INVESTIGATOR: Emily Cook, Rhode Island College
THEME: Neuroscience

ABSTRACT: Past research during adulthood has suggested that how individuals handle stress emotionally and physically has implications for behavioral and physical health during adolescence. Yet we know little about daily stressors (i.e., minor yet frequent stressful experiences such as daily tests, family arguments) among late adolescents (the age between 18-20) and the associations of these stressors with adjustment during this developmental period. Individual differences in adolescents’ reactions to stress (e.g., dysregulation in cortisol) are predictive of behavioral and physical health problems and may provide one explanation as to why we see increases in health problems among late adolescents, particularly in the domains of substance use and mood disorders. To date research linking how individuals handle stress and health outcomes has largely been conducted in laboratory settings. Thus, we know little about how stressful experiences affect youth outside of the laboratory context in their daily lives limiting the ecological validity of findings (the extent to which the methods, materials and setting of a study approximate the real-world phenomenon). A particularly effective way to increase ecological validity and capture associations among daily stressors and health outcomes is the use of daily diary approaches for data collection. Additionally, we know very little about factors that might mitigate or exacebate associations between daily stress and outcomes. One factor that might be important to examine is close friendships, as we know that during late adolescence friendships are key sources of social support that may be used to efficiently cope with different stressors and emotions. In sum, this study will use a daily diary approach, collecting data across 3 days and over the course of one year, to assess associations among stressors, stress physiology (as measured by daily heart rate and salivary cortisol), and behavioral and physical health among 15 friendship dyads. Additionally, the role that close friends have on exaberbating daily stress and health outcomes will be considered. Specifically, the aims are (1) to examine the associations among daily stressful experiences, physiological stress response, and behavioral and physical health problems and (2) To examine if close friends exacerbate the associations between stressful experiences, physiological stress response, and behavioral and physical health outcomes. This research is paramount given the importance of friendships in shaping behaviors and the known correlation between dysregulation of stress response and health problems.

Relevance: Utlilizing rigorous methods to collect data to understand influences on the regulation of stress during adolescence and the implications for health outcomes is imperative to reduce the incidence of behavioral health problems that are observed during this period. Furthermore, the findings may suggest points of intervention that will help decrease the onset of psychological disorders and health problems in adulthood.