Socialization in the Family and Child Development: Emotionality, Regulation, and Sleep as Pathways and Moderators of Outcomes

家庭和儿童发展中的社会化：情绪、调节和睡眠作为结果的途径和调节因素

• 批准号: 0339115
• 负责人: Mona El-Sheikh
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: Auburn University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-08-01 至 2007-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0339115&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Socialization; Family; Child; Development; Emotionality

Forty percent of children in the U.S. live in homes characterized by high levels of marital conflict. And when parents fight, children suffer. Children who live in high conflict homes are more likely to experience depression, behavior problems, ill health, and academic difficulties. The damage is not uniform, however; some children survive high conflict families nearly unscathed, whereas other sustain substantial harm. How marital conflict exacts such a devastating toll on most children and why some children are able to defy the odds and function well despite stressful home environments are questions for which there are no answers. Yet, answers to these questions are needed to develop strategies to protect vulnerable children. This project examines physiological processes as mechanisms that explain the effects of marital conflict on children, and also as factors that put children at greater risk, or convey protection, in highly stressful homes, depending on children's autonomic reactivity. We propose that marital conflict induces physiological arousal, and that for some children, particularly for highly reactive children, this arousal is sufficiently intense and long lasting to disrupt sleep and interfere with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development. Less autonomically reactive children, and children who can recover, or calm their arousal, quickly, may be more immune to the negative effects of parental conflict. Children's reactivity and recovery in response to staged family conflict scenes are assessed with several measures of autonomic activity, including skin conductance and vagal tone. Vagal tone is an index of heart rate variability that reflects the intensity of physiological reaction and the time needed calm after arousal. Children's sleep is assessed with actigraph, a watch-like devise that children wear to bed and that records sleep quantity and quality. In high conflict homes, highly reactive children are expected to have more disturbed sleep, more behavior problems, more depression, and poorer academic performance in high conflict homes than do less reactive children. On the other hand, high reactivity may confer protection for children living in low conflict homes. Knowing which children are at risk because of high reactivity and stressful environments will help educators develop programs that help these children cope more effectively.

美国百分之四十的儿童生活在婚姻冲突严重的家庭中。当父母吵架时，孩子也会受苦。生活在冲突频繁的家庭中的儿童更有可能出现抑郁、行为问题、健康状况不佳和学业困难。然而，损害并不均匀；一些儿童在冲突严重的家庭中几乎毫发无伤地幸存下来，而另一些儿童则遭受了严重伤害。婚姻冲突如何给大多数孩子造成如此毁灭性的伤害，以及为什么有些孩子能够克服困难并在家庭环境压力大的情况下表现良好，这些问题都没有答案。然而，需要回答这些问题来制定保护弱势儿童的战略。该项目将生理过程视为解释婚姻冲突对儿童影响的机制，同时也将其视为在高压家庭中使儿童面临更大风险或提供保护的因素，具体取决于儿童的自主反应。我们认为，婚姻冲突会引起生理唤醒，而对于一些儿童，特别是反应性较高的儿童，这种唤醒足够强烈且持久，足以扰乱睡眠并干扰情绪、行为和认知发展。自主神经反应较少的儿童，以及能够迅速恢复或平息兴奋的儿童，可能更容易受到父母冲突的负面影响。儿童对上演的家庭冲突场景的反应和恢复是通过多种自主活动指标来评估的，包括皮肤电导和迷走神经张力。迷走神经张力是心率变异性的指标，反映生理反应的强度和觉醒后平静所需的时间。儿童的睡眠是通过活动记录仪进行评估的，这是一种类似手表的设备，孩子们在睡觉时佩戴它来记录睡眠数量和质量。在高冲突家庭中，高反应性儿童与低反应性儿童相比，预计会出现更多睡眠障碍、更多行为问题、更多抑郁症和更差的学习成绩。另一方面，高反应性可能为生活在低冲突家庭中的儿童提供保护。了解哪些儿童因高反应性和压力环境而面临风险，将有助于教育工作者制定帮助这些儿童更有效应对的计划。