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

美国40%的儿童生活在婚姻冲突严重的家庭中。当父母吵架时，孩子们会遭殃。生活在高度冲突家庭的儿童更有可能经历抑郁、行为问题、健康不佳和学习困难。然而，损害并不是一致的；一些儿童在高度冲突的家庭中几乎毫发未伤地存活下来，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带来如此毁灭性的损失，以及为什么一些孩子能够在压力很大的家庭环境下顶住困难并正常运作，这些都是没有答案的问题。然而，需要对这些问题的答案来制定保护弱势儿童的战略。这个项目考察了生理过程作为解释婚姻冲突对儿童影响的机制，以及根据儿童的自主神经反应，在压力很大的家庭中将儿童置于更大的风险中或提供保护的因素。我们认为，婚姻冲突会引起生理唤醒，对于一些儿童，特别是对高反应性的儿童，这种唤醒足够强烈和持久，足以扰乱睡眠，干扰情绪、行为和认知的发展。自主反应性较差的儿童，以及能够迅速恢复或平静觉醒的儿童，可能对父母冲突的负面影响更有免疫力。儿童对上演的家庭冲突场面的反应和恢复能力通过几项自主活动指标进行评估，包括皮肤电导和迷走神经紧张度。迷走神经张力是心率变异性的一个指数，它反映了生理反应的强度和觉醒后所需的平静时间。儿童的睡眠由Actigraph评估，这是一种儿童睡觉时佩戴的类似手表的装置，它记录了睡眠的数量和质量。在高冲突家庭中，高反应性儿童的睡眠受到更多干扰，更多的行为问题，更多的抑郁，以及在高冲突家庭中较差的学习表现。另一方面，高反应性可能会为生活在冲突较少家庭的儿童提供保护。了解哪些儿童由于高反应性和紧张的环境而处于危险之中，将有助于教育工作者制定计划，帮助这些儿童更有效地应对。

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.