The Interpersonal Dynamics of Violence Exposure and Adolescents' Autonomic Regulation

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Project Summary In a given year, over 60% of adolescents in the U.S. directly experience interpersonal violence or witness family or community violence. Although exposure to interpersonal violence increases adolescents’ risk for numerous psychosocial difficulties, not all adolescents develop problems. Physiological stress regulation is a critical factor underlying the vulnerability of violence-exposed youth. A growing body of evidence links interpersonal violence exposure to aberrant patterns of arousal and regulation in parasympathetic (PNS) and sympathetic (SNS) activity, particularly to social challenges. It is believed that the dynamics of interpersonal violence (betrayal, stigmatization, powerlessness) render youth more likely to perceive interpersonal stressors as threatening and mobilize threat-related ANS stress responses. Unfortunately, research evaluating these claims is limited in important ways, leaving significant knowledge gaps regarding (1) how violence-exposed adolescents regulate autonomic responses in age-normative interactions that pull for interpersonal violence dynamics and (2) whether adolescents’ autonomic responses in these contexts are related to psychosocial functioning across domains (e.g., mental health, interpersonal functioning, health risk behavior). The proposed project adds to a recently awarded NIH grant that will validate a developmentally sensitive assessment of these violence dynamics using virtual reality (VR) technology (HD092956). Specifically, this project will add assessments of autonomic regulation (heart rate variability and cardiac pre-ejection period) to the VR assessment to examine associations between adolescents’ violence exposure, ANS regulation during the VR assessment, and adolescent adjustment across various domains (mental health, interpersonal functioning, and health risk behavior). We will also explore potential moderators of these associations, including gender and parenting, as well as individual differences in the synchrony of PNS and SNS regulation. Findings will advance knowledge of how adolescents regulate stress during age-normative interpersonal challenges and inform the development of larger prospective studies that can examine longitudinal relations between violence exposure, stress regulation in real world contexts, and adolescent adjustment. Since the VR assessment is highly portable, it can be disseminated broadly to researchers to further advance theory and research on the cascading effects of violence exposure on stress regulation and adjustment. In addition, our paradigm could be incorporated into clinical research on trauma-informed interventions targeting stress regulation and violence dynamics or provide a platform for new interventions for improving stress regulation and enhancing competencies through the rehearsal of triggering or age-salient challenging interactions.