Intimate Partner Violence and its Effect on Children

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There exists a vast amount of literature that suggests that there is a connection between intimate partner violence and maladaptive outcomes for children. Studies have shown that children who witness violence undermines the children’s sense of security. Intimate partner violence (IPV) proves to be distressing and deregulating for the children victims of intimate partner violence. Not only is witnessing violence distressing for children but is also been shown that it can interfere with the deal with stressors and learn age-appropriate skills. While there have been many studies to show the effects of IPV on the development of children, there have not been studies that show how IPV can affect children’s memory skills. When looking at children who are 5 years old and younger there have been indications that IPV can negatively affect a child’s memory development. A large part of the development of working memory, long term memory and strategies for remembering information occurs in the preschool years of children. Due to the little amount of literature on how family situations can affect a child’s memory development it is not clear as to how great of a role IPV can have on a child. However there is a small amount of information that seems to indicate that IPV causes children to be so concerned with their safety that it interferes with their attentional skills. The children who then develop attention problems have problems with encoding information and their working memory performance. Researchers, in attempt to gather more information on this matter, began a longitudinal study that would be used to attempt to find more information about the link between IPV and memory. The focus of the test was on IPV that was occurring around chil... ... middle of paper ... ...ers were able to come to the conclusion that the violent relationship of the parents was linked to the children‘s memory skills. The study helped to determine that IPV does have a negative impact on the children’s’ working memory so it is important that programs are designed to help children overcome the negative effects that IPV has on the children’s short-term memory, working memory performance and deliberate memory strategies. While the study did help to support previous studies it also has its flaws. The main problems the study has was that the research was mainly correlational and not all possibilities were considered, and only information taken from the mother was taken into account. Works Cited Gustafsson, Hanna C., et al. "Intimate Partner Violence And Children’S Memory." Journal Of Family Psychology 27.6 (2013): 937-944. PsycARTICLES. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.

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