Acceptability of dating violence and expectations of relationship harm among adolescent girls exposed to intimate partner violence.

OBJECTIVE: Little is known about the factors that contribute to adolescents' perceptions of the acceptability of dating violence, particularly among girls who have witnessed intimate partner violence (IPV). Drawing on relevant theory, the current study tests a path model linking frequency of witnessing IPV in childhood, sexist beliefs, and automatic relationship-to-harm associations to acceptability of dating violence. METHOD: Participants were 79 female adolescents with a mean age of 16.08 years (SD = 1.52) involved in the child welfare system. Participants self-reported frequency of witnessing IPV in childhood, ambivalent sexism, and acceptability of dating violence. A lexical-decision task assessed implicit relationship-to-harm priming, which reflects the degree to which people automatically assume that relationships include harm. RESULTS: Consistent with hypotheses, frequency of witnessing IPV was significantly associated with strength of implicit relationship-to-harm associations. Implicit relationship-to-harm associations and hostile sexism were significantly associated with girls' attitudes that dating violence is acceptable. There was a significant indirect effect of witnessing IPV and acceptability of dating violence through relationship-to-harm associations. CONCLUSION: The current study provides information that is relevant to dating violence intervention among adolescent girls. Interventions that target girls' schema about relationships-making explicit that healthy relationships do not involve harm-and include education about sexism in society are likely to decrease dating violence risk over time. (PsycINFO Database Record

Betrayal trauma and child symptoms: The role of emotion.

Both mothers' and children's exposures to interpersonal violence-including betrayal traumas-are linked with heightened risk for children developing internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Despite this association, little research has examined additional factors that may explain this risk, such as emotion skills. The current study examined the relationship between mother-child emotion understanding abilities and use of emotion language on a behavioral facial affect perception task and betrayal trauma exposure in relation to child internalizing/externalizing symptoms. The sample included 47 ethnically diverse female guardians (ages 25-51 years old; M age = 37.7) and their children (ages 7-11 years old; M age = 9.1). Results indicated that maternal provision of a spontaneous, unprompted reason for emotions during the facial affect perception task was significantly associated with lower child internalizing/externalizing symptoms when both mothers' and children's betrayal trauma histories were controlled. The results suggest that emotion skills (in particular, the way mothers talk about emotions) warrant greater attention in research on the development of child internalizing/externalizing problems.

Links between posttrauma appraisals and trauma-related distress in adolescent females from the child welfare system.

Research on predictors of trauma-related distress in youth has tended to focus on trauma exposure and individual difference characteristics. This study extends previous research by examining the role of posttrauma appraisals in predicting trauma-related distress in a sample of female adolescents with current or prior involvement in the child welfare system and a history of maltreatment. Participants' posttrauma appraisals accounted for unique variance in trauma-related distress, above and beyond key trauma exposure and individual difference variables. Further, posttrauma appraisals of alienation accounted for unique variance in posttraumatic stress, dissociation, and depression symptom severity, and posttrauma appraisals of shame accounted for unique variance in posttraumatic stress symptom severity. These results suggest that posttrauma appraisals may represent an important predictor of trauma-related distress for youth with current or prior involvement in the child welfare system. They also replicate findings in youth and adult literature on interpersonal trauma, lending further support to the existence of specific pathways between certain appraisals and various forms of trauma-related distress. We discuss the implications of our study for trauma-informed practice within the child welfare system.

Testing two approaches to revictimization prevention among adolescent girls in the child welfare system.

PURPOSE: Girls in the child welfare system are at high risk of revictimization in adolescence. The present study compared two interventions designed to decrease revictimization in a diverse sample of adolescent child welfare-involved girls. The social learning/feminist (SL/F) intervention focused on concepts derived from social learning and feminist models of risk, such as sexism and beliefs about relationships. The risk detection/executive function (RD/EF) intervention focused on development of specific executive function abilities related to detecting and responding to risky situations/people. METHODS: Participants were randomized to RD/EF (n = 67) or SL/F intervention (n = 67). A group of youth (n = 42) engaged in the research assessments only. Participants (n = 180) were assessed before intervention, immediately after intervention, 2 months after intervention, and 6 months after intervention. We examined revictimization (the presence/absence of sexual or physical assault in any relationship) over time. RESULTS: Adolescent girls in the RD/EF condition were nearly five times less likely to report sexual revictimization compared with girls in the no-treatment group. A trend suggested that girls who participated in the SL/F intervention were 2.5 times less likely to report sexual revictimization relative to the no-treatment group. For physical revictimization, the odds of not being physically revictimized were three times greater in the SL/F condition and two times greater in the RD/EF condition compared with the no-treatment group. CONCLUSIONS: The active interventions did not differ significantly from one another in rates of revictimization, suggesting that practitioners have at least two viable options to engage high-risk youth in revictimization prevention.

Exploring revictimization risk in a community sample of sexual assault survivors.

Previous research points to links between risk detection (the ability to detect danger cues in various situations) and sexual revictimization in college women. Given important differences between college and community samples that may be relevant to revictimization risk (e.g., the complexity of trauma histories), the current study explored the link between risk detection and revictimization in a community sample of women. Community-recruited women (N = 94) reported on their trauma histories in a semistructured interview. In a laboratory session, participants listened to a dating scenario involving a woman and a man that culminated in sexual assault. Participants were instructed to press a button "when the man had gone too far." Unlike in college samples, revictimized community women (n = 47) did not differ in terms of risk detection response times from women with histories of no victimization (n = 10) or single victimization (n = 15). Data from this study point to the importance of examining revictimization in heterogeneous community samples where risk mechanisms may differ from college samples.

