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This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

THE IMPACT OF EXPOSURE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
ON INFANT RESPONSE TO ADULT VERBAL CONFLICT

presented by

Erika Sargent DeJonghe

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. degree in Psychology

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THE IMPACT OF EXPOSURE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ON INFANT
RESPONSE To ADULT VERBAL CONFLICT
By

Erika Sargent DeJonghe

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Psychology

2002

ABSTRACT
THE IMPACT OF EXPOSURE TO DOMECTIC VIOLENCE ON INFANT
RESPONSE TO ADULT VERBAL CONFLICT
By

Erika Sargent DeJonghe

The current study examined whether infants whose mothers had been victims of
domestic violence during the infant’s lifetime would be more likely to experience
distress in response to a simulated verbal conﬂict and whether the amount of distress
expressed would be inﬂuenced by infant temperament. Ninety one-year-old infants
were videotaped during and for ﬁve minutes after a simulated verbal conﬂict in which
an experimenter pretended to have a telephone argument. Exposure to domestic
violence was related to infant distress following an episode of simulated adult verbal
conﬂict. Two aspects of temperament, intensity and mood, predicted greater distress
among infants not exposed to domestic violence, but not among infants exposed to
domestic violence. These ﬁndings suggest that while typically only more
temperarnentally reactive infants would display distress in response to verbal conﬂict,
all infants exposed to domestic violence, regardless of temperament, may be likely to

experience distress when verbal conﬂicts occurs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, G. Anne, Bogat, for her guidance,
support, and encouragement. I would also like to thank my other committee members:
Alytia Levendosky, for her unﬂagging optimism and insightful recommendations, and
Alexander von Eye, for his generous assistance with the analyses and enthusiastic
support.

In addition, I am grateful to my colleagues on the Mother-Infant Study, Sally
Theran, Robin Weatherill, Kerry Kelly, and Shallimar Jones, whose emotional and
practical support helped me at every stage in the process. Finally, I would like to thank
the dedicated research assistants whose commitment to the project made it possible to
conduct the interviews upon which this study is based and who continue to make the
Mother-Infant Study possible by maintaining positive relationships with study

participants.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... vi
LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... vii
Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1

Risks Associated with Exposure to Domestic Violence in Childhood and Infancy...1

Theoretical Models of Risk Transmission to Infants .................................................. 5
Infants’ Responses to Domestic Violence .................................................................. 9
Measurement of Infant Responses ............................................................................ 11
Temperament ............................................................................................................ 13
Rationale ......................................................................................................................... 18
Hypotheses ...................................................................................................................... 21
Method ............................................................................................................................ 22
Participants ............................................................................................................... 22
Measures ................................................................................................................... 24
Procedures ................................................................................................................. 29
Results ............................................................................................................................. 34
Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 39
Appendix A: Demographic Questionnaire ..................................................................... 50
Appendix B: Conﬂict Tactics Scale ............................................................................... 58
Appendix C: Severity of Violence Against Women Scales ........................................... 59
Appendix D: Angry Phone Call Script ........................................................................... 62
Appendix E: Coding Manual for Angry Phone Call ...................................................... 63

iv

Appendix F: Toddler Temperament Scale ...................................................................... 75
Appendix G: Consent Form ............................................................................................ 84

References ....................................................................................................................... 85

Table 1:

Table 2:

Table 3:

Table 4:

Table 5:

Table 6:

LIST OF TABLES

Prevalence of Domestic Violence (as Measured by the SVAWS) in the Study
Sample as compared to the Larger Longitudinal Study Sample ...................... 23
Demographics Differences Among “Witnessed”, “Lived With”,

and “Non-Exposed” to Domestic Violence (DV) Groups ............................... 24
Intercorrelations Between Distress Rating Scales ........................................... 34
Descriptive Data for Measures ........................................................................ 36

Results of Regressions of Posture-Expressed Distress
on Temperament Subscale Scores ................................................................... 37

Temperament Means and Standard Deviation in the Current Study
as Compared to the Standardization Sample .................................................. 45

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Change in Distress Ratings Across Quarters .................................................. 38

vii

Introduction

The association between exposure to domestic violence and behavioral and
psychological problems, particularly the expression of trauma symptoms, is well-
documented in preschool and school age children. Clinical evidence suggests that these
negative effects are also present in infants, but empirical work has not yet been
conducted. However, given that infants possess the necessary abilities to experience,
respond to, learn from, and display a response to interpersonal interactions, it is
reasonable to expect that exposure to domestic violence may also have a negative
impact on infants. The limited information available suggests that infants will not only
experience distress in response to an episode of domestic violence, but will also be
more likely to respond with distress to similar future events. However, it is also likely
that there will be signiﬁcant individual differences in the degree to which the distress
response is facilitated. This may be due in part to temperamental differences that
function as risk factors. Infants who are temperamentally more sensitive may be at an
additional risk, because they are generally more likely to experience environmental
stimuli as stressful. The present study examined whether infants exposed to domestic
violence would indeed be more likely to display distress in response to a related event,
adult verbal conﬂict, and whether temperament would inﬂuence the degree to which
this distress response occurred.

Risks Associated with Exposure to Domestic Violence in Childhood and Infancy

Children exposed to domestic violence display elevated levels of behavioral

problems as well as internalizing problems such as depression and anxiety. In a study of

198 children varying in age from 4-16 years old, Wolfe, Jaffe, Wilson, and Zak (1985)

found a signiﬁcant prevalence of behavior problems and diminished social competence
among those children whose mothers reported that the children had witnessed family
violence. Similarly, O’Keefe (1994) found that 21% of children aged 7-13 years from
homes in which domestic violence occurred displayed externalizing problems so severe
that they fell within the 98th percentile on Achenbach’s Child Behavior Checklist
(CBCL) and that 31% of children displayed internalizing problems severe enough to be
in the 98th percentile on the CBCL. Fantuzzo, DePaola, Lambert, Martino, Anderson,
and Sutton (1991) found that among young children ranging in age from 3.6 to 6.4
years, exposure to domestic violence was associated with clinical levels of conduct
problems, with exposed children living in shelters faring even worse. Wildin,
Williamson, and Wilson (1991) found a higher prevalence of developmental and
academic problems among children varying in age from 9 months to 13 years-5 months
who had been exposed to domestic violence. Among the pre-school-aged children in the
sample, 39% showed developmental delays and risk for ﬁiture school problems. Among
school-aged children, 46% had one or more academic problems. Though domestic
violence commonly co-occurs with other risk factors [e.g., single parent status, lower
family income, less maternal education and smaller family size, frequent family moves,
parental divorce, maternal and paternal drinking, incarceration of father (Spaccarelli,
Sandler, & Roosa, 1994) and child abuse (O'Keefe, 1994)], exposure to domestic
violence has been shown to account for behavioral and psycholgical problems in
children over and above the effects of these co-occuring risk factors (Hughes, 1988;

Spaccarelli et al., 1994).

Domestic violence may also lead to the development of trauma symptoms in
young children. In a study of 84 school-aged children (9-15 years of age) residing in a
shelter for battered women, Lehmann (1997) found that 56% of children met criteria for
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [as deﬁned by DSM-III R (1987)] and the group
of children exhibiting PTSD contained more younger children than the non-PTSD
group. Conclusions drawn from this study are limited by the fact that data were
collected from children residing in a shelter, who have recently experienced the
emotional upheaval associated with leaving their homes. However, Graham-Bermann
and Levendosky (1998) also found elevated rates of traumatic symptoms among a
community sample of 64 children 7-12 years of age who had been eyewitnesses to or
overheard domestic violence. While only 18% of children in this study met ﬁtll criteria
for PTSD as deﬁned by DSM-IV (1994), a high percentage of children in the sample
suffered from traumatic symptoms such as intrusive reexperiencing (52%), traumatic
avoidance (19%), and traumatic arousal symptoms (42%).

Recent research has documented the presence of trauma symptoms in even
younger children exposed to domestic violence. Levendosky, Huth-Bocks, Semel, and
Shapiro (2002) examined whether trauma symptoms were present in pre-school aged
children whose mothers reported that the children had been eyewitnesses to domestic
violence or had lived in the home during a violent relationship. According to maternal
report using the PTSD scale from the CBCL, of the 62 children included in the study,
92% had at least one reexperiencing symptom, 47% had at least three avoidance
symptoms, and 91% had at least two symptoms of hyperarousal, with 24% of the

children meeting diagnostic criteria for PTSD according to the DSM-IV (1994).

Despite the fact that the negative impact of domestic violence has been clearly
demonstrated in pre-school and school age children, the potential effects of domestic
violence in infancy have received little attention in the literature. However, anecdotal
reports suggest that such effects may be present. Layzer, Goodson, and deLange (1985)
report that, among infants in the six shelters in which they conducted research, over half
of the infants demonstrated problems such as poor health, sleep disturbance, and lack of
responsiveness to adults. Other researchers also describe infants who witness domestic
violence as having poor health and poor sleeping habits (Alessi & Hearn, 1984).
Clinicians working with children exposed to domestic violence have suggested that the
impact of violence witnessed in infancy may be expressed later in life (McIntosh,

2002)

These anecdotal reports of the negative impact on infants exposed to domestic
violence are supported by the limited available empirical research on the impact of
trauma in infancy. In a study of severely traumatized children under 48 months of age
(ranging from 3-48 months), Scheeringa and Zeanah (1995) examined the effects of a
variety of types of trauma in infancy using an alternative criteria for PTSD developed
by the authors and published as the criteria for Traumatic Stress Disorder in the
Diagnostic Classiﬁcation: 0-3 (1994). The authors found that threat to a caregiver was
most likely to produce symptoms such as hyperarousal, fear, and aggression and that
threat to caregiver was the trauma involved most often when children in the study were
diagnosed with PTSD. The severity of symptoms was generally higher for infants
exposed to threat to a caregiver. The authors suggest that threat to a caregiver may be an

especially potent producer of anxiety in infants because of their extreme dependence on

caregivers. Unfortunately, this study had a small sample of infants who had been
exposed to a wide variety of traumas, making it difﬁcult to draw conclusions about a
single type of trauma, such as exposure to domestic violence. However, this study does
suggest that threat to caregiver may be among the most psychologically damaging of
traumas.
Theoretical Models of Risk Transmission to Infants

Though strong evidence exists that children are at increased risk for negative
social and emotional consequences if exposed to domestic violence, and there is a fairly
good indication that these risks may exist in infancy, the mechanisms by which these
risks are transmitted is not clear. Three theories may account for why exposure to
domestic violence results in these negative consequences: Bandura’s concept of
learning via “modeling”, Cummings’ “emotional security hypothesis”, and Perry,
Pollard, Blakley, Baker and Vigilante’s “sensitization and trait formation” hypothesis.

Albert Bandura demonstrated that exposure to a model of aggressive behavior
can lead a child to behave aggressively. The child can both mimic the aggressive
behavior of the model as well as engage in new aggressive behaviors (Bandura, Ross, &
Ross, 1961). He theorized that children learn behavior by observing and then imitating
the behavior of the adults they observe. The idea that domestic violence serves as a
model for children may be useful to explain the behavior problems seen in children
from homes where domestic violence occurs (Fantuzzo et al., 1991; O'Keefe, 1994;
Wolfe et al., 1985) as well as the strong relationships between experiencing domestic
violence in childhood and receiving or perpetrating domestic violence in adulthood

(Stith et al., 2000). Applying Bandura’s model to children who witness domestic

violence suggests that these children should model the aggressive behavior they see at
home and be at an increased risk to model these behaviors in their own adult romantic
relationships.

The internalizing symptoms and traumatization seen in children and infants
exposed to domestic violence may not be adequately explained by modeling alone.
Davies’ and Cummings’ (1994) “emotional security hypothesis” may serve to enhance
our understanding of how these symptoms develop. They assert that conﬂicts involving
intense marital difﬁculties or direct threat to the child are more distressing to children
than are other types of marital conﬂict. Among the most distressing conﬂicts are those
that involve physical aggression (Cummings, Vogel, Cummings, & El-Sheikh, 1989;
Cummings, Zahn—Waxler, & Radke-Yarrow, 1981). Conﬂicts that are well-resolved
lead to less negative impact on children (Cummings, Ballard, El-Sheikh, & Lake, 1991;
Cummings, Simpson, & Wilson, 1993; El-Sheikh, Cummings, & Reiter, 1996) and
more positive predictions about the future (El-Sheikh & Cummings, 1995), contributing
to emotional security. However, marital conﬂicts that result in physical violence are by
deﬁnition not well-resolved, and would therefore be expected to contribute to high
levels of emotional insecurity. Emotional insecurity is believed to arise from a history
of witnessing these more destructive types of marital conﬂict. Repeated exposure to
destructive conﬂict causes emotional insecurity, which reduces children’s capacity for
regulating emotions and behavior. Consistent with this hypothesis, children exposed to
repeated episodes of domestic violence tend to display the most severe problems (Wolfe

etaL,1985)

Finally, Perry, Pollard, Blakley, Baker, and Vigilante (1995) hypothesize that
trauma affects an infant’s developing brain differently than it would affect a mature
adult brain. Perry et al. point to two major principles of neurodevelopment: (1) use-
dependent development and organization of the brain and (2) critical or sensitive
periods in brain development during which the course of development may be
dramatically altered. Because of these characteristic features of child and infant brains,
psychological trauma in infancy can permanently alter the way in which a person
processes information. Normal neural development can be altered by lack of sufﬁcient
sensory experiences or by abnormal patterns of neuronal activation due to extremes of
experience, as would be the case with children exposed to high levels of domestic
violence. This is accomplished by way of sensitization of speciﬁc responses.

