The Degree of Synchrony Across Physiological and Behavioral Indicators in Aggression

社会、行为和经济科学司提供博士后研究奖学金，为最近的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并扩大他们在本科和研究生训练之外的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家指导他们跨越传统学科线的研究工作，并利用他们自己独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外的研究地点。这个博士后奖学金奖支持心理学和工程学（动力系统）交叉领域的新兴学者。在一个日益合作的科学领域，这个项目代表了一个独特的跨学科方向，应该有利于两个领域。这个项目的主要焦点是约会攻击性，它带来了重大的社会问题，包括攻击性在长期关系中的连续性，对养育子女的负面影响，以及一系列身心健康问题。确定解释约会攻击性的机制对于中断不适应的交流模式和支持关系的健康发展轨迹至关重要。与之前的研究主要关注与约会攻击相关的整体个体特征不同，本研究旨在捕捉最终可能导致攻击的时刻到时刻关系过程的动态展开。这项博士后奖学金资助了一名最近的博士，他的目标是通过心理学和电子工程的跨学科整合新技术来改变约会伴侣攻击性的科学研究。调查的重点是每个伴侣的生理状态，将通过行为、声音和生理渠道进行测量。跨生理条件渠道的协调——在个体内部以及约会对象之间——将被测试为当前夫妻攻击经历中的假定因素，以及约会对象原生家庭中暴露于攻击的过去遗留因素。更好地了解与约会攻击性有关的因素，特别是可改变的因素，如沟通过程和伴随的生理状态，最终可以为预防和干预措施提供信息，旨在减少约会攻击性。减少约会攻击的发生率以及限制攻击的代际传播是多个利益相关者的优先事项：个人，家庭，研究人员，临床医生和政策制定者。本项目的目标是通过确定相互作用的模式和作为夫妻攻击的风险与恢复指数的生理条件，扩大对约会伴侣攻击及其与原生家庭攻击的联系的了解。该建议的理论创新在于概念化和测试不同生理指标的同步性和非同步性：声音、生理和心理。年轻的约会伴侣会进行多次充满感情的讨论，在此过程中，行为、声音质量和生理（如心率、皮肤电导）都会被测量和记录下来。基于工程的声学分析和生物医学信号处理方法，以及基于心理学的人类行为和情感编码，将允许同时捕获多个调节过程。据推测，跨不同渠道的同步与异步模式将进一步了解正在进行的调节过程如何促进关系攻击（例如，不伴有伴随行为的生理状态可能会规避升级）。攻击的风险和恢复力通常被研究为特征倾向，这里将从关系的角度进行研究。本研究以处于重要亲密关系早期阶段的年轻人为研究对象，通过新技术的应用，将促进对关系攻击以及跨代攻击连续性的科学探究。

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising scholar at the intersection of Psychology and Engineering (Dynamical Systems). In an increasingly collaborative domain of science, this project represents a unique interdisciplinary direction that should be beneficial for both the fields. The main focus of this project is dating aggression, which poses significant societal problems including the continuity of aggression into committed long-term relationships, negative future implications for parenting, and an array of physical and mental health problems. Identifying mechanisms that explain dating aggression is crucial to interrupting maladaptive patterns of communication and bolstering healthy developmental trajectories for relationships. In contrast to prior research that focuses primarily on global individual characteristics associated with dating aggression, the present study is designed to capture dynamic unfolding of moment-to-moment relational processes that ultimately may lead to aggression. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a recent Ph.D. who aims to transform the scientific study of dating partner aggression through the interdisciplinary integration of novel technologies from psychology and electrical engineering. The focus of investigation is each partner's physiological state, which will be measured through behavioral, vocal, and physiological channels. Coordination across channels of physiological conditions -within individuals as well as between the dating partners-will be tested as putative factors in current experiences of couple aggression as well as past legacies from exposure to aggression in the dating partners' family-of-origin. Better understanding of factors associated with dating aggression-particularly modifiable factors such communication processes and accompanying physiological states can ultimately inform prevention and intervention efforts designed to reduce dating aggression. Decreasing the incidence of dating aggression as well as limiting the transmission of aggression across generations are priorities for multiple stakeholders: individuals, families, researchers, clinicians, and policy-makers. The goal of the present project is to expand what is known about dating partner aggression and its link to family-of-origin aggression by identifying patterns of interaction and of physiological conditions that are indices of risk versus resilience for couple aggression. The theoretical innovation of this proposal lies in the conceptualization and testing of synchrony versus asynchrony across different physiological indices: vocal, physiological and psychological. Young dating couples will engage in multiple emotionally-charged discussions during which behaviors, vocal qualities, and physiology (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance) are measured and recorded. Engineering-based methods of acoustic analysis and biomedical signal processing along with psychology-based human coding of behaviors and emotions will allow for the simultaneous capture of multiple regulatory processes. It is hypothesized that patterns of synchrony versus asynchrony across different channels will further knowledge of how ongoing regulatory processes contribute to relational aggression (e.g., physiological states that are not accompanied by concomitant behavioral ones may circumvent escalation). Risk and resilience for aggression, often studied as trait-like propensities, will be examined here from relational perspectives. By focusing on young adults who are in early stages of significant intimate relationships and through the application of novel technologies, this study will advance scientific inquiry on relationship aggression as well as on the continuity of aggression across generations.