The Department of Communication at the University of Arkansas congratulates Lindsey Aloia, assistant professor of communication, on receiving the Sandra Petronio Family Communication Dissertation Excellence Award, which she will accept on Nov. 20 at the National Communication Association's annual conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Aloia's award-winning research drew upon conceptualizations of the physiological stress response system to illuminate factors likely to shape people's reactivity to conflict interactions within romantic relationship. She argued that childhood exposure to intense conflict within the family desensitizes adults to conflict in close relationships. In addition, she linked individual differences in emotional competence and cognitive ability to people's communication during conflict episodes.

Aloia's dissertation was an ambitious study that involved inducing a laboratory-based conflict interaction between college-aged dating partners, collecting physiological data, and coding the intensity of conflict behaviors. By using structural equation modeling to account for dependence in the dyadic data, Aloia was able to assess how family history and individual differences both shaped conflict behaviors and moderated the associations between conflict intensity and stress responses. 

When asked about the award, Aloia thanked her dissertation adviser, Denise Haunani Solomon, for the "consistent care and guidance that contributed to the successful completion of this project" and said that "this award affirms the importance of understanding the causes and consequences of verbal aggression in interpersonal associations."