Mem ory and Dissociative Ten dencies : The Roles of Attentional Con text and Word Mean ing in a Di rected For getting Task

Con cep tual and meth od olog i cal ap proaches from cog ni tive sci ence have in creas ingly been ap plied to re search ex am in ing the re la tion be tween trauma, dis so ci a tion and ba sic cog ni tive func tion ing. The cur rent study rep li cates and ex tends re cent re search that ex am ined per for mance in a di rected for get ting task us ing PTSD and trauma his tory as the group ing vari ables (McNally, Metzger, Lasko, Clancy, & Pitman, 1998) to col lege stu dents who were clas si fied as high or low dissociators based on their per for mance on the Dissociative Ex pe ri ences Scale (DES: Bernstein & Putnam, 1986). High and low DES par tic i pants’ per for mance was ex am ined un der two attentional con texts: a se lec tive at ten tion con di tion and two new di vided at ten tion con di tions (based on DePrince & Freyd, 1999). Dif fer ences be tween the groups were re vealed when a di vided at ten tion ver sion of the task was em ployed. Con sis tent with DePrince and Freyd (1999), when di vided at ten tion was re quired, high DES par tic i pants re called fewer trauma and more neu tral words than did low DES par tic i pants, who showed the op po site pat tern. [Ar ti cle cop ies avail able for a fee from The Haworth Doc u ment De liv ery Ser vice: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail ad dress: Website:  2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights