Life experiences throughout the ifespan: What do people say (or not) about them?

Life experiences have been a topic of interest for researchers and clinicians for decades. Current knowledge is rooted in two distinct approaches, i.e., personality psychology and psychosomatics. Whereas the first is interested in ordinary life stories of nonclinical individuals, based on a more qualitative, in-depth, and person-driven approach, psychosomatics stresses negative events, mainly in clinical samples, and presents a more quantitative, general, and construct-driven approach. Consequently, available evidence is dispersed and unrelated and many basic questions remain unanswered. This study aimed to explore occurrence, developmental stage, valence, and impact of life experiences and to analyze critical answering patterns (i.e., “I don’t remember,” missingness). Through a cross-sectional retrospective design, 394 adults from the community answered the Lifetime Experiences Scale, which covers 75 life experiences organized in eight domains (i.e., school, job, health, leisure, living conditions, adverse experiences, achievements, and people and relationships). Occurrence of life experiences varied greatly, and the mean number of experiences reported was approximately 30. Regarding developmental stage, most experiences were reported in just one stage—mainly adulthood—however, some could be considered chronic. Globally, life experiences tended to be clearly rated as positive or as negative; additionally, assessed experiences were mainly appraised as positive. Moreover, participants presented their experiences as significant, rating them as high impact. Overall, critical answering patterns were not very expressive: “I don’t remember” and missing answers were below 2 and 5%, respectively, in the majority of experiences. These findings offer several important new insights, suggesting that life experiences are mainly an idiosyncratic topic.This manuscript is part of a doctoral dissertation, which had the support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), through the PhD grant with the reference SFRH/ BD/76022/2011, funded by POPH-QREN-Typology 4.1-Advanced Training, reimbursed by the European Social Fund and national funds from State Budget. This study was conducted at Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Relational Aggression, Overt Aggression, and Family Relationships

187 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997.Many researchers have sought to increase understanding of childhood aggression through the study of the relation between characteristics of family relationships and children's (mainly boys') use of physical aggression in the peer group. This study is a first step toward examining processes in the family relationships (parent-child relationship, the interparental relationship) of relationally aggressive children in addition to those of traditionally studied overtly aggressive children. An extreme-group sample of 120 children (i.e., nonaggressive, relationally aggressive, overtly aggressive, and both relationally and overtly aggressive), their female caregivers, and 34 of their male caregivers, completed instruments during interviews in the family home. The instruments, guided by theories such as Social Learning Theory, Coercion Theory, and the Cognitive-Contextual Framework, were designed to gain information from the children's and caregivers' perspectives about characteristics (e.g., aggression, conflict, warmth) of the parent-child relationship and the interparental relationship. Results for the families of overtly aggressive children compared to nonovertly aggressive children were consistent with past research, indicating aggression and low warmth within the parent-child relationship and aggression and conflict within the interparental relationship. Results for the families of relationally aggressive children compared to their nonrelationally aggressive peers indicated similar findings, such as female caregiver use of relational aggression toward the child and difficulty in conflict resolution, but also a number of qualitatively different findings, such as self-blame for interparental conflict and greater caregiver desire for exclusivity with the child. Results provide initial evidence for the importance of studying the family relationships of relationally aggressive children, and highlight the importance of exploring the possibility of somewhat differential etiologies of these two forms of aggression.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Relational Aggression, Overt Aggression, and Family Relationships

187 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997.Many researchers have sought to increase understanding of childhood aggression through the study of the relation between characteristics of family relationships and children's (mainly boys') use of physical aggression in the peer group. This study is a first step toward examining processes in the family relationships (parent-child relationship, the interparental relationship) of relationally aggressive children in addition to those of traditionally studied overtly aggressive children. An extreme-group sample of 120 children (i.e., nonaggressive, relationally aggressive, overtly aggressive, and both relationally and overtly aggressive), their female caregivers, and 34 of their male caregivers, completed instruments during interviews in the family home. The instruments, guided by theories such as Social Learning Theory, Coercion Theory, and the Cognitive-Contextual Framework, were designed to gain information from the children's and caregivers' perspectives about characteristics (e.g., aggression, conflict, warmth) of the parent-child relationship and the interparental relationship. Results for the families of overtly aggressive children compared to nonovertly aggressive children were consistent with past research, indicating aggression and low warmth within the parent-child relationship and aggression and conflict within the interparental relationship. Results for the families of relationally aggressive children compared to their nonrelationally aggressive peers indicated similar findings, such as female caregiver use of relational aggression toward the child and difficulty in conflict resolution, but also a number of qualitatively different findings, such as self-blame for interparental conflict and greater caregiver desire for exclusivity with the child. Results provide initial evidence for the importance of studying the family relationships of relationally aggressive children, and highlight the importance of exploring the possibility of somewhat differential etiologies of these two forms of aggression.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD