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Women exposed to violence early in life are at risk of revictimization. The interpersonal schema hypothesis of revictimization proposes that revictimized women will be more likely to hold negative expectations about intimate relationships, including expectations that relationships involve harm, relative to singly or nonvictimized women. To test the interpersonal schema hypothesis, we used the implicit lexical decision task to examine automatic associations between relationship and harm concepts among college women who reported histories of no, single, or multiple types of interpersonal trauma involving close others (e.g., family member, partner). Women exposed to multiple types of interpersonal trauma involving close others showed stronger relationship-harm associations than singly or nonexposed women. Relationship-harm associations predicted the number of interpersonal trauma types (e.g., sexual, physical trauma) involving close others reported by participants, but were unrelated to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Findings suggest that relational schemata held by women exposed to multiple types of interpersonal trauma involving close others include concepts of harm, which may have implications for how multiply victimized women behave in and think about intimate relationships.

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Extending previous research with adults, the current study examined Stroop task performance under selective and divided attention demands in a community sample of school-age children (N = 97). Stroop interference scores in both attention conditions were calculated. Higher levels of child-reported dissociation were associated with better interference control under divided attention conditions and worse control under selective attention conditions; lower levels of dissociation were associated with the opposite pattern. Both family violence exposure and Stroop interaction scores explained unique variance in dissociation scores. Although research with adults has generally assumed or implied that cognitive correlates of dissociation are a consequence of dissociation, the current findings with school-age children suggest that future research should evaluate executive function performance (in this case, interference control) as a possible risk factor for dissociation.

Research has identified numerous negative sequelae of child maltreatment that may adversely impact academic functioning (AF). There is limited research, however, on the relationship between specific trauma symptoms, such as dissociation, and poor AF. This cross-sectional study examined the association between dissociative symptoms and multi-informant reports of AF in a sample of maltreated youth with a history of out-of-home care. Participants included 149 youth and their caregivers and teachers. Dissociative symptoms were measured based on youth report, while AF was assessed using: 1) standardized measures of academic achievement, 2) youth-report measures of school membership and perceived academic competence, 3) caregiver reports of youths’ performance in school, and 4) teacher reports of student grades. Results of multiple regression analyses suggested that dissociative symptoms were generally related to poorer AF after controlling for IQ, age, gender, and the total number of school and caregiver transitions. Implications for school personnel are discussed.