1-087 - Connecting environmental experience to the emergence of self-regulation: Insights from typical and atypical populations

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Self-regulation is a core feature of successful psychological adjustment, however multiple open questions exist regarding the development of this construct. Here, we organize a group of inter-related talks that provide powerful insights regarding how experience during development impacts the emergence of self-regulation. In this session, four leading scholars ground their work in: 1) the concept that self-regulation can be broadly defined as the ability to adaptively modulate one’s own cognitions, emotions, and actions for the purposes of goal-directed behavior; 2) the fact that variations in these capacities relate to social and cognitive development. Each presentation then leverages multi-method assessments of self-regulation to examine relations between this construct and psychosocial development, centralizing different time-scales of experience.

The first paper examines neurocognitive functioning during infancy, in relation to poverty and neuroendocrine markers of stress-responsivity. The second paper then interrogates connections between poverty during early childhood, neurocognitive and physiological indices of self-regulation during adolescence, and externalizing problems in adulthood. The third paper examines change in neuroendocrine and physiological functioning in connection to behavioral measures of self-regulation. The fourth paper takes an experimental approach, taxing self-regulatory abilities and seeing the negative, as well as positive, impacts on neurocognitive functioning during early childhood. Collectively these papers provide longitudinal information about how components of self-regulation are influenced by experience, whether that be acute experimental manipulations or adverse contexts. This session also brings into focus self-regulatory abilities that may be targets of intervention and prevention efforts to promote adaptive child development early in life.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Jamie Hanson, University of Pittsburgh

Individual Presentations

• Influences of Poverty-Related Risk and Physiological Stress on Childhood Self-Regulation: Mediation through Infant Attention - Presenting Author: Annie Brandes-Aitken, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Stephen H. Braren, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Clancy Blair, New York University

• Early poverty interacts with adolescent inhibitory control and physiological reactivity to predict adult externalizing problems - Presenting Author: Jamie Hanson, University of Pittsburgh; Non-Presenting Author: Destany Calma-Birling, LRDC, University of Pittsburgh; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer Lansford, Duke University; Non-Presenting Author: John Bates, Indiana University - Bloomington; Non-Presenting Author: Gregory S. Pettit, Auburn University; Non-Presenting Author: Kenneth A. Dodge, Duke University

• Dynamic Changes In Stress Physiology Predict Concurrent Executive Functions Performance In Low-Income Children - Presenting Author: Stephen H. Braren, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Annie Brandes-Aitken, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Clancy Blair, New York University

• Experiential Stress and Higher-Order Cognition: Enemy or Adaptive Organizer? - Presenting Author: Dan Berry, University of Minnesota; Non-Presenting Author: Keira B. Leneman, University of Minnesota; Non-Presenting Author: Alyssa R Palmer, University of Minnesota; Non-Presenting Author: Lexus Jade Aksteter, University of Minnesota