Adaptive Information Processing Model

The Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model is the explanatory framework associated with EMDR therapy. It proposes that some continuing difficulties arise when experiences have not been integrated with other adaptive information. Treatment is intended to help change the way those experiences are held and linked with present responses. ^{1) 2)}

In AIP terminology, the relevant information can include images, beliefs, emotions and bodily sensations. A present situation may activate elements of an earlier experience, giving that experience continuing emotional significance. The model guides attention to past events, present triggers and anticipated future situations.

Hase and colleagues discuss the relationship between AIP and the idea of 'pathogenic memories': experiences whose continuing effects are implicated in symptoms. Their paper is a theoretical perspective intended to guide understanding and research. It should be identified as such when cited. ³⁾

AIP supplies a rationale for identifying targets and connecting them to a person's difficulties. It sits within a broader treatment structure that includes history taking, preparation, assessment, memory processing, closure and re-evaluation. The model should not be used to reduce EMDR to a single eye-movement exercise. ⁴⁾

Terms such as 'unprocessed' and 'maladaptively stored' are part of this explanatory framework. They are not findings from a scan of an individual patient's memory. Likewise, a useful clinical formulation is not proof that every symptom has a single traumatic origin.

AIP and working-memory accounts operate at different explanatory levels. AIP addresses how experiences may contribute to symptoms and how treatment is conceptualised. A working-memory account makes more specific predictions about what happens when recall and another demanding task occur together.

Evidence that eye movements alter the vividness of a recalled image can bear on a working-memory prediction without independently validating every proposition in AIP. Evidence of improvement after EMDR also does not uniquely identify AIP as the cause; several mechanisms and therapeutic factors may be involved. ⁵⁾

IEMT training literature uses concepts such as emotional and identity imprints. These can be compared with AIP as clinical ways of organising experience, but similarity of language does not establish that they name the same psychological or neurological entity. A claim of equivalence would require clear definitions and studies designed to test it. ⁶⁾

For an encyclopaedic account, the distinction is straightforward: describe what a model proposes, then separately state what research has tested. This allows readers to understand a theory without mistaking it for an established biological map of memory.

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Imprinting
• Proposed Mechanisms of Therapeutic Eye Movements
• Types of Memory
• IEMT, EMI and EMDR Compared