Adversity and Regulation in Preschool Children: Impact on Psychosocial Adjustment

描述(由申请人提供)：自我调节是儿童在学龄前和早期发展的核心发展技能之一，它构成了儿童处理具有挑战性的情景的能力的基础，从而成功地适应了社会、行为和心理领域。自我调节在多个层面上的考察包括生理、情绪和行为领域的调查。鉴于放松管制和解体对儿童障碍的发展和维持至关重要，努力查明监管系统之间的一致性模式对于产生积极适应至关重要。此外，早期环境和照顾关系的缺陷对自我调节系统的发展和随后的调整产生了强大的影响。这项研究项目采用过程水平的方法，通过评估儿童在应激任务中的生理、情绪和行为调节，以及他们同时和预期的适应，以及相关的风险和保护因素，来检验自我调节发展的个体间和个体内的差异。本研究以250名来自不同种族背景和风险背景的学龄前儿童为样本，纵向跟踪，采用多种方法和信息者来评估这些能力及其在时间点内和跨时间点的交易关系。这项研究的新颖之处在于，它侧重于跨多个分析层次的监管系统的整合，并检查了环境风险和关系风险对适应和调整模式的影响。这项调查将为发展科学和背景敏感干预措施的设计和实施提供重要的知识。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): As one of the core developmental skills that develop in preschool and early childhood, self regulation forms the basis of a child's ability to manage challenging situations, and hence successfully adapt in social, behavioral, and psychological domains. Examination of self regulation on multiple levels includes investigation of physiological, emotional, and behavioral domains. Given the central importance of deregulations and disintegration for the development and maintenance of childhood disorders, efforts to identify patterns of coherence among regulatory systems are critical to engendering positive adaptation. In addition, deficits in early environments and care-giving relationships exert a powerful influence on the development of self regulatory systems and subsequent adjustment. This program of research adopts a process-level approach to examining inter- and intra- individual differences in the development of self regulation by assessing physiological, emotional, and behavioral regulation in children during stressful tasks, as well as their concurrent and prospective adaptation, and relevant risk and protective factors. Drawing on a sample of 250 preschool children from diverse ethnic backgrounds and risk contexts, followed longitudinally, this research will employ multiple methods and informants to assess these capacities and their transactional relations within and across time points. This research is novel in its focus on the integration of regulatory systems across multiple levels of analysis, and in its examination of the influences of both environmental and relational risks on patterns of adaptation and adjustment. This investigation will yield important knowledge for developmental science and for the design and implementation of context sensitive interventions.