Mitigating Risk for Anxiety Among Preschool-Age Children Living in Poverty: Evaluating the Impact of Adult-Provided Social Support on Autonomic Stress Reactivity

<p>Poverty increases children's exposure to stress, elevating their risk for developing patterns of heightened sympathetic and parasympathetic stress reactivity. Repeated patterns of high sympathetic activation and parasympathetic withdrawal place children at risk for anxiety disorders. This study evaluated whether providing social support to preschool-age children during mildly stressful situations helps reduce reactivity, and whether this effect partly depends on children's previously assessed baseline reactivity patterns. The Biological Sensitivity to Context (BSC) theory proposes that highly reactive children may be more sensitive than less reactive children to <em>all</em> environmental influences, including social support. In contrast, conventional physiological reactivity (CPR) theory contends that highly reactive children are more vulnerable to the impact of stress but are less receptive to the potential benefits present within their social environments. In this study, baseline autonomic reactivity patterns were measured. Children were then randomly assigned to a high-support or neutral control condition, and the effect of social support on autonomic response patterns was assessed. Results revealed an interaction between baseline reactivity profiles and experimental condition. Children with patterns of high-reactivity reaped more benefits from the social support in the experimental condition than did their less reactive peers. Highly reactive children experienced relatively less reactivity reduction in the neutral condition while experiencing relatively greater reactivity reduction in the support condition. Despite their demonstrated stability over time, reactivity patterns are also quite susceptible to change at this age; therefore understanding how social support ameliorates reactivity will further efforts to avert stable patterns of high-reactivity among children with high levels of stress, ultimately reducing risk for anxiety disorders.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Year dc:date.available

2009

Author dc:creator

• Wolff, Brian Cory

Contributors dc:contributor

• Martha E. Wadsworth, Ph.D.
• Debora Ortega
• Iris Mauss
• Sarah Watamura
• Chip Reichardt

• Anxiety
• Children
• Physiology
• Poverty
• Reactivity
• Social support
• Clinical Psychology
• Psychology

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/954

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-1953