Psychology
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2270
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Item The Interaction Between Parenting and Children’s Cortisol Reactivity at Age Three Predicts Increases in Children’s Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms at Age Six(2015) Barrios, Chelsey S.; Dougherty, Lea R; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Little is known about the role of stress reactivity in the emergence of psychopathology across early childhood. In this longitudinal study, we tested the hypothesis that child cortisol reactivity at age three moderates associations between early parenting and children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms from age three to age six. 160 children were assessed at age three and 135 children were reassessed at age six. At age three, we exposed children to stress-inducing laboratory tasks, during which we obtained four salivary cortisol samples, and parental hostility was assessed using an observational parent-child interaction task. At ages three and six, child psychiatric symptoms were assessed using a semi-structured clinical interview with parents. Results indicated that the combination of high child cortisol reactivity and high observed parental hostility at age three was associated with greater concurrent externalizing symptoms at age three and predicted increases in internalizing and externalizing symptoms from age three to age six. Findings highlight that increased stress reactivity, within the context of hostile parenting, plays a role in the emergence of psychopathology from preschool to school entry.Item Parental Depression, Parenting, and Cortisol Reactivity in Preschoolers(2011) Tolep, Marissa; Dougherty, Lea R; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study systematically examined individual differences in stress sensitivity as a vulnerability marker for depression in young children. We collected five salivary cortisol samples from 142 preschool-age children who were exposed to a laboratory stressor paradigm. Parents (N = 88 with family history of depression) completed clinical interviews and an observational parent-child interaction task. We found that hostile parenting behavior moderated the relation between maternal depression and offspring cortisol. Specifically, the offspring of mothers who had a history of depression during the child's life and whose mothers exhibited hostility evidenced increasing cortisol levels in response to the stressor paradigm. Conversely, the offspring of mothers who had no history of depression and whose mothers exhibited hostility evidenced decreasing cortisol levels in response to the stressor. The data highlight the critical role of the early caregiving environment on offspring's developing stress system and add to our understanding of transmission of depression risk.