Attention and memory performances were studied in Persian Gulf War veterans with and without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses. Veterans diagnosed with PTSD showed relative performance deficiencies on tasks of sustained attention, mental manipulation, initial acquisition of information, and retroactive interference. Their performances were also characterized by errors of commission and intrusion. The tendency toward response disinhibition and intrusion on cognitive tasks was correlated positively with reexperiencing symptoms and negatively with avoidance-numbing symptoms. These cognitive deficit patterns are consistent with models of PTSD that emphasize the role of hyperarousal and implicate dysfunction of frontal-subcortical systems. Results suggest that intrusion of traumatic memories in PTSD may not be limited to trauma-related cognitions but instead reflects a more general pattern of disinhibition.

Attention, learning, memory, and estimated intellectual potential were examined in 26 Vietnam veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and in 21 Vietnam veterans without mental disorders. Results revealed PTSD-associated cognitive deficits on tasks of sustained attention, working memory, initial learning, and estimated premorbid intelligence but not on measures of focus of attention, shift of attention, or memory savings. Cognitive task performances adjusted for estimated native intelligence remained negatively correlated with PTSD severity. An intellectual measure adjusted for cognitive task performances was negatively correlated with PTSD severity, even after the authors statistically controlled the level of combat exposure. Results suggested that although intellectual resources may constitute a vulnerability–protective factor for PTSD development, PTSD was associated with cognitive impairment independent of intellectual functioning.

Deployment to Iraq is associated with increased risk of neuropsychological compromise. Findings point to the need to investigate further the impact of deployment on neural functioning. Public health implications include consideration of neuropsychological compromise in health prevention and postdeployment clinical and occupational management.

The Deployment Risk and Resilience Inventory (DRRI) is a suite of scales that can be used to assess deployment-related factors implicated in the health and well-being of military veterans. Although initial evidence for the reliability and validity of DRRI scales based on Gulf War veteran samples is encouraging, evidence with respect to a more contemporary cohort of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) veterans is not available. Therefore, the primary goal of the present study was to validate scales from the DRRI in a large sample of OIF army personnel diversified in occupational and demographic characteristics. In general, results supported the use of these DRRI scales in this population. Internal consistency reliability estimates were quite strong. Additionally, support was obtained for criterion-related validity, as demonstrated by associations with mental and physical health measures, and discriminative validity, as demonstrated by differences between key military subgroups.

Studies have come to conflicting conclusions about whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with poorer memory for emotionally neutral information. The authors report a meta-analysis of 27 studies that investigated verbal and/or visual memory in samples with PTSD and healthy controls. The results indicated that the association between PTSD and memory impairment appears to be robust, small to moderate in size, and stronger for verbal than for visual memory. Effect sizes did not vary according to whether recall was immediate or delayed. The association is found in both civilian and military samples and cannot be readily explained as being due to the use of nontraumatized healthy control groups or concurrent head injury. The findings are placed in the context of recent neurobiological and experimental cognitive research.

The Deployment Risk and Resilience Inventory (DRRI) is a widely used instrument for assessing deployment-related risk and resilience factors among war veterans. A revision of this instrument was recently undertaken to enhance the DRRI’s applicability across a variety of deployment-related circumstances and military subgroups. The resulting suite of 17 distinct DRRI-2 scales is the product of a multiyear psychometric endeavor that involved (a) focus groups with Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) veterans to inform an assessment of the content validity of original DRRI measures, (b) examination of item and scale characteristics of revised scales in a national sample of 469 OEF/OIF veterans, and (c) administration of refined scales to a second national sample of 1,046 OEF/OIF veterans to confirm their psychometric quality. Both classical test theory and item response theory analytical strategies were applied to inform major revisions, which included updating the coverage of warfare-related stressors, expanding the assessment of family factors throughout the deployment cycle, and shortening scales. Finalized DRRI-2 scales demonstrated strong internal consistency reliability and criterion-related validity. The DRRI-2 can be applied to examine the role that psychosocial factors play in post deployment health and inform interventions aimed at reducing risk and enhancing resilience among war veterans.

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Veterans deployed to the Persian Gulf have higher self-reported prevalence of health symptoms compared to PGW veterans who were deployed only as far as Germany. Several Gulf-service environmental exposures are associated with increased health symptom reporting involving predicted body-systems, after adjusting for war-zone stressor exposures and PTSD.