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Abstract-Two groups of college students were selected on the basis of their scores on the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES). The high-DES group (score > 20, M = 29.6; n = 54) and low-DES group (score < 10, M = 5.1; n = 54) Dissociation has been defined as the lack of integration of thoughts, feelings, and experiences into the stream of consciousness. Most people report some dissociative experiences, such as "highway hypnosis" (when one apparently loses conscious awareness of driving for some period of time). However, individual differences in dissociative tendencies have been consistently reported in the literature (see Freyd, 1996, for a review). A number of studies have indicated that dissociative tendencies appear to be high in populations of trauma survivors, and these studies include research in which there was external corroboration for the trauma (e.g., see Bremner et al., 1992;Carlson & Rosser-Hogan, 1993;Marmar et al., 1994;Putnam & Trickett, 1997). Dissociation appears to be an important clinical construct in various disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; e.g., Bremner et al., 1992;Carlson & Rosser-Hogan, 1993;Koopman, Classen, & Spiegel, 1994;Marmar et al., 1994) as well as the dissociative disorders. Despite its clinical importance, however, dissociation has not been well understood at the cognitive level, although a number of studies have provided some hints about the cognitive bases of dissociation and dissociative disorders (e.g., Eich, Macaulay, Lowenstein, & Dihley, 1997;Hilgard, 1986;Kihlstrom, 1992;Kihlstrom, Tataryn, & Hoyt, 1993;Litz et al., 1996;Nissen, Ross, Willingham, MacKenzie, & Schacter, 1988).The need for more rigorous examination of the cognitive bases of dissociative tendencies coincides with a tradition of using information processing approaches to study the role of attention in the onset and maintenance of various disorders. The emotional Stroop task, for example, has been widely used to study information processing in a variety of mental disorders. In an emotional Stroop task, participants typically view words that are emotionally charged for the participants' particular fears (for a review, see Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996). Studies using this task have shown that individuals who meet criteria for PTSD take longer to name the color of words that are threatening than do control subjects without PTSD (e.g., Foa, Feske, Murdock, Kozak, & McCarthy, 1991;McKenna & Sharma, 1995;McNally, Kaspi, Riemann, & Zeitlin, 1990).Freyd, Martorello, Alvarado, Hayes, and Christman (1998), working within the framework of betrayal trauma theory, examined the effects of dissociation on attention. Betrayal trauma theory posits a social utility in remaining unaware of abuse when the abuse is perpetrated by a caregiver (Freyd, 1996). Dissociating information from awareness is mediated by the threat that the information poses to the individual's system of attachment and most likely employs attentional mechanisms (Freyd, 1996). Freyd et al. (1998) used dissociation as a predi...

Poor psychological outcomes are common among trauma survivors, yet not all survivors experience adverse sequelae. The current study examined links between cumulative trauma exposure as a function of the level of betrayal (measured by the relational closeness of the survivor and the perpetrator), trauma appraisals, gender, and trauma symptoms. Participants were 273 college students who reported experiencing at least one traumatic event on a trauma checklist. Three cumulative indices were constructed to assess the number of different types of traumas experienced that were low (LBTs), moderate (MBTs), or high in betrayal (HBTs). Greater trauma exposure was related to more symptoms of depression, dissociation, and PTSD, with exposure to HBTs contributing the most. Women were more likely to experience HBTs than men, but there were no gender differences in trauma-related symptoms. Appraisals of trauma were predictive of trauma-related symptoms over and above the effects explained by cumulative trauma at each level of betrayal. The survivor’s relationship with the perpetrator, the effect of cumulative trauma, and their combined impact on trauma symptomatology are discussed.

An expanded sourcebook: Qualitative data analysis (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing. Root, M. P. (1996). Women of color and traumatic stress in "domestic captivity": Gender and race as disempowering statuses. In A. J. Mar-

Previous work reported in this journal suggested that the cognitive capacities of high dissociators are impaired under conditions of focused (selective) attention, but not under conditions of divided attention, compared with the cognitive capacities of low dissociators. Using a directed-forgetting paradigm, the current study demonstrated that under divided-attention demands, high dissociators have impaired memory for words associated with trauma (e.g., incest) but not for neutral words, as compared with low dissociators. In addition, high dissociators reported significantly more trauma history and significantly more betrayal trauma (abuse by a caregiver) than low dissociators. These results are consistent with the proposal that dissociation may aid individuals with histories of betrayal traumas to keep threatening information out of awareness.