Cognitive processing of trauma cues in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse

Psychologically traumatized people exhibit delayed color naming of trauma w ords in the emotional Stroop task. Four groups of participants were asked t o color name positive words, neutral words, and trauma words: these groups included 15 women who believed that they harbored repressed memories of chi ldhood sexual abuse (CSA), 13 women who reported recovered memories of CSA, 15 women who had never forgotten their CSA, and 12 women who had never bee n abused. Repressed-memory participants exhibited patterns of interference indistinguishable from those of the nonabused control group participants. i rrespective of group membership, the severity of self-reported posttraumati c stress disorder symptoms was the only significant predictor of trauma-rel ated interference, r(48) = .30, p < .05.