IISBR
  • Home
  • Meet Our Team
    • IISBR Team Members
    • Postdoctoral Researchers
    • Faculty Affiliates
  • Assay Services
    • Assay Service Menu
    • Sample Collection and Shipping
  • IISBR Research
    • IISBR Google Scholar
    • IISBR Publications
  • Courses and Trainings
    • Undergraduate and Graduate Courses
    • Spit Camp I
    • Spit Camp II
  • Events
  • Contact Us
  • Forms
    • Assay Quote
    • Spit Camp I Pre-Registration
    • Spit Camp II Pre-Registration

Hibel LC., et al. (2015). Maternal‐child adrenocortical attunement in early childhood: Continuity and change. Dev Psychobiol. 57(1):83-95.

March 1, 2016 by IISBR

Abstract: This study evaluated continuity and change in maternal-child hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis attunement in early childhood. Participants were drawn from a prospective study of 1,292 mother-child dyads, which were racially diverse, predominantly low-income, and non-urban. Child focused stress tasks designed to elicit anger, fear, and frustration were administered during early infancy, later infancy, and toddlerhood. Mothers’ and children’s saliva samples (later assayed for cortisol) were collected before and after the tasks. The strength of mother-child adrenocortical attunement was conserved across infancy and toddlerhood. The magnitude of maternal-child adrenocortical attunement decreased in response to the child-focused stress tasks. Maternal sensitivity and the child’s task-related emotional reactivity moderated adrenocortical attunement across the task, with greater maternal sensitivity during a free-play, and lower levels of child emotional reactivity during the stress tasks, stabilizing attunement from pre- to post-task levels. The findings advance our understanding of individual differences in the social regulation of adrenocortical activity in early childhood.

View on Pubmed

Filed Under: Recent Publications

UCI School of Social Ecology
Social Ecology I
Irvine, CA 92697-7050
www.uci.edu
www.socialecology.uci.edu

UCI Program in Public Health
UCI Health Sciences Complex
856 Health Sciences Quad
Irvine, CA 92697-3957
www.uci.edu www.publichealth.uci.edu

Log-In

© 2023 UC Regents