How young children manage stress: Multi-system physiologic crosstalk as a function of caregiver support

• In Event: Parenting and Psychophysiology: Evaluating Complex Dyadic Processes

Abstract

Salivary alpha amylase and salivary cortisol
Authors : Tiffany Phu, Sarah Watamura
Coordination across two biological stress responsive systems, the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, is theorized to support optimal functioning (Bauer et al., 2002). Studies to date have primarily used ratio or interactive effects of the respective salivary analytes (for SAM, salivary alpha amylase; for HPA axis, salivary cortisol) to examine how these two systems act in conjunction to one another (e.g., Wadsworth et al., 2019). We explored multisystem coordination across stress reactive and recovery contexts by capturing both relationships between SAM and HPA changes over time (i.e., reactivity and recovery slopes), as well as sample-to-sample concurrent and cross-lagged relationships. As parent-child relationships critically shape individual stress system functioning (e.g., Brown et al., 2021), we sought to characterize multisystem coordination by behavioral parenting sensitivity.
Methods: Participants included 124 children (59% male, mean age=23.73 months, SD age=9.74) who provided up to nine saliva samples across a 75-minute home visit that included free play, stress induction, and recovery periods. Saliva was assayed for salivary alpha amylase (sAA) and salivary cortisol (see Figure 1). Most families experienced low income (84% at/below 150% of the federal poverty line) and 77% of primary caregivers identified as Latinx. Transformations were applied to salivary cortisol and sAA data to reduce skewness. Structural equation models entered piecewise slopes fit to each analyte, autoregressive paths, concurrent sample correlations, and cross-lagged effects; models covaried for child age and time of day. We applied a median split to observer-rated behavioral parenting sensitivity during a free play interaction task to examine potential moderating effects.
Results: The structural equation model differed by behavioral parenting sensitivity, ∆χ2(59)= 85.44, p=.01. Model fit indices were CFI=0.98, SRMR=0.08, RMSEA= 0.08 [95% CI, 0.05, 0.10]. Young children experiencing high observer-rated behavioral parenting sensitivity primarily showed cross-lagged effects between prior sAA/cortisol to subsequent cortisol/sAA when reacting to and recovering from arrival of lab staff to the home, samples 1-3. Children in context of low behavioral parenting sensitivity showed cross-lagged effects across the arrival and stress reactive periods. See Figure 2 for beta coefficients of statistically significant paths.
Discussion: Results indicate that young children in low-income contexts show differential patterns of multisystem coordination to stressors, depending on high or low observer-rated behavioral parenting sensitivity. Young children experiencing low behavioral parenting sensitivity showed more crosstalk between SAM system and HPA axis outputs across the home visit when compared to those experiencing high behavioral parenting sensitivity. We interpret these findings as indicating that children with less behaviorally sensitive caregivers working harder to draw on multisystemic stress system resources to manage external stressors, whereas those with behaviorally sensitive caregivers may have support regulating stressors.

Authors

• Tiffany Phu, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• Sarah E Watamura, University of Denver