Research and News from the Center for Families at Purdue University

August 7, 2023

Intimate Partner Violence and Inflammaging: Conflict Tactics Predict Inflammation Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults

Rosie Shrout

In long-term relationships, conflict is inevitable, but physical and psychological aggression is not. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a known risk factor for age-related disease onset, and inflammation likely links the two. This study explores relationships between frequency of constructive...

August 7, 2023

Goldilocks and the home mathematics environment: Parents’ rate activities‘too easy,’‘just right,’or‘too hard’ across early development

David Purpura

Research focusing on the home mathematics environment has shown mixed results across age groups. Using data from a large online survey, we explored parents' perceptions of the age appropriateness of home mathematics activities for their children

August 4, 2023

Don’t Take a Workcation! A plea for a healthier kind of travel.

Ellen Ernst Kossek

Around 80 percent of remote workers are more open to workcations than they were two years ago, a Marriott survey of 2,000 of them found, with a similar percentage identifying it as a promising way to extend a trip. A...

August 1, 2023

Palliative care needs and preferences of older adults with advanced or serious chronic illnesses and their families in rural communities of Indiana, USA

Nasreen Lalani

Rural family caregivers experience several social inequities and disparities causing a lack of access to and low utilization of palliative care. All these disparities cause several challenges for patients and their families trying to manage serious illnesses and die in...

July 31, 2023

MFRI: Registration open for Battlemind to Home Summit

Battlemind is one of the most engaging conferences in the state, designed especially for those who work with service members, veterans and their families, bringing together subject matter experts to educate Indiana professionals about the critical issues facing our military and...

July 28, 2023

‘I’m a soldier first’: Senior, Black female vets share experience in U.S. Military

Being a soldier runs deep in Aletha Calloway’s family. Her mother, father and two uncles were all in the U.S. Military. Growing up, she recalls many times when her family sat in their Washington D.C. kitchen, talking about their service....

July 27, 2023

Neurofluid coupling during sleep and wake states

A.J. Schwichtenberg

In clinical populations, the movement of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) during sleep is a growing area of research with potential mechanistic connections in both neurodegenerative (e.g., Alzheimer's Disease) and neurodevelopmental disorders. However, we know relatively little about the processes that influence...

July 21, 2023

Globalization, Diet and Child Health in Three Latin American Indigenous Populations

Amanda Veile

This chapter provides an introduction to the nutrition transition and its effects on diet, growth, and health of very rural Latin American indigenous infants and children. Case studies are drawn from fieldwork in communities of Tsimane forager-farmers in the Bolivian...

July 18, 2023

Conceptual Considerations and Methodological Challenges to Measuring Food Acceptance During Infancy

Kameron Moding

Infant food acceptance includes separate but overlapping components: wanting, liking, and consumption. Recent evidence suggests that although these components are often correlated, there is variability in the sensitivity of these measures to detect differences in infants’ responses to target foods.

July 17, 2023

Verb vocabularies are shaped by complex meanings from the onset of development

Arielle Borovsky

Verbs and nouns vary in many ways – including in how they are used in language and in the timing of their early learning. We compare the distribution of semantic features that comprise early-acquired verb and noun meanings. Given overall...