^{Return to note 18} The interactions of these important neurotransmitter systems intricately associated with mechanisms for both PTSD (and perhaps unresolved loss) and substance abuse or addiction (Antelman et al., 1997; Cramer, 2002; Resnick, Yehuda, & Acierno, 1997) suggest a strong need for more investigation into connections between adolescent unresolved loss and substance abuse among traditional age college students, a pursuit clearly outside of the scope of this essay.

^{Return to note 19} Also outside the scope of this essay but a problem associated with the oscillation between hyperarousal, re-experiencing, and avoidance symptoms is Pynoos, et al.’s (1997) strong correlation between PTSD symptoms in children and the development of attention deficit disorder symptoms (see also Teicher, Ito, Glod, Andersen, Dumont, & Ackerman, 1997). Furthermore, situational reminders, sometimes as innocuously seeming as a crack in the wall, in the learning environment of the traumatic event have been linked in Pynoos et al. animal studies with “catastrophic cohort aggression,” suggesting that there may be a relationship between situational reminders and cohort “irritability, hostile aggression, and propensity to retaliatory violence” (p. 189). These arguments suggest that children and adolescents with PTSD may experience reminders in the school setting that strengthen PTSD symptoms in association with schooling. Away from situational reminders of both the trauma and schooling, PTSD symptoms may fade only to be re-evoked when they return to school as adults. In a similar fashion, if students who developed PTSD as adults encounter traumatic event reminders in their school locations, they may find themselves unexpectedly re-experiencing trauma memories and hyperarousal that will in turn affect the speed and effectiveness of their efforts to learn.

^{Return to note 20} Connectionism, which argues that a particularly robust property of mind is pattern completion, appears to suggest that the resemblance of nontraumatic to traumatic stimuli needs to share very few features to elicit a preliminary judgment of a pattern match (Tryon, 1993a, 1993b, 1995, 1998, 1999).