Child Trauma

Childhood trauma effecting the perception of self and intimate partners in adulthood

Introduction introduce the topic and research questions. What is the general topic the authors were looking at? Why is it an interesting and or important topic (50 words)

Traumatic experiences from early childhood result in negative effects on intimate relationships in adulthood. Busby, Walker and Holman (2011) explored this idea by looking at the association of childhood trauma with perceptions of self and the partner. Three possible explanations were examined; one is selection effect that is where the abused person selects partners that have negative characteristics. Another explanation is perception effect, which is where partners may not have more negative characteristics but rather are perceived to function more negatively by the traumatised person. Reciprocal negativity is the third possible explanation where abuse may change how views of self are related to views of the partner. The study is important as it would find out some information regarding how these traumas might affect their future relationships. Also by examining which explanations are more prevalent for adult survivors of childhood trauma is important as both selection and perceptual effects are quite different, so by finding out which explanation is more accurate would this would help the professionals to work on the solution to help those survivors.

Body What is the overall aim of the study? What did the authors do and why? What did the authors find? Were the findings in line with their hypotheses? Were there any unexpected findings? Could there have been other explanations for the findings? Don’t use more than a few sentences to describe the methods (300 words)

Busby et. al., (2011) aim was to evaluate the patterns of perception of self, partner and whether childhood trauma is associated with selection effects of romantic partners, perceptual effects of partners of reciprocal negativity in a...