Freyd, Jennifer J.
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This collection contains some of the work being carried out by Jennifer J. Freyd, Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon.
1227 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1227
Lab: (541) 346-4950
Fax: (541) 346-4911
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Browsing Freyd, Jennifer J. by Author "DePrince, Anne P."
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Item Open Access Abuse Awareness: Physical and Psychological Health Consequences(2006-11) Goldsmith, R.E.; Freyd, Jennifer J.; DePrince, Anne P.Despite established links between child abuse and psychological symptoms such as depression, dissociation, and anxiety, many abuse survivors experience awareness of specific abuse instances or abuse-related symptoms without acknowledging the abuse itself. The current study examines relations among abuse awareness, physical symptoms, and emotional functioning in young adults. One hundred eighty-five university students responded to questions regarding perceptions of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as standard abuse and symptom measures. Ninety-six individuals completed the questionnaire a second time 1-2 years later. At baseline, labeling oneself as having been abused was not correlated with depression, anxiety, dissociation, or physical health complaints. At follow-up, however, labeling abuse was significantly positively related to depression, anxiety, physical health complaints, and the number of reported visits to a health professional, even after controlling for abuse severity. These results indicate that processes involved in abuse perception appear to be connected to individuals' psychological and physical functioning, and that abuse awareness may have important clinical implications.Item Open Access Child Abuse: Betrayal and Disclosure(2006-11) Foynes, M. Ming; Freyd, Jennifer J.; DePrince, Anne P.The present study examined the association between perpetrator relationship and disclosure latency (DL) for physical and emotional abuse using a survey methodology with a sample of 202 undergraduate participants. Based on Freyd's Betrayal Trauma Theory (1996), we predicted that abuse by a close perpetrator would be related to longer DL, because nondisclosure may serve as a protective coping mechanism in the same way as unawareness of abuse. BTT frames disclosure as a risk that poses a threat to the emotional needs of the child, without requiring the child's conscious awareness of the way in which the world operates. We found that closeness of perpetrator significantly predicts DL above and beyond other variables such as age at abuse onset, gender of survivor and abuse severity. Abuse by very close perpetrators was associated with a greater likelihood of first disclosure years following abuse, if disclosure ever occurred. While delayed disclosure may allow the attachment relationship to be sustained, it may also prolong abuse and prevent receipt of emotional, legal, or financial support. Since disclosure may result in the loss of important social relationships, it is important to address these risks in interventions geared toward encouraging disclosure to promote ethical intervention delivery.Item Open Access Dissociative tendencies, attention, and memory(Blackwell, 1999) DePrince, Anne P.; Freyd, Jennifer J.Two groups of college students were selected on the basis of their scores on the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES). The high-DES group and low-DES group both completed the standard and a new dual-task version of the Stroop ink-naming task with xs (baseline condition) and color, neutral, and emotionally charged words. Free recall results indicated that high-DES participants remembered fewer emotionally charged words than low-DES participants. We found a crossover interaction for Stroop interference: High-DES participants showed more interference (conflicting color--baseline latency for ink naming) in a selective-attention Stroop task and less interference in the dual-task Stroop task. The interaction between attentional context and dissociation for Stroop interference and the free recall results are consistent with a cognitive-environments view of dissociative tendencies. In this view, dissociative tendencies, which have been otherwise speculated to be largely deleterious, can be advantageous in certain contexts.Item Open Access Forgetting traumatic stimuli(2004-02-20T23:21:48Z) DePrince, Anne P.; Freyd, Jennifer J.Previous work reported in this journal (DePrince & Freyd, 1999) suggested that the cognitive capacities of high dissociators are impaired under conditions of focused (selective) attention, but not under conditions of divided attention, compared to low dissociators. Using a directed forgetting paradigm, the current study demonstrates that under divided-attention demands high dissociators have impaired memory for words associated with trauma (e.g. "incest") but not neutral words, as compared with low dissociators. In addition, the high dissociators report significantly more trauma history and significantly more "betrayal trauma" (abuse by a caregiver). These results are consistent with the proposal that dissociation may aid individuals with a history of betrayal traumas to keep threatening information out of awareness.Item Open Access Lack of precision, misleading implications, and ethical issues arising from the use of the label "false memory" for errors in word memory(2004-11) DePrince, Anne P.; Allard, Carolyn B. (Carolyn Brigitte), 1968-; Oh, Hannah; Freyd, Jennifer J.Since 1995, psychologists have increasingly used the term "false memory" to describe memory errors for details (e.g., errors for words learned in a list); such errors in details were once referred to by other terms, such as "intrusions". "False memories" is also used to refer to suggestibility experiments in which whole events are apparently confabulated and in media accounts of contested memories of childhood abuse. We examined use of the term "false memory/ies" to describe 1.) suggestibility for, or confabulation of, entire events or 2.) errors in details. Using the keyword "false memory/ies", journal articles published between 1992 and August 2003 were identified. Editorials, commentaries, responses to other articles, and book reviews were excluded. Of the 397 articles collected, 222 (55.9%) were empirical reports. Approximately 70% of empirical articles used the term "false memory/ies" to refer to error in details. The shift in language away from prior terms such as "memory intrusions" to a new use of the term "false memory" presents serious ethical challenges to the data-interpretation process by encouraging over-generalization and misapplication of research findings on word memory to social issues. The research and ethical implications of the new use of the term will be discussed.Item Open Access Memory and Dissociative Tendencies: The Roles of Attentional Context and Word Meaning in a Di rected Forgetting Task(Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 2001) DePrince, Anne P.; Freyd, Jennifer J.Conceptual and methodological approaches from cog nitive science have increasingly been applied to research examining the relation between trauma, dissociation and basic cognitive functioning. The current study replicates and extends recent research that examined performance in a directed forgetting task using PTSD and trauma history as the grouping variables (McNally, Metzger, Lasko, Clancy, & Pitman, 1998) to college students who were classified as high or low dissociators based on their performance on the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES: Bernstein & Putnam, 1986). High and low DES participants’ performance was examined under two attentional contexts: a selective attention condition and two new divided attention conditions (based on DePrince & Freyd, 1999). Differences between the groups were revealed when a divided attention version of the task was employed. Consistent with DePrince and Freyd (1999), when divided attention was required, high DES participants recalled fewer trauma and more neutral words than did low DES participants, who showed the opposite pattern.Item Open Access Self-Reported Memory for Abuse Depends Upon Victim-Perpetrator Relationship(The Haworth Press, Inc., 2001) Freyd, Jennifer J.; DePrince, Anne P.; Zurbriggen, Eileen L.We present preliminary results from the Betrayal Trauma Inventory (BTI) testing predictions from betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1994, 1996, in press) about the relationship between amnesia and betrayal by a caregiver. The BTI assesses trauma history using behaviorally defined events in the domains of sexual, physical, and emotional childhood abuse, as well as other lifetime traumatic events. When participants endorse an abuse experience, follow-up questions assess a variety of factors including memory impairment and perpetrator relationship. Preliminary results support our prediction that abuse perpetrated by a caregiver is related to less persistent memories of abuse. This relationship is significant for sexual and physical abuse. Regression analyses revealed that age was not a significant predictor of memory impairment and that duration of abuse could not account for the findings.