Stress, Self-Regulation and Psychopathology in Middle Childhood

 说明(申请人提供)：青春期早期是发展中的一个关键过渡期，但人们，特别是农村贫困儿童，对儿童早期阶段确立的轨迹如何支持或限制自我调节的发展及其对关键成果的影响知之甚少。因此，我们建议继续跟踪一个以人口为基础、主要是低收入的纵向样本，称为家庭生活项目(N=1292个非裔美国人族裔和贫困的过度抽样)。通过两轮资助收集了广泛的儿童、家庭、家庭和学校数据，作为NICHD项目，消耗了11%。从2岁到8岁的数据收集包括10次家访、5次托儿访问和8次学校访问。在这一后续行动中，我们继续 重点关注儿童自我调节和压力反应生理学，以及在前两个阶段测量的家庭、同伴、学校和邻里环境。数据将在1次家访(7年级)和2次学校访问(6年级和8年级)中收集。我们将检验关于家庭贫困相关逆境的时间性和长期性对从儿童早期到青春期的压力反应生理和自我调节发展的影响的具体假设。最重要的是，我们将测试关于同伴、学校和邻里环境如何增加或降低关键结果风险的假设，包括心理健康、药物使用和学校成绩。这一阶段的主要创新涉及我们测试关键问题的能力，这些问题涉及自我调节发展的可塑性，以及青春期早期对奖励和延迟冒险行为的新兴敏感性的作用。我们假设，压力反应的改变和伴随的自我调节困难将是最严重的，也最有可能导致面临持续高度贫困相关逆境的儿童的不良结果；然而，我们也假设，这种影响将受到同伴关系质量以及学校和社区特征的影响。具体地说，对于面临持续逆境的儿童，更高质量的同伴关系(考虑到自我调节和同伴质量之间潜在的双向关系，包括社会孤立和与越轨同伴的联系)，更高的学校质量水平，更高的邻里质量水平将分别与压力反应能力和自我调节能力的提高相关，从而更高的成就，更少的药物使用，以及更好的心理健康。据我们所知，这是第一次在以人口为基础的样本中，测试逆境、压力反应生理学、自我调节和跨越多个地理和经济定义的社会背景的关键结果之间的复杂纵向关系。通过使用心理生物学模型测试发育的延展性，拟议的研究将对预防工作和促进青年积极发展的努力产生明确的影响。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Early adolescence represents a key transition period in development yet little is known, particularly for children in rural poverty, about the ways in which trajectories established in early childhood support or constrain the development of self-regulation with implications for key outcomes. Accordingly, we propose to continue to follow a population-based predominantly low-income longitudinal sample known as the Family Life Project (N=1292 oversampled for African American ethnicity and poverty). Extensive child, family, home, and school data were collected through two rounds of funding as an NICHD program project with 11% attrition. Data collection beginning at child age 2mos through age 8yrs occurred in 10 home visits, 5 childcare visits, and 8 school visits. In this follow-up, we continue to focus on child self-regulation and stress response physiology, as well as family, peer, school, and neighborhood contexts measured in the first two phases. Data will be collected in 1 home visit (7th grade) and 2 school visits (6th & 8th grades.) We will test specific hypotheses about the influence of the timing and chronicity of poverty-related adversity in families on the development of stress response physiology and self-regulation from early childhood through early adolescence. Most importantly, we will test hypotheses about the ways in which peer, school, and neighborhood contexts increase or decrease risk for key outcomes, including mental health, substance use, and school achievement. Primary innovation in this phase concerns our ability to test key questions about the malleability of self-regulation development and the role of emerging sensitivity to reward and delay in risk taking behavior in early adolescence. We hypothesize that alterations to the stress response and accompanying self-regulation difficulties will be most severe and most likely to lead to poor outcomes for children facing sustained high levels of poverty-related adversity; however, we also hypothesize that this influence will be moderated by the quality of peer relations, as well as school, and community characteristics. Specifically, for children facing sustained adversity, higher quality peer relatios (taking into account potential bidirectional relations between self-regulation and peer quality, including social isolation and affiliation with deviant peers), higher levels of school quality, an higher levels of neighborhood quality will each be associated with improvements in stress responsivity and in self- regulation abilities, and thereby higher achievement, reduced substance use, and better mental health. To our knowledge this is the first study of its kind to test complex longitudinal relations among adversity, stress response physiology, self-regulation, and key outcomes across multiple geographically and economically defined social contexts in a population-based sample. By testing the malleability of development using a psychobiological model, the proposed research will have clear implications for prevention efforts and efforts to promote positive youth development.