Exposure to trauma, such as domestic violence, stimulates the adaptive “ﬁght or
ﬂight” response. Abnorrnally frequent or severe stimulation of this response can lead to
sensitivity, in that the fear response will be easier to elicit in the future. Because infants
and young children are developing patterns of neuronal activity that will determine how
they process and respond to future stimulation, this sensitization leads to trait formation.
Infants exposed to domestic violence have fear responses activated more often and more
intensely by their environment than normal. While in adults, exposure to trauma can
lead to problems such as PTSD, in the immature brain of an infant, fear states organize
neural systems resulting in more stable traits.

Thus, infants exposed to traumatic events should display exaggerated reactivity
to stimuli associated with the traumatic event. In a study that seems to support this

assertion, Reider and Cicchetti (1989) found that, while all children were likely to

display avoidance of aggressive stimuli, children with a history of maltreatment were
more likely to shift their attention to aggressive stimuli from an ongoing task.
Maltreated children also showed less embellishment and distortion of aggressive
stimuli, assirnilating aggressive stimuli more accurately. The authors suggest that this
heightened attention to and ready assimilation of aggressive stimuli may have originally
constituted an adaptive response to maltreatment. A similar process might occur for
infants exposed to domestic violence. While these infants may not be directly abused,
they may become attuned to aggressive stimuli in their early environments because
these aggressive stimuli are associated with threat to their caregiver. Verbal conﬂict in
particular seems likely to carry such an association for infants living in homes where
domestic violence abuse occurs.

Research with children supports the notion that exposure to parental conﬂict
may facilitate a distress response. Observing the responses of children ages 2-5 to
simulated adult verbal conﬂict, Cummings, Pellegrini, Notarius, and Cummings (1989)
found that children of parents with a history of exposure to physical hostility displayed
heightened involvement and reactivity in responding to anger. Similarly, El-Sheikh
(1994) found that children from high-conﬂict homes (those in which mothers reported
either physical violence or verbal aggression above the sample mean) exhibited more
distress in response to simulated adult verbal conﬂict than children from low-conﬂict
homes. It is likely that a similar sensitization to verbal conﬂict and facilitation of the
distress response may occur in infants exposed to domestic violence.

Also consistent with the sensitization hypothesis, when comparing abused

and/or neglected infants and matched controls, Gaensbauer and Hiatt (1984) found that

abused/neglected infants consistently displayed more anger throughout the testing;
however, this difference did not reach statistical signiﬁcance, presumably because the
power of the study was limited because of the small sample size (n=18). The
abused/neglected infants appeared to display anger particularly at times of mild
stimulation (e. g., during feeding, when presented with a new toy, while being held) that
were typically pleasurable or at least did not elicit negative reactions from the control
group. The authors suggest that this differential response to mild stimulation may have
been because abused infants’ “threshold for being disrupted by stimulation had been
lowered considerably’ ’(pp. 226-227). This heightened tendency to respond negatively to
stimuli would be expected in infants exposed to domestic violence.

These three theories converge on the notion that the long-term impact of
exposure to domestic violence will be determined by the degree to which the infant or
child’s pattern of responding to stimuli is altered by domestic violence. Bandura (1961)
highlights how a child may learn to recreate the behaviors he observes. Davies and
Cummings (1994) focus on how a child’s emotional security may be damaged, leading
to an inability to regulate emotion. Perry et al. (1995) describe how an infant may
develop a sensitization to stimuli as a result of exposure to domestic violence. All three
theories suggest that an infant’s past experience of trauma, among other factors, may
contribute to different patterns of responding to future events.

Infants ’ Responses to Domestic Violence

The extent to which infants’ responses are altered as a result of exposure to

domestic violence will be determined by the degree to which an infant is able to

perceive, respond to, and remember these episodes. Heightened distress will most likely

be observable when the infant is presented with a stimulus associated with domestic
violence to which the infant has developed a negative association.

It is clear that infants perceive and respond to stimuli. Most infants can
distinguish voices early in the ﬁrst year of life and have developed 20/20 vision by 12
months (Drell, Siegel, & Gaensbauer, 1993). Infants appear to be particularly skilled at
perception of emotions in others. Terrnine and Izard (1988) found that nine-month-old
infants showed more joy when their mothers were instructed to display joy and more
sadness and anger when their mothers were instructed to display sadness. They also
found that the infant looked less at their mothers while the mothers displayed sadness.
This suggests that infants may use gaze aversion to reduce exposure to negative-
emotion information and to self-regulate emotional arousal. Displays of sadness also
resulted in decreased play behavior while displays of joy resulted in increased play
behavior, suggesting that the infants’ displays of sadness were not simply mimicry, but
an actual expression of emotions.

Infant display of emotions in response to stimuli has been well-documented
from very early infancy and appears to become somewhat stable by the end of the ﬁrst
year. Izard, Hembree, Dougherty, and Spizzini (1983) studied infant response to
inoculation from age 2-19 months. They found that infants as young as two months of
age displayed an emotional response to pain. This response changed over time such that
infants became more likely to display anger and less likely to display physical distress
over time, with emotional expression becoming fairly stable by the end of the ﬁrst year.
Hyson and Izard (1985) examined emotional responses to separation at 13 months and

again at 18 months. They found that individual differences in emotional expressions in

10

response to a separation seemed to be stable across time and suggest that these
individual differences are due in part to the infants’ temperamental reactivity. However,
they also found a general trend toward more complex display of emotions, with older
infants more likely to display facial expressions that indicate two emotions
simultaneously.

In order to develop a negative response to stimuli associated with domestic
violence (e. g., verbal conﬂict), infants must also learn to associate the emotions they
experience in the presence of these stimuli with analogous or comparable indicators in
their environments. The ability to recognize and respond differentially to speciﬁc
stimuli appears to exist even prior to birth. For example, infants whose mothers had
read aloud “The Cat in the Hat” twice a day for a month and a half before their due
dates were found to show changes in their rate of sucking in response to this particular
passage three days after birth (DeCasper & Spence, 1986). Similarly, infants have been
shown to learn fearﬁrl responses. McGraw (1941) found that infants over 300 days of
age showed a learned fear response to the experimenter after being subjected to a series
of pin pricks. Similarly, Levy (1960) found that 25% of infants age 12 months or older
displayed anticipatory crying prior to inoculation. Given the prevalence of conditioned
responses, including fear, in infants, it is possiblethat infants will be likely to develop
associations between the distress they experience in response to episodes of domestic
violence and the visual and auditory stimuli associated with it.

Measurement of Infant Responses
While it does appear that infants possess the prerequisite capabilities to

experience a negative impact of exposure to domestic violence, measurement of these

11

effects is limited by infants’ abilities to communicate them. Infant emotions must be
inferred from the infant’s behavior, facial expressions, vocalizations, or actions. Some
researchers assert that infants display facial expressions consistent with their emotional
states (Izard, 1994). These facial expressions can be identiﬁed not only by trained
professionals, but also by untrained observers. For example, Izard et al. (1980)
demonstrated that even untrained college students could identify emotions associated
with infant facial expressions. Subjects were able to reach agreement as follows: joy
(81%), sadness (72%), surprise (69%), interest (67%), fear (52%), contempt (44%),
anger (41%), and disgust (37%). Similarly, in a study of abused and/or neglected infants
ranging in age from 6 to 27 weeks and a matched control group, Gaensbauer and Hiatt
(1984) found that facial patterns for discrete emotions in adults were applicable to even
these very young infants. These authors suggest that the emotions of happiness, interest,
anger, sadness, disgust, and surprise are organized, in at least a rudimentary form, by 3
or 4 months of age. However, it should be noted that there is controversy about the
universality of emotional expression in infancy and about whether facial expression
actually denotes underlying emotions (Russell, 1995).

Vocalization may also provide valuable information about an infant’s emotional
state. Examining brain electrical activity in 10-month-old infants, Fox and Davidson
(1988) found that facial expressions of emotions produced different patterns of
electrical activity depending on whether they were accompanied by vocalizations,
suggesting that facial expressions accompanied by vocalization may represent

qualitatively different neurological states. While their study was limited by the use of an

12

EEG (electroencephalogram), which provides poor spatial resolution, it does highlight
that it may be important to consider both facial and vocal indicators of infant emotion.

Finally, infants may communicate distress via their posture. Camras et al. (2002)
found that judgments of surprise in infants were related to changes in posture (infants’
reduced physical movement) that accompanied changes in facial expression. Even when
infants do not display emotion via facial expression, they may display emotion through
body posture. For example, infants exposed to presumably surprise inducing events
(such as the disappearance of an object) did not typically produce facial expressions of
surprise, but they did display postural indications of surprise (Hiatt, Campos, & Emde,
1979)

Given that infants possess the abilities to perceive, respond emotionally to, and
develop a learned fear response to threatening stimuli, it appears likely that infants are
experiencing negative effects as a result of exposure to domestic violence. No empirical
studies, however, have examined this issue. Unlike older children, infants are not able
to describe their experiences of domestic violence, nor are they able to describe the
types of internalizing and externalizing symptoms typically seen in older children
exposed to domestic violence. However, infants do display facial expressions,
vocalizations, and body postures that can be studied as indicators of the degree to which
an infant is distressed.

Temperament
As suggested by Hyson and Izard (1985), an infant’s response to environmental
stimuli, including episodes of domestic violence, are likely to be affected by the infant’s

temperament. “Difﬁcult” temperamental characteristics, such as high reactivity and a

13

tendency to respond negatively, appear to function as risk factors for negative
outcomes. Thomas and Chess (1984) demonstrated that infants characterized as
temperamentally difﬁcult were at increased risk for psychological problems in
adulthood. Demonstrating the short-term impact of temperament, Kyrios and Prior
(1990) found that children’s temperaments measured at 3-4 years were predictive of
behavioral adjustment one year later, such that high temperamental reactivity predicted
poor behavioral adjustment.

Temperament appears to be present and to affect responses to stressors from the
beginning of life. Lewis, Worobey, and Thomas (1989) found that infant reactivity
shortly after birth (response to a stressful stimulus-- a painful heelstick procedure) was
consistent with infant reactivity two months after birth. Similarly, Eckennan, Hsu,
Molitor, Leung, and Goldstein (1999) compared the reactions of four-month-old full-
term and very low birth weight (VLBW) (adjusted age) infants (who typically differ in
reactivity) to a peek-a-boo game in a laboratory setting. They found that VLBW infants
were less likely to show positive and more likely to show negative arousal.

Rothbart (1981) was among the earliest researchers to quantify temperament in
the ﬁrst year of life. She deﬁned infant temperament as individual differences on two
dimensions—reactivity and self-regulation. Evidence for the existence of the two
dimensions of temperament deﬁned by Rothbart exists in the work of Braungart-Rieker
and Stifter (1996). They found that infant behavioral responses to ﬁ'ustrating situations
loaded onto two factors, reactivity and regulation, and that the relationship between
these two factors changed over time. Infants who were highly negatively reactive at ﬁve

months tended to display lower levels of regulation at ten months, whereas infants who

14

were less negatively reactive at ﬁve months tended to display more regulatory behaviors
at ten months. Also, reactivity and regulation were negatively correlated at ﬁve months,
but unrelated at ten months. The authors hypothesize that regulation in younger infants
may involve automatic responses that are dependent on distress levels, but, that by ten
months, infants may have more control over their behavior and hence their regulatory
responses. The authors postulate that this developing independence of reactivity and
regulation may be due to environmental factors such as parent responses to reactive
behavior. For example, a parent of a reactive infant may choose not to expose that
infant to stressﬁrl stimuli, reducing the infant’s need to develop self-regulatory
behaviors.

However, for a temperamental vulnerability to lead to a negative outcome, this
vulnerability must interact with an environmental stressor. Strelau (1995) explains that
temperament serves as a risk factor “only if the difﬁcult temperament is in interaction
with an inappropriate environment... which is experienced by the child as a chronic or
excessive state of stress” (p. 67). Indeed, temperamental characteristics shown to be
associated with negative outcomes in Western cultures have been associated with
positive outcomes in other cultures (deVries, 1987). Thus, infants or children who are
temperamentally more reactive will only be at increased risk if they encounter an
environment that makes this temperamental reactivity undesirable. If infants or children
are relatively buffered from stress, reactive temperament will not function as a risk
factor.

