2-105 - Family adversity and youths’ physical health: physiological, linguistic, and daily findings

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Studies illustrate detrimental effects of family adversity on youths’ physical health, yet resilience also exists (Repetti & Robles, 2016). Stress-related health symptoms, such as headaches, that may precede clinical health conditions, occur in adolescence (Wiklund, 2012). Establishing factors that protect youths from the adverse impact of family stressors may prevent later health problems, such as cardiovascular disease.
This symposium investigates how variability in youths’ physiological stress and family support offset the impact of family adversity on health. We employ longitudinal, multi-method data to assess family adversity and physical health in-lab and at home to study how supportive interactions and physiological arousal may protect youth from developing health symptoms. This series of studies examines ethnically diverse individuals, dyads, and family units, across early to late adolescence.
The first study prospectively measures family adversities from middle childhood to late adolescence. Consistent with biological-sensitivity-to-context models (Ellis et al., 2005) greater adversity together with a heightened cortisol awakening response predicts more health symptoms in young adulthood. Our next study employed in–lab procedures to show how parent-child coregulation- indexed by language matching - reduces early adolescents’ cortisol reactivity while heightening mothers’ cardiovascular reactivity. Results suggest that parental empathy buffers youths’ physiological stress reactions. Our final study uses two-weeks of parents and youths’ daily reports and prospective assessment of family aggression to show how family conflict and support interacts with aggression to predict daily physical symptoms. Discussant will address risk/resilience in youths’ health and introduce dynamic measures (space-state grid analyses) to examine family synchrony.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Reout Arbel, University of Southern California

Discussant

• Jelena Obradović, Stanford University

Individual Presentations

• Family Adversity and Late Adolescents’ health: The Moderating Role of the Cortisol Awakening Response and daily worrying - Presenting Author: Reout Arbel, University of Southern California; Kelly F. Miller, University of Southern California; Gayla Margolin, University of Southern California

• Early Adolescents’ Physiological Stress Reactivity: The Buffering Role of Mother-Youth Language Matching - Presenting Author: Jessica Borelli, Pomona College; Ryan Cheuk Ming Cheung, Claremont Graduate University; Chloe Cohen, Pomona College; Schuyler Fox, Pomona College; Matthew John Marvin, Pomona College; Hannah F Rasmussen, University of Southern California; Betsy Blackard, Claremont Graduate University; Patricia A Smiley, Pomona College

• Daily family conflict, support, & adolescents’ physical health symptoms: The impact of aggressive family environments - Presenting Author: Michelle C. Ramos, California State University, Fullerton