These results could be explained by the similarity and recency effects.