Dissociative Tendencies, Attention, and Memory

Two groups of college students were selected on the basis of their scores on the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES). The high-DES group (score > 20, M = 29.6; n = 54) and low-DES group (score < 10, M = 5.1; n = 54) 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.