Joel S Milner

Northern Illinois University · Department of Psychology

This chapter provides an overview of child maltreatment and domestic abuse in U.S. military families. Topics include the military’s development of standardized definitions (i.e., criteria) for different types of family violence, the development and use of a formal structured decision tree for determining if alleged instances of family violence “mee...

This technical report contains a list of more than 1,800 journal articles, chapters, books, theses (100+), dissertations (200+), convention and meeting papers, unpublished reports, and other documents describing the uses/limitations and/or psychometric characteristics of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory and modified versions (e.g., Brief C...

There are no published studies on pregnancy-related concerns, worries, and fears (CWFs) in primiparous and multiparous women and men in USAF families. Reflecting a biopsychosocial model of behavioral health, women’s and men’s pregnancy-related CWF Questionnaires were developed. Usable data were obtained from 260 women and 243 men. Similarities and...

Scholarly journals increasingly request that authors include effect size (ES) estimates when reporting statistical results. However, there is little guidance on how authors should interpret ESs. Consequently, some authors do not provide ES interpretations, or, when interpretations are provided, they often fail to use appropriate reference groups, u...

Child physical abuse (CPA) is a pervasive societal problem with serious outcomes. Understanding CPA risk factors is necessary to identify those at risk for CPA perpetration and to inform efforts to prevent the occurrence of CPA. The present study provides an updated review of conceptual models of CPA, a review of model-related CPA risk factors, and...

Child physical abuse (CPA) is a pervasive societal problem with serious outcomes. Understanding CPA risk factors is necessary to identify those at risk for CPA perpetration and to inform efforts to prevent the occurrence of CPA. The present study provides an updated review of conceptual models of CPA, a review of model-related CPA risk factors, and...

Research suggests that prolonged infant crying may increase risk for child physical abuse (CPA). However, few studies have examined behavioral responses to infant crying among parents at risk for CPA. The present study sought to fill this gap by using a simulated infant to examine how mothers and fathers with varying degrees of CPA risk respond to...

This chapter provides an overview of child maltreatment and domestic abuse in U.S. military families. Topics include the military’s development of standardized definitions (i.e., criteria) for different types of family violence, the development and use of a formal structured decision tree for determining if alleged instances of family violence “mee...

Research described in the present article assessed (a) whether a fading affect bias (FAB) occurred in parent memories of a child as well as parent general personal memories, and (b) whether either or both of these FAB effects was moderated by a parent’s risk for child physical abuse. A FAB effect, unmoderated by parents’ abuse risk status, emerged...

Increasing rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in military populations during recent conflicts have sparked concerns regarding the incidence of other commonly associated problems, such as intimate partner violence (IPV). From a clinical perspective, it is important to understand patterns of PTSD symptomology that may indicate heightened r...

This reading list contains articles that have used the Childhood History Questionnaire (CHQ) or used a modified version of the CHQ in a research study. In varying degrees, these reports provide data on the reliability and construct validity of the CHQ.

This reading list contains journal articles, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports, and other documents that have used a translated version of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory or a modified version of the CAP Inventory.

This reading list contains more than 1,800 journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports, and other documents describing the uses/limitations and/or psychometric characteristics of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory and modified versions of the CAP Inventory. This reading list is meant to be...

The present study examined the extent to which the aggressive tendencies of parents at risk for perpetrating child physical abuse (CPA) generalize to situations other than discipline-related encounters (e.g., a competitive gaming interaction). Participants included parents who were either low ( n = 90) or high ( n = 75) risk for CPA. Parents were l...

The present study examined the extent to which the aggressive tendencies of parents at risk for perpetrating child physical abuse (CPA) generalize to situations other than discipline-related encounters (e.g., a competitive gaming interaction). Participants included parents who were either low (n= 90) or high (n = 75) risk for CPA. Parents were led...

In the current study, we examined the extent to which the United States Air Force Family Needs Screener (FNS)—a scale that purportedly measures risk for child maltreatment–predicted future child maltreatment in a group of 87,982 mothers. Mothers’ FNS total scores predicted future child maltreatment overall (i.e., any type of maltreatment) and for i...

This reference list contains an exhaustive list of more than 1,600 journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports, and other documents describing the uses/limitations and/or psychometric characteristics of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory and modified versions of the CAP Inventory.

Exposing parents to a positive classical conditioning (+CC) procedure can (a) prompt positive evaluations of children, (b) alter judgments made about children from their behavior, and (c) reduce harsh behaviors enacted toward children. Two studies explored possible limits of these effects. Results from Study 1 showed that only some +CC effects evin...

Two studies tested whether attributions of hostile intent (AHI) and anger for ambiguous child behaviors uniquely predict parents’ harsh verbal discipline (HVD) and harsh physical discipline (HPD) or whether AHI only predicts harsh discipline when AHI occurs in conjunction with anger, as suggested by the Integrated Cognitive Model of general aggress...

