PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGIC STUDY OF CHILD ABUSE IMAGERY IN ADULTS

这个项目的目标是测试创伤后的有效性 儿童期性虐待导致的应激障碍(PTSD)诊断， 通过使用已经在创伤后应激障碍产生中得到验证的评估方法 在之前的四项研究中，来自其他(军事和民用)来源， 即，在个人脚本驱动的过程中测量生理反应 想象。 未服药的成年女性在想象中的反应 将对儿童时期的个人性侵经历进行衡量。科目 将被诊断为创伤后应激障碍、既往创伤后应激障碍和非创伤后应激障碍组。三十岁- 第二个“剧本”将在主题描述的帮助下准备 各种过去的生活经历，包括儿童时期的特定情节 性虐待。剧本将融入主观的本能和 受试者记忆中的肌肉反应伴随着 经验。这些脚本将被录制下来，以便在 心理生理学实验室，在那里受试者将被指导 想象一下剧本描绘的事件，而心率，皮肤 电导和面部肌肉肌电记录。 数据将通过多变量方差分析进行分析 (Manova)和判别函数分析。潜在的角色 混杂变量将通过多变量分析进行评估 协方差(MANCOVA)，包括总体创伤暴露， 面对所研究的特定虐待事件的严重性，焦虑， 抑郁、分离和催眠暗示作为协变量使用。 来自有确凿虐待事件的受试者子集的数据将是 分别检查，并将结果与完整的 数据集。此外，虐待儿童的生理反应 受试者将与军方和民间的回应进行比较， 创伤后应激障碍和非创伤后应激障碍患者已经进行了相同的研究 方法论。由下列公式导出的判别函数的成功 已发表的关于创伤后应激障碍和非创伤后应激障碍分类的早期研究 虐待儿童的科目将被审查。

This project's objective is to test the validity of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis as the result of childhood sexual abuse, by utilizing an assessment method that has been validated in PTSD arising from other (military and civilian) sources in four previous studies, viz., measurement of physiologic responses during personal, script-driven imagery. The responses of medication-free, adult women during imagery of their personal sexual abuse experiences as children will be measured. Subjects will be diagnosed into PTSD, past-PTSD, and non-PTSD groups. Thirty- second "scripts" will be prepared with the aid of the subject describing various past life experiences, including specific episodes of child sexual abuse. The scripts will incorporate subjective visceral and muscular reactions that the subject remembered accompanied each experience. The scripts will be recorded for playback in the psychophysiology laboratory, where the subject will be instructed to imagine the events the scripts portray, while heart rate, skin conductance, and facial muscle electromyograms are recorded. The data will be analyzed by means of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and discriminant function analysis. The role of potentially confounding variables will be assessed by means of multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), with factors such as overall trauma exposure, face severity of the specific abuse episodes studied, anxiety, depression, dissociation, and hypnotic suggestibility used as covariates. Data from a subset of subjects with substantiated abuse episodes will be examined separately and the results compared with those from the full data set. In addition, the physiologic responses of the child abuse subjects will be compared with the responses of military and civilian, PTSD and non-PTSD trauma victims already studied with the same methodology. The success of a discriminant function derived from published studies with earlier subjects in classifying PTSD and non-PTSD child abuse subjects will be examined.