The Sexual and Physical Abuse Questionnaire (SPAQ). A screening instrument for adults to assess past and current experiences of abuse

OBJECTIVE: We reconstructed and validated a simple questionnaire to be completed by adult respondents for the assessment of sexual and physical abuse during childhood and later life, the Sexual and Physical Abuse Questionnaire (SPAQ). METHOD: The criterion validity of the questionnaire was investigated in a population of psychiatric outpatients (n = 134) using the Structured Trauma Interview [Am. J. Psychiatr. 156 (1999) 379] as gold standard for the assessment of sexual and physical abuse. RESULTS: All questionnaires were returned fully completed. The measures of agreement and the predictive measures of the questionnaire were satisfactory, in particular with respect to experiences of sexual abuse. Positive answering of the questionnaire increased the odds for sexual abuse by a factor of 12-17.5, and negative answering of the questionnaire reduced the odds by a third. The odds for physical abuse were increased by a factor of 8 with positive answering of the questionnaire, and reduced by a third with negative answering. CONCLUSION: The questionnaire may be a useful screening instrument in research and in clinical practice to assess sexual abuse during childhood and later years. As a screening instrument for physical abuse it is less satisfactory.     

The Relation Between Breakfast Skipping and School Performance in Adolescents

Breakfast skipping is common in adolescents, but research on the effects of breakfast skipping on school performance is scarce. This current cross‐sectional survey study of 605 adolescents aged 11–18 years investigated whether adolescents who habitually skip breakfast have lower end‐of‐term grades than adolescents who eat breakfast daily. Additionally, the roles of sleep behavior, namely chronotype, and attention were explored. Results showed that breakfast skippers performed lower at school than breakfast eaters. The findings were similar for younger and older adolescents and for boys and girls. Adolescents with an evening chronotype were more likely to skip breakfast, but chronotype was unrelated to school performance. Furthermore, attention problems partially mediated the relation between breakfast skipping and school performance. This large‐scale study emphasizes the importance of breakfast as a determinant for school performance. The results give reason to investigate the mechanisms underlying the relation between skipping breakfast, attention, and school performance in more detail.     

Effects of Pointing Gestures on Memory for (In)Congruent Stimuli in Children and Young Adults

We investigated whether finger pointing toward picture locations can be used as an external cognitive control tool to guide attention and compensate for the immature cognitive control functions in children compared with young adults. Item and source memory performance was compared for picture‐location pairs that were either semantically congruent (e.g., a cloud presented at the upper half of the screen) or incongruent (e.g., a cloud presented at the lower part of the screen). Contrary to our expectations, pointing had an adverse effect on source memory compared to visual observation only, in both age groups. As expected, superior source memory performance was found for congruent compared to incongruent picture‐locations pairs in both age groups. These findings suggest that pointing toward pictures compared to only viewing may hamper memory, and that congruent picture locations are easier to remember than incongruent ones.