Research suggests that deficits in executive functioning are associated with negative parenting behaviors. However, limited research has examined the link between executive functioning and risk for child physical abuse (CPA) perpetration. Early studies examining executive functioning in parents at risk for perpetrating CPA relied on performance-bas...

This reference list contains an exhaustive list of more than 1,600 journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports, and other documents describing the uses/limitations and/or psychometric characteristics of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory and modified versions of the CAP Inventory.

This document contains a selected list of journal articles, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports and other documents that have used a translated version of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory or a translated version of a modified version of the CAP Inventory.

This reading list contains articles that have used the Childhood History Questionnaire (CHQ) or used a modified version of the CHQ in a research study. In varying degrees, these reports provide data on the reliability and construct validity of the CHQ.

Using longitudinal survey data, this study explores patterns and predictors of the sexual harassment and sexual assault of women by male Navy personnel (N = 573) in their second year of service. A modified version of the Malamuth Confluence Model, informed by the Navy Sexual Assault Continuum of Harm, was used to predict both types of sexual aggres...

Abstract Implicit personality theories (IPTs) represent the beliefs people hold about the extent to which personality is malleable (i.e., incremental beliefs) versus fixed (i.e., entity beliefs). IPTs influence how individuals process, understand, and respond during social interactions. The research described herein examined (a) whether parents who...

This study examined the associations between executive functioning problems, emotion regulation difficulties, and risk for perpetrating child physical abuse (CPA). It was hypothesized that: (a) poor executive functions (i.e., working memory problems and inhibition/switching problems) would be associated with higher levels of emotion regulation diff...

The present study examined heart rate and heart rate variability (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) in a sample of 48 general population parents (41.7% fathers), who were either at high risk (n = 24) or low risk (n = 24) for child physical abuse. During baseline assessments of heart rate and RSA, parents sat quietly for 3 min. Afterward, pa...

The current study examined child maltreatment re-offending in United States Air Force (USAF) families. In a clinical database containing 24,999 child maltreatment incidents perpetrated by 15,042 offenders between the years 1997 and 2013, 13% of offenders maltreated a child on more than one date (i.e., they re-offended). We explored several offender...

This reference list contains more than 1,500 journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports, and other documents describing the uses/limitations and/or psychometric characteristics of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory and modified versions of the CAP Inventory.

This reading list contains articles that have used the Childhood History Questionnaire (CHQ) or a modified version of the CHQ in a research study. In varying degrees, these reports provide data on the reliability and construct validity of the CHQ.

This document contains a selected list of journal articles, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports and other documents that have used a translated version of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory or a translated version of a modified version of the CAP Inventory.

The present study examined the associations between authoritarian parenting beliefs, attributions of hostile intent, negative affect, and harsh parenting practices. General population parents (N = 183; 31.1% fathers) completed self-report measures of authoritarian parenting beliefs and read vignettes describing children engaging in transgressions....

Six studies explored the extent to which evaluative conditioning (EC) can change adults’ child-related attitudes and expectations. A subset of studies also investigated the extent to which EC can change child-related attributions of hostile intent, anger, use of harsh discipline, and use of punishment. An initial study demonstrated that a brief EC...

Parents’ evaluations of children are believed to be a cognitive contributor to their subsequent child-directed harsh or physically abusive behaviors. The current research examined whether parents’ (N = 100) evaluations of children were moderated by either (a) the child behavior on which the evaluation was based and (b) parents’ measured risk for ch...

This document is a reading list of more than 1,500 journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, theses, convention papers, unpublished reports, and other documents describing the uses/limitations and/or psychometric characteristics of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory and modified versions of the CAP Inventory. This list is meant to be...

Summary: Positive memories tend to hold their affective intensity across time better than negative memories, a phenomenon referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB). An initial study explored this bias in the context of parents’ affective responses to memories involving their children. Specifically, parents (N =90 for Study 1) were asked to recall...

This document contains a list of articles that have used the Childhood History Questionnaire (CHQ) or a modified version of the CHQ in a research study. In varying degrees, these reports provide data on the reliability and construct validity of the CHQ. The CHQ was designed to screen large groups of individuals for self-reported childhood abuse his...

This chapter briefly reviews research regarding the impact of premilitary interpersonal violence on the long-term adjustment of military personnel. It further presents new data regarding methodological issues in assessing the impact of premilitary childhood sexual abuse (CSA) severity on enlisted Navy personnel, with a specific focus on the nature...

Research has demonstrated that perpetrator characteristics (gender, age, and military status) and incident characteristics (perpetrator substance use and initial incident severity) are associated with intimate partner maltreatment recidivism. This study assessed whether these variables were associated with intimate partner maltreatment recidivism i...

