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theses

ETD graduate

Sexual trauma is a serious social and mental health problem that affects more than 25% of women worldwide, with comparable rates in the United States [1,2]. Survivors of sexual trauma frequently suffer from distorted thoughts about the self and the world but less is known about the processes related to autobiographical memories and time. The following project has three primary aims: 1) to identify mental health symptoms, 2) memory-related outcomes, and 3) temporal changes in college-aged women with and without sexual trauma during adolescence and young adulthood. Experiment 1 tested depressive, anxiety and trauma-related symptoms as well as ruminative thoughts in women with sexual trauma versus women with no history of sex-ual trauma. It was hypothesized that women with sexual trauma would report greater numbers of depressive, anxiety and trauma-related symptoms and ruminative thoughts compared to controls. During Experiment 1, women were interviewed for trauma history with the Structured Interview for DSM-5, and then completed self-report questionnaires for depression, anxiety, trauma-related cognitions and rumination. Women with sexual trauma (n=34) reported significantly more depressive, anxious, and trauma-related symp-toms, as well as ruminative thoughts (all p’s < 0.01), when compared to those measures in controls (n=94). Correlations among these measures were highly significant (p < 0.001, n=128). Experiment 2 evaluated the details surrounding an autobiographical memory of the most stressful event of one’s past, as well as temporal and spatial cognition. Participants completed the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire and the Symmetry Span, Temporal Separation and Spatial Discrimination tasks. Women with sexual trauma (n=34) reported significantly more temporal and spatial details related to the vividness and significance of a past stressful autobiographical memory compared to controls (n=94), p < 0.001. Furthermore, women who reported heightened vividness of the memory reported higher numbers of ruminative and trauma-related thoughts (p < 0.001). Despite these differences in memory recall, no differences in spatial and temporal cogni-tion tasks unrelated to stress were observed (all p’s > 0.05). These data suggest that sexual trauma can increase the vividness of intense stressful life memories, which may contribute to or minimally interact with their heightened rumination and trauma-related thoughts. In Experiment 3 we tested time sensitivity and subjective time estimation in women with sexual trauma and controls with a temporal bisection task. During training, participants make temporal judgments of stimulus durations (ranging from 400ms-1600ms) presented as a red circle on a black computer screen. Participants classified probes as being “short” (closer to 400ms duration) or “long” (closer to 1600ms duration) with a keyboard press. The task yields a measure of time sensitivity (i.e., threshold of Just Noticeable Difference) and time of perceived subjective equality (or the bisection point), defined as the point when an individual responds “short” or “long” with equal frequency. Women with sexual trauma (n=24) significantly differed from controls (n=75) on the time point of subjective equality (ST = 940ms; controls 830ms, p < 0.05). Overall, wom-en with sexual trauma underestimated the duration of most time intervals compared to controls. These data suggest women with sexual trauma experience time as moving slow-er. There were no group differences in time sensitivity (p > .05). Overall, data from these three experiments suggest that women with sexual trauma ruminate more often, suffer from symptoms of depression, anxiety and trauma, recall past stressful events with heightened vividness, and may process time differently as compared to women without the same trauma history. 

ETD_8558

doi:10.7282/T3K64N9V

M.S.

Includes bibliographical references

by Emma M. Millon

The author owns the copyright to this work.