ANTISOCIAL CHILDREN: MARITAL & PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESSES

本研究将检验基于家庭的儿童反社会行为连续性情绪调节模型。在一项研究中，将系统地应用对婚姻、亲子和儿童同伴系统的观察性评估，以及对交感和副交感神经系统活动的生理评估，以检查与反社会行为的稳定性和变化相关的人际和个人内部风险因素。之前招募的130个有学龄前儿童（4-5岁）的家庭样本将在9岁和10岁时再次出现。另外还将增加95个家庭，分别对5岁、9岁和10岁的孩子进行评估。夫妻身体攻击、父母个体情绪调节能力、父母技能缺陷、父母元情绪哲学、儿童冲突敏感性和儿童生理调节能力将被提出作为理论检验的构式。一个高警惕性模型，其中暴露于身体的婚姻侵犯可能与对威胁的高警惕性有关，并阐明了联系的机制。一个竞争性模型，一个习惯模型，其中婚姻中的身体攻击与威胁的习惯相关联，也进行了测试。本研究还试图：(1)研究行为问题儿童在儿童期早期到中期生理功能的发展变化；(2)家庭情绪调节模型的性别差异检验。

The present proposal will test a family-based emotion regulation model of continuity in childhood antisocial behavior from preschool to middle childhood. Observational assessments of marital, parent-child and child-peer systems and physiological assessments of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity will be systematically applied in one study to examine interpersonal and intrapersonal risk factors that are associated with stability and change in antisocial behavior. A previously recruited sample of 130 families with preschool aged children (4-5 years old) will be seen again at ages 9 and 10. A new cohort of 95 families will also be added, with assessments at age 5, 9 and 10. Physical marital aggression, individual parental emotion regulation abilities, parenting skill deficits, parental meta-emotion philosophy, children's sensitivity to conflict, and children's physiological regulatory ability will be proposed as constructs in theory testing. A hypervigilance model in which exposure to physical marital aggression may be associated with hypervigilance to threat is tested and mechanisms of linkage are articulated. A competing model, a habituation model in which physical marital aggression is associated with habituation to threat, is also tested. The present proposal also seeks to: (1) examine developmental changes in physiological functioning in conduct-problem children across the developmental period from early to middle childhood; and (2) test for gender differences in the family-based emotion regulation model.