Associations among Latino Adolescents' Emotional/Behavioral Dysregulation and Cortisol Responses to the Trier Social Stress Test

• In Event: 1-186 - Latina(o) Adolescents’ Cortisol Responses to Psychosocial Stress: Experimental and Field Approaches

Integrative Statement

Latino adolescents are at greater risk for experiencing a range of social stressors (De La Rosa, 2002). Prolonged exposure to stress may result in dysregulated stress response systems and increase risk for emotional dysregulation and impulsivity (Cărnuţă et al., 2015; Lovallo, 2013), which can lead to risky behavior due to an immediate reward focus (Verdejo-Garcia et al, 2008). However, Latino adolescents with a strong orientation towards the future may be protected against the effects of dysregulated emotional tendencies and trait impulsivity on stress responsivity.

This study assessed Latino adolescents’ trait levels of emotion dysregulation and impulsivity as they relate to three adrenocortical indices (responsivity, reactivity, and recovery) to an adapted group Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-G). Additionally, we examined whether future expectations moderated these relations. We hypothesized that greater emotion dysregulation and impulsivity would be associated with heightened responsivity and reactivity, but slower recovery, to the TSST-G. Furthermore, we hypothesized stronger expectations for a positive future would attenuate the associations of emotion dysregulation and impulsivity with stress responsivity, reactivity, and recovery.

Participants for this study included 192 seventh-grade students (56% male; 66% Latino) recruited from two schools in the SW U.S. as part of the [BLINDED] intervention. Data were collected pre-intervention. Adolescents reported on non-acceptance of negative emotions from the DERS (Gratz & Roemer, 2004), urgency (i.e., the tendency to act impulsively under conditions of positive/negative affect) and sensation seeking (i.e., tendency to highly stimulating experiences) from the UPPS-P (Lynam et al., 2007), and Future Expectations (Wyman et al., 1999). Groups of 5-7 adolescents engaged in the TTST-G ( Hostinar et al., 2014), in which adolescents were randomly chosen to give a speech. Adolescents provided saliva samples immediately before and after the TSST-G, as well as 15- and 30-minutes post-task. Cortisol reactivity was operationalized as the difference between the immediate post-task sample and the baseline sample, recovery as the difference between the final sample and the reactivity sample, and responding as the total hormonal output measured by the area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg). Baseline cortisol, time of day, and gender were included as covariates.

Results for the direct association of impulsivity with the adrenocortical indices revealed that positive urgency was associated with greater cortisol reactivity (B= .187, p < .001) and responsivity (B= .158, p < .01). The association of positive urgency with cortisol recovery was not significant. Similarly, negative urgency, sensation seeking, emotional non-acceptance, and future expectations were not associated with any of the adrenocortical indices. Future expectations moderated the association of emotional non-acceptance with cortisol recovery (B= -.180, p<.05), such that emotional non-acceptance predicted a slower cortisol recovery at low levels of future expectations (B= .181, p<.05; Figure 1). Similarly, the interaction between positive urgency and future expectations predicted slower cortisol recovery (B=.158, p<.01; Figure 2). These findings underscore a distinctly heightened cortisol stress response pattern linked with trait positive urgency. Furthermore, greater expectations for a positive future may serve as a protective factor for Latino adolescents who are high in emotional non-acceptance.

Authors

• Vanesa M Perez, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Nancy Gonzales, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author