On the interpretation of pictures with and without a content of child sexual abuse.
OBJECTIVE
The purposes of the three experiments were to validate the possibility of a picture to evoke the recognition of child sexual abuse, to determine if the picture was anxiety evoking, and to investigate if the content of child sexual abuse would be transferred to a neutral picture.


METHODS
In all three experiments, adult men and women were presented with a drawing intended to depict child sexual abuse, and were requested to interpret the picture. Experiment 1: Before and after the picture presentation, 226 participants were given a test of anxiety. Experiment 2: After the exposure of the child abuse picture, 200 new participants were asked to interpret an innocent child-adult picture. Experiment 3: To complete Experiment 2, 89 new participants were asked to interpret the pictures in the reverse order.


RESULTS
Almost three-fourths of the participants saw child sexual abuse in the picture with a sexual threat. Those in Experiment 1 who saw the picture as child sexual abuse or as a problematic child-adult situation without sexual implications reported a significant increase of anxiety level. None in Experiment 2 or 3 saw child sexual abuse in the innocent picture. The sex of the abused child was significantly more often interpreted as opposite to one's own sex.


CONCLUSIONS
The study indicates some people's deficient capacity to recognize the message of child sexual abuse in the picture. It seems that certain people can spare themselves anxiety by not registering the child's precarious situation or not seeing the child as being of their own sex. This has implications for the recognition of child sexual abuse in society. It was also shown that a sexual abuse theme was not transferred from one context to another context, which immediately followed it.
Lindblom
L
L
Department of Psychology, Lund University, Sweden.
Carlsson
I
I
D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis*; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011386:Projective Techniques; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires