A Longitudinal Study of the Mediating Role of Romantic Attachment in the Relation Between Child Maltreatment and Psychological Adaptation in Emerging Adults.

Considering the long-term deleterious consequences of child maltreatment, it is crucial to better understand the pathways leading to psychological outcomes in emerging adulthood. This study contributes to the existing knowledge through the examination of the role of romantic attachment as a mechanism explaining the association between child maltreatment and psychological adaptation. Prospective and retrospective data from 605 school-based participants (56.0% women) from the general population involved in a 10-year study were used. Child maltreatment, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, was measured at age 14 years (mean age = 14.04, SD = 0.21). Ten years later (mean age = 24.5, SD = 0.50), similar forms of maltreatment, in addition to neglect, were measured, along with adult romantic attachment, self-esteem, and psychological distress. The results of path analyses, controlling for self-esteem and psychological distress at age 14, revealed that child maltreatment was associated with increases in psychological distress and with decreases in self-esteem in emerging adults, through their levels of romantic attachment anxiety. The results also revealed that cross-sectional analyses involving retrospective measurements of child maltreatment at age 24 were as valuable as longitudinal analyses involving its measurement at age 14. Those results confirm the importance of romantic attachment in survivors' well-being, and suggest that attachment may be a key target for intervention with adolescents or emerging adults.

Interactive effects of prey and p,p'-DDE on burrowing owl population dynamics.

We used population models to explore the effects of the organochlorine contaminant p,p'-DDE and fluctuations in vole availability on the population dynamics of Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia). Previous work indicated an interaction between low biomass of voles in the diet and moderate levels of p,p'-DDE in Burrowing Owl eggs that led to reproductive impairment. We constructed periodic and stochastic matrix models that incorporated three vole population states observed in the field: average, peak, and crash years. We modeled varying frequencies of vole crash years and a range of impairment of owl demographic rates in vole crash years. Vole availability had a greater impact on owl population growth rate than did reproductive impairment if vole populations peaked and crashed frequently. However, this difference disappeared as the frequency of vole crash years declined to once per decade. Fecundity, the demographic rate most affected by p,p'-DDE, had less impact on population growth rate than adult or juvenile survival. A life table response experiment of time-invariant matrices for average, peak, and crash vole conditions showed that low population growth under vole crash conditions was due to low adult and juvenile survival rates, whereas the extremely high population growth under vole peak conditions was due to increased fecundity. Our results suggest that even simple models can provide useful insights into complex ecological interactions. This is particularly valuable when temporal or spatial scales preclude manipulative experimental work in the field or laboratory.