Gender Differences in the Relationship between Trauma and Cognition

Graduate #102
Discipline: Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Subcategory: Social Sciences/Psychology/Economics

Brittany Watkins - Virginia State University
Co-Author(s): Lauren Kendall Brooks, Virginia State University, Petersburg, VA

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Trauma exposure and its effects are a huge public health concern. 60% of adults report experiencing abuse or other difficult family experiences during childhood. 26% of children in the United States will witness or experience a traumatic event before they turn four. Trauma is a linked to significant risk of injury and negative health and behavior outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. The purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in the relationship between trauma and cognition. It was hypothesized that such gender differences would exist between childhood trauma and cognition. Specifically, females would exhibit a significantly larger correlation between cognition and childhood f trauma. Participants (n= 84 ) were African American students (middle school, high school, and college students). Overall, trauma experiences and cognition were significantly negatively correlated, r= -.325, p = .004. When the relationships were evaluated for each gender separately, females (r= -.330, n= 34 ) had a trend toward a stronger negative correlation between trauma and cognition than males (r=-.211, n= 42 ), although this did not reach statistical significance. These data suggest that trauma may have a more significant affect on cognition in women than men.

Final Abstract.docx

Funder Acknowledgement(s): This research was supported by NSF Awards # DRL-1621416 and HRD-1533563

Faculty Advisor: Oliver Hill, Ph.D, ohill@vsu.edu

Role: Abstract, data collection and analysis