It has been suggested for a long time that dissociation creates cognitive difficulties. However, the relationship between dissociation and cognitive abilities is unclear as many incongruent results have been identified among the literature. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between cognitive functioning and dissociative manifestations, and to distinguish the results based on the method used.

We performed a PRISMA systematic review with one key word related to cognitive functioning and one key word related to dissociation. The extracted study characteristics included: being an empirical study, containing at least one keyword from each category within the title, and assessing the relationship between cognitive functioning and dissociative manifestations. The research was performed with EMBASE, Pubmed and PsycInfo.

60 studies were included in the systematic review. We found highly congruent results among studies that used self-report measures of cognition, and poorly congruent results in studies that used cognitive tasks. We identified the use of emotional material and the use of inductive procedures all as potential explanations for the incongruence.

Even though the relationship between dissociation and cognitive complaints is now clearly established, the association between dissociation and cognitive tasks remains unclear. Further studies focusing on emotional tasks or inductive methods should be performed.