Collaborative Research: Disentangling the effects of extrinsic mortality risk and energy availability on adolescent maturation

众所周知，环境和社会因素都会影响青春期成熟的时间。然而，人们对这些因素如何相互作用、如何随社会经济地位而变化以及如何因男孩和女孩而异知之甚少。目前项目的目的是解开营养和疾病的影响，从几个未充分研究的因素对青春期的时间在青少年发展的背景下，提出了广泛的社会和环境挑战。该项目将研究青春期作为一系列身体，荷尔蒙和行为变化，以便更好地评估影响男孩和女孩成熟的因素。该研究将解决与独特的人类生长和发展模式的演变有关的理论问题。从这项工作中获得的见解也可以为与青春期有关的公共卫生干预提供信息。该项目将培训来自代表性不足的少数民族的本科生和研究生，并将加强研究合作和基础设施。理论和证据表明，个人往往会加速发展，以应对外在死亡风险的线索，并减缓发展，以应对疾病或能源供应不足。该项目将研究能量可用性和外在死亡率对青春期时间的影响，通过纵向量化不同样本的青年面临各种不同的社会和环境压力的大小，克里思和成熟速度的差异。它将在男孩和女孩身上采用一套全面的措施，包括男性发展的新措施（例如，音调），以及常规测量，例如初潮年龄、躯体生长、激素水平和自我报告的坦纳阶段。研究将在两个地点进行，关键措施有很大的差异，以促进得出可靠的结论。统计模型将被用来划分青春期的措施，由于不同的社会和环境因素的影响的变化，并评估青春期的时间测量是否与青少年的生殖，教育和生命历程的愿望。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Both environmental and social factors are known to affect the timing of maturation at adolescence. Yet little is known about how these factors interact, vary with socioeconomic status, and differ for boys and girls. The aim of the current project is to disentangle the effects of nutrition and disease from several understudied factors on the timing of puberty in adolescents developing within contexts that present a wide range of social and environmental challenges. The project will study puberty as a set of physical, hormonal, and behavioral changes, allowing for a better assessment of factors affecting maturation in boys and girls. The research will address theoretical questions related to the evolution of the unique human pattern of growth and development. Insights from this work may also inform public health interventions related to adolescence. The project will train undergraduate and graduate students from under-represented minorities and will enhance research collaborations and infrastructures.Theory and evidence suggest that individuals often accelerate development in response to cues of extrinsic mortality risk and decelerate development in response to disease or low energy availability. This project will examine the individual and combined effects of energy availability and cues of extrinsic mortality on the timing of puberty by longitudinally quantifying differences in the magnitude, tempo, and velocity of maturation across a diverse sample of youth facing a variety of different social and environmental stressors. It will employ a comprehensive set of measures in both boys and girls, including novel measures of male development (e.g., voice pitch), and conventional measures such as age at menarche, somatic growth, hormone levels, and self-reported Tanner stages. Research will be carried out in two locations with a wide range of variation in key measures to facilitate robust findings. Statistical models will be used to partition variation in measures of puberty into effects due to different social and environmental factors, and to assess whether measuring of the timing of puberty are associated with adolescents’ reproductive, educational, and life-course aspirations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.