Adolescent responses to varying environments in virtual reality simulations

项目摘要 虽然童年和青春期的逆境暴露是随后身体健康的重要预测因素， 和心理健康，对青少年如何应对压力和不利环境的了解还不够 以及它们是如何“深入皮肤”影响健康和发育的。邻里关系是如此重要 青少年环境，因为邻里的不利因素与早期出现的健康差异有关 这可能为长期积累不良健康和发展奠定基础。那里 社区可以通过许多重要的途径影响整个生命过程中的健康， 行为和具有挑战性的物理，社会和服务环境。感觉邻里关系紧张 可能是一种这样的机制，通过这种机制，邻里环境“深入皮肤”来影响健康。 邻里环境可能对压力相关过程有急性影响，但也可能有 由于反复暴露的慢性累积效应和适应的长期代价而造成的寿命影响 恶劣的邻里环境。这种适应可以采取习惯化或敏感化的形式 与邻里相关的压力源。然而，评估邻里对压力的影响， 情感在方法论上具有挑战性。没有标准化的邻里接触， 用于确定暴露于社区特征可以引起压力和情绪的差异。 此外，虽然移动的技术的进步，以衡量功能的背景是重要的，在这些 研究暴露不能标准化和控制，测试慢性压力假设将需要 纵向测量。因此，需要替代设计策略来阐明 邻里效应的压力。这项研究开发了一种新颖的替代方法来解决这些问题 通过部署基于虚拟现实（VR）的邻里劣势和富裕模型， 一种身临其境的体验，近似于在不同社区的体验。在这项研究中， 模型将被应用于了解邻里效应在不同样本的青少年（n = 130），从一个 贫困和富裕社区的范围。这项研究将采用随机实验 （每种条件n = 65），以确定（a）虚拟暴露于邻域劣势是否会导致 情绪和压力反应;（2）如果在弱势社区长大会导致习惯化， 对不同邻里特征的敏感性;以及（3）如果慢性压力导致习惯化或 对不同邻里特征的敏感性。这项研究将开发一种创新的方法 这将有助于建立邻里可能在引发压力以及 适应慢性压力和慢性邻居暴露。此外，它将有助于建立一种方法， 可以更广泛地用于研究背景和社会环境对心理和 青春期的生物风险

PROJECT ABSTRACT Although exposure to adversity in childhood and adolescence is an important predictor of subsequent physical and mental health, not enough is known about how adolescents respond to stressful and adverse environments and how they “get under the skin” to influence health and development. Neighborhoods are one such important adolescent environment, as neighborhood disadvantage is associated with early emerging disparities in health and development that may set the stage for the accumulation of poor health and development over time. There are many important pathways by which neighborhoods may influence health over the life course, including health behaviors and challenging physical, social, and service environments. Perceiving neighborhoods as stressful may be one such mechanism by which neighborhood environments “get under the skin” to influence health. Neighborhood environments may have both acute influences on stress-related processes, but also may have lifespan effects due to the chronic, cumulative effects of repeated exposures and the long-term toll of adapting to adverse neighborhood environments. Such adaptation may take the form of either habituation or sensitization to neighborhood-related stressors over time. However, assessing neighborhood influences on stress and emotion is methodologically challenging. There are no standardized neighborhood exposures that have been used to determine that exposure to neighborhood characteristics can elicit differences in stress and emotion. Moreover, while advancements in mobile technologies to measure functioning in context are important, in these studies exposures cannot be standardized and controlled, and testing chronic stress hypotheses would require extensive longitudinal measurement. Consequently, alternative design strategies are needed to clarify the role of stress in neighborhood effects. This study develops such a novel, alternative approach to address these issues by deploying a virtual reality (VR) based model of neighborhood disadvantage and affluence that creates an immersive experience approximating the experience of being in different neighborhoods. In this study, this model will be applied to understand neighborhood effects in a diverse sample of adolescents (n = 130) from a range of disadvantaged and affluent neighborhoods. The proposed study will employ a randomized experiment (n = 65 per condition), to determine (a) if virtual exposure to neighborhood disadvantage elicits differences in emotion and stress reactivity; (2) if growing up in a disadvantaged neighborhood results in habituation or sensitization to different neighborhood characteristics; and (3) if chronic stress results in habituation or sensitization to different neighborhood characteristics. This research will develop an innovative methodology that will help establish the role that neighborhoods may play in eliciting stress as well as the processes of adaptation to chronic stress and chronic neighborhood exposures. In addition, it will help establish a method that can be utilized more broadly to study contextual and social environmental influences on psychological and biological risk in adolescence.