Examining Adolescent Stress Regulation: Cortisol Responses to a School-Based Group Public Speaking Task

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding Physiological Stress in Teachers and Students: Identifying Ways to Facilitate Adaptive Coping

Abstract

The adolescent period is characterized by transitions that involve substantial biological, cognitive and social changes. The many changes that adolescents face characterize it as a period of heightened psychological and physiological stress (Spear, 2009). Nearly half of adolescents report difficulty coping with the stress they face (Gans, 2009). As a result, maladaptive coping behaviors, such as rumination, may emerge. Research suggests that rumination - unwanted, repetitive negative thoughts - increases the risks for negative health outcomes, including heightened stress reactivity and psychopathology, but the mechanisms for these associations are not well understood (Thomsen et al., 2004). This study examines the feasibility of using physiological measures of stress to examine the relationship between rumination and stress reactivity during a public speaking task with a group of high school students.
This study used the Group Public Speaking Task for Adolescents (GPST-A; Hostinar et al., 2014,), which is typically a lab-based stress task. This stress paradigm includes a speech presented to judges in the presence of their classmates. Six saliva samples were taken over 90 minutes and assay for cortisol from 54 students at two schools (mean age=16). Participants’ emotions and thought processes were assessed at five time-points post-stressor (Zoccola et al., 2008).
RMANCOVAs show the protocol was successful in significantly increasing cortisol production (F(1.51,79.97 )=7.4, p=.003). The average cortisol increase was 51% over baseline levels, which is within the range in single-subject TSST studies conducted with adolescents (Gunnar et al., 2009). Female students had lower overall cortisol output during the task (r= -.44, p<.05). Students who reported higher levels of trait rumination, did not recover from the stressor as quickly as those reporting less rumination (r= -.34, p<.05) and positive thinking strategies post-stressor were associated with better recovery from the stressor (r= .31, p<.05). This presentation will include analyses using multilevel models to examine the relationship between participants’ physiological response profiles and their changing thought processes after their speech. This analytic approach allows us to capture between and within person differences in physiological response and coping strategies in response to the stressor
The goal of this research is to begin to examine individual differences in coping strategies and stress reactivity that may contribute to adolescents’ responsiveness to universal interventions targeting stress management and coping in high school. This study represents a unique, ecologically valid approach to examining adolescent stress reactivity and its mechanisms. This study demonstrates the feasibility of collecting physiological measures to examine stress-management strategies in diverse adolescents in a school-based setting. Increasing knowledge about adaptive and maladaptive cognitive strategies that adolescents’ use when responding to stress may increase our potential to teach adaptive coping skills and prevent mental health issues. Findings have the potential to inform interventionists seeking to improve adolescents’ coping skills in school contexts.

Author

• Deirdre A Katz, The Pennsylvania State University