We reviewed and meta-analyzed 10 studies (N = 492) that examined the association between (risk for) child maltreatment perpetration and basal autonomic activity, and 10 studies (N = 471) that examined the association between (risk for) child maltreatment and autonomic stress reactivity. We hypothesized that maltreating parents/at-risk adults would...

The current study examined temporal variations in child maltreatment within a U.S. Air Force database. Relative to comparison days, child maltreatment rates generally decreased on weekends, Thanksgiving, and the first days of a month, whereas rates of specific maltreatment types differed on some holidays: Physical abuse decreased on New Year's Eve...

Objective: Four studies (total N = 1,847 parents) examined whether harsh parenting behaviors would increase when parents experienced an instigation and whether this increase would be especially strong for parents who were high in trait aggression. Method: These predictions were tested both when parents’ experience of an instigation was manipulated...

Objectives: This paper describes the development of an actuarial risk assessment instrument (the Intimate Partner Physical Injury-Risk Assessment Tool; IPPI-RAT) designed to be used by military providers to assess the likelihood that an individual who has had an alleged incident of intimate partner violence (IPV) will have a subsequent incident res...

The present study was designed to clarify the associations between covert narcissism, overt narcissism, negative affect, and child physical abuse (CPA) risk. It was hypothesized that covert (but not overt narcissism) would be significantly associated with parental CPA risk and that negative affect would partially mediate this association. General p...

The present study extends prior research examining the association between borderline personality disorder (BPD) features and child physical abuse (CPA) risk. We hypothesized that: (1) high CPA risk parents (compared to low CPA risk parents) would more often report clinically elevated levels of BPD features; (2) high CPA risk parents with elevated...

This study examined child maltreatment perpetration among 99,697 active-duty U.S. Air Force parents who completed a combat deployment. Using the deploying parent as the unit of analysis, we analyzed whether child maltreatment rates increased postdeployement relative to predeployment. These analyses extend previous research that used aggregate data...

Objective: Six studies (N = 1,081 general population parents) assessed the validity of the Voodoo Doll Task (VDT) as a proxy for aggressive parenting behaviors. Methods: Participants were given an opportunity to symbolically inflict harm by choosing to stick "pins" into a doll representing their child. Results: Individual differences in parent...

From 2002 until 2007, the United States Air Force (USAF) revised the process of determining whether incidents of suspected family maltreatment met the criteria for maltreatment. In this study, all reported child maltreatment and partner abuse incidents in the USAF from January 2008 to July 2011 were examined to determine the extent to which charact...

This study examined whether parents with varying degrees of child physical abuse (CPA) risk differed in pain tolerance, pain sensitivity, and accessibility of aggression-related schemata. Participants included 91 (51 low CPA risk and 40 high CPA risk) general population parents. Participants were randomly assigned to complete either an easy or a di...

Routine activities (RA) theory posits that changes in people's typical daily activities covary with increases or decreases in criminal behaviors, including, but not limited to, partner maltreatment. Using a large clinical database, we examined temporal variations among 24,460 incidents of confirmed partner maltreatment across an 11-year period with...

Objective: To examine child facial emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) in high-risk for child physical abuse (CPA) parents and low-risk for CPA parents (Study 1) and to conduct a meta-analysis summarizing published research on the relationship between child facial ERA and CPA (Study 2). Method: In Study 1, ERA data for child facial emotions were obt...

Patterns of healthcare use in a sample of young adults entering the US Navy (N = 1137) were examined in a longitudinal survey study. Baseline data provided information about healthcare use as a civilian, whereas follow-up data were used to examine changes in patterns of use over time following entry into the Military Health System (MHS). Entrance i...

Past research results suggest that reliable identification of emotions conveyed by facial expressions can be made either when faces are: (1) briefly glimpsed, or (2) viewed in profile. Of interest was whether such effects would persist when perceivers encountered both manipulations, briefly (100 ms) viewing 90-degree profile faces. Our results show...

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) New Parent Support Program (NPSP) is a voluntary family maltreatment prevention program for expectant parents and parents of young children. NPSP mothers are classified as “low needs” (LN) or “high needs” (HN) based on their Family Needs Screener (FNS) responses and NPSP service providers’ clinical judgment. Using data fro...

Objective: To conduct the first population-based study comparing child maltreatment rates perpetrated by civilian parents in military families before, during, and after combat-related deployments. Method: The sample included children in United States Air Force families who experienced at least 1 child maltreatment incident perpetrated by their civi...

This study examined whether caregivers who exhibit high risk for child physical abuse differ from low-risk caregivers in reactions to transgressing children. Caregivers read vignettes describing child transgressions. These vignettes varied in: (a) the type of transgression described (moral, conventional, personal), (b) presentation of transgression...

The authors examined spouse abuse perpetration among all married U.S. Air Force personnel who deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom. Using Poisson and conditional Poisson regression, they compared rates of spouse abuse perpetration predeployment and postdeployment in the population of married U.S. Air Force perso...