Among infants who do not face undue environmental stress, temperamental

reactivity may be associated with positive outcomes. Fox (1989) found that infants who

15

were more emotionally reactive to both positive and negative stimuli at ﬁve months
were more positively reactive to novel events at fourteen months. They were also still
more reactive to a stressor, showing a shorter latency to cry after maternal separation,
indicating that the underlying temperamental reactivity still existed. Fox suggests that
the reactive infants in this sample appeared to have developed the ability to self-regulate
by fourteen months. Infants in the sample who were less reactive showed little overt
reaction to novelty at ﬁve months and were unsociable with unfamiliar adults or objects
at fourteen months. Fox worked with infants speciﬁcally selected to be representative of
a healthy, low-risk population. Infants in this study were all born full term, with high
Apgar scores, they had normal pediatric examinations, and their mothers’ pregnancies
were uncomplicated by serious illness. One might expect a different pattern of
development in high-risk samples. Reactive infants who face a stressful and dangerous
environment after birth might not learn to be as outgoing and exploratory as the infants
in this study. This might also affect the development of self—regulation that appears to
occur later in the ﬁrst year of life.

Karraker, Lake, and Parry (1994) collected information from mothers about
infant responses to a variety of stressful events. They found that infants who were rated
temperamentally more “difﬁcult” were more likely to respond to these events with
negative emotion. However, infants’ behaviors after the negative emotional response
(presumably regulatory behaviors) appeared to be independent of temperament,
suggesting that these “coping strategies” may be related to infants’ learning from

successful previous attempts at coping rather than temperamental factors. They also

16

found that older infants experienced a greater variety of stressful events and were more
likely to be distressed by the events they experienced.

Highlighting the importance of the temperament/environment interaction,
Kochanska (1995) examined the ways in which a child’s temperament as well as
attachment security and maternal discipline contributed to internalization in a sample of
103, 26-41-month-old toddlers. She found evidence for multiple pathways to
internalization depending on the child’s temperament. For example, a more
fearful/anxious temperament was associated with better internalization when coupled
with gentle maternal discipline. This is presumably because the combination of a
fearful/anxious temperament and gentle discipline resulted in an optimal, moderate
level of anxiety that facilitated internalization of discipline. For children who were less
fearful, it was security of attachment that predicted internalization. Here the impact of
parental behavior, an environmental inﬂuence, is moderated by temperament.

Despite the fairly good evidence that temperament inﬂuences an infant’s
response to stressors, there is no research on the impact of temperament on infant
exposure to domestic violence. However, Easterbrooks, Cummings, and Emde (1994)
did ﬁnd that toddlers with more difﬁcult temperaments tended to be more reactive to
non-violent marital disputes. As suggested by Strelau (1995), highly reactive
temperament most likely functions as a risk factor for children exposed to high or
moderate levels of stress. Inclusion of temperament as a factor, which will interact with

an infant’s experience of domestic violence, might serve to better predict outcomes.

17

Rationale

The negative consequences associated with exposure to domestic violence have
been well-documented in pre-school and school-age children (F antuzzo et al., 1991;
Wildin et al., 1991; Wolfe et al., 1985). However, the consequences of domestic
violence have not been as fully explored for infants, despite evidence that exposure may
be traumatic for children (Graham-Bermann & Levendosky, 1998) and anecdotal
reports indicating the adverse effects of domestic violence on infants (Alessi & Hearn,
1984; Layzer et al., 1985; McIntosh, 2002). To date, only one study has empirically
examined this issue (Scheeringa & Zeanah, 1995). Unfortunately, this study has several
methodological limitations, the most serious of these being the inability of the authors
to draw conclusions about the speciﬁc effects of domestic violence as contrasted with
other traumas.

Infants are keen observers of their environment. Very early in life they possess
abilities to observe and learn about their environments (DeCasper & Spence, 1986;
Drell et al., 1993; Levy, 1960; McGraw, 1941). Infants attend not only to positive
factors in the environment, but also to potential dangers. As infants are almost entirely
dependent on their caregivers, a threat to the primary caregiver, typically the mother,
presents an especially salient danger, one that may constitute a traumatic experience
(Scheeringa & Zeanah, 1995).

As suggested by Perry et al. (1995), traumatic experiences in infancy may make
the infant more likely to respond with distress to ﬁrture events. The distress will be
facilitated in these infants such that it will be more easily elicited in the future. Infants

will be likely to develop associations between the distress they experience in response

18

to episodes of domestic violence and the visual and auditory stimuli associated with it.
Adult verbal conﬂict appears to be a particularly likely candidate for the development
of a facilitated distress response (J. S. Cummings et al., 1989; El-Sheikh, 1994).

The degree to which infants exposed to domestic violence become sensitized to
verbal conﬂict may be inﬂuenced by infant temperament. As suggested by Strelau
(1995), temperament functions as a risk factor when combined with an environmental
factor that makes a speciﬁc temperamental characteristic undesirable. In the case of
infants exposed to domestic violence, a highly reactive temperament, one that leads an
infant to be predisposed to intense reactions to stimuli, will be particularly problematic
when combined with witnessing domestic violence. Infants who live in homes where
domestic violence occurs, but who do not directly witness the abuse would be presumed
to be experiencing a less stressful environment and, therefore, would be less susceptible
to the adverse impact of temperamental reactivity. Infants not exposed to domestic
violence would not be expected to suffer an adverse effect of reactive temperament
because the necessary interaction between temperament and the adverse environmental
factor is not present. Infants who are highly temperamentally reactive and who also
have a reduced threshold for the distress will most likely show the strongest negative
effects of exposure to domestic violence.

To empirically test whether exposure to domestic violence in infancy produces
differences in how infants respond to stimuli related to domestic violence, this study
examined the responses of infants to an event that may elicit fear, a simulated verbal
conﬂict. The verbal conﬂict was a mild one, in which an experimenter simulated a

telephone argument. Infant response following the conﬂict was ascertained by rating

19

facial, vocal, and postural expressions of distress. The responses of three groups of
infants were compared: infants who had witnessed (seen or heard) domestic violence,
infants that lived in homes where abuse occurred but did not witness the violence, and
infants who did not live in households where domestic violence occurred. Infants were
placed into groups according to maternal report. Because previous studies have failed to
ﬁnd signiﬁcant differences between child witnesses of domestic violence and non-
witness children living in homes where domestic violence occurs (Levendosky et al.,
2002) and because clinical literature suggests that children may actually witness more
violence than mothers are aware of (J affe, Wolfe, & Wilson, 1990), it was expected that
the witnesses/non-witness distinction might not produce signiﬁcantly different groups.
Therefore, if initial analyses did not reveal signiﬁcantly different levels of distress
between these two groups of infants, it was planned, a priori, that the two groups would
be collapsed. Additionally, information from a parent-report temperament questionnaire
was used to allow investigation of whether reactive temperament would exacerbate

distress among infants who either witnessed or lived in homes with domestic violence.

20

Hypotheses

Based on the literature review, the following hypotheses were predicted (see
Figure 1):
Hypothesis 1: Following exposure to simulated adult verbal conﬂict, infants who had
neither witnessed nor lived in homes with domestic violence were expected to have
signiﬁcantly lower mean ratings on three scales of distress (vocal, facial, and postural
expressions) than the other two groups. Infants who had witnessed domestic violence
were expected to obtain signiﬁcantly higher ratings than those who lived in homes with
domestic violence but did not witness the abuse.
Hypothesis 2: Should signiﬁcant differences in distress not emerge between infants who
had witnessed domestic violence and infants who had lived in homes with domestic
violence, these two groups were to be collapsed into a single group which was expected
to receive higher mean distress ratings than infants who had neither witnessed nor lived
with domestic violence.
Hypothesis 3: Greater temperamental reactivity was predicted to exacerbate distress in
response to simulated adult verbal conﬂict only among infants who had either witnessed

or lived in homes with domestic violence.

21

Method
Participants

Participants were part of a larger study conducted by Alytia Levendosky, G.
Anne Bogat, William Davidson and Alexander von Eye at Michigan State University.
Participants included the infants of women recruited during pregnancy to participate in
the Mother-Infant Study, a longitudinal study of the effects of domestic violence on
mother-infant relationships.

Of the 206 women involved in the original interview during pregnancy, 189
were also interviewed at the time of the infant’s ﬁrst birthday. One-hundred-eighty—one
mother infant dyads completed this interview; 3 infants did not attend the interview due
to maternal loss of custody and 5 infants did not attend the interview because the
mother was interviewed by telephone only. The 90 infants in this study were those that
completed the “Angry Phone Call” measure during this interview. Not all 181 infants
completed the “Angry Phone Call” because it required that the infant separate from
his/her mother and many infants and/or their mothers resisted this separation. As the
“Angry Phone Call” was the last measure administered to the infants, it was also not
completed if infants were extremely sleepy or fussy. The sample of infants was 24.4%
African American, 32.2% Biracial, 1.1% Latino/a and 42.2% Caucasian. The mean age
of infants at the time of the interview was 1.08 years (SD = .15). The median monthly
family income reported by mothers was $1600.00. Among the mothers of the infants
included in the sample, 33.3% indicated that their highest level of education was high

school or lower, 31.1% had completed some college, 13.3% had completed trade

22

school, 6.7% had completed an AA degree, 7.8% had completed a BA/BS degree, 1.1%
had completed some graduate school, and 6.7% had completed a graduate degree.

Of the 90 participants included in the present study, 33 (36.7%) were infants whose
mothers indicated on either the Conﬂict Tactics Scale (CTS) or Severity of Violence
Against Women Scale (SVAWS) that they had been victims of domestic violence
during the previous year. Of these 33 participants, 16 (17.7% of the total) of the mothers
indicated that their infant had seen or heard an incident of domestic violence; these
infants are referred to as having “witnessed” domestic violence for the purpose of the
present study. Infants whose mothers indicated the presence of domestic violence, but
did not indicate that the infants saw or heard the abuse are referred to as having “lived
with” domestic violence. The combined “witnessed” and “lived with” groups were
considered to constitute a larger group “exposed” to domestic violence in infancy
(n=33). For a comparison of rates of domestic violence in the larger longitudinal study
sample and the sub-sample used for the current study, please see Table 1.

Table 1

Prevalence of Domestic Violence (as Measured by the S VA WS) in the Study Sample as
compared to the Larger Longitudinal Study Sample

 

Study Sample All Longitudinal Study Participants
(N=90) =206)
Exposed Non-Exposed Exposed Non-Exposed
Number in Group 33 57 59 120
Mean SVAWS 18.36 .33 19.35 .44
Score (SD) (19.49) (.72) (22.70) (1.23)

 

As shown in Table 2, for two demographic variables (maternal marital status
and monthly family income), signiﬁcant differences emerged between the three current

study groups. However, this is not considered to be problematic, as differences in these

23

variables typically co-occur with domestic violence and the negative impact of domestic

violence has been demonstrated over and above the impact of these demographic

variables (Spaccarelli et al., 1994).

Table 2

Demographic Diﬂerences Among "Witnessed “Lived With and “Non-Exposed ” to

Domestic Violence (DV) Groups

Witnessed DV Lived with DV Non-Exposed

 

(n= 17) (n= 16) to DV (n=57)
Ethnicity
Aﬁican American 3 (17.6%) 6 (37.5%) 13 (22.8%)
Caucasian 6 (35.3%) 4 (25.0%) 28 (49.1%)
Latino/a 0 (0.0%) O (0.0%) 1 (1.8%)
Biracial 8 (47.1%) 6 (37.5%) 15 (26.3%)
Maternal Marital Status“
Single, never married 11 (64.7%) 10 (62.5%) 21 (36.6%)
Married 3 (17.6%) 3 (18.8%) 31 (54.4%)
Separated 1 (5.9%) 2 (12.5%) 0 (0.0%)
Divorced 2 (11.8%) 1 (6.3%) 5 (8.8%)
Maternal Highest Level of
Education
Grades 1-13 6 (35.3%) 4 (25.5%) 20 (35.5%)
Some college 6 (35 .3%) 8 (50.5%) 14 (24.6%)
Trade School 3 (17.6%) 2 (12.5%) 7 (12.3%)
AA Degree 0 (0.0%) 1 (6.3%) 5 (8.8%)
BA/BS Degree 1 (5.9%) 1 (6.3%) 5 (8.8%)
Some graduate school 1 (5.9%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%)
Graduate degree 0 (0.0%) O (0.0%) 6 (10.5%)
Median monthly family income“ 1000.00 $1050.00 $2000.00
(SD = $678.03) (SD = $955.61) (SD=$1775.24)
Mean age of infant 1.09 1.06 1.09 years
(SD= .11) (SD= .08) (SD= .18)

 

*Signiﬁcant differences between groups, p < .05
Measures

Demographics

A questionnaire (see Appendix A) was administered to obtain basic

demographic information, such as ethnicity of mother and father, infant’s age at the

time of the interview, family income, mother’s employment status, and number of other

24

children in the family. Information about the ethnicity of the infant’s mother and father
was collected at the mother’s interview during her pregnancy; all other demographic
information was collected during the interview that occurred at the child’s ﬁrst birthday.
Measures of Domestic Violence

The Conﬂict Tactics Scales (CT S) (Straus, 1979). The CTS is the most
commonly used violence instrument in the literature. (See Appendix B.) Mothers in this
study completed the 14-item verbal and physical aggression scales for each romantic
relationship (lasting at least six weeks) during the past year. Examples of items include
“threw something at you” and “threatened you with a gun or knife.” Respondents rate
items on a 7-point Likert scale of frequency over the past year, the ﬁrst year of the
infant’s life, ranging from “Never” to “More than 20 times.” Mothers were also asked to
indicate whether their infants witnessed (i.e., saw or heard) the act of verbal or physical
aggression described in each item. Domestic violence was considered present if women

indicated that an event had occurred described by items six or higher on the CTS, those
describing physical violence or the threat of physical violence. Straus (1979) reports a
coefﬁcient alpha of .83 when using this measure for reports of husband to wife
violence. Coefﬁcient alphas for this sample were .89 for the current or most recent
partner and .81 for the next most recent partner.

