A dyadic exploration into the romantic relationship experiences of Canadians with histories of childhood adversity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are linked to long-term relational and sexual challenges, yet research rarely explores how individuals uniquely appraise these events or how ACEs affects couples. This thesis had two aims: (1) to describe how traumatic the ten commonly measured ACEs are perceived to be, and (2) to test how perceived partner responsiveness (PPR)—feeling understood and cared for by one’s partner—and event centrality—the degree to which a traumatic event is central to one’s identity—relate to sexual arousal and inhibition for couples (and compared differing dyadic ACEs configurations). Participants were 202 Canadian couples (404 individuals). Aim 1 showed variation in trauma appraisals: women rated parental mental illness as more traumatic, childfree participants viewed emotional and physical neglect as more traumatic, and emotional abuse was reported as the most traumatic, on average. In Aim 2, I compared mixed-adversity couples (one partner had ACEs) and dual-adversity couples (both had ACEs). In mixed-adversity couples, individuals with ACEs experienced greater sexual arousal when they felt supported by their partner (PPR); and greater event centrality was linked to both higher arousal and inhibition. In dual-adversity couples, PPR was linked to greater arousal in one’s romantic partner, and greater event centrality was associated with one’s own higher inhibition and their partner’s higher arousal. These findings underscore the need to study couples’ adversity through a dyadic lens—without dyadic data, critical information is lost related to the effects of the partner. Additionally, findings highlight the value of trauma-informed, couple-based approaches to sexual wellbeing and support more nuanced clinical care for couples with ACEs histories.
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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 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".