Childhood Sexual Abuse and Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Responses to Partner Touch
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Objective This dyadic study examined how childhood sexual abuse is associated with cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses anticipated in reaction to different types of hypothetical partner touch. Background Trauma theories contend that childhood sexual abuse is associated with long‐term relational challenges, including difficulties with intimacy and physical touch. Touch plays a central role in fostering connection and well‐being in couples, but individuals with a history of childhood sexual abuse and their partner may react differently to touch from a romantic partner. Method A convenience sample of 363 couples ( n = 695 participants) mostly living in Canada completed self‐report measures assessing perceptions of sexual intent, anticipated negative affect, and behavioral avoidance in response to hypothetical scenarios depicting affectionate, sexual, or no‐touch. Actor‐partner interdependence models examined the associations between a person's childhood sexual abuse and both partners' responses to touch. Results Individuals with higher childhood sexual abuse frequency anticipated greater negative affect and behavioral avoidance in response to hypothetical sexual touch, but lower avoidance in response to hypothetical affectionate touch. In the hypothetical no‐touch condition, individuals with higher CSA frequency anticipated higher negative affect and men perceived greater sexual intent. Moreover, partners of individuals with higher CSA frequency reported expecting greater negative affect and perceived greater sexual intent. Conclusion Childhood sexual abuse may shape how partners interpret touch, suggesting that while sexual touch may be distressing, affectionate touch could play a role in rebuilding intimacy via lower avoidance.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".