The Life Events Checklist (LEC), a measure of exposure to potentially traumatic events, was developed at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) concurrently with the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) to facilitate the diagnosis of PTSD. Although the CAPS is recognized as the gold standard in PTSD symptom assessment, the psychometric soundness of the LEC has never been formally evaluated. The studies reported here describe the performance of the LEC in two samples: college undergraduates and combat veterans. The LEC exhibited adequate temporal stability, good convergence with an established measure of trauma history -- the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ) -- and was comparable to the TLEQ in associations with variables known to be correlated with traumatic exposure in a sample of undergraduates. In a clinical sample of combat veterans, the LEC was significantly correlated, in the predicted directions, with measures of psychological distress and was strongly associated with PTSD symptoms.

PTSD researchers and clinicians report observing fragmented and disorganized trauma memories (FDTM) in interviews with PTSD patients and more coherent, organized, and detailed trauma narratives as treatment progresses. Some hypothesize a causal role for FDTM in developing and/or maintaining PTSD symptoms. Operationally de®ning FDTM is dif®cult, but a recent study used Flesch reading formulas to gauge narrative complexity and articulation in FDTM. We evaluated the validity of this method by comparing written trauma narratives of 58 undergraduates with and without PTSD on word counts and articulation complexity. Additional narratives on unpleasant and pleasant experiences tested the speci®city of group differences. Large initial effect sizes disappeared when writing skill and cognitive ability were controlled suggesting Flesch analyses may not be useful. Furthermore, trauma narrative lengths exceeded those of other memories for both groups, which is inconsistent with FDTM predictions. Most studies supporting FDTM have used oral accounts which we hypothesize may provoke more anxiety than written accounts and thereby produce more fragmented and disorganized narratives.

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The hypothesis that smokeless tobacco-related sensory and behavioral cues can act as conditioned stimuli was tested in a counterbalanced double-blind experimental design. The nicotine content of snuff smokeless tobacco (ST) was manipulated for 24 male ST users by mixing ST with an ST substitute. Affect was manipulated through imagery scripts, stress was induced by a mental arithmetic task, and physiological measures and self-reported affect, stress, and urge for ST were collected. Urge for ST was consistently reduced regardless of the nicotine content in the ST conditions. Urge was increased by the stress manipulation and by negative affect when compared with positive affect. Urge for ST was positively correlated with stress and negative affect but was not correlated with positive affect. Physiological arousal was not related to urge. Results generally parallel studies of smoking and suggest that ST substitute products may aid ST cessation.

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