From childhood abuse and lack of social support to intimate partner violence: The mediating role of impulsivity and attentional functioning.

BACKGROUND

Childhood maltreatment and limited social support are established risk factors for intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW), yet the self-regulatory mechanisms linking them to perpetration remain unclear. We tested whether impulsivity and sustained attention mediate the associations between childhood abuse, perceived social support, and IPVAW perpetration and recidivism.

METHODS

211 convicted male perpetrators (M = 40.7 years) completed validated self-report and performance measures: Revised Conflict Tactics Scales-Parent-Child (childhood physical/psychological abuse), Functional Social Support Questionnaire, Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (current psychological, physical, sexual aggression, injury), Spousal Assault Risk Assessment, Plutchik Impulsivity Scale, and Conners CPT-3 (attention variability). Simple mediation models were estimated with PROCESS (10,000 bootstrap resamples), controlling for sociodemographic variables. To address multiple testing, we adjusted using Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate (BH-FDR).

RESULTS

Childhood physical and psychological abuse were positively associated with adult physical aggression and with recidivism risk toward others. Across outcomes, impulsivity showed robust indirect effects (β_indirect = .035-.078; q < .05) and consistent with full mediation. Lower perceived social support predicted higher partner-directed recidivism risk; the indirect effect via attentional variability was nominally significant (β_indirect = -.244, 95% CI excludes 0) but did not survive BH-FDR correction (q = .078) and is therefore considered exploratory. Models explained 5-13% of outcome variance.

CONCLUSIONS

Impulsivity represents a key cognitive control pathway linking childhood maltreatment to IPVAW-related outcomes in convicted perpetrators, supporting intervention targets focused on self-regulatory control. Attention-related mechanisms may contribute to the association between social support and recidivism risk, but this pathway requires confirmatory replication.