A related limitation of this study is in our measure of post- traumatic stress symptoms. This measure was simply a subset of items from the depression scale and has not been validated. We considered using a preexisting measure of posttraumatic stress symptoms (Zilberg, Weiss, & Horowitz, 1982). We decided against it because most of its items are very similar to measures of earthquake-related ruminations (e.g., "I thought about it when I didn't mean to"), and it does not include the other symp- toms of PTSD listed in the DSM-III-R (e.g., loss of energy and interest, problems in concentration and decision making). In- deed, we feel that an interesting result from this study is that people's tendencies to recall a trauma (i.e., their ruminations about the earthquake scores) were good predictors of whether they would show the other symptoms of PTSD. Still, we must be cautious about interpreting the results concerning the PTSD scale until they can be replicated with a better validated mea- sure.