Early psychosocial deprivation and risk taking among adolescents in Romania

罗马尼亚青少年的早期社会心理剥夺和冒险行为

• 批准号: 8242526
• 负责人: Catalina Kopetz
• 金额: $ 21.21万
• 依托单位: UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-05-01 至 2014-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8242526
• 关键词: 8 year old; Address; Adolescence; Adolescent; Age; Alcohol or Other Drugs use; Attention; Behavior; Birth; Caring; Child; Child Abuse and Neglect; Clinical Trials; Cognitive; Collaborations; Development; Drug Addiction; Early treatment; Emotional; Ethics; Exhibits; Experimental Models; Family; Goals; Guide prevention; Health; Human; Individual; Individual Differences; Infant; Institution; Institutionalization; Institutionalized Child; International; Intervention; Investigation; Knowledge; Left; Link; Mediating; National Institute of Drug Abuse; Nature; Participant; Patient Self-Report; Poverty; Prevention; Preventive Intervention; Process; Psychosocial Deprivation; Randomized; Randomized Clinical Trials; Research; Rewards; Risk; Risk Behaviors; Risk Factors; Risk-Taking; Role; Romania; Sampling; Single-Parent Family; Staging; behavior measurement; demographics; early adolescence; early experience; experience; foster care; high risk; innovation; insight; preference; programs; psychosocial; relating to nervous system; research study; skills; therapy development

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adolescence is a developmental period associated with a dramatic increase in risky behaviors including substance use and other potentially health-compromising behaviors. Extensive research has been conducted to identify the factors that may heighten the vulnerability for engagement in risk behaviors among adolescents. Among such factors, early adversity and its developmental effects across neural, socio-cognitive, and emotional domains has been often linked to heightened vulnerability for delinquent behaviors and risk taking. Although the relationship between psychosocial adversities and engagement in risk taking behavior has been well established, ethical and practical concerns have limited our ability to conduct experimental research that would allow a direct investigation of the causal role of psychosocial adversities on risk taking. As such, our knowledge about the nature of this relationship and the mechanisms underlying it remains limited. In line with the goals of this international collaboration application, the present study aims to address these limitations and assess the impact of early psychosocial adversities on adolescent risk taking, as well as to explore the mediating role of disinhibitory processes assessed through a behavioral measure. To this aim, we will use a unique sample of adolescents in Romania who, over the past 10 years, participated in a randomized clinical trial of a foster care/family intervention and who are now entering early adolescence. In this clinical trial, infants abandoned since birth and raised in institutions in Bucharest, Romania were randomly assigned either to be removed from the institution and placed into a family/foster care intervention or to be left in the institutions to care as usual. These children were subsequently followed through 8 years of age such that the sample has been well characterized with regard to multiple domains of psychosocial functioning. Given the uniqueness of the sample as well as the innovative assessment approach, the current study represents a unique opportunity to understand how early psychosocial deprivation may impact disinhibitory processes as risk taking vulnerability which may in turn heighten the likelihood of engagement in risky behaviors in adolescence. This is particularly relevant as prevention and intervention efforts move toward idiographic strategies that attempt to identify deficits and provide relevant skill development for such deficits. Thus, the ability to identify the processes underlying deficits and vulnerabilities is crucial for prevention and intervention development targeting those most at risk. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Empirical support for the impact of early adversity on risk-taking behavior among adolescents as well as for the mediating role of disinhibitory processes will accelerate our understanding of the risk factors that may be responsible for the dramatic increase in risky behaviors, including substance use and other potentially health- compromising behaviors, associated with this developmental period. Empirical evidence emerging from this study may guide prevention efforts targeting specific vulnerabilities associated with early adversity prior to the escalation of risky behaviors in later adolescence.

描述（由申请人提供）：青春期是一个与危险行为（包括物质使用和其他潜在危害健康的行为）急剧增加相关的发育时期。已经进行了广泛的研究，以确定可能增加青少年参与危险行为的脆弱性的因素。在这些因素中，早期的逆境及其在神经、社会认知和情感领域的发展影响通常与犯罪行为和冒险行为的脆弱性增加有关。尽管社会心理逆境与冒险行为之间的关系已经得到了很好的确立，但伦理和实际问题限制了我们进行实验研究的能力，这些实验研究可以直接调查社会心理逆境对冒险行为的因果作用。因此，我们对这种关系的本质及其背后机制的了解仍然有限。根据这项国际合作申请的目标，本研究旨在解决这些局限性，评估早期社会心理逆境对青少年冒险行为的影响，并探索通过行为测量评估的去抑制过程的中介作用。为此，我们将使用一组独特的罗马尼亚青少年样本，他们在过去10年里参加了寄养/家庭干预的随机临床试验，现在正进入青春期早期。在这项临床试验中，在罗马尼亚布加勒斯特的机构中被遗弃并抚养的婴儿被随机分配，要么从机构中移出并安置到家庭/寄养干预中，要么像往常一样留在机构中照顾。这些儿童随后被跟踪到8岁，这样样本在心理社会功能的多个领域都有很好的特征。鉴于样本的独特性以及创新的评估方法，目前的研究提供了一个独特的机会，可以了解早期社会心理剥夺如何影响作为冒险脆弱性的去抑制过程，这反过来可能会增加青少年参与危险行为的可能性。这是特别相关的，因为预防和干预努力转向具体的策略，试图识别缺陷，并为这些缺陷提供相关的技能发展。因此，识别缺陷和脆弱性背后的过程的能力对于针对风险最大的人群制定预防和干预措施至关重要。