Perceptions of trauma research with a sample of at-risk youth.

Growing body of research demonstrates that participants generally report favorable perceptions of participating in trauma research. However, questions remain on the long-term impact of asking at-risk youth about trauma in settings where such questions are unexpected. Perceptions of participation were examined in the current longitudinal study comprising a sample of adolescent girls recruited from the child welfare system to participate in a healthy relationship project. Over a year, teens (n = 180) completed four research sessions during which they were interviewed about interpersonal trauma exposure and trauma-related symptoms. Results indicated that adolescents reported stable, favorable benefit-to-cost ratios over time. Perceptions of research participation and symptom severity did not impact retention.

Cumulative violence exposure, emotional nonacceptance, and mental health symptoms in a community sample of women.

Women exposed to more types of violence (e.g., emotional, physical, or sexual violence)--referred to here as cumulative violence exposure--are at risk for more severe mental health symptoms compared to women who are exposed to a single type of violence or no violence. Women exposed to violence may also experience greater emotional nonacceptance compared to women with no exposure to violence. Emotional nonacceptance refers to an unwillingness to experience emotional states, including cognitive and behavioral attempts to avoid experiences of emotion. Given the links between cumulative violence exposure, emotional nonacceptance, and mental health symptoms among female victims of violence, the current study tested victims' emotional nonacceptance as a partial mediator between cumulative violence exposure and the severity of 3 types of symptoms central to complex trauma responses: depression, dissociation, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. A non-treatment-seeking community sample of women (N = 89; M age = 30.70 years) completed self-report questionnaires and interviews. Bootstrap procedures were then used to test 3 mediation models for the separate predictions of depression, dissociation, and PTSD symptoms. Results supported our hypotheses that emotional nonacceptance would mediate the relationship between women's cumulative violence exposure and severity for all symptom types. The current findings highlight the role that emotional nonacceptance may play in the development of mental health symptoms for chronically victimized women and point to the need for longitudinal research in such populations.

Clinical implications of traumatic stress from birth to age five.

Children aged birth to five years are exposed to a disproportionately increased amount of potentially traumatic events compared to older children. This review examines the prevalence of traumatic exposure in the birth-to-five age range, the indicators and diagnostic criteria of early traumatic stress, and the contextual issues associated with the experience of early trauma. The article also selectively reviews the impact of trauma on the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive functioning of young children's development along with some promising clinical treatment and service interventions that target the parent-child relationship as a vehicle of trauma recovery. Despite extensive documentation of the negative impact of trauma on the normal development of young children, research, clinical, and policy efforts to address the psychological repercussions of early victimization remain remarkably limited. Future directions in research and clinical practice as well as implications for policy are discussed.

Trauma-related predictors of deontic reasoning: a pilot study in a community sample of children.

OBJECTIVE: Deontic reasoning (i.e., reasoning about duties and obligations) is essential to navigating interpersonal relationships. Though previous research demonstrates links between deontic reasoning abilities and trauma-related factors (i.e., dissociation, exposure to multiple victimizations) in adults, studies have yet to examine deontic reasoning abilities in children exposed to trauma. Given that social and safety rules (exemplars of deontic reasoning rules) may appear arbitrary for children in the face of trauma exposure, particularly interpersonal violence perpetrated by adults (i.e., caregivers, close relatives), we predicted that the ability to detect violations of these rules would vary as a function of trauma exposure type (no, non-interpersonal, and interpersonal). Additionally, given previous research linking dissociation and deontic reasoning in adults, we predicted that higher levels of dissociation would be associated with more errors in deontic problems. METHODS: Children exposed to interpersonal violence (e.g., sexual abuse by an adult family member, witnessing domestic violence, or physical abuse in the home) were compared to children exposed to non-interpersonal trauma (e.g., motor vehicle accident, natural disaster) or no trauma on their ability to detect violations of deontic and descriptive rules in a Wason Selection Task and assessed for their level of dissociative symptoms. RESULTS: Dissociation (but not trauma exposure type) predicted errors in deontic (but not descriptive) reasoning problems after controlling for estimated IQ, socio-economic status, and children's ages. CONCLUSIONS: The current study provides preliminary evidence that deontic reasoning is associated with dissociation in children. This pilot study points to the need for future research on trauma-related predictors of deontic reasoning. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Deontic rules are essential to navigating interpersonal relationships; errors detecting violations of deontic rules have been associated with multiple victimizations in adulthood. Future research on violence exposure, dissociation, and deontic reasoning in children may have important implications for intervention and prevention around interpersonal functioning and later interpersonal risk.

Children's Perception of Research Participation: Examining Trauma Exposure and Distress.

USING THE REACTIONS TO RESEARCH Participation Questionnaire for Children (RRPQ-C), this study examined perceptions of research participation among 181 school-aged children with and without trauma histories. As part of two larger studies, children completed non-trauma related tasks to assess emotion understanding and cognitive ability. Parents (and not children) reported on children's interpersonal (e.g., sexual abuse, physical abuse, witnessing domestic violence, witnessing community violence) and non-interpersonal (e.g., motor vehicle accidents, medical traumas, natural disasters) trauma exposure. Children's perceptions of costs and benefits of research participation and understanding of informed consent did not vary as a function of trauma exposure. The number of traumatic events experienced was unrelated to children's perceptions. Furthermore, children across trauma-exposure groups generally reported a positive cost-benefit ratio, and understanding of the consent information. Implications of these data are discussed.