The Cognitive Consequences of Child Abuse in Young Girls

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of child abuse on cognitive dimensions of personality including intelligence, accuracy and memory. Subjects consisted of 100 female high school students in the city of Isfahan in the academic year of 2003-2004, who were selected using random multi-stage sampling method. Based on the scores ob-tained through the Child Abuse Scale, the subjects were divided into two groups: abused or normal. Raven’s Progressive Matrices, Wechsler Memory Scale, and Bonardel Accuracy Test were used for gathering data. Data were then analyzed using MANOVA and correlation coeffi- cient. Mean accuracy, IQ, and memory scores of the abused and normal groups were 63.66 versus 70.44, 107.12 versus 108.89, and 86.82 versus 86.16 respectively. Abuse causes a decrease in the memory mean score of female adolescents, but has no considerable effect on their accuracy and IQ.