Severity of Violence Against Women Scales (S VA WS) (Marshall, 1992). The
SVAWS is a 46-item questionnaire assessing violent behavior and threats a woman has
experienced from her partner. There are nine categories of abuse and threats: symbolic
violence, threats of mild violence, threats of minor violence, threats of moderate

violence, threats of serious violence, mild violence, minor violence, moderate violence,

25

serious violence, and sexual violence. As with the CTS (see above), mothers completed
this scale for each romantic relationship (lasting at least six weeks) during the past year.
Marshall (1992) reports obtaining coefﬁcient alphas among a community sample that
ranged from a low of .86 for symbolic violence to a high of .96 for mild and serious
violence. Examples of items include “destroyed something belonging to you,” “punched
you,” and “demanded sex whether you wanted to or not.” Respondents rate their
experiences of abuse on a 4-point scale ranging from “Never” to “Many Times.” For
each item, women also indicated whether the infant heard or witnessed the abuse or
violence described in the item. (See Appendix C.) Domestic violence was considered to
be present if women endorsed items in these categories: threats of serious violence, mild
violence, minor violence, moderate violence, serious violence, and sexual violence. The
categories are items nine and above on the SVAWS. Coefﬁcient alphas for this sample
were .96 for the current or most recent partner and .97 for the next most recent partner.

Classification of Infants as "Witnessed”, “Lived With”, or “Non-Exposed” to
Domestic Violence. For the purpose of this study, infants were considered to have “lived
with” domestic violence if their mothers endorsed items six or higher on the CTS (those
that describe physical violence) or items nine or higher on the SVAWS (threats of
serious violence, mild violence, minor violence, moderate violence, serious violence,
and sexual violence). Infants met criteria for having “witnessed” domestic violence if
their mothers indicated that the infant had seen or heard any of the incidents described
above. The “lived with” and “witnessed” groups combined were considered to

constitute a group “exposed” to domestic violence. If none of the items six or higher on

26

the CTS or nine or higher on the SVAWS were endorsed, infants were considered “non-
exposed” to domestic violence.
Angry Phone Call (Levendosky, 1999)

This measure was adapted from Cummings (1987) “Exposure to Inter-Adult
Anger.” An adult female experimenter simulated an angry phone conversation while the
infant played in the same room. The adult experimenter, following a script (see
Appendix D), pretended to be angry with a ﬁctional caller for failing to come to a
scheduled appointment. The “phone call” lasted approximately 30 seconds. The
experimenter then played with the infant for ﬁve minutes and then pretended to have a
second phone call of approximately 15 seconds in which she apologized for her angry
behavior and appeared to reconcile with the ﬁctional caller. The infant’s behavior was
videotaped during the angry phone call, the ﬁve minutes of free play afterward, the
reconciliation call, and during ﬁve minutes of free play following the second call.

The infant’s videotaped responses to the conﬂict for the ﬁve minutes during and
after the ﬁrst, “angry” call were reviewed by trained raters and coded for displays of
distress, as indicated by facial expression, vocalization, and posture. Raters assigned
distress ratings every 15 seconds, resulting in 20 ratings per scale, per episode. (See
Appendix E for coding manual.) To measure facial and vocal expressions of distress,
Thompson’s scales for emotional expression in freely moving infants were applied
(Thompson & Lamb, 1984). The scale that measures facial expression of positive or
negative emotion consists of 8 points ranging from 1 (bright smile) to 8 (cry-face or
angry-face). In the present study, coefﬁcient alpha for this scale was .88. Vocal

expressions of distress were measured on a 14-point scale reﬂecting differences in

27

intensity, rythmicity, continuity, pitch, and sound quality of infant vocalizations.
Coefﬁcient alpha for the vocal scale in this study was .91.

Postural indications of distress, such as freezing, hiding (under or behind
furniture in the room), avoidance of the experimenter, cessation of play, and attempting
to leave the room, were coded on a 5-point scale developed by the author. This scale
ranges from 1 (no postural indicators of distress) to 3 (postural indicators of distress
present but not severe—e.g., child brieﬂy stops play immediately after angry phone
call) to 5 (postural distress clearly indicated—cg, child thrashing limbs as in a
tantrum). Coefﬁcient alpha for the postural scale was .90. Additionally, the degree to
which the experimenter successfully simulated anger was rated on a 3-point scale
developed by the author ranging from 1 (very mild or no anger expressed) to 3 (anger
clearly and strongly expressed).

Toddler Temperament Scale (TT S) (F ullard, McDevitt, & Carey, 1984)

The TTS is a maternal report measure that was used to assess infant
temperament (see Appendix F). This scale is appropriate for infants 12-36 months of
age and consists of 97 items. This scale includes 9 Subscales: activity, rhythmicity,
approach-withdrawal, adaptability, intensity, mood, attention span/persistence,
distractibility, and sensory threshold. For the present study, the following scales were
used to measure aspects of temperamental reactivity: activity, intensity, mood,
distractibility, and sensory threshold. Higher scores on each of these subscales indicate
higher levels of each temperament trait. Examples of items include “the child cries aﬁer
fall or bump,” “the child sits still while waiting for food,” and “the child is still wary of

strangers after 15 minutes.” Respondents rate their children’s recent and current

28

behavior, based on the previous four to six weeks, on a 6-point scale ranging from
“Almost Never” to “Almost Always.” Scores are obtained by assigning a value on each
item ﬁom 1 (low) to 6 (high) based on mothers’ ratings on the six-point scale. Some
items are reverse-scored. Subscale scores are obtained by summing these values for all
items for the subscale and then dividing by the number of items endorsed on the
subscale. F ullard et a1. (1984) reported coefﬁcient alphas for the nine subscales ranging
from .59 to .86, and test-retest reliability coefﬁcients range from .69 to .89. In the
present study, coefﬁcient alphas obtained for each of the ﬁve subscales used were .72
for activity level, .54 for intensity, .61 for mood, .59 for distractibility, and .39 for
sensory threshold.
Procedures

Data collection for the present study took place as part of a larger longitudinal
study of the impact of domestic violence on women and their children. Participants in
the larger study were originally recruited by posting ﬂiers and contacting agencies in
Mid-Michigan. Women were interviewed initially during pregnancy and were asked for
permission to continue to contact them for ﬁrrther interviews. When not currently
involved with an interview for the larger study, project staff routinely contact
participants every 90 days to ensure that they can be reached for future interviews. For
the present study, participants were contacted just before their child’s ﬁrst birthday and
asked to come to the project ofﬁce for an interview that would include gathering
information directly from them as well as observation and participation by their infants.
Participants were paid $75.00 for the interview. If participants did not have

transportation to the ofﬁce, a cab was provided.

29

Female research assistants at both the graduate and undergraduate levels were
trained as interviewers. Interviewers were blind with regard to the hypotheses of the
study, the results of previous interviews and the mothers’ abuse statuses, the purpose of
speciﬁc measures (including the “Angry Phone Call”), and history Of domestic violence
(questionnaires regarding experience of domestic violence were given at the end of the
interview). The group of interviewers was diverse with regard to ethnicity, socio-
economic status, and culture. Training took place during the eight months before the
interviews.

Interviewers were trained speciﬁcally to work with either mothers or infants.
Interviewers trained to work with infants underwent extensive training to administer
assessments and measures directly to the infants. As part of this training, infant
interviewers volunteered at local daycare centers to become familiar working with one
year olds and were given extensive readings on infant development and domestic
violence. They were also trained speciﬁcally to administer the “Angry Phone Call”,
practicing as a group to express a consistent level of anger.

At the end of training, mother and infant interviewers were merged into one
training group. All interviewers observed skilled graduate students perform interviews
and completed at least three practice interviews. The interviewers were also observed
by graduate students while performing practice interviews and given feedback.

All interviews were conducted at Michigan State University. Infant assessment
and observation of the mother-infant dyad took place in a room with a one-way mirror

through which mothers and infants could be videotaped without interfering with

30

assessment or distracting the infant. Mothers were also interviewed separately in private
rooms.

A mother interviewer met the mother and infant as they came to the building.
This interviewer met with the mother and infant before the interview process began to
explain the interview procedure and the fact that all information would be kept
conﬁdential as well as to obtain written consent. (See Appendix G for a copy of the
consent form.) Conﬁdentiality was maintained throughout the interview by labeling all
videotaped information and questionnaires with only the subject number, which had
been assigned to the mother at the time of her ﬁrst interview. The participant list,
linking names to subject numbers, is kept separately ﬁom the data, in locked research
ofﬁces. Mothers were also informed that they could refuse to complete any portion of
the interview without penalty. Mothers had been informed prior to scheduling the
interview that they and their infants would be interviewed separately for a portion of the
interview and they were reminded of this at this time as well.

The interviewer then escorted the mother and infant to the observation room.
The mother and infant began completing several tasks together in the observation room,
and then the mother and one interviewer left to speak privately while the infant
remained in the observation room with an infant interviewer and assistant. If at this
point the infant’s mother or the interviewers felt that the infant was too distressed to be
separated from his or her mother, the infant portion of the interview was modiﬁed such
that the mother was in the room throughout the administration of the infant portion of

the interview. In this case, the “Angry Phone Call” did not take place. Once alone with

31

the infant interviewer, the infant was administered the Bayley Scales of Infant
Development and the “Angry Phone Call.”

While infants were with the trained infant interviewers, mothers met privately
with mother interviewers to complete the remaining portion of the interview. This
portion of the interview included a semi-structured interview and several
questionnaires, including questionnaires about infant temperament and the mother’s
experiences of domestic violence.

At the end of the interview the mother and her interviewer returned to the
observation room to pick up the infant. Mothers were thanked for their participation and
paid $75.00 for the interview and infants received an age-appropriate book, valued at
$8.00.

Videotaped segments of infants responding to simulated, verbal conﬂict were
coded by two coders, the author and another clinical psychology graduate student.
Coders were blind to the abuse status of the mother. The two coders achieved inter-
rater reliability for the facial (kappa =.94; 96.7% agreement), vocal (kappa = .92;
95.96% agreement), postural (kappa = .88; 95.96% agreement), and experimenter anger
(kappa = .99; 100% agreement) scales by double coding 10% of the sample. The ﬁrst
coder then coded all tapes. The second coder checked for integrity of administration by
double coding another 20% of the taped segments that were randomly selected from the
remaining episodes (kappas for facial, vocal, postural, and experimenter anger scales
were .72, .70, .75, and .47, respectively; percent agreements were 85.79%, 83.50%,
89.59%, and 72.22%, respectively). Reliability was computed by comparing whether

the 2 ratings for each of the distress scales, facial, vocal, and postural, were the same for

32

each 15-second interval rated. All but two experimenter anger ratings (97.7%) were
judged to be either 2 or 3, indicating that nearly all experimenters were judged to

express at least mild anger during the simulated verbal conﬂict.

