Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Evidence For Persistent Hypervigilance For Sexual Assault Survivors, Michãel Palmer

Psychology ETDs

Inhibition has been proposed as a cognitive mechanism that allows persons to screen out irrelevant information. This study investigated the effects of sexual assault on inhibition. Many sexual assault survivors experience intrusive memories of their assault that may be the result of deficient inhibitory processes. On the other hand, assault survivors often cope through avoidance which may strengthen inhibitory experience. Other hypotheses investigated the possibility that inhibitory strength changes across the healing process and that inhibition was related to trauma symptomatology. Forty-four survivors of sexual assault and seventy-nine non-assaulted controls were tested on two measures of inhibition: directed forgetting (a …