The proposed research will determine if the right and left hemispheres are differentially impacted in the way in which they process verbal information as a result of early childhood trauma, specifically, child sexual abuse. Participants will anonymously answer questionnaires concerning childhood trauma, psychological functioning, masculinity and femininity, and for females, menstrual phase. They will be presented bilaterally with words and non-words which vary in length, visual field, hand used for the response, and for words, frequency of usage and emotionality. Subjects will focus on a central point and are to determine if the target item, which is underlined, is a word or non-word by pressing the appropriate key on a computer keyboard which will provide latency and accuracy scores. The primary goal of the study is to provide evidence for left hemispheric decrements in subjects who experienced childhood trauma. The secondary goal is to determine if left hemispheric decrements result from an interaction with the gender-related and item variables. Finally, the results will provide additional evidence of hemispheric independence or cooperation in processing various types of information.
