Communication Skills vs. Mindfulness for IPV

University of Houston50 enrolled

Overview

This tests the immediate impact of two brief interventions on couples reporting intimate partner violence using the proximal change experimental design. Couples will be randomly assigned to a mindfulness conditions, a communication exercise or a placebo condition. Outcome measures include observed and experimentally assessed aggression.

This pilot study is designed to test the effects of two brief interventions on communication and emotional expression between intimate partners who have experienced recent domestic violence. In addition, it will provide some basic laboratory findings on differences in distress tolerance between perpetrators and victims of domestic abuse. Specifically, using the proximal change experimental design, couples will engaged in a 7.5 minute conflict discussion while being videotaped and having their autonomic responding monitored. Then they will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a communication skills training exercise, a mindfulness condition, or a placebo control. Next, ,couples will engaged in second 7.5 minute conflict discussion. It is hypothesized that those in both the communication skills training and mindfulness condition will display more positive and less aggressive behavior in their second conflict discussion as compared to their first. It is also expected that they will administer less aggression (as measured by delivery of a loud noise) to their partner after both of the active interventions. In addition, multiple measures of distress tolerance will be administered to both partners. It is expected that couples with a characterologically violent perpetrator, he or she will evidence decreased distress tolerance and the victimized partner will evidence increased distress tolerance

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

SINGLE

Enrollment

Conditions

Domestic Violence Domestic Abuse Family Conflict Aggression

Interventions

Communication Skills TrainingBEHAVIORAL

Gentle start-up is one treatment technique in the Creating Healthy Relationship Program written by John Gottman, Ph.D.

MindfulnessBEHAVIORAL

Acceptance/willingness of unwanted emotions is treatment technique of Achieving Change through Value-Based Behavior (ACTV) written by Amie Zarling, Ph.D.

PlaceboBEHAVIORAL

Couples randomly assigned to this condition listen to music on headphones. This may be considered an active placebo as it is similar to a Time Out technique taught in battering interventions.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 YearsMax age: 80 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: Adult co-habituating couples Reporting some violence in the past year (score \> 0 on CTS2 physical abuse subscale) Exclusion Criteria: Homosexual couples Children under 18 non-English speakers

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Observed aggression

Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF; Gottman, McCoy, Coan, Collier, 1996). SPAFF categorizes 16 emotions based on facial affect, vocal tone, body language, and content of speech.

Time frame: 10 minutes: Change in observed behavior/emotion from first to second conflict discussion

TAPS aggression paradigm

Overt aggression will be assessed using a modified version of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP; Epstein \& Taylor, 1967). The TAP is an established method to study aggression in the laboratory. It is a deceptive, competitive reaction time task in which the participant competes against an "opponent" which is actually the computer program.

Time frame: 10 minutes: Change in aggression from first to second conflict discussion

Central Contacts

Alicia Vargas

CONTACT

713-743-9215 avargas5@central.uh.edu

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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