33

Results

Treating level of exposure to domestic violence as a categorical variable
(witnessed vs. lived-with vs. non-exposed), a one-way between subjects ANOVA was
calculated to determine whether the average distress rating across the ﬁve-minute
period differed across the three groups. Three separate AN OVAs were run for each of
the distress scales: facial, vocal and postural. The ANOVAS revealed a signiﬁcant
difference between groups on the postural scale [F (2,87) = 3.58, MSE = .14, p < .05],
but not for the facial expression [F (2, 87) = 2.29, MSE = .23, ns] or vocalization scales
[F(2, 87) = 1.07, MSE = 2.03, ns], despite the fact that average ratings on all three
scales were signiﬁcantly correlated with each other (see Table 3 below).
Table 3

Intercorrelations Between Distress Rating Scales

 

Facial Scale Vocal Scale Postural Scale

 

Facial Scale -—-

 

 

Vocal Scale r = .73** __
Postural Scale r = .65” r = .66" _
** p < .01

A Tukey test revealed signiﬁcant differences on posture-expressed distress
between the non-exposed (M = 1.34, SD = .34) and the lived-with group (M = 1.62, SD
= .54), though not with the witnessed group (M = 1.39, SD = .33). The lived-with and
witnessed group means did not differ signiﬁcantly from each other, as was expected.
Thus, the lived-with and witnessed groups were collapsed for the reminder of the

analyses, as was planned a priori. This collapsed group (n = 33) will henceforth be

34

referred to as the exposed group. (For a summary of descriptive data for the exposed
group, non-exposed group, and total sample see Table 4 below.)

A one-way between subjects AN OVA was used to determine whether mean
ratings of affect in response to conﬂict differed between the exposed and non-exposed
groups. Separate AN OVAs were run for each of the distress scales (facial, vocal, and
postural). Again, there was a signiﬁcant between-group difference on the postural scale
[F(1,89) = 3.99, MSE = .15, p < .05], but not on the facial expression [F(l,89) = 3.08,
MSE = .23, ns] or vocalization scales [F ( 1,81) =.67, MSE = 2.04, ns]. Infants in the
exposed group had a higher mean level of posture-expressed distress (M = 1.50, SD =
.45) than did infants in the non-exposed group (M = 1.34, SD = .34).

To determine whether experimenter effects, namely the amount of anger
expressed by the experimenter, contributed signiﬁcantly to the ﬁndings, ANOVAs were
conducted to determine if experimenter anger was signiﬁcantly related to distress level
or group membership. Experimenter anger did not correlate with level of posture-
expressed distress [r = .11, ns], nor did experimenter anger ratings differ signiﬁcantly
across the exposed and non-exposed groups [F (1, 87) = .39, MSE = .30, ns].

Linear regressions were calculated (using SYSAT) to determine whether the
amount of posture-expressed distress was predicted by temperament (activity, intensity,
mood, distractibility, or sensory threshold) for the exposed and non-exposed groups.
Two subscales, intensity and mood, yielded signiﬁcantly different regression lines (see
Table 5). Greater temperamental intensity and more negative mood predicted greater
distress in the non-exposed group, but not in the exposed group. All other temperament

subscales did not generate signiﬁcantly different regression lines.

35

 

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36

Table 5

Results of Regressions of Posture—Expressed Distress on Temperament Subscale Scores

 

 

Exposed Group Non-Exposed Group
(n= 33) (n= 57)

Temperament Subscale B t RT p B t R2 p
Activity .03 . 14 .00 ns .24 1 .78 .06 ns
Intensity -.Ol -.05 .00 ns .35 2.77 .12 .Ol
Mood -.13 -.75 .02 ns .30 2.33 .09 .03
Distractibility .31 1.83 .10 ns .08 .59 .01 ns
Threshold -.08 -.42 .01 ns -.04 -.26 .00 ns

 

 

Post—hoe Analyses

While infant responses to conﬂict seemed generally to differ across groups, it
was not clear how long these differences persisted and whether the persistence of
distress differed across groups. To investigate these questions, infant distress ratings
were collapsed (by summing postural scores) into four 75-second intervals. Infant
responses by group were examined across the four time intervals. A within-subjects,
repeated measures AN OVA using a Geisser-Greenhouse correction (to compensate for
violations of sphericity) conducted across time periods (each 7 5-second interval)
revealed that a signiﬁcant interaction existed between time and group such that the
exposed group’s mean distress level decreased more quickly than did the non-exposed

group’s [F(3, 264) = 4.16, MSE = 3.28,p < .05].

37

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sum of Distress Ratings

 

1 2 3 4
Quarter

 

 

 

Figure 1. Change in Distress Ratings Across Quarters

38

Discussion

The results of this study support the assertion that infant exposure to domestic
violence may facilitate distress in response to verbal conﬂict. As predicted in
Hypothesis 1, level of exposure to domestic violence (exposed vs. non-exposed) was
related to distress in response to simulated adult, verbal conﬂict, as indicated by the
infant’s posture. An increased likelihood of distress in response to conﬂict is consistent
with Davies’ and Cummings’ (1994) “emotional security hypothesis.” According to this
hypothesis, repeated exposure to destructive conﬂict causes emotional insecurity, which
reduces children’s capacity for regulating emotions and behavior. Among the most
distressing are conﬂicts that involve physical aggression between parents (Cummings et
al., 1981). Such a result would also be consistent with a learned distress response to
verbal conﬂict, such that children who observe verbal conﬂict paired with violence
develop a distress response to the verbal conﬂict itself. It was surprising to ﬁnd that,
even given the low power in such a small sample, exposure to violence accounted for a
signiﬁcant difference in distress responses to the simulated conﬂict.

It is notable that while differences in response to conﬂict emerged between
exposed and non-exposed infants, differences did not emerge between those infants
whose mothers indicated that the infants had directly witnessed the abuse and those who
lived with it. This is consistent with Levendosky et al.’s (2002) ﬁnding that signiﬁcant
differences did not exist in internalizing, externalizing, and PTSD symptoms between
pre-school-age eyewitnesses to domestic violence and children whose mothers indicated
that they did not witness domestic violence but lived in homes where domestic violence

occurred. This apparent equivalence of groups may simply be a result of mothers under-

39

reporting children’s witnessing of violence. Clinical work with older children suggests
that parents may minimize the degree to which children are present during violence.

J affe, Wolfe, and Wilson (1990) state that children described detailed accounts of
violence that their mother or father never realized they witnessed.

It is also interesting to note that the only signiﬁcant results were found using the
postural indicators of distress. This may be largely due to the fact that postural ratings
of distress could be collected for all subjects at nearly all time intervals, while facial and
vocal ratings were sometimes not possible to obtain. This was both an artifact of the
data collection process (infants often faced away from the camera, and microphones
often failed to adequately pick up vocalizations) and simply the result of typical
behavior of one-year-old infants (many infants did not vocalize for long periods of time,
if at all). Additionally, evidence exists that infants may display postural responses to
conﬂict even when they do not display facial responses (Hiatt et al., 1979). This ﬁnding
has interesting implications for research on infant expression of emotions in general.
While mechanical failures, such as the microphone’s inability to register some
vocalizations, can certainly be corrected, it seems clear that to consistently identify an
infant’s facial expression in videotaped data, the infant must in some way be restrained
to remain facing a camera, as is often done in studies of infant facial expression.
However, restraining infants in this way not only may affect the infant’s mood, possibly
frustrating or ﬁightening an infant, but also may make observations of postural
expression of emotions difﬁcult or impossible. Rather than restraining infants for

measurement of emotion and losing potentially valuable information that may be

40

conveyed through posture, it seems that further development of scales of emotional
expression in infants that include interpretation of posture would be prudent.

Support was indicated for Hypothesis 2, that temperament would affect infants’
response to conﬂict differently depending on whether or not the infant had been
exposed to domestic violence. However, this moderation did not occur in the manner
expected. As suggested by Strelau (1995), it was expected that temperament would
function as a risk factor only when combined with an environmental factor which made
a speciﬁc temperamental characteristic undesirable. In this study, it was expected that
temperamentally reactive infants would be at an increased likelihood to display distress
in response to verbal conﬂict only if the temperamental characteristic occurred in
combination with exposure to domestic violence. Contrary to this prediction,
temperamental intensity and negative mood predicted greater distress among infants not
exposed to domestic violence. Among infants exposed to domestic violence,
temperament did not impact distress.

This suggests that infants exposed to domestic violence may have reached a
“threshold” for distress. In other words, the infants’ environmental circumstances are
negative enough that distress becomes more easily elicited in these infants regardless of
temperament. It appears that, in a non-violent home, only infants who have higher
temperamental intensity or negative mood are likely to respond to verbal conﬂict with
displays of distress. However, when verbal conﬂict has been paired with domestic
violence, infants’ distress in response to verbal conﬂict appears to be elicited regardless
of temperament. The intensity of the experience of domestic violence may “override”

temperament, eliciting distress responses to stimuli, such as mild verbal conﬂict, which

41

would typically not be distressing to less temperamentally reactive infants. This ﬁnding
suggests that all infants, not only temperamentally reactive ones, may be at risk for
adverse affects of exposure to domestic violence.

Altemately, temperament might not function in the expected manner because
domestic violence is unique in that, unlike other stressors infants might be exposed to
(e.g., poverty), it may be preceded by cues, such as verbal conﬂict, to which infants
may develop learned responses. Temperament may appear to be “overridden” because
temperamentally non-reactive infants display the effect of an association between a cue
that would typically be neutral for them, a mild verbal conﬂict, and an unconditionally
distressing event, domestic violence. While temperamentally reactive infants might
always be likely to experience verbal conﬂict as distressing, temperamentally less
reactive infants might typically experience rrrild verbal conﬂict as a neutral event.
Infants have been shown to learn distress responses to neutral stimuli when this stimuli
has previously been paired with a distress inducing event (Watson & Rayner, 1920).
Additionally, research with animal models has shown that the development of a distress
response to a neutral stimulus is most likely to occur when the cue is presented just
before exposure to a negative event (Domjan, 1993). Thus, the development of a
learned distress response to verbal conﬂict may be facilitated by the fact that, unlike
other risk factors, domestic violence is often preceded by a cue, verbal conﬂict.

Another interesting ﬁnding of the current study is that the exposed and non-
exposed infants tended to differ in their patterns of distress over the ﬁve-minute interval
studied. Infants exposed to domestic violence were more likely to show higher distress

initially (in the ﬁrst 75-second quarter), but after this their mean distress ratings

42

descended quickly and became similar to those of the non-exposed group. Thus, while
infants exposed to domestic violence do appear to have stronger reactions to verbal
conﬂict, these reactions are of short duration. This is consistent with short durations of
distress found by other research with infants. For example, Axia, Bonichini, & Benini
(1999) found that displays of distress following inoculations decreased in duration
during the ﬁrst year of life and were, on average, just under 15 seconds by 11 months of
age. Thus, the short durations of distress found in the current study may be typical of
infants of this age.

One possible implication of this ﬁnding is that these displays of distress in
response to conﬂicts that are short-lived might easily go unnoticed by parents. If an
infant displays the greatest distress during and in the seconds immediately following a
heated verbal argument, parents may not perceive the distress due to their involvement
in the argument. This may be exacerbated by the fact that distress tended to be
expressed through posture, rather than a more easily noticeable response, such as loud
crying. Thus, parents of infants experiencing increased distress in response to conﬂict
may be largely unaware of this fact, suggesting that studies which employ parental
report to measure infant distress after verbal conﬂict may fail to capture existing
distress.

This study has several limitations, which may have inﬂuenced the ﬁndings
described above. First, sample size was small. The small sample made it very difﬁcult
to draw conclusions about differences between infants who had witnessed domestic
violence and infants who lived with, but did not witness, domestic violence. While the

results of other studies also suggest that maternal report of this distinction may not be

43

related to outcomes (J affe et al., 1990; Levendosky et al., 2002), it is also possible that
distinctions do exist and that a sufﬁciently large sample size would have yielded
signiﬁcant results. Small sample size may also have masked the role of temperament, as
less pronounced differences in responding would be unlikely to achieve statistical
signiﬁcance in such a small sample. The lack of support found for the moderating role
of other temperament subscales between domestic violence and infant responses to
simulated verbal conﬂict may be due largely to the low number of participants included
in the study.

Second, as noted above, only 90 of the possible 181 mother-infant pairs
interviewed during this wave of data collection were included in this study. As infants
who were fussy or reacted very strongly to separation from their mother were excluded
from the sample, the more temperamentally reactive infants may have been excluded
ﬁom the sample. At the same time, infants who were extremely sleepy or listless by the
time the experimental procedure was to take place were also excluded, potentially
excluding infants who were temperamentally less reactive. Thus, it is possible that the
sub-sample of infants included in the study was temperamentally homogenous. Such a
restriction of range in temperament would make it unlikely that signiﬁcant results
would emerge. Consistent with this hypothesis, examination of study mean and standard
deviations as compared to standardization means and standard deviation (F ullard et al.,
1984) revealed that standard deviations (and thus variances) tended to be higher in the

standardization sample (see Table 6).

