The Psychobiology of Stress in Early Life

    T he research in my laboratory is focused on the developmental psychobiology of stress in early life. We are especially interested in individual differences between children in behavioral and biological (e.g., cardiovascular, autonomic, immunologic) responses to emotional stressors, both naturally occurring and laboratory-based, due to the tremendous amount of variability in the way children respond to stress. Current studies are focused on the ways in which children with heightened psychobiologic reactivity are at higher risk for both psychiatric and biomedical disorders under conditions of environmental stress and adversity. We also see children with heightened psychobiologic reactivity exhibiting a lower risk for ill health when under low stress conditions.

    Investigators in our laboratory include Dr. W. Thomas Boyce, a developmental pediatrician/social epidemiologist; Dr. Abbey Alkon, an epidemiologist with expertise in pediatrics and child development; Dr. Jeanne Tschann, a social psychologist with a research focus on family conflict; and post-doctoral fellows from the fields of clinical and developmental psychology. Specific projects currently in progress include studies of:

1. Cardiovascular, adrenocortical, and autonomic reactivity to laboratory stressors as risk factors for developmental psychopathology.
2. Immunologic effects of school entry stress on HIV+ children and the HIV- children of HIV+ mothers.
3. Differences in psychobiologic reactivity and social hierarchical position in preschool groups.
4. The relationship between parental marital conflict and the development of adolescent risk taking behaviors.