Abstract
This study aimed to examine the executive functioning of survivors exposed to recent sexual assaults. Twenty-seven female rape survivors who met the criterion for acute stress disorder (ASD) were enrolled and completed the assessment within 4 weeks after the traumatic experience. Additionally, 25 age-matched female health controls (HC) never exposed to such a traumatic event were enrolled. The assessments evaluated psychiatric symptoms including post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression, anxiety, and trait and state anger; general intelligence indexed by intellectual quotient (IQ); and executive functioning including set-shift/attention, planning, spatial working memory, and inhibition using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. The ASD group showed higher levels of depression, anxiety, and state anger, and lower IQ than the HC group. The ASD group also showed global impairment of executive functioning for set-shifting, attention, planning, and response inhibition compared to the HC group. Rather than being associated with low IQ and education levels, these results could be from trauma-related effects in survivors with ASD. Additionally, the state anger level was related to survivors’ deficient executive functioning. The findings indicate the importance of providing assessment and intervention efforts to sexual assault survivors soon after the trauma occurs.
Highlights
A traumatic stress experience has short- and/or long-term physical and psychological impacts
As diagnosing acute stress disorder (ASD) involves identifying it within a certain time limit, which can be challenging for researchers, few studies have examined the incidence of ASD as compared to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
As the acute stressed state might affect the total intellectual quotient (IQ), we applied the vocabulary subtest of K-WAIS-IV, which is known to be relatively less affected by variation in participants’ condition
Summary
A traumatic stress experience has short- and/or long-term physical and psychological impacts. PTSD is diagnosed one month after the traumatic event, and all four clusters of criteria—intrusive/re-experience, avoidance, negative change in cognition and mood, and alteration in arousal and reactivity—are needed for its diagnosis. ASD is diagnosed within one month after experiencing the trauma. ASD has five clusters of symptoms: intrusion, negative mood, dissociation, avoidance, and arousal. Many ASD symptoms are similar to those of PTSD; ASD and PTSD differ in terms of the clusters of symptoms required for diagnosis. ASD diagnosis requires meeting the criteria for at least 9 of the 14 symptoms and this method of diagnosis is introduced in the DSM-5. As diagnosing ASD involves identifying it within a certain time limit, which can be challenging for researchers, few studies have examined the incidence of ASD as compared to PTSD
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