44

Table 6

Temperament Means and Standard Deviation in the Current Study as Compared to the
Standardization Sam 1e

 

 

Study Sample Standardization Sample
Activity M = 3.96 SD =.68 M = 4.13 SD = .80
Intensity M = 3.75 SD =.61 M = 4.03 SD =.76
Mood M = 3.08 SD =.68 M = 2.96 SD =.69
Distractibility M = 4.21 SD =.59 M = 4.39 SD =.76
Sensory threshold M = 3.68 SD =.79 M = 3.61 SD =.88

 

 

 

Third, the measure used to ascertain infant response to conﬂict, the “Angry
Phone Call”, had several limitations. Clearly, this measure did not approximate the type
of verbal conﬂict infants exposed to domestic violence are most likely to fear, verbal
conﬂict between their mother and a male partner. While such a measure might have
better elicited responses from the infants, the use of a methodology such as one in
which an infant’s mother is asked to simulate an argument with a male experimenter
would have the potential to be traumatic for women involved in violent relationships
and possibly for the infants as well. Given the paucity of research on the impact of
domestic violence on infants and the subsequent lack of understanding of how infants
and mothers might be impacted by such an experimental design, a more direct
approximation of the type of verbal conﬂict typical of domestic violence would not
have been justiﬁed. It is also notable that we chose to measure an infant’s response not
only to verbal conﬂict but also to an angry experimenter. It is possible that anger may
not be the emotional aspect of an episode of domestic violence that is most salient to the

infant. Indeed, research with older children (aged 6-16 years) indicates that adult

45

expressions of fear elicit the greatest negative emotional response (De Arth—Pendley &
Cummings, 2002).

Finally, it is not clear whether exposure to domestic violence may be presumed
to be the only factor contributing to differences in infant responses to the simulated
verbal conﬂict. Other environmental risk factors such as such as lower socioeconomic
status (Spaccarelli et al., 1994) and general levels of violence in the community
(Richters & Martinez, 1993) have been shown to commonly co-occur with domestic
violence. In addition, history of exposure to verbal conﬂict has been shown to impact
response to simulated verbal conﬂict in pre-school age children (El-Sheikh et al., 1996).
As the current study did not directly examine factors such as additional environmental
stressors and history of exposure to verbal conﬂict, it is not clear whether these factors
might account for the relationship between infant response to simulated verbal conﬂict
and exposure to domestic violence.

Despite these limitations, this study is unique in that it is the ﬁrst to demonstrate
differential distress responses to verbal conﬂict according to whether or not infants have
been exposed to domestic violence. This reinforces clinical evidence that even infants
as young as one year of age are not immune to the effects of living in homes where
domestic violence occurs. Irnportantly, infants display these effects even in the absence
of cues from their mothers, who were not present during the episode. Thus, this
suggests support for the hypothesis that infants exposed to domestic violence may
develop a conditioned distress response to verbal conﬂict because of the association

between verbal conﬂict and domestic violence in their homes.

46

This is a preliminary study and needs replication. Research with different
examples of verbal conﬂict would help to develop a better understanding of how infants
exposed to domestic violence may differ in their responses to conﬂict. In particular,
research in which infants are exposed to fearful vs. angry behavior may elicit
information about which aspects of conﬂict are most distressing to infants. In addition,
longitudinal research is needed to determine if infants exposed to domestic violence
develop different responses to verbal conﬂict that are stable over time. Longitudinal
research will also illuminate whether some infants may show a delayed impact of
exposure to violence in infancy.

Future research is also needed to understand other factors, in addition to
exposure to domestic violence, which might inﬂuence infants’ responses to conﬂict.
For example, the mother’s response to her abuse might mediate the relationship. Partner
physical violence toward women has repeatedly been associated with increased levels
of psychological distress (Cascardi & O'Leary, 1992; Christopoulos, Cohn, Shaw,
Joyce, & et al., 1987; Kemp, Rawlings, & Green, 1991; Mitchell & Hodson, 1983;
Thompson et al., 2000; Wolfe, Zak, Wilson, & J affe, 1986). Thus, infants of mothers
who are victims of domestic violence may be subject to the adverse effects of these
associated problems.

Indeed, the fact that no signiﬁcant differences emerged between the “witnessed”
and “lived with groups” suggests that the effect of domestic violence may be mediated
through impact on the mother. For example, domestic violence may impact infants as a
result of its impact on mothers, rather than directly via witnessing abuse. In addition,

infants may not directly witness an incident of violence, but may witness its aftermath,

47

such as a mother crying, a mother’s injuries, a parent’s absence, the use of emergency
medical care, or police intervention (Edleson, 1999). A clearer understanding of how
infants are both directly and indirectly inﬂuenced by domestic violence will enable
professionals to better serve families recovering from domestic violence and will
facilitate the development of interventions and programs serving victims of domestic

violence.

48

Appendices A-F

49

Appendix A

Demographic Questionnaire

Name of child: (Interviewer: Get this information from T2

 

interview prior to interview)
Child’s birthdate: / / (Interviewer: Get this information from T2
interview prior to interview)

Since you gave birth to [name of child], have you had

 

any:
YES NO (a) miscarriages

YES NO (b) still births

YES NO (c) abortions

YES NO (d) other children

Are you currently pregnant? YES NO

How many biological children do you currently have?

How many people, including yourself, live in your household?

(If participant is living in a shelter, questions 6 & 7 refer to household
composition before moving into shelter.)

Please list these: (Write in speciﬁc relationship to mother. Be speciﬁc--is the
person (for ex.) a husband, stepfather, biological child, foster child, or partner's

child?)

50

self

Appendix A (cont)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Choose the one that best describes your current marital/relationship status

(choose only one):

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

single, never married

married (a) For how long? __ (in months)
separated (b) For how long? __ (in months)
divorced (c) For how long? __ (in months)
widowed (d) For how long? __ (in months)

When we interviewed you during your pregnancy, you had been involved with

[name of T1 partner] for at least six weeks during the pregnancy.

What has happened to this relationship since we interviewed you then? (Read

all choices and circle one)

(1)
(2)

(3)

(4)

I am still in a relationship with him.

We have been together off and on since the interview, and we are
currently together.

We have been together off and on since the interview, and we are
currently n_ot together.

I have not had a relationship with him since the interview.

51

10.

Appendix A (cont)

Since the birth of your baby, please list the ﬁrst names of the people with whom
you had a romantic relationship that lasted at least 6 weeks. Please start with the
most recent or current relationship and go back in time. Include the person
listed in Question #9 (T1 partner) if appropriate.

10a.

 

Was this person the same person you were involved with when we
last interviewed you? YES NO
Is this person the father of your baby? YES NO

Are you currently involved? YES NO

Anyone else?

10b.

 

Was this person the same person you were involved with when we
last interviewed you? YES NO
Is this person the father of your baby? YES NO

Are you currently involved? YES NO

Anyone else?

100.

 

Was this person the same person you were involved with when we
last interviewed you? YES NO
Is this person the father of your baby? YES NO

Are you currently involved? YES NO

52

Appendix A (cont.)

Anyone else?

10d.

 

Was this person the same person you were involved with when we
last interviewed you? YES NO
Is this person the father of your baby? YES NO
Are you currently involved? YES NO
Anyone else?
(Interviewer: If there are other partners, please list them on the back of page and ask
the 3, yes/no questions for each partner.)
11. What is your current relationship with the father of your baby? (Circle one)
1 = spouse
2 = ex-spouse
3 = partner/ﬁance
4 = ex-partner
5 = ﬁiend
6 = acquaintance
7 = stranger

8 = other Please specify:

 

12. Is the baby’s father involved with the baby? YES NO

13. Does the baby’s father live with the baby? YES NO

53

14.

15.

l6.

17.

18.

19.

Appendix A (cont.)

Does the baby live with you? YES NO

If NO, who does the baby live with?
(relationship of person to mother)

 

What is your religious afﬁliation?

 

Do you currently work outside the home? YES NO

If NO, did you work outside the home anytime during the last year?
YES NO

Do you currently work at home (e. g., daycare provider or home ofﬁce)?
YES NO

[If YES to either part of Questions 16 and 1 7]: What is/was your oCcupation?

 

1:] Please be specific. For example, bookkeeper, cashier, computer
programmer.
D If there were two jobs/occupations, have participant choose the one that

she feels best represents her occupation.
What is the highest level of education you have completed? (Circle one)
a. Gradezl 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ll 12 l3=GED
b. Some college
c. Trade School (Cosmetology, Nursing, TechnicaWocational)
d. AA degree .

e. BA/BS

54

20.

21.

22.

Appendix A (cont.)

f. Some grad school

g. Graduate degree

1. MA? __

2. Ph.D.? _

3. Law?

4. MD? _
Have you been in school during the last year? YES NO
If YES, please describe:

 

 

Does your current partner work outside the home? (Circle one)

2 = NO
888 = not applicable; no current partner

If YES, what is his occupation?

 

(Please be speciﬁc)
What is the highest level of education your current partner/spouse has
completed? (Circle one)
a. Gradezl 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 l3=GED
b. Some college
c. Trade School (Cosmetology, Nursing, Technical/Vocational)
d. AA degree

e. BA/BS

55

Appendix A (cont.)

f. Some grad school

g. Graduate degree

1. MA? _
2. Ph.D.? _
3. Law?
4. MD?

h. Not applicable = 888

What is your total family income per month (estimate)?

 

Do you currently receive services from . . . ?

a. WIC YES NO
b. AFDC YES NO
c. Protective Services YES NO
c. Food Stamps YES NO
(1. Medicaid YES NO
e. SSI (Disability) YES NO
f. FIA cash assistance/grant YES NO

. Any child related programs (e. g., 0-3; Mother-Infant Program; Head Start)?

(IQ

YES NO

56

Appendix A (cont.)

25. Are you currently residing in a shelter for battered women?
(a) YES NO/888
(b) If YES, # days?_____
26. Since (child’s name) was born, have you stayed in a shelter for battered
Loam?
(a) YES NO/888
(b) If YES, # days? __
27. Since (child’s name) was born, have you stayed in a homeless shelter?
(a) YES NO/888

(b) If YES, # days?

57

Appendix B

Conﬂict Tactics Scale
*****This questionnaire refers to [NAME, see page 2, Question 10]*****
Use a separate form for each partner listed on page 2, Question 10

INTER VIEWER: If participant did not have a romantic partner in the last year, do not
administer: code all answers as “X. ”

Instructions: No matter how well a couple gets along, there are times when they
disagree on major decisions, get annoyed about something the other person does, or just
have Spats or ﬁghts because they’re in a bad mood or tired or for some other reason.
They also use many different ways of trying to settle their differences. I’m going to
read a list of some things that you and your partner might have done when you had a
dispute. For each one, indicate how often your partner did the following to you (1)
during the last year and (2) how many times (child’s name) saw or heard what
happened.

A BB D E F G X
Never Once Twice 3-5 Times 6-10 Times 11-20 Times More than No Partner
20 Times During Last
Year

0

During Times baby saw
. or heard what happened?

F?
:I‘
0
ﬂ
9)
U)
H
‘<
0
DD
"1
\D

Insulted or swore at you

Sulked and/or refused to talk about it
Stomped out of the room or house (or yard)
Did or said something to spite you
Threatened to hit or throw something at you
Threw or smashed or hit or kicked something
Threw something at you

Pushed, grabbed, or shoved you

. Slapped you

10. Kicked, bit, or hit you with a ﬁst

11. Hit or tried to hit you with something

12. Beat you up

13. Threatened you with a knife or gun

14. Used a knife or gun on you

WWSQMPPP!‘

58

Appendix C

Severity of Violence Against Women Scales
*****This questionnaire refers to [NAME, see page 2, Question 10]*****Use a
separate form for each partner listed on page 2, Question 10
INTER VIEWER: If participant did not have a romantic partner in the last year, do not
administer: code all answers as "X. ” INSTRUCTIONS: You and your partner have
probably experienced anger or conﬂict. Below is a list of behaviors he may have done.
Describe how often he has done each behavior to you during the last year and how many
times your baby saw or heard what happened by choosing a letter from the following scale.

A BB C D X
never once a few times many times no partner during
last year
During the last year:
Times your baby saw
or heard what happened:
I
1. Hit or kicked a wall, door or ﬁrrniture
2. Threw, smashed or broke an object
3. Driven dangerously with you in the car
4. Threw an object at you
5. Shook a ﬁnger at you
6. Made threatening gestures or faces at you
7. Shook a ﬁst at you
8. Acted like a bully toward you
9. Destroyed something belonging to you
10. Threatened to harm or damage things you care about
11. Threatened to destroy property
12. Threatened someone you care about
13. Threatened to hurt you
14. Threatened to kill himself

59

15.

l6.

l7.

l8.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

Appendix C (cont.)

__ Threatened you with a club-like object
__ Threatened you with a knife or gun
__ Threatened to kill you
__ Threatened you with a weapon
__ Acted like he wanted to kill you
__ Held you down, pinning you in place
_ Pushed or shoved you
__ Shook or roughly handled you
_ Grabbed you suddenly or forcefully
_ Scratched you
__ Pulled your hair
__ Twisted your arm
__ Spanked you
_ Bit you
__ Slapped you with the palm of his hand
__ Slapped you with the back of his hand
__ Slapped you around your face and head
_ Kicked you

_ Hit you with an object

__ Stomped on you

Choked you

60

Appendix C (cont.)

