Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of Extreme Stressors in Adolescence

在青春期经历的极端压力可能会对一个人的发展、健康和生理产生不利影响。个体对压力源的反应变化，除了理解对个体轨迹的影响外，还可以深入了解发育可塑性及其结果。这些压力源对个体施加影响的程度，以及这种影响的持久性，是有争议的。本博士论文研究项目考察了由于被迫流离失所和贫困造成的压力如何影响青春期激素水平的变化，以更好地理解这些压力源的时间和经历如何影响发育、新陈代谢和形成压力反应，从而影响个人如何应对未来的压力源。这项研究的结果提供了减压计划如何帮助青少年在经历不良生活事件时形成弹性反应的视角，并进一步提供了在关键发展时期生活经历的影响的宝贵见解。进化社会科学家认为，早期生活中的逆境可能会加速或抑制青春期的发育，因为存在较高的社会心理压力。从发育的角度来看，睾酮和皮质醇会同步增加，以促进青春期的生殖发育，并预测它们应该在青春期之前分离，在青春期早期呈正相关，然后在成年期变得不那么呈正相关。这项研究探讨了心理社会压力是否会影响青少年达到成人激素水平的平均时间，通过皮质醇和睾丸激素之间关系的时间和性质来衡量。具体来说，这个项目探讨了在经历过极端压力的青少年中，更大的社会心理压力是否与更早的青春期发育有关。通过测量来自先前进行的混合年龄随机对照试验（包括为期8周的社区减压干预计划）的干血斑样本中皮质醇和睾酮的变化，本研究的结果有助于更好地理解极端压力源对青少年发展的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Extreme stress experienced during adolescence may adversely affect a person’s development, health, and physiology. Variation in which individuals respond to stressors can offer insight into developmental plasticity and its outcomes, in addition to understanding impacts on individual trajectories. The degree to which these stressors exert influence among individuals, and the persistence of this influence, is debated. This doctoral dissertation research project examines how stress due to forced displacement and poverty impact variation in hormone levels in adolescence, to better understand how the timing and experience of such stressors impact development, metabolism, and shape the stress response – which impacts how individuals cope with future stressors. The results of this research offer perspective on how stress reduction programs may help shape resilient responses in adolescents experiencing adverse life events, and further offer valuable insight into the impacts of lived experience during a critical developmental period.Evolutionary social scientists suggest early life adversity may accelerate or suppress pubertal development in the presence of high psychosocial stress. A developmental perspective suggests that testosterone and cortisol will increase in tandem to facilitate reproductive development in puberty, and predicts that they should be dissociated prior to puberty, positively associated in early adolescence, and then become less positively associated in adulthood. This study explores whether psychosocial stress impacts the average timing at which adolescents reach adult hormone levels, as measured by the timing and nature of the relationship between cortisol and testosterone. Specifically, this project explores whether greater psychosocial stress is associated with earlier pubertal development among adolescents who have experienced extreme stress. Through the measurement of variation in cortisol and testosterone in archived dried blood spot samples from a previously conducted mixed-age randomized control trial that included an 8-week community-based stress-reduction intervention program, the results of this research contribute to a better understanding of the consequences of extreme stressors on adolescent development.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.