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育，健康和生理产生不利影响。个体对压力源的反应变化可以提供对发育可塑性及其结果的洞察，以及对个体轨迹的影响。在何种程度上，这些压力施加个人之间的影响，这种影响的持久性，是有争议的。这个博士论文研究项目探讨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，以更好地了解这种压力源的时间和经历如何影响发育，新陈代谢和塑造压力反应-这会影响个人如何科普未来的压力源。这项研究的结果提供了关于减压计划如何帮助青少年经历不良生活事件塑造弹性反应的观点，并进一步提供了宝贵的见解，生活经验的影响，在一个关键的developments.Evolutionary社会科学家认为，早期生活逆境可能会加速或抑制青春期的发展，在高心理社会压力的存在。发展的观点认为，睾酮和皮质醇将增加串联，以促进青春期的生殖发育，并预测他们应该在青春期前分离，在青春期早期呈正相关，然后在成年后变得不那么积极相关。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，这是通过皮质醇和睾酮之间关系的时间和性质来衡量的。具体来说，这个项目探讨是否更大的心理社会压力与经历过极端压力的青少年的青春期发育提前。通过测量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）中存档的干血斑样本中皮质醇和睾酮的变化，这项研究的结果有助于更好地理解极端压力对青少年发展的后果。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过以下方式获得支持：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。

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.