36. __ __ Punched you

37. __ _ Burned you with something

38. _ _ Used a club-like object on you

39. _ _ Beat you up

40. __ _ Used a knife or gun on you

41. _ __ Demanded sex whether you wanted to or not
42. _ __ Made you have oral sex against your will
43. _ _ Made you have sexual intercourse against your will
44. __ _ Physically forced you to have sex

45. _ _ Made you have anal sex against your will
46. __ __ Used an object on you in a sexual way

4 7. Were you ever pregnant during the time that any of these events occurred?

(l)yes (2) no (888) n/a

61

Appendix D

Angry Phone Call Script
Experimenter: What! You are going to be late! I know it is only a few minutes, but I
have an extremely tight schedule and can’t have any inconveniences like that to deal
with. It shouldn’t be so hard to get here anyway. I was counting on you being on time!
Everything is going to be messed up because you are going to be late! You think you
are the only one with a busy life, you are so inconsiderate. I can’t believe how
irresponsible you are. I am so mad at you and I never want to work with you again.
Wait ﬁve minutes and then read the following:
Experimenter: Hi. I am calling to apologize for how I acted just now on the telephone. I
really got carried away. I hope you will accept my deepest apologies. I really shouldn’t
have said those things. You are a very nice person and don’t deserve to be treated so
badly by me. I am sorry that I lost control of myself. You have been a wonderful person
to work with and everything I said was not true. I really apologize and wish that I could

take back the things I said to you.

62

Appendix E

Coding Manual for Angry Phone Call

Facial Expression

This scale consists of 8 points ranging from 1 (bright smile) to 8 (cryface or angry face).
Please indicate the highest rating criteria met during the ﬁfteen-second segment.

0

No assessment possible: The baby is out of camera range or otherwise cannot
be observed facial for the entire rating period. If the infant can be observed for
any portion of the scoring period, rate on this basis. If the infant cannot be rated
for the entire period, provide an inference of the baby’s facial expression in
parentheses — that is, your best guess of the baby’s expression (e. g. 0(2), 0 (4),
etc.).

Bright smile: This expression is similar to the “full smile” (#2), in that the
infant is showing a full smile with lips pulled back and turned up, the mouth is
open, and clear naso-labial folds are apparent (i.e., fold running down from the
nose to the outer edge of the mouth beyond the lip corners), often with puffy
cheeks. In addition, this hi gh-intensity smile is accompanied by a narrowing of
the eyes and, sometimes, the appearance of crows-feet crinkling at the outer
edges of the eyes. Sometimes the nose is scrunched-up as well. In short, the
distinguishing characteristic of this expression is the participation of the eyes
region in the smile, conveying the impression of a bright, animated pleasure
response. (Note: Occasionally eye-narrowing or squinting is due either to the

peek-a-boo cloth moving across the baby’s face or to being touched or tickled

63

Appendix E (cont.)

with the puppet in the face. Discount these instances of eye-narrowing, since
they may be due simply to the facial stimulation which is involved, and not
really reﬂect a high-intensity pleasure response.)

Full smile: In this expression, the infant displays a full, open-mouth smile, with
the lips pulled back and turned up, puffy cheeks, and clear naso-labial folds.
Occasionally dimples may appear. Eyes are usually focused and attentive.

Grin or faint smile: This expression denotes a clearly pleasurable but muted
response in either of the following ways:

3. There is a small upturrring of the comers of the mouth, sometimes
barely enough to be called a smile. In contrast to the full smile, there
is little or no pulling back of the comers of the lips, and thus little
pufﬁng of cheeks or naso-labial folds.

b. The baby grins with a small, closed mouth smile or a narrow open-
mouth smile. The lip comers are puled back somewhat and are turned
up, resulting in some naso-labial folds. However, the lips are not
pulled back sufﬁciently to produce the open-mouth expression
characteristic of a full smile.

Attentive, receptive expression: This category includes facial expressions,
which lack distinctly positive or negative expressive features; quite often these
occur when the infant is attending to some event. Usually the eyes are widened,

and the mouth is straight (or, for some babies, the comers of the mouth may be

Appendix E (cont.)

slightly downtumed). Mouth may be either closed or opened slightly. Naso-
labial folds are absent. Eyebrow position can be variable: either straight but
drawn together toward the middle (4a), narrowed a bit toward the middle (4c)
(both indicating focused attention or interest), or raised (indicating surprise)
(4b).

Wary brow: The distinguishing characteristic of this category is the eyebrows:
they are drawn close together and slightly raised where they meet at the center
of the forehead, resulting in ridges over the baby’s eyes and in the middle of the
forehead. Use this category when the wary brow is unaccompanied by any other
signs of distress in the baby’s face; when other distress cues co-occur with the
wary brow, use higher rating categories.

Pout: This expression denotes low level fear or distress, and it is denoted by a
mild turning down of the comers of the mouth and/or a jutting lower lip. The
mouth may be either open or closed, and naso-labial folds may be apparent. The
pout may or may not be accompanied by the brow furrowing described in the
preceding category (#5).

Partial Cryface: Expressions included in this category show elements of the
cryface described below, but the face is not entirely screwed-up, and the eyes
are open and focused. The eyebrows are furrowed and drawn together at the
center or the forehead. The mouth may assume a pout with a jutting-out of the

lower lip. More typically, however, the mouth is open and round or kidney-

65

8a

8b

 

Appendix E (cont.)

shaped (as in the illustration), with the corners downtumed. Naso-labial folds
are apparent. Together, these cues indicate deﬁnite distress in the baby.

Angry cryface: Expressions in this category are distinguished from those which
are rated as typical cryface (#8b) in either of the following ways:

a) The eyebrows are drawn down together in the middle of the
forehead, with vertical lines appearing between the brows and,
usually, ridges evident higher in the forehead.

b) The mouth is open and is squarish or box-shaped rather than
turned-down at the corners or kidney shaped. Naso-labial folds
are apparent.

In the angry cryface, the facial features are generally screwed-up, although often
not as much as in the more typical cryface expression. In particular, eyes are
likely to be open and focused. ‘

Cryface: Expressions in this category are characterized by the screwing-up of
facial features: eyes are narrow and compressed by brow-furrowing, with the
result that the infant’s gaze is squinted and often nondirected; the nose is
wrinkled; the mouth is open (and may be kidney-shaped) with naso-labial folds
apparent; eyebrows are lowered in the forehead and narrowed. The infant looks

clearly distressed.

66

Appendix E (cont.)

Vocal Expression

Please rate the infant’s vocal expression of emotion on the following scale. Please take

into account differences in intensity, rythmicity, continuity, pitch, and sound quality of

infant vocalizations. Please indicate the highest rating criteria met during the ﬁfteen-

second segment.

0

1

N o vocalization was heard at any time during the scoring interval.
Pleasure vocalization: This includes squeals or shrieks of delight,
cooing, laughing, or other vocalizations denoting excitement or positive
engagement in some activity. These are characteristicallyintermittent, of
brief duration, and discontinuous in quality. Pitch varies, but is usually
high. Sometimes the baby uses words that have a positive tone; in these
instances use the notation 1(w).

Neutral vocalization: This includes babbling and other vocalizations
that have neither a distressed nor a positive quality to them. Like
pleasure vocalizations, these are also characteristically intermittent, of
brief duration, and discontinuous in quality. Whereas the pitch of
pleasure vocalizations is usually high and varies a great deal, the pitch of
most neutral vocalizations is characteristically lower and is less variable.
Sometimes the baby uses words that have neither a distinctively

distressed nor positive tone; in these instances, use the notation 2(W).

67

Appendix E (cont.)

Mild distress: This includes brief, mild whines, squeals of frustration or
anguish, mild wails or sobs, fretting, and other vocalizations which have
a distinctly negative quality. These are characteristically intermittent,
discontinuous, and of brief duration. While not full-ﬂedged crying or
calling as such, they nevertheless indicate mild or low level distress in
the infant. Sometimes the baby uses words, which have a distressed
quality; in these instances, use the notation 3(W).

Calling: This includes vocalizations, which seem intended to signal or
summon the caretaker, and they have a distinctly negative or distressed
quality. Like protest crying, there is an imperative tone to this kind of
vocalization. In contrast to protest, however, calling is brief and of
intermittent duration, is more discontinuous, and conveys much milder
distress. Sometimes words are used in this capacity (such as “Ma!Ma!”),
and in these instances use the notation 4(W).

Distress gasps: The infant’s breathing has become audible and the rate
has increased; the baby is taking breaths in short, quick gasps. What has
become audible is the breathing; there is no cry accompanying this.
Often, but not always, gasping of this kind occurs as a prelude to a ﬁsh-
ﬂedged cry, or immediately follows a long bout of sobbing.

Fussing or whimpering: The cry is partial or intermittent rather than

continuous over the scoring interval, conveying the impression of

68

Appendix E (cont.)

moderate distress. In particular, the pattern of breathing and crying is
arhythmic, in contrast to the more rhythmic alternation of cry and
inhalation which is more characteristic of sobbing. In fussing, the cry is
more intermittent and discontinuous; crying is interrupted frequently.
The cry also has a distressed rather than an angry or anxious tone. Pitch
may vary widely, but generally is moderate or low.

Whining: The quality of this cry conveys the kind of moderate distress,
which is also characteristic of fussing; in contrast to fussing, however,
whining denotes anxiety or ﬁ'ustration rather than clear-cut distress. This
is conveyed especially by the tone and pitch of the cry: Whining
characteristically has a moderate to high pitch and a strident quality; it is
intermittent and discontinuous. Whining also has a demanding or
insistent quality, due largely to its persistence over time; in contrast,
fussing either tends to cease over the short run or develops into a kind of
crying denoting more intense distress. F ussing and whining usually are
also distinguished by their characteristic pitch, with whining usually
somewhat higher in pitch than fussing/whimpering.

Protest: This is a hard cry, which sounds as much like shouting as it
does crying, and conveys an angry, imperative quality. The cry is
typically of a strong intensity; the pitch is characteristically low or

moderate. The cry is

69

10

11

Appendix E (cont.)

usually continuous, with the pattern of cry and inhalation somewhat
rhythmic, but not always: An imperative, demanding cry.

Sobbing: A full-ﬂedged cry denoting clear-cut distress. It lacks the
angry, imperative quality of protest. Sobbing is continuous and of
moderate to long duration; its rhythmicity is revealed in the regular
alternation of crying and inhalation. Sobbing may occur at either
moderate or very high intensity, depending on the intensity of distress.
Pitch is usually medium to low.

Screaming: An intense, abrasive cry of high pitch and intensity; the
infant sounds as if in pain. This is characteristically a hard cry, and its
abrasiveness derives from the high pitch. The cry is usually continuous,
and the pattern of cry and inhalation characteristically somewhat
rhythmic. Usually there are longer bursts of crying than is the case with
sobbing, with similarly lengthened breathing pauses. The infant sounds
distressed rather than angry.

Panic Cry: This cry characteristically comes in three distinct stages: ﬁrst
a long sob which is of greater than usual duration; then a long (ahnost
interminable) pause in which the infant is continuing to exhale but no

sound can be heard; and ﬁnally an audible inhalation before the next sob.

70

12

Appendix E (cont.)

Hyperventilated Cry: This is a cry denoting very intense distress,
largely due to the rapid alternation of cry and inhalation at a rate which is

faster than normal sobbing. The cry is also very intense, continuous and

rhythmic.

71

Appendix E (cont.)

Postural Indication

Please rate the infant’s postural expression of distress on the following scale ﬁom 1-5.

Please indicate the highest rating criteria met during the ﬁfteen-second segment.

0

1

No assessment possible: The infant is not visible.

No postural indicators of distress: The infant’s behavior continues apparently
unaffected, or the infant displays mild curiosity and/or pleasure.

Mild postural indication of distress is present: The infant averts his gaze from
the experimenter, by turning his head or whole body away from the
experimenter. The infant may ﬂinch. Play may slow, but doe not stop
completely.

Postural indicators of distress present but not severe: The infant stops play
completely. He may seek comfort by crawling into the experimenter’s lap or
move away from the experimenter. He may also throw toys. The infant may
display vigilance, carefully observing either the experimenter, telephone or both,
typically from a distance. (Note: this must not be as a result of playful
interaction with the experimenter.)

Marked distress indicated: The infant may cower (curling his shoulders
toward his chest and lowering his head) or move away and avoid looking at the
experimenter. The infant may also display aggression toward the experimenter

or telephone, hitting them once.

72

 

Appendix E (cont.)

Severe distress clearly indicated: The infant is thrashing limbs as in a tantrum,
hiding behind furniture (not playfully as in a “peek—a-boo” game), freezing for
long periods of time, clinging to the experimenter, or trying to leave the room.
The infant may also display extensive aggression toward the experimenter or

telephone, striking them repeatedly, kicking or throwing the phone violently.

73

 

Appendix E (cont.)

