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This study investigated changes in day-to-day affect, behavior, and physiology (hypothalamic--pituitary--adrenocortical axis activity) associated with temporary physical separations from romantic partners (such as those brought about by work-related travel). Daily diaries and measures of salivary cortisol were collected from 42 couples over a 21-day period that was timed to coincide with a naturally occurring 4-to 7-day separation. There were significant changes from preseparation to separation and from separation to reunion in the quality of partners' interactions, their positive and negative affect, sleeping problems, subjective stress, physical symptoms, and cortisol levels. Separation and reunion effects were generally more pronounced in homebound partners, partners with high attachment anxiety, and partners who had less contact with each other during the separation. Separation and reunion effects were not moderated by relationship length, relationship satisfaction, how often couples underwent separations, or the presence of children in the home. The results are discussed with respect to the role of daily proximity and contact between partners for day-to-day affective and physiological regulation. Keywords: adult attachment, separation, HPA activity, daily diary

Background: Women ages 16-29 utilizing family planning clinics for medical services experience higher rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) and reproductive coercion (RC) than their same-age peers, increasing risk for unintended pregnancy and related poor reproductive health outcomes. Brief interventions integrated into routine family planning care have shown promise in reducing risk for RC, but longer-term intervention effects on partner violence victimization, RC, and unintended pregnancy have not been examined. Methods/Design: The 'Addressing Reproductive Coercion in Health Settings (ARCHES)' Intervention Study is a cluster randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of a brief, clinician-delivered universal education and counseling intervention to reduce IPV, RC and unintended pregnancy compared to standard-of-care in family planning clinic settings. The ARCHES intervention was refined based on formative research. Twenty five family planning clinics were randomized (in 17 clusters) to either a three hour training for all family planning clinic staff on how to deliver the ARCHES intervention or to a standard-of-care control condition. All women ages 16-29 seeking care in these family planning clinics were eligible to participate. Consenting clients use laptop computers to answer survey questions immediately prior to their clinic visit, a brief exit survey immediately after the clinic visit, a first follow up survey 12-20 weeks after the baseline visit (T2), and a final survey 12 months after the baseline (T3). Medical record chart review provides additional data about IPV and RC assessment and disclosure, sexual and reproductive health diagnoses, and health care utilization. Of 4009 women approached and determined to be eligible based on age (16-29 years old), 3687 (92 % participation) completed the baseline survey and were included in the sample. Discussion: The ARCHES Intervention Study is a community-partnered study designed to provide arigorous assessment of the short (3-4 months) and long-term (12 months) effects of a brief, clinician-delivered universal education and counseling intervention to reduce IPC, RC and unintended pregnancy in family planning clinic settings. The trial features a cluster randomized controlled trial design, a comprehensive data collection schedule and a large sample size with excellent retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shuffle conjecture expresses a relationship between parking functions, diagonal harmonics, and the Bergeron–Garsia ∇ operator. Recent conjectures by Haglund, Morse, and Zabrocki about a family of modified Hall–Littlewood operators sharpen the shuffle conjecture and suggest a variety of combinatorial properties of parking functions. In particular, these conjectures combined with previously established commutativity laws of the Hall–Littlewood operators suggest the existence of certain bijections relating parking functions with different diagonal compositions. In this paper, we formulate a conjecture which yields an algorithm for the construction of these bijections, prove a special case, and give some applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participants rated houses of worship for one of seven variables: preference, tranquility, age, visual richness, building care, potential for recovery from fatigued attention, and potential for reflection. Factor analysis of the preference ratings yielded four content categories: “contemporary,” “traditional,” “unusual architecture,” and “older red brick churches.” Preference was positively correlated with visual richness and building care in the contemporary and traditional categories and had a positive partial correlation with age in the traditional category. Tranquility was positively correlated with preference, building care, recovery, and reflection in the contemporary category but only with reflection in the traditional category. Tranquility was rated higher overall than preference. Preference and visual richness were lower for contemporary architecture than for the other categories, but there were no differences in tranquility. Apparently, raters felt they could achieve tranquility in most houses of worship but preferred those higher in visual richness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the following, we give two parking function bijections and describe their relationship to the Frobenius characteristic of the diagonal harmonics. In particular these bijections prove Dyck and Schröder path recursions which combined with certain Hall Littlewood operator recursions proved by Garsia et al. [“Hall–Littlewood operators in the theory of parking functions and diagonal harmonics.” International Mathematics Research Notices (2011)] yield sharper versions of the q,t-Catalan and Shröder Theorems established in Garsia and Haglund [“A proof of the q,t-Catalan positivity conjecture.” Discrete Mathematics 256, no. 3 (2002): 677–717. LaCIM 2000 Conference on Combinatorics, Computer Science and Applications (Montreal, QC)] and Haglund [“A proof of the q,t-Schröder conjecture.” International Mathematics Research Notices no. 11 (2004): 525–60]. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous research suggests that cardiac vagal regulation (indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia, or RSA) provides a physiological substrate for affect regulation, which presumably underlies adaptive interpersonal functioning.The authors tested these associations in the context of daily interactions between 68 cohabiting couples. Participants underwent a laboratory assessment of RSA during rest and also during a series of psychological stressors. Subsequently, they kept daily measures of affect and interaction quality for 21 days. Individual differences in baseline and stress levels of RSA moderated within-person associations between daily affect and the quality of couple interactions. The pattern of results differed for women versus men. Men with lower vagal tone or higher vagal reactivity had stronger associations between daily negative affect and daily negative interactions, and men with higher vagal tone had more positive daily interactions overall. Women with higher vagal tone had stronger associations between daily positive affect and daily positive interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that the quality of childhood attachments to caregivers influences the development of capacities and strategies for emotion regulation. Avoidantly attached individuals are characterized by emotion-regulation strategies involving the suppression of negative thoughts and feelings. Psychophysiological research on repressive coping suggests that these strategies might be associated with patterns of heightened and escalating sympathetic nervous system reactivity in the absence of correspondingly heightened self-reported affect. The present study tested this hypothesis by subjecting 148 adults to psychological stressors and discussions of attachment-related issues while monitoring their skin conductance level (SCL). Attachment avoidance - but not anxiety - was associated with heightened SCL reactivity to all tasks, especially among women, as well as escalation in reactivity. Additionally, on one stressor avoidance was associated with greater disassociation between subjective and physiological responses. These results have implications for understanding the influence of attachment style on cognitive and physiological aspects of emotion regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young men were subjected to laboratory inductions of anger and anxiety after undergoing a physiological assessment of vagal tone, an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning that has been associated with emotion regulation in prior research. We tested whether: (i) young men's emotional reactivity and recovery were associated with their global attachment style or their perceptions of security in specific, current attachment relationships; (ii) such associations were mediated by vagal tone; and (iii) such effects were moderated by the physical presence of romantic attachment figures. As predicted, vagal tone was negatively associated with attachment anxiety and positively associated with perceptions of security in current attachment relationships. Men with high perceptions of security in current relationships showed more effective recovery from laboratory-induced anger, and vagal tone mediated this association. In contrast, the physical presence of romantic attachment figures showed no association with emotional reactivity or recovery and did not moderate the aforementioned effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]