The effects of castration and hormone replacement on the acquisition of a leverpress Sidman avoidance task were examined. Sixty male rats were assigned randomly to one of five groups: (1) castration with estradiol treatment, (2) castration with progesterone treatment, (3) castration with estradiol and progesterone treatment, (4) castration with sal...

The present study examined whether parents at high-risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed from low-risk parents in their tendency to infer positive traits and negative traits from children's behaviors. The final sample consisted of 58 (25 low CPA risk and 33 high CPA risk) parents. Parents completed a false-recognition task, which involved vi...

Objective: To conduct the first population-based study comparing the frequency of child maltreatment among active-duty United States Air Force (USAF) maltreating parents before and after combat-related deployment. Method: By combining archival databases, we identified 2,287 children with a total of 2,563 substantiated maltreatment incidents perpetr...

An initial experiment assessed mouse killing in the rat following different periods of recovery from a food deprivation schedule. Testing which immediately followed food deprivation resulted in a high mouse killing rate relative to rates observed after a 2-week recovery period and control conditions. A second experiment investigated the effects of...

Cognitive models of aggression propose that when an individual attributes hostile intent to another person's behavior, these attributions increase the likelihood of aggression toward that person. This proposition has been supported by a large body of literature.1 Similar speculations are found in cognitive behavioral models of child physical abuse....

The effects of increasing numbers of electroconvulsive shock (ECS) treatments on the estrous cycle in the rat were investigated. Seventy-six female Sprague-Dawley rats were selected on the basis of stability of estrus from an initial subject pool. The rats were assigned randomly to one of eight treatment conditions, with the restriction that each t...

Despite the widespread assumption that traumas and stressors experienced by military personnel during combat deployment are likely to increase spouse abuse when they return home, little empirical research has investigated this issue. In the current study, we compared rates of spouse abuse perpetration before and after deployment in the population o...

Contemporary theories of child physical abuse (CPA) emphasize the proximal role of social cognitive processes (many of which are implicit in nature) in the occurrence of parental aggression. However, methods that allow for the systematic examination of implicit cognitive processes during the course of aggressive interactions are needed. To address...

Objective: To conduct the first population-based study comparing spouse abuse rates before and after combat-related deployments during Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom among married U.S. Air Force personnel. Method: The sample included all married Air Force members with at least one substantiated incident of spouse physical or emo...

Objective: The present study was designed to assess the psychometric adequacy of translated versions of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory. Method: Numerous terms were used to search databases for studies on translated versions of the CAP Inventory. Results: Across translations, meta-analyses produced Abuse scale internal consistency estimat...

The present study examined the extent to which attentional control mediates the relationship between adverse early life experiences (e.g., harsh discipline, low perceived support) and child physical abuse (CPA) risk in adulthood. Participants included 138 general population parents (30.4% fathers and 69.6% mothers) who completed self-report measure...

This study explored individual and military risk factors for intimate partner aggression (IPA) perpetration among Navy personnel in their second year of service. We found some evidence that job stress was related to higher perpetration among men. Contrary to expectations, ship duty was related to lower perpetration rates, even though it involves mo...

The U.S. Navy Sexual Assault Intervention Training (SAIT) program for women was evaluated in a randomized clinical trial. The SAIT uses multiple presentation modalities (lecture, slides, discussion, film) to provide information related to sexual assault, including risk factors, consequences, prevention, and relevant military regulations. Female per...

Although research has documented negative effects of combat deployment on mental health, few studies have examined whether deployment increases risky or self-destructive behavior. The present study addressed this issue. In addition, we examined whether deployment effects on risky behavior varied depending on history of pre-deployment risky behavior...

: anche se la trasmissione intergenerazionale della violenza familiare č stata ben documentata, il meccanismo responsabile di questo effetto non č stato ancora completamente accertato. Il presente studio valuta se i sintomi traumatici mediano la relazione fra una storia di maltrattamento fisico infantile (CPA, Child Physical Abuse) e il rischio in...

The present investigation used event-related potentials (ERPs, N400 and N300) to determine the extent to which individuals at low and high risk for child physical abuse (CPA) have pre-existing positive and negative child-related schemata that can be automatically activated by ambiguous child stimuli. ERP data were obtained from individuals at low (...

To examine differences in accessibility of positive and negative schema in parents with high and low risk for child physical abuse (CPA). This study combined picture priming and lexical decision making methods to assess the accessibility of positive and negative words following presentation of child and adult faces. The child and adult faces depict...

Recent theory and research suggest that physically abusive parenting behavior might be understood as originating from: 1) greater accessibility of hostile/negative schema, and/or 2) lower accessibility of benign/positive schema. This study examined whether parents at high and low risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed in the extent to which t...