| Summary: | A well-developed body of literature has established the deleterious effects of chronic stress on children’s cognitive development. However, there has been almost no research examining the impact of acutely stressful experiences on children’s cognitive performance. This is surprising given evidence in adults that acute stress alters cognition and plausible links between stress system reactivity and cognitive function. Extending such temporally precise acute stress research to the childhood age range may be valuable for identifying new ways to support children’s function across contexts and elucidating how repetitive stress leads to pervasive alterations in cognitive development.
The first chapter reviews the theorized links between acute stress and subsequent cognitive vulnerability as well as the possible role of biological stress systems (i.e. autonomic nervous system, ANS; Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal Axis, HPA) in supporting cognitive function. The second chapter serves to validate an in-laboratory stressor paradigm (modified from previous research) as effective at inducing biological reactivity across HPA and ANS systems. Validating this ‘matching task’ was important given the challenges of eliciting stress system reactivity in the early childhood age range. In the third chapter, the relevance of stress system reactivity to children’s concurrent performance on a cognitively challenging matching task was examined. This study was conducted to establish profiles of HPA and ANS (parasympathetic, PNS, and sympathetic, SNS, branches) associated with adaptive cognitive function, under stress. Results indicated that indices of both HPA and PNS reactivity were predictive of cognitive performance, with different results by gender.
Finally, we examined the extent to which acute stress (versus control) altered children’s subsequent selective attention and inhibitory control performance. Largely consistent with the adult literature employing Go/No-Go tasks, stress-exposed children experienced selective attention impairment, but no inhibitory control change. Amongst stress-exposed children, higher maternal stress predicted selective attention impairment, which highlights the relevance of early caregiving to children’s stress regulatory ability. In contrary to hypotheses, this effect was not mediated by HPA or ANS reactivity. The final chapter concludes with a discussion of broad implications, limitations, and future directions for acute stress research in early childhood. === 10000-01-01
|
|---|
