Gemma Pons-Salvador

Intimate Partner Violence in Self-Identified Lesbians: A Systematic Review of Its Prevalence and Correlates.

This article presents the first systematic review on intimate partner violence (IPV) in self-identified lesbians in same-sex couples. Studies published from January 1990 to December 2013 were analyzed. Of the 687 studies reviewed, 59 were preselected, of which 14 studies were selected that met the inclusion and methodological quality criteria. A summary is presented of the characteristics of the studies, the participants, the prevalence of IPV victimization and perpetration, and its correlates. All the studies were carried out in the United States and used a nonprobabilistic sampling method. The majority of participants were White with a high educational level. The results indicate that all the forms of violence occur, but the most prevalent is emotional/psychological violence. The correlates positively associated with IPV are certain personality characteristics, fusion, previous IPV experience, a family history of violence, and alcohol consumption. This review finds significant limitations in the analyzed literature. Methodological recommendations are made for future studies.

La evaluación del abuso sexual infantil: comparación entre informes periciales en función del diagnóstico de abuso

El objetivo del presente trabajo es comparar las diferencias existentes entre informes psicologicos periciales que confirman el diagnostico de abuso sexual infantil de los que no lo confirman. Los datos proceden de 61 informes sobre menores remitidos a un servicio para el diagnostico. Las variables se agruparon en: caracteristicas de la familia, proceso de evaluacion y consecuencias psicologicas. Los resultados muestran que hay mas ninos en el grupo de abuso que viven en familias con graves problemas de relacion y/o drogodependencias y que tienen sentimientos negativos hacia el presunto perpetrador, si bien en esta muestra en un porcentaje elevado de casos el perpetrador utiliza amenazas y/o agresiones. Ademas se da una alta probabilidad de que el abuso se confirme cuando es el nino el que informa y cuando muestra conducta sexualizada o conocimientos sexuales no apropiados a la edad.

Modifying the Family Process in Two Cases of Physical Child Abuse and Secondary Functional Encopresis

In this article, a treatment working model is proposed and applied to two cases of multiproblem families with severe physical child abuse. Stimulus events that directly affect the likelihood of a physically abusive episode and setting factors that play an important indirect role because they increase the number of confrontations and decrease parental competence are considered. The child abuse cases involved major parenting deficits, maternal psychopathology, a major psychosomatic problem (childhood encopresis), and symptoms of childhood conduct disorder, which occurred in a setting of family distress, low income, and sibling distress. This study demonstrates how a two-phase comprehensive parent intervention, paralleling the stimulus versus setting factor distinction, can deal effectively with such multiproblem families. Treatment results and a 7-month follow-up assessment illustrate the utility and validity of the proposed scheme when applied in the real world where the relational character of the problems makes them multidimensional.

Parental and Infant Gender Factors in Parent–Infant Interaction: State-Space Dynamic Analysis

This study aimed to investigate the influence of parental gender on their interaction with their infants, considering, as well, the role of the infant’s gender. The State Space Grid (SSG) method, a graphical tool based on the non-linear dynamic system (NDS) approach was used to analyze the interaction, in Free-Play setting, of 52 infants, aged 6 to 10 months, divided into two groups: half of the infants interacted with their fathers and half with their mothers. There were 50% boys in each group. MANOVA results showed no differential parenting of boys and girls. Additionally, mothers and fathers showed no differences in the Diversity of behavioral dyadic states nor in Predictability. However, differences associated with parent’s gender were found in that the paternal dyads were more “active” than the maternal dyads: they were faster in the rates per second of behavioral events and transitions or change of state. In contrast, maternal dyads were more repetitive because, once they visited a certain dyadic state, they tend to be involved in more events. Results showed a significant discriminant function on the parental groups, fathers and mothers. Specifically, the content analyses carried out for the three NDS variables, that previously showed differences between groups, showed particular dyadic behavioral states associated with the rate of Transitions and the Events per Visit ratio. Thus, the transitions involving ‘in–out’ of ‘Child Social Approach neutral – Sensitive Approach neutral’ state and the repetitions of events in the dyadic state ‘Child Play-Sensitive Approach neutral’ distinguished fathers from mothers. The classification of dyads (with fathers and mothers) based on this discriminant function identified 73.10% (19/26) of the father–infant dyads and 88.5% (23/26) of the mother–infant dyads. The study of father-infant interaction using the SSG approach offers interesting possibilities because it characterizes and quantifies the actual moment-to-moment flow of parent–infant interactive dynamics. Our findings showed how observational methods applied to natural contexts offer new facets in father vs. mother interactive behavior with their infants that can inform further developments in this field.