2-127 - Experimental Methods for Studying Stress in Children: What Have We Learned, Where Are We Going?

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Understanding how children’s functioning and development may be altered in contexts of both acute and chronic stress is of great theoretical and practical interest. Unlike in research with adult populations, there is less consensus about the causes and effects of acute stress exposure across early development (Gunnar, Talge, & Herrera, 2009). Not only does the effectiveness of stressor paradigms change with development but research has also relied on a range of stress induction procedures and has focused primarily on only one physiological system.
The purpose of the proposed symposium is to bring together researchers from laboratories at the forefront of developmental stress research in order to share methodologies and findings regarding the causes and effects of stress across development.
The first paper examines how early institutionalization (18-36 mos.) affects children’s reactivity and habituation to a series of lab activities over a 2-year time span and how this reactivity predicts behavioral problems. The second paper examines how social-evaluative threat and coping strategies affect reactivity on a variety of stress indices and how this reactivity is related to executive function and emotional memory in 5- to 9-year-old children. The third paper highlights the importance of taking a multi-system approach to studying stress. The authors identify several profiles of stress responses in 7-15 year olds and discuss relations with detailed records of internal and contextual factors starting shortly after birth.
The results of these papers will help the field identify consistent child-level and environment-level factors affecting stress measurement, reactivity, and coping.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes

Chairs

• Regula Neuenschwander, New York University

• J. Zoe Klemfuss, Florida International University

Individual Presentations

• Cortisol Reactivity in Post-Institutionalized Children Following Adoption - Presenting Author: Kalsea J Koss, University of Minnesota; Camelia E Hostinar, Northwestern University; Bonny Donzella, University of Minnesota; Megan R Gunnar, Univ of Minnesota

• A Stress Manipulation Suited for Field Studies: Reactivity on Multiple Stress Indices, Executive Function, and Emotional Memory - Presenting Author: Regula Neuenschwander, New York University; Janina Eberhart, Deutsches Jugendinstitut e.V., International Center Early Childhood Education and Care, Munich, Germany; Scarlett Sijia Wang, Columbia University; Clancy Blair, New York University

• Cross-System Patterns of Physiological Reactivity and Behavior Problems in Children and Adolescents - Presenting Author: Jodi A Quas, University of California; Ilona Sabine Yim, University of California, Irvine; Tim F Oberlander, Child and Family Research Institute