Anne-Marie Wall’s research while affiliated with York University and other places

The purpose of the present study was to examine adolescent alcohol use within the context of youth involvement and reinforcement from alternative leisure activities and also to determine whether perceived reinforcement from alcohol (outcome expectancy liking [OEL]) impacts this relationship. Participants were 956 students in grades 7 through 9 who participated in the Project on Adolescent Trajectories and Health (PATH), a 3-year longitudinal study of adolescent risk behaviors and health outcomes. A path model included Time 1 and Time 3 youth self-reported alcohol use, Time 2 youth ratings of reinforcement potential from alternative activities and OEL scores, and Time 3 perceived access to alcohol. The final model provided a good fit for the data and revealed several significant paths. In particular, alcohol use was positively associated with reinforcement potential from party attendance and involvement in social activities, and negatively associated with reinforcement potential from religious involvement and involvement in home/family activities. In addition, OEL was a partial mediator for party attendance and religious activities. These findings highlight the need for prevention programs that focus on reducing adolescent alcohol use through increasing access to substitutable leisure activities that can compete with behaviors maintained by alcohol's positive reinforcement value for youth.

A brief personality risk profile (23 items), the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale was tested for concurrent and predictive validity for substance use in 1139 adolescents (grades 8-10) from a mid-sized city in western Canada. The SURPS was administered in two waves of a longitudinal study separated by 12 months (2003-04). As expected, four subscales were supported by confirmatory factor and metric invariance analysis. In regression analysis, three subscales, hopelessness, impulsivity, and sensation seeking, were positively related to current and future use; while one, anxiety sensitivity, was negatively related. Findings suggest clinical utility for screening adolescents at risk for substance use.

Despite recent interest in deliberate self-harm (DSH), the majority of DSH studies have been limited to clinical samples and have identified psychological or clinical correlates and neglected general personality factors. The present study examined personality traits, child maltreatment, and substance use as correlates of DSH in a sample of 319 (65.2% women) university students. A related goal was to describe the nature of DSH in university students. Overall, 29.4% of students reported that they had engaged in at least 1 act of DSH, and rates of DSH were similar across men and women. Cutting was the most frequently endorsed type of DSH. Women were more likely to have engaged in cutting than men, whereas men were more likely to have put themselves in a violent situation where risk of harm was high. There were no differences in the number of different types of DSH acts reported by men and women. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed several significant positive correlates of DSH acts, including greater depressive symptoms, higher levels of sensation seeking and openness to experience, a history of emotional abuse, and illicit drug use. These findings have important implications for the assessment and treatment of DSH among university students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Objective: For child protective services (CPS) youth who may have experienced more than one form of maltreatment, the unique contribution of emotional abuse may be over-looked when other forms are more salient and more clearly outside of accepted social norms for parenting. This study considers the unique predictive value of childhood emotional abuse for understanding adolescent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology and dating violence. Further, PTSD symptomatology is assessed as an explanatory bridge in the emotional abuse-teen dating violence link. Methods: A random sample of 402 youth from the active caseload of a large urban CPS catchment area participated as part of a larger longitudinal study on adolescent health behaviors. Mid-adolescent youth across types of CPS status were targeted. CPS youth reported on lifetime maltreatment experiences, PTSD symptomatology, and past year dating experiences, using published scales. Results: Over 85% of CPS youth had begun dating. For dating youth, some level of dating violence was common: over half of females (63-67%) and nearly half of males (44-49%). Taking into account other forms of maltreatment, emotional abuse emerged as a significant predictor of both PTSD symptomatology and dating violence among males and females. PTSD symptomatology was a significant mediator of the male emotional abuse-perpetration and the female emotional/physical abuse-victimization links, indicating a gendered patterning to findings. Conclusions: These results indicate that: (1) CPS youth are a high priority group for dating violence and PTSD-linked intervention; and (2) CPS youth continue to experience the unique negative impact of childhood emotional abuse in their adolescent adjustment. All CPS children should be evaluated for emotional abuse incurred, and appropriate intervention attention be given as to how it specifically impacts on the child's approach to relating to themselves and to others. Practice implications: The present study directs practice implications in regards to: (1) the problem of teen dating violence, (2) the salience of childhood emotional abuse; and (3) the importance of targeting PTSD symptomatolgy among CPS youth. A substantial number of CPS youth report early engagement in violent romantic relationships and require support towards attaining the non-coercive relationship experiences of their non-CPS-involved age mates. The topic of dating, healthy dating relationships, and dating violence may need to be part of the regular casework, with a view towards supporting youths' conceptualization of and skill set for healthy, close relationships. Further, this knowledge needs to be translated to foster parents and group home staff. With regard to the impact of childhood emotional abuse, CPS workers need to be sensitive to its potential for long-term, unique impact impairing relationship development. Emotional abuse is (a) unique among genders (i.e., for females, it clusters with physical abuse) and (b) uniquely predictive of PTSD symptoms and dating violence. Finally, as is consistent with theory and biopsychosocial evidence, PTSD symptomatology is a key causal candidate for understanding maltreatment-related impairment. Attention to targeting PTSD symptoms may be preventative for dating violence; attention to targeting emotional abuse experiences may be preventative for PTSD symptoms. CPS youth are an important population to involve in research, as their inclusion adds to the evidence-base to achieve evidence-informed practice and policy within child welfare.

