The Impact of Abuse Exposure on Memory Processes and Attentional Biases in a College-Aged Sample

Abstract

This research assessed whether attentional biases in response to negative stimuli were related to the poor specificity and low levels of emotional language that have previously been observed in stressed individuals. The relations between abuse and assessments of autobiographical memory, working memory, attentional biases, and psychopathology were examined in eighty college students, thirty-four of whom reported past experiences with abuse or domestic violence. Abuse history was unrelated to memory specificity, but recent abuse was related to lower levels of positive emotional language. Depressive symptoms were related to more negative emotional language and overgeneral memories. The analyses also indicated that child abuse exposure was associated with a subliminal bias to attend to abuse-related stimuli. An unconscious bias toward trauma, in turn, predicted fewer overgeneral, and more specific, memories. One implication is that poor memory specificity may be due to automatic attentional processes instead of strategic avoidance of potentially negative memory content.