Experimenter Simulation of Anger
Please rate the degree to which the experimenter displays anger.
1 The experimenter displays no anger. Her voice is not raised and she does not
use intonation to suggest anger.
2 The experimenter displays mild anger or irritation. Her voice is slightly
raised and her intonation suggests irritation.
3 Anger is clearly expressed. The experimenter’s voice is raised. She

expresses emotion and modulates her voice consistently with anger.

74

Appendix F

Toddler Temperament Scale

Here are some questions about your toddler’s temperament. There are no g'ghlgr
wrong or good orbzgl answers, only descriptions of your toddler. Please base your
rating on your toddler’s £06111 and m behavior (the last four to six weeks). Some
items may seem alike but are not the same. If an item doesn’t apply to your toddler, just
mark that it’s “not applicable or N/A.” Each item is rated on a six-point scale.
The scale used for each question is: 1 = almost never

2 = rarely

3 = variable, usually does not

4 = variable, usually does

5 = frequently

6 = almost always

[Note.' Variable means the same thing as changeable. ]
Using the scale below, please circle the number that tells how often the toddler’s recent
and current behavior has been like the behavior described by each item.
1 = ALMOST NEVER 2 = RARELY 3 = VARIABLE, USUALLY DOES NOT

4 = VARIABLE, USUALLY DOES 5 = FREQUENTLY 6 = ALMOST ALWAYS

 

l 2‘ 3 4 5 6 N/A 1. The child gets sleepy at about the same time each evening

(within ‘/2 hour).

75

 

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

2. The child ﬁdgets during quiet activities (story telling,

looking at pictures).

 

6 N/A

3. The child takes feedings quietly with mild expressions of

likes and dislikes.

 

6 N/A

4. The child is pleasant (smiles, laughs) when ﬁrst arriving in

unfamiliar places.

 

6 N/A

5. The child’s initial reaction to seeing the doctor is

acceptance.

 

6 N/A

6. The child pays attention to games with parent for only a

minute or so.

 

6 N/A

7. The child’s bowel movements come at different times from

day to day (over one hour difference).

 

6 N/A

8. The child is fussy on waking up (frowns, complains, cries).

 

6 N/A

9. The child’s initial reaction to a new baby sitter is rejection

(crying, clinging to mother, etc.).

 

6 N/A

10. The child reacts to a disliked food even if it is mixed with a

preferred one.

 

6 N/A

11. The child accepts delays (for several rrrinutes) for desired

objects or activities (snacks, treats, gifts).

 

6 N/A

12. The child moves little (stays still) when being dressed.

 

 

6 N/A

 

13. The child continues an activity in spite of noises in the

same room.

76

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

14. The child shows strong reactions (cries, stamps feet) to

failure.

 

6 N/A

15. The child plays continuously for more than 10 minutes at a

time with a favorite toy.

 

6 N/A

16. The child ignores the temperature of food, whether hot or

cold.

 

6 N/A

17. The child varies from day to day in wanting a bottle or

snack before bedtime at night.

 

6 N/A

18. The child sits still while waiting for food.

 

6 N/A

19. The child is easily excited by praise (laughs, yells, jumps).

 

6 N/A

20. The child cries after fall or bump.

 

6 N/A

21. The child approaches and plays with unfamiliar pets (small

dogs, cats).

 

6 N/A

22. The child stops eating and looks up when a person walks

by.

 

6 N/A

23. The child seems unaware of differences in taste of familiar

liquids (type of milk, different juices).

 

6 N/A

24. The child moves about actively when he/she explores new

places (runs, climbs or jumps).

 

6 N/A

25. The child ﬁrsses or whines when bottom cleaned after

bowel movement.

 

6 N/A

26. The child smiles when played with by unfamiliar adults.

 

 

6 N/A

 

27. The child looks up from play when mother enters the room.

77

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

28. The child spends over an hour reading a book or looking at

the pictures.

 

6 N/A

29. The child responds intensely (screams, yells) to ﬁ'ustration.

 

6 N/A

30. The child eats about the same amount of solid food at

meals from day to day.

 

6 N/A

31. The child remains pleasant when hungry and waiting for

food to be prepared.

 

6 N/A

32. The child allows face washing without protest (squirming,

turning away).

 

6 N/A

33. The amount of milk or juice the child takes at mealtime is

unpredictable from meal to meal (over 2 oz. difference).

 

6 N/A

34. The child practices physical activities (climbing, jumping,

pushing objects) for under 5 minutes.

 

6 N/A

35. The child vigorously resists additional food or milk when

full (spits out, clamps mouth closed, bats at spoon, etc.).

 

6 N/A

36. The child plays actively (bangs, throws, runs) with toys

indoors.

 

6 N/A

37. The child ignores voices when playing with a favorite toy.

 

6 N/A

38. The child approaches (moves toward) new visitors at

home.

 

 

6 N/A

 

39. The child plays outside on hot or cold days without

seeming to notice differences in temperature.

78

 

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

40. The child continues playing with other children for under

ﬁve minutes and then goes elsewhere.

 

6 N/A

41. The child continues to look at a picture book in spite of

distracting noises (car horns, doorbell).

 

6 N/A

42. The child wants a snack at a different time each day (over

one hour difference).

 

6 N/A

43. The child is pleasant (smiles) when put down for nap or at

night.

 

6 N/A

44. The child takes several days to get used to (show usual
behavior in) new situations away from parent (play group, day

care center, sitter).

 

6 N/A

45. The child speaks (or vocalizes) right away to unfamiliar

adults.

 

6 N/A

46. The child reacts strongly (cries or screams) when unable to

complete a play activity.

 

6 N/A

47. The child enjoys games with running and jumping over

games done sitting down.

 

6 N/A

48. The child notices wet clothing, and wants to be changed

right away.

 

6 N/A

49. The child is fussy or moody throughout a cold or an

intestinal virus.

 

 

6 N/A

 

50. The child ignores parent’s ﬁrst call while watching a

favorite TV program.

79

 

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

51. The child loses interest in a new toy or game within an

hour.

 

6 N/A

52. The child runs to get where he/she wants to go.

 

6 N/A

53. For the ﬁrst few minutes in a new place (store, home or

vacation place) the child is wary (clings to mother, holds back).

 

6 N/A

54. The child takes daytime naps at differing times (over '/2

hour difference) from day to day.

 

6 N/A

55. The child reacts mildly (frown or smile) when his/her play

is interrupted by parent.

 

6 N/A

56. The child accepts being dressed and undressed without

protest.

 

6 N/A

57. The child is outgoing with adult strangers outside the

home.

 

6 N/A

58. The child runs ahead when walking with the parent.

 

6 N/A

59. The child’s period of greatest physical activity comes at the

same time of day.

 

6 N/A

60. The child can be coaxed out of a forbidden activity.

 

6 N/A

61. The child stops play and watches when someone walks by.

 

6 N/A

62. The child goes back to the same activity after brief

interruption (snack, trip to toilet).

 

6 N/A

63. The child laughs or smiles when meeting other children.

 

 

6 N/A

 

64. The child sits still while watching TV or listening to music.

80

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

65. The child will avoid repetition of misbehavior if punished

ﬁrmly once or twice.

 

6 N/A

66. The child continues to play with a toy in spite of sudden

noises from outdoors (car horn, siren, etc.)

 

6 N/A

67. The child ignores dirt on himself/herself.

 

6 N/A

68. The child’s time of waking in the morning varies greatly (by

1 hour or more) from day to day.

 

6 N/A

69. The child has moody or “off” days when he/she is fussy all

day.

 

6 N/A

70. The child reacts mildly (frown or smile) when another child

takes his/her toy.

 

6 N/A

7 l. The child stays with a routine task (dressing, picking up

toys) up to 5 rrrinutes or more.

 

6 N/A

72. The child stops eating and looks when he/she bears an

unusual noise (telephone, doorbell).

 

6 N/A

73. The child sits still (moves little) during procedures like hair

brushing or nail cutting.

 

6 N/A

74. The child shows much body movement (stomps, writhes,

swings arms) when upset or crying.

 

6 N/A

75. The child is pleasant (smiles, laughs) dming face washing.

 

 

6 N/A

 

76. The child’s initial reaction at home to approach by strangers

is acceptance (looks at, reaches out).

81

 

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

77. The child is hungry at dinner time.

 

6 N/A

78. The child continues to get into forbidden areas or objects

in spite of parents’ repeated warnings.

 

6 N/A

79. The child stops to examine new objects thoroughly (5

minutes or more).

 

6 N/A

80. The child ignores odors (cooking, smoke, perﬁrme)

whether pleasant or not.

 

6 N/A

81. The child looks up from an activity when he/she hears the

sounds of children playing.

 

6 N/A

82. The child falls asleep at about the same length of time after

being put to bed.

 

6 N/A

83. The child greets babysitter loudly with much expression of

feeling whether positive or negative.

 

6 N/A

84. The child is moody for more than a few minutes when

corrected or disciplined.

 

6 N/A

85. The child sits still (little squirming) while traveling in car

or stroller.

 

 

6 N/A

 

86. The child watches TV for under 10 minutes, then turns to

another activity.

82

 

 

Appendix F (cont.)

 

6 N/A

87. The child is shy (turns away or clings to mother) on

meeting another child for the ﬁrst time.

 

6 N/A

88. The child is still wary of strangers after 15 nrinutes.

 

6 N/A

89. The child frets or cries when ﬁrst learning a new task

(dressing self, picking up toys).

 

6 N/A

90. The child sits quietly in the bath.

 

6 N/A

91. The child practices a new skill (throwing, piling, drawing)

for 10 rrrinutes or more.

 

6 N/A

92. The child ignores differences in taste or consistency of

familiar foods.

 

6 N/A

93. The child sleeps poorly (restless, wakeﬁrl) in new places

for ﬁrst 2 or 3 times.

 

 

6 N/A

94. Child is fearﬁrl of being put down in an unfarrriliar place

(supermarket cart, new stroller, playpen) with parent present.

 

6 N/A

95. The child frowns or complains when left to play by self.

 

A

6 N/A

96. The child accepts within 10 rrrinutes (feels at home, at

ease) new surroundings (home, store, play area).

 

 

6 N/A

 

97. The child looks up from play when the telephone or

doorbell rings.

 

83

 

Appendix G

Consent Form

Thank you for participating in the ﬁrst two interviews for this study. This study is part
of a survey of women in Michigan, some of whom may be experiencing domestic violence. We
hope to learn about the strengths that you bring to your situation, your feelings, your
perceptions of your baby, and your relationships with others, including family members,
partners, and friends. We hope to use this information to help plan better programs for families
experiencing domestic violence.

If you decide to take part in the survey today, you will be asked questions about how
you have been feeling recently, events that have happened to you in the last year, and your
feelings about your baby and the people in your life who provide support for you. You will also
be asked to participate in some play with your baby that will be videotaped. Your baby will
also play with some toys and games with an interviewer for about an hour. The total interview
will take about 3-4 hours. You will be paid $75 for your participation and you will also receive
a toy for your baby.

All information that you give us will be kept strictly conﬁdential among the project
staff. Your name or your baby’s will not be on any questionnaires and videotapes; an
identiﬁcation number will be put on them instead. All questionnaires and videotapes will be
kept in locked ﬁle cabinets in a locked ofﬁce. Your identity will not be revealed in any reports
written about this study. We will summarize information from all study participants and will
not report information about yourself or any individuals. Your privacy will be protected to the
maximum extent allowable by law.

The only exception to full conﬁdentiality is in the case of ongoing child abuse or
neglect. Ifyou indicate that child abuse or neglect is occurring in your household, we are
required to make a report to Child Protective Services. We would inform you if we thought we
needed to make such a report.

You have the right to refuse to answer any questions or to withdraw from this study at
any point during the interview with no penalty or negative consequences. Your decision about
whether to participate or not will not affect your relationship with any agencies or Michigan
State University. If you have any questions, please ask us. If you have any questions about the
study later, you can contact Dr. Anne Bogat or Dr. Alytia Levendosky at (517) 432-1447. If
you have questions about your rights as a participant in this research study you may contact Dr.
David Wright at 355-2180.

We may be interested in recontacting you 2 years after the birth of your baby. At the
end of the interview today, we will ask you to update the contact information that we have for
you. Your participation today does not obligate you to participate in any future interviews.

 

I have read this form and agree to participate.

 

 

 

 

Signature of Participant Date

Witness Date

Anne Bogat, Ph.D. Alytia Levendosky, Ph.D.

Michigan State University Michigan State University

Department of Psychology Department of Psychology
East Lansing, MI 48824 East Lansing, MI 4882

84

 

References

Alessi, J. J., & Hearn, K. (1984). Group treatment of children in shelters for battered
women. In A. R. Roberts (Ed.), Battered women and their families (pp. 49-61).
New York: Springer.

American Psychiatric Association. (1987). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders (3rd ed., revised). Washington, DC: Author.

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
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