This K21 award will liberate and provide resources for the applicant to acquire the specialized research training needed to enable her to become an outstanding independent behavioral scientist. To that end the candidate will carry out a two phase (preliminary and subsequently revised)) experimental investigation testing the following hypothesis: """"""""the interaction of individual psychophysiologic reactivity and stressful family transaction predicts the level of emotional distress and airways compromise in asthmatic children during family problem solving tasks."""""""" Asthma was chosen for study because of its potential for immediate physical responses to emotional challenge, i.e., disease-related autonomic activation and airways obstruction. Children with asthma will be assessed for their independent (of the family) psychophysiologic reactivity (changes in heart and respiration rate and emotional reactivity) in response to an emotionally evocative movie (""""""""E.T.-the Extra-terrestrial). A week later the patient, sibling and parents will participate in a Family Problem Solving Sequence (FPSS), a series of family interaction tasks which, in some families, elicit disagreement, engagement of children in conflictual parental transactions, and negative affect (emotional intrusion and criticism). The FPSS will be videotaped and emotional and physiologic responses will be measured for the patient throughout the tasks. The patient's pulmonary function will also be monitored during the FPSS via pulse oximetry and spirometry, non-invasive measures of airways obstruction. Data analysis will assess the interaction of individual differences in psychophysiologic reactivity (measured during E.T.) and family transactional patterns as predictors airways compromise. Measures of emotional distress indexed by emotional response and physiologic (autonomic) activation will be assessed as possible intervening variables. Temporal microanalytic techniques will provide an index of the contingencies between particular family transactions and the emotional and physiologic responses of the patient. Long range goals for K21 Scientist Development Award: 1) prepare the candidate for a full-time research career, making scientifically and clinically significant research contributions to the field of child and adolescent behavioral medicine, focusing on the interaction of individual and family factors as they influence physical and mental disorders of childhood and adolescence; 2) assist the candidate in establishing an outstanding laboratory research program in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at SUNY at Buffalo.
| Wood, B L (2001) Physically manifested illness in children and adolescents. A biobehavioral family approach. Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am 10:543-62, viii |
| Wood, B L; Klebba, K B; Miller, B D (2000) Evolving the biobehavioral family model: the fit of attachment. Fam Process 39:319-44 |
| Bleil, M E; Ramesh, S; Miller, B D et al. (2000) The influence of parent-child relatedness on depressive symptoms in children with asthma: tests of moderator and mediator models. J Pediatr Psychol 25:481-91 |
