Children Living in Rural Poverty: Phase 3 of the Family Life Project

童年中期是一个关键的过渡期，在此之前， 儿童早期和青春期的个性化过程。然而，人们对此知之甚少，特别是对儿童 关于在农村环境中生活在贫困中的具体发展轨迹在 婴儿期和儿童期早期支持或限制成功驾驭这一过程所需的自我调节能力 生命过程中的一个阶段。家庭生活项目的主要贡献是解决如何体验 童年中期的发展有助于促进发展的连续性而不是间断性，两者都增加了 这不仅是为了提高能力，也是为了促进积极发展。在中途 在童年时期，儿童面临着重大的新挑战，在与以下方面的选择上变得越来越自我指导 活动、友谊和学校，对自律的要求越来越高。这可能尤其适用于 在低收入农村社区长大的儿童；然而，人们对儿童的经历知之甚少 在这些背景下的儿童。 以解决儿童中期发展中的紧迫问题。FLP项目一继续将重点放在 测量自我调节的关键方面，包括执行功能(EF)、情绪调节(ER) 以及儿童时期的应激反应生理学，包括唾液皮质醇和唾液α淀粉酶(SAA) 此外，我们还检查了青春期的时机、情绪性活动、种族和性别，作为潜在的 高度显著的儿童特征，这将是理解逆境、自律、 和心理健康结果。 对我们在该项目第三阶段的调查至关重要的是关于农村背景如何 儿童正在发展的疾病可能会加剧或在某些情况下转移与种族相关的风险， 贫困和儿童特征。我们尤其感兴趣的是， 在地理上更孤立的地区，高度的社会和经济分层可能会限制变化 贫困率高、失业率高、社会资本低的社区。因此，我们 继续关注仔细和全面的自我监管措施，并通过 明确的目的是了解自律困难在多大程度上可能在 家庭面临高水平的与贫困相关的逆境，更有可能导致不利的结果 规模更小、等级更高的农村社区。为了与儿童x环境观点保持一致 在FLP组织发展研究，我们感兴趣的是儿童的自我调节能力 与环境对他们的行为、行为和选择施加的约束和负担进行交互 他们日常生活的特点，包括教室、同龄人群体、社区和社区的特点。 我们这一阶段研究的主要创新领域包括：1)自我调节的纵向测量 在很少进行这类研究的发展科学领域的能力；2) 儿童应激生理的详细检查，包括交感神经的反应性和调节(SAA) 以及HPA(皮质醇)系统对中等应激源的反应。其他创新领域包括3) 对与贫困相关的逆境进行纵向建模，以检验衡量压力的模型 生理(皮质醇和SaA)和自我调节(EF、ER、奖赏敏感度)调节家庭效应 逆境和贫穷对儿童结果的时间和持续时间；以及4)农村环境 降低儿童心理健康结果预测中与自我调节困难相关的风险。我们 建议测试一个模型，通过该模型，儿童早期和中期的不良经历与 以假设限制自我调节发展的方式来强调生理的变化， 从而增加了出现外化和内化精神病的可能性。关键的是，使用 分层线性建模，我们建议检查跨级别的交互，在其中我们测试我们的密钥 关于农村环境特征的假设，包括课堂、同伴、 社区和社区特征会增加与以下因素相关的不良心理健康结果的风险 自律困难。据我们所知，这是第一次对这些复杂的纵向测试进行此类研究 跨地域和跨地域的逆境、自我调节和心理健康结果之间的关系 以人口为基础的样本中经济定义的社会背景。

Middle childhood represents a key transition period following the rapid changes of emerging autonomy in early childhood and processes of individuation during adolescence. Yet little is known, particularly for children living in poverty in rural contexts, about the ways in which specific developmental trajectories established in infancy and early childhood support or constrain self-regulation abilities required to successfully navigate this period of the life course. The overarching contribution of the Family Life Project is to address how experiences of middle childhood serve to promote continuity versus discontinuity in development, both to increase risk for adverse outcomes as well as to enhance capabilities and to promote positive development. During middle childhood, children face significant new challenges and become increasingly self-directed in choices relating to activities, friendships, and school, with increasing demands on self-regulation. This may be particularly so for children growing up in low income, rural communities; however, very little is known about the experience of children in these contexts. To address pressing issues in development in middle childhood. Project I of the FLP continues to focus on the measurement of key aspects of self-regulation including executive functions (EF), emotion regulation (ER) as well as stress response physiology including salivary Cortisol and salivary alpha amylase (sAA) as children develop Also, we examine pubertal timing, temperamental emotional activity, race, and gender, as potentially highly salient child level characteristics that will be central to understanding associations among adversity, self-regulation, and mental health outcomes. Critical to our enquiry in this third phase of the project are questions about the ways that rural contexts in which children are developing might accentuate or perhaps in some cases deflect risk associated with race, poverty, and child characteristics. In particular, we are interested in the extent to which opportunities for change may be limited by high levels of social and economic stratification in more geographically isolated communities characterized by high rates of poverty, unemployment, and low social capital. As such, we continue to focus on the careful and comprehensive measurement of self-regulation and do so with the express purpose of understanding the extent to which self-regulation difficulties may be more frequent in families facing high levels of poverty-related adversity and more likely to lead to disadvantageous outcomes in smaller, more highly stratified rural communities. In keeping with the child x environment perspective that organizes the study of development in the FLP, we are interested in how children's self-regulation capacities interact with the constraints and affordances imposed on their actions, behaviors, and choices by the contexts of their daily lives, including characteristics of classrooms, peer groups, neighborhoods, and communities. Major areas of innovation in this phase of our research include 1) the longitudinal measurement of self-regulation abilities in an area of developmental science in which few such studies have been conducted and 2) the detailed examination of child stress physiology, including reactivity and regulation of the sympathetic (sAA) as well as HPA (Cortisol) systems in response to a moderate stressor. Additional areas of innovation include 3) the modeling of poverty-related adversity longitudinally to test a model whereby measures of stress physiology(cortisol and sAA) and self-regulation (EF, ER, sensitivity to reward) mediate effects of family adversity and the timing and duration of poverty on child outcomes; and 4) the ways in which rural context moderates risk associated with self-regulation difficulties in the prediction of child mental health outcomes. We propose to test a model by which adverse experiences in early and middle childhood are associated with alterations to stress physiology in ways that are hypothesized to constrain the development of self-regulation, thereby increasing the likelihood of emerging externalizing and internalizing psychopathology. Critically, using hierarchical linear modeling, we propose to examine cross level interactions in which we test our key hypotheses concerning the extent to which characteristics of rural contexts, including classroom, peer, neighborhood, and community characteristics increase risk for poor mental health outcomes associated with self-regulation difficulties. To our knowledge this is the first study of its kind to test these complex longitudinal relations between adversity, self-regulation, and mental health outcomes across multiple geographically and economically defined social contexts in a population-based sample.