TY - JOUR PY - 2006// TI - The impact of childhood sexual abuse upon implicit processing of intimacy-related stimuli JO - Stress, trauma and crisis A1 - Blake, Margaret A1 - Weinberger, Joel SP - 29 EP - 44 VL - 9 IS - 1 N2 - This study examined the impact of childhood sexual abuse upon implicit processing of intimacy-related stimuli in adulthood. Participants were 22 male and 20 female psychiatric inpatients ranging in age from 20 to 78 (M = 42). Each completed the Sexual Experiences Survey, a questionnaire derived from the Abuse Dimensions Inventory, and performed a modified emotional Stroop task in which they named the colors of neutral words, general threat words, and intimacy-related words. Contrary to prediction, the Sexually Abused group (n = 16) did not take significantly longer to color-name intimacy related words than the Non-abused group (n = 26), p = .70. However, there was a significant interaction between sexual abuse and gender (F = 6.45, p = .015). Sexually abused women performed faster than non-abused women, whereas abused men performed slower than non-abused men on the intimacy-related Stroop task. This effect retained significance even after controlling for participants' level of pathology (F = 4.80, p = .035). These results support the notion of implicit interference upon current functioning, and suggest gender differences in coping with sexual trauma.

LA - SN - 1543-4613 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15434610500506225 ID - ref1 ER -