121: Sleep Problems and Dissociation Symptoms in Sexually Abused Preschoolers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Children experiencing sexual abuse (SA) are found to display significant internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems compared to non-abused children, In addition, victims of sexual abuse also appear at greater risk of dissociative symptoms than non-maltreated children. Adult studies have shown a link between dissociation and sleep disturbances. Yet, few studies have been conducted with young children although retrospective studies on adult survivors have shown that the pre-school period may be crucial in the development of dissociation. The aim of this study was to document the contribution of sleep problems to the prediction of dissociation in sexually abused preschoolers. The sample consisted of 224 children and the non-offending mother who were referred to the Child Protection Clinic of a tertiary care hospital following alleged SA. Abuse-related variables were abstracted from medical records. The child's level of dissociative symptoms was assessed with the Child Dissociative Checklist and the seven-item Sleep Problems subscale of the Child's Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000) was used as an index of sleep disturbance. Maternal psychological distress was evaluated by the Psychiatric Symptom Index. Factors contributing to the prediction of dissociative symptoms were evaluated with a hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The mean (± SD) age of the participants was 4.6±0.7 years, and there were 33 boys and 191 girls. Approximately 36% of SA children reported a single episode of abuse, 40% reported more than two episodes and 24% abuse lasting for more than six months. SA was described as complete or attempted penetration in 46% of cases. An immediate family member was identified as the perpetrator in 60% of cases. Entering age and sex of the child and maternal psychological distress in the multiple regression analysis to predict dissociative symptoms gets an R2=0.14, F (2, 138)=7.31; P<0.001. Adding other traumas experienced resulted in a significant increment in R2=0.20, F(1, 137)=10.97; P<0.01. With the addition of sleep disturbance, prediction of dissociation symptoms reached R2=0.37, F(1, 136)=36.07; P<0.001. After controlling for socio-demographic and maternal variables, and other traumatic experiences, sleep disturbance significantly added to the prediction of dissociative symptoms. Sleep disturbances appear to contribute to the frequency of dissociative symptoms. This regulation deficit should be addressed promptly, in order to help decrease long-term detrimental effects of sexual victimization, such as the development of dissociation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".