Cortisol reactions in five‐year‐olds to parent–child interaction: the moderating role of ego‐resiliency

Abstract

Background: This study with five-year-olds is the first to examine whether low-quality interactions with parents elicit physiological stress in children beyond toddlerhood, as evident from elevated cortisol levels in their saliva. It was hypothesised that particularly children with low levels of ego-resiliency )a personality construct reflecting the capacity to cope with stress ) would show cortisol increases during low-quality parent-child interactions. Method: In a sample of 101 five-year-old children (62 boys), parent-child interaction was observed at home during parent-child discourse that involved the recollection and discussion of emotional events that happened to the child in the past. Saliva samples to assess cortisol levels were collected before and 20 minutes after the parent-child discourse task. The children's teacher rated child ego-resiliency using a Dutch translation of the California Child Q-set (CCQ; Block & Block, 1980). Results: One of the two parent-child interaction factors that emerged from a principal component analysis, namely negative parent-child interactions, was significantly related to the children's cortisol reaction; more negative parent-child interactions elicited significantly stronger cortisol reactions. The other parent-child interaction factor that was found, i.e., effective guidance, was not significantly related to children's cortisol reaction. As predicted, children low on egoresiliency showed increases in cortisol during negative interactions with their parents, whereas high ego-resilient children did not. Conclusions: The association between negative parent-child interactions and cortisol elevations in children may point to a likely mechanism through which negative parent-child interactions contribute to negative developmental outcomes as the repeated exposure to high levels of cortisol have earlier been found to negatively affect children's development and functioning in various areas.

“Shift-and-Persist” Strategies

“…Thus while we draw on this literature on life-threatening and traumatic events, we focus our discussion around individual characteristics that would be beneficial to health in the context of a lifetime of chronic, enduring stress. As such, we did not discuss studies that either examined resilience characteristics (e.g., ego-resilient personality) unconnected to adversity (Block and Block, 1980; Hart et al, 2005; Simeon et al, 2007), or that investigated resilience characteristics in samