Media Impact on Biased Perceptual Processing of Threat-Relevant Imagery Among Patients Who Recovered Memory of Childhood Sexual Abuse Prior to the Onset of Treatment

ABSTRACT

Several recent studies have indicated that patients who report a history of sexual abuse, on the basis of recovered or delayed recall of memory, process Rorschach stimuli in ways that substantially deviate from non-abused patients. They exhibited sensitivity to threat-relevant imagery that was highly similar to the biased perceptual processing found among patients with continuously held memories of sexual abuse. In the present study, perceptual processing of threat-relevant imagery was examined as an artifact of media exposure in 40 patients who recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse as adults and in 40 patients who were not sexually abused. The two patient samples were divided into high and low media groups on the basis of a composite measure of media exposure. The results indicated that information gained from media exposure was unrelated to patients' responses to Rorschach stimuli. Recovered memory patients produced threat-relevant imagery that is reminiscent of trauma irrespective of the level of media exposure; non-abused patients did not. That this imagery remained essentially unnoticed by even the most active consumers of the sexual abuse media among non-abused patients suggests that the popular media does not play a contagious role in the perceptual processing of threat-relevant imagery.

KEYWORDS:

• Media exposure
• recovered memory
• child sexual abuse
• Rorschach
• perceptual processing
• trauma-relevant imagery