In September 2005, the authors explored the relationship between perfectionism and binge drinking in a sample of first-year college students. The authors recruited 207 first-year college students (76 men, 131 women) to complete the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) and Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (F-MPS). The authors divided participants into 3 groups on the basis of frequency of binge drinking and conducted multivariate analyses of variance to compare the binge drinking groups on the 3 MPS subscales and the 5 F-MPS subscales. The group with 2 or more binge drinking episodes in the past 2 weeks had higher levels of parental criticism and lower levels of self-oriented perfectionism, but they did not have lower scores on a measure of personal standards. These findings suggest that certain perfectionists binge drink in response to harsh parental treatment and that, at least initially, the pursuit of extreme standards of personal perfection is incompatible with binge drinking. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The field of gambling research has advanced rapidly in recent years with the sophistication of the research mirroring the complexity of this public health concern. This is an exciting time for gambling research. Psychology, genetics, neurobiology, and treatment have joined forces to address not only gambling but also the universal theme of what gambling represents: conflicting motivations that drive behavior. This new book gathers important recent research in the field.

Our goal is to assess the effect of caregiver vulnerabilities, singly and in combination, on the substantiation of child abuse (physical, sexual) and neglect, while controlling for relevant background variables. We test the moderator role of adult partner violence in qualifying the relationship between caregiver vulnerabilities and maltreatment substantiation. Secondary analyses of the 1998 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Maltreatment (CIS) are used to predict child protective service investigation substantiation versus non-substantiation from a range of caregiver vulnerability factors. Involvement in partner violence was examined as a moderator in the relation between caregiver vulnerabilities and maltreatment substantiation. The CIS is an epidemiological survey of first-reported cases to child protective services, using a random sample of child welfare agencies across Canada. Child welfare workers completed a research form on the child, primary caregiver, family, perpetrator, severity and type of maltreatment, as well as services and court outcomes. All maltreatment classifications were assigned according to the Canadian legal definition of child abuse and neglect. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses were used, with stepped entry of: (1) demographic factors, socioeconomic disadvantage, and caregiver's own history of maltreatment; (2) caregiver vulnerability factors; (3) involvement in partner violence; (4) the interaction between caregiver vulnerability and partner violence. Caregiver substance abuse was found to be the single most potent kind of caregiver vulnerability in predicting maltreatment substantiation. When the total number of vulnerabilities was used as the predictor, prediction across all types of maltreatment increased, especially for substantiated neglect. Analyses also showed that the presence of partner violence in the home exacerbated the effect of caregiver vulnerability on substantiation. The total number of caregiver vulnerabilities was the best predictor of the substantiation of child abuse and neglect. This relationship was moderated by the existence of partner violence: high caregiver vulnerability and high partner violence increased the likelihood of substantiation versus non-substantiation. These results suggest that caregiver issues should be considered in tandem with partner relationships. Among child welfare cases, caregiver vulnerability and partner violence are critical targets for child maltreatment prevention and early child protective services intervention.

This article introduces readers to the Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways (MAP) study. The MAP is a longitudinal study that follows active case files of mid-adolescents in a large urban child protective services (CPS) system. The MAP is a unique opportunity to collect information from teens about their physical health (e.g., sleep quality), mental health (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) and cognitive style (e.g., attention, memory). The MAP study samples the population of CPS teens on questions that are used in provincial teen surveys, allowing for points of comparison to non-CPS teens. The MAP tracks youth development over 2.5 years. Although the MAP currently has a very small number of Aboriginal teens, the responses of these teens may focus practitioner and researcher attention to priority areas for further research. This includes the investigation of how some research issues, such as maltreatment history, personal safety, relationship to primary CPS worker and suicidal ideation, may be cross-informative. It is known that teen risk behaviours cluster together, but it is important to understand the relationships among these variables. An understanding of these relationships can drive knowledge creation, as well as practice and policy change. Finally, the MAPstudy has succeeded given a successful collaborative partnership between hospital, university, and CPS partners who both strive to keep the youths’ best interests in the forefront.

The present research investigates how defendant and claimant intoxication operates in sexual-assault trials. Participants (N= 323) were provided with a description of a sexualassault trial in which the intoxication level (sober, moderate, extreme) of both parties was systematically varied. While the introduction of alcohol altered participants' perceptions of the case and of the parties involved, a complex interplay between the defendant's and complainant's level of intoxication was apparent. When the complainant was sober, harsher judgments were rendered when the defendant was intoxicated, particularly at the extreme level. In contrast, when the complainant was moderately intoxicated, more guilty verdicts occurred when the defendant was similarly inebriated. Finally, when the complainant was extremely intoxicated, the defendant's beverage consumption did not exert any discemible impact. Evaluations of both parties' abilities to self-regulate their behavior and for the female target to become sexually disinhibited were also influenced by the intoxication manipulation.