P.T.S.D

            Directed Forgetting of Trauma Cues in Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse With and Without Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
             Children that are in sexual abuse situations are smaller and not as powerful as their predator. In some cases these predators might be family members, if that were the case then the children would also have to depend on them for food and shelter as well. Some psychologist have a theory that children during sexual abuse use avoidant encoding style that enables them to forget about the harsh reality that they are in and focus on something else, during the trauma. .
             The purpose of this study was to use directed-forgetting methods to test and see if an encoding style would characterize psychiatrically impaired adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. There were three groups tested the PTSD group was made up of adult women who had been sexually abused as children and who were currently diagnosed with PTSD. The trauma-exposed group was made up of women that were sexually abused as children but who were not diagnosed with PTSD. The control group was formed of women who had never been sexually abused. .
             The Participants were chosen by being referred by their doctor or some responded to a newspaper ad. The study did not take into account the age of the girls when they were abused or how frequently the abuse happened. The Participants were shown different words and told to remember them or to forget them. The words ranged from everyday house hold words to words like incest or sex. Each participant saw the same set of words. A significant effect of the study was the instructions that participants remembered words when they were told to or if they forgot those words also when told to. The trauma-exposed group and the control groups should have been able to recall more words than the PTSD group. The PTSD group should have remembered the words with sexual content, more than the normal words.