This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The overarching goals are to understand the psychosocial regulation of stress physiology in early childhood and the relations that stress system activity to children's sociemotional development. We focus on cortisol, a hormone produced by the Limbic-Hypothalamic-Pituitary Adrenocortical (LHPA) system. Theoretically, frequent, prolonged elevations of cortisol increases risk of physical and emotional disorders (allostatic load model, CRH-model of anxiety/depression). Early experience animal studies suggest that variations in care help shape responsivity of the LHPA system and the neurobiological substrate of fear/anxiety. Studies in children suggest that temperament correlates with children's vulnerability to the normal challenges of early life (e.g., separation, interactions with peers). We seek to understand how and whether sensitive care from parents and childcare providers and the development of one facet of child regulatory competence (effortful control) modifies cortisol responsivity for more temperamentally vulnerable (fearful/anxious, angry/reactive) youngsters. Both naturalistic (home-based childcare and nursery school) and laboratory assessments are planned. The laboratory assessment (to be performed within the GCRC) will allow 1) objective measures of temperament to be obtained for export to the studies in naturalistic settings and 2) exploration of the roles of adult-child relationship and regulatory processes in moderating relations between cortisol responsivity and electrophysiological measures of the presumed neural substrate of fear/anxiety (fear-potentiated startle), and the tone of the sympathetic (pre-ejection period, PEP) and parasympathetic (respiratory sinus arrthymia, RSA) arms of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This work should help integrate research on the physiological basis of fearful/anxious temperament with the work on psychosocial regulation of stress in early childhood.
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