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Electronic communication technology (ECT), such as mobile phones and online communication tools, is widely used by adolescents; however, the availability of such tools may have both positive and negative impacts within the context of romantic relationships. While an established literature has documented the nature, prevalence, and impact of traditional forms of adolescent dating violence and abuse (ADVA), limited empirical investigation has focused on the role of ECT in ADVA or what shall be termed technology-assisted adolescent dating violence and abuse (TAADVA) and how adolescents perceive the impact of TAADVA relative to ADVA. In this article, the authors explore the role ECT plays in adolescent romantic relationships and psychologically abusive and controlling ADVA behaviors and its perceived impact. An opportunity sample of 52 adolescents (22 males and 30 females) between the ages of 12 and 18 years participated in the study. One all-female and seven mixed-gendered semi-structured focus groups were conducted. Thematic analysis was used to identify three superordinate themes, including (a) perceived healthy versus unhealthy communication, (b) perceived monitoring and controlling communication, and (c) perceived impact of technology-assisted abuse compared with that in person. While ECTs had a positive impact on the development and maintenance of adolescent romantic relationships, such tools also provided a new avenue for unhealthy, harassment, monitoring, and controlling behaviors within these relationships. ECT was also perceived to provide unique impacts in terms of making TAADVA seem both less harmful and more harmful than ADVA experienced in person. Adolescents’ perceptions and experiences of ECT in romantic relationships and TAADVA may also vary be gender. Implications of the findings are discussed, and recommendations are made for future research.

No abstract

the emotional Stroop task has been used to assess deviant sexual interests of sexual abusers. two limitations noted in the literature are difficulties surrounding the choice of word stimuli and the task's inability to elicit significant differences between offender subtypes thus far. the purpose of this study was to examine differences in emotional Stroop bias between three adult groups using new, empirically derived word stimuli intended to reflect sexual interests more specific to sexual abusers. Significant differences were found between sexual abusers and nonoffending controls for affective and sexual word stimuli. the results further support differential processing biases between sexual offenders and nonoffenders; however, difficulties in differentiating between offender groups are still evident. Implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are made.

Adolescent sexual abusers are a heterogeneous group of offenders that often receive generic assessment and treatment services that are modeled on research findings from adult sex offender samples. The emotional Stroop task has been used to measure deviant sexual interest in adult samples. The purpose of the present study was to test whether the emotional Stroop task could also be used to assess deviant sexual interest in adolescent samples. Three groups of adolescents (a) sexual abusers (n = 24); (b) offending controls (n = 21); and (c) nonoffending controls (n = 21) completed two emotional Stroop tasks related to deviant sexual interest and tests of executive function. Adolescent sexual abusers were significantly slower to color-name some word stimuli than both adolescent offending controls and adolescent nonoffending controls. However, the task was unable to differentiate between the groups on most of the Stroop word categories. Very little research has been conducted with adolescent offender samples and the emotional Stroop task. Reaction time (RT) and Stroop bias outcome data for adolescent samples appear to be more unsystematic and weaker than has been observed in previous adult data. Based on potential difficulties with reading and development, the emotional Stroop task may not be a task suitable for measuring deviant sexual interest in adolescent samples.