Through the training outlined in this Mentored Career Development Application, the candidate will advance her understanding of developmental processes and work toward her goal of becoming a developmental psychopathologist. The candidate will receive developmentally-focused training on psychopathology, psychobiology and adolescent development in order to become an independent interdisciplinary researcher capable of answering questions about the role of early experience in shaping the emergence of psychopathology in adolescents at risk. The candidate will be more prepared at the end of 5 years to embark on independent research. This study examines the role of Early and Concurrent stress exposure in shaping the development of stress regulation and risk for psychopathology in adolescents. This study investigates early stress exposure in maltreated and internationally adopted post-institutionalized children to explore whether early Stress Alone or in combination with Concurrent Stress is necessary to result in endocrine dysregulation. This study is unique because it uses multiple hormones measured across different ecologically-valid social contexts in order to characterize stress regulation. Early Stress Alone is hypothesized to be capable of altering stress regulation and psychopathology risk in adolescents as compared to high socioeconomic status youth. Adolescents who have experienced Early and Concurrent Stress will be compared to adolescents of similar socioeconomic strata to aid interpretation of the Early Stress Alone effects. Stress regulation is characterized as normal diurnal rhythms in the first phase of the study. Phase II, two years later, is designed to rigorously assess the ability of novelty and social salience to influence hormonal activation and recovery from three laboratory based tests. A prospective, longitudinal extension across Phase I and II will allow us to evaluate these adolescents'risk for mental health symptoms and disorders. Psychopathology symptoms expressed in early adolescents are hypothesized to emerge as mental health disorders in a subset of participants two years later. These disorders will be most likely in those who show evidence of stress dysregulation.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 23 publications
