Adela C. Timmons

The Importance of Temporal Design: How Do Measurement Intervals Affect the Accuracy and Efficiency of Parameter Estimates in Longitudinal Research?

The timing (spacing) of assessments is an important component of longitudinal research. The purpose of the present study is to determine methods of timing the collection of longitudinal data that provide better parameter recovery in mixed effects nonlinear growth modeling. A simulation study was conducted, varying function type, as well as the number of measurement occasions, in order to examine the effect of timing on the accuracy and efficiency of parameter estimates. The number of measurement occasions was associated with greater efficiency for all functional forms and was associated with greater accuracy for the intrinsically nonlinear functions. In general, concentrating measurement occasions toward the left or at the extremes was associated with increased efficiency when estimating the intercepts of intrinsically linear functions, and concentrating values where the curvature of the function was greatest generally resulted in the best recovery for intrinsically nonlinear functions. Results from this study can be used in conjunction with theory to improve the design of longitudinal research studies. In addition, an R program is provided for researchers to run customized simulations to identify optimal sampling schedules for their own research.

Family Conflict, Mood, and Adolescents' Daily School Problems: Moderating Roles of Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms.

Using daily diary data, this study examined cross-day associations between family conflict and school problems and tested mediating effects of daily negative mood and moderating effects of psychological symptoms. For 2 weeks, parents and adolescents (N = 106; Mage = 15.4) reported daily conflict; adolescents reported daily negative mood and school problems. Results indicated bidirectional, multiday spillover between parent-adolescent conflict and school problems with daily negative mood statistically accounting for spillover both within and across days. Externalizing symptoms strengthened links between father-adolescent conflict and school problems, whereas depressive and anxious symptoms strengthened links between parent-adolescent conflict and daily negative mood. By demonstrating cross-domain transmission of daily problems, these findings highlight the salience of everyday events as possible intervention targets.

Daily Patterns of Stress and Conflict in Couples: Associations With Marital Aggression and Family-of-Origin Aggression.

For many married individuals, the ups and downs of daily life are connected such that stressors impacting one person also impact the other person. For example, stress experienced by one individual may “spill over” to negatively impact marital functioning. This study used both partners’ daily diary data to examine same-day and cross-day links between stress and marital conflict and tested several factors that make couples vulnerable to spillover. Assessment of 25 wide-ranging sources of daily stress included both paid and unpaid work, health issues, financial concerns, and having to make difficult decisions. Results showed that both husbands’ and wives’ experiences of total daily stress were associated with greater same-day marital conflict and that conflict was greater on days both spouses experienced high levels of stress. Evidence of cross-day spillover was found only in those couples with high concurrent marital aggression and in couples where wives reported high family-of-origin aggression. These results highlight both the common, anticipated nature of same-day spillover and the potentially problematic aspects of more prolonged patterns representing failure to recover from stressors that occurred the previous day. The discussion focuses on how reactivity in one life domain puts that individual at risk for generating stress in another life domain and how current marital aggression and family-of-origin aggression are associated with difficulty recovering from stressful events.

Using Multimodal Wearable Technology to Detect Conflict among Couples

By monitoring human behavior unobtrusively, mobile sensing technologies have the potential to improve our daily lives. Initial results from a field study demonstrate that such passive technologies can detect a complex psychological state in an uncontrolled, real-life environment. In the web extra at https://youtu.be/n8Ap3Z44ojQ, guest editor Katarzyna Wac interviews authors Adela Timmons and Theodora Chaspari, quality-of-life technology researchers at the University of Southern California.

New Frontiers in Ambulatory Assessment

With the increasing use of smartphone technologies and wearable biosensors, we are currently undergoing what many have termed a “data revolution,” where intensive, multichannel data are passively collected over long time frames. Such procedures are transforming the way psychologists conceptualize research and have the potential to spur important advances in the study of close relationships. This proof-of-concept study from the Couple Mobile Sensing Project, a partnership between psychologists and engineers, combines big data and ambulatory assessment methodologies to study multimodal, microprocesses in couples’ everyday lives. These data collection procedures are designed to test how characteristics of everyday behavioral, physiological, and vocal interactions are integrated within and across individuals. We present two mini-illustrations to show how these data can be synchronized across modalities and partners and can be linked to generalized relationship dimensions. Discussion highlights the potential and challenges of capturing multimodal, multiperson, real-time, naturally occurring social phenomena.

Compassion in a heartbeat: Physiology during couples’ loss discussions

The physiology of compassion, typically studied in individuals, has not yet been studied dyadically and in the context of close relationships. The current study used dating partners’ discussions of personal losses to simultaneously investigate the physiological profile of compassion in an individual sharing an emotionally salient loss, the “narrator,” and his or her partner, the “listener.” In a given moment, listeners who perceived themselves as being more compassionate had a lower heart rate. This association was stronger for listeners whose partners were less anxiously attached. Narrators and listeners who were more avoidantly attached showed stronger positive associations between their average heart rate and overall compassion. Additionally, narrators’ compassion moderated linkage between partners’ heart rates such that heart rates were more strongly linked in moments with lower levels of compassion. These results support studying compassion dyadically and illustrate the importance of attachment style in the physiology of compassion.