Poster #56 - Early Life Stress, Neighborhood Quality, and Stress Reactivity: A Multilevel Perspective on Risk and Resilience

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Early life stress (ELS) is strikingly common – more than half of children in the United States are exposed to major adverse experiences, including family violence, poverty, and emotional abuse (McLaughlin et al., 2012). Although ELS has consistently been associated with risk for psychopathology, not all children who experience ELS go on to develop difficulties. Thus, it is important that we identify factors that confer risk versus resilience for the development of disorder. A comprehensive understanding of risk and resilience requires a multilevel framework that considers environmental context, life experience, and physiology; however, researchers have yet to examine the joint contributions of ELS, neighborhood context, and individual stress physiology to behavioral problems in adolescence. Here, we tested whether neighborhood resources and stress physiology are environmental and individual factors, respectively, that moderate the effects of ELS on externalizing and internalizing problems in adolescence.
Participants were 128 9- to 16-year-old adolescents (mean age=12.16 years; 71 girls). To assess history of ELS, participants completed interviews assessing 30 different types of stressful experiences. Interview responses were coded and aggregated by a panel of raters to form a measure of cumulative ELS severity experienced before 6 years of age. Overall neighborhood quality was assessed using the Child Opportunity Index (Acevedo-Garcia et al., 2014), a population-level tool that considers financial, health, and educational conditions of a neighborhood (census tract) relative to other neighborhoods in the same metropolitan area. Participants’ respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; a measure of parasympathetic nervous system activity) and skin conductance level (SCL; a measure of sympathetic nervous system activity) were recorded in response to both a resting baseline and the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), a standardized laboratory stressor. To assess externalizing and internalizing problems, participants completed the Youth Self-Report (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1987).
Neighborhood quality and RSA reactivity jointly moderated the association between ELS and externalizing problems (B=.20, p=.034). For adolescents who lived in higher-quality neighborhoods and/or who demonstrated less RSA withdrawal in response to social stress, ELS had no effect on externalizing problems (all ps>.171). However, for adolescents who lived in lower-quality neighborhoods and who also exhibited greater RSA withdrawal in response to social stress, we found a positive association between ELS and externalizing problems (p<.001; see Figure 1). The association between ELS and internalizing problems was moderated by SCL reactivity (B=.23, p=.023). Specifically, ELS predicted more internalizing problems only for adolescents who showed greater SCL increases in response to social stress (p<.001; see Figure 2).
Living in neighborhoods characterized by educational, health, and financial opportunity, and having less parasympathetic reactivity to stress, may be environmental and internal sources of resilience that buffer the effects of severity of ELS on externalizing problems. Conversely, the combination of having experienced ELS, living in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and having greater parasympathetic reactivity to stress appears to increase risk for externalizing problems. Sympathetic reactivity to stress may exacerbate or buffer ELS-related risk for internalizing problems regardless of neighborhood quality. Interventions aimed at increasing neighborhood opportunity or decreasing physiological stress reactivity may benefit youth exposed to ELS.

Authors

• Jonas G. Miller, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Katharina Kircanski, Emotion and Development Branch, NIMH
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erika Manczak, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lucy S. King, Stanford University, Department of Psychology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julia S. Gillette, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathryn Humphreys, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Natalie L Colich, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah J. Ordaz, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ian H. Gotlib, Stanford University, Department of Psychology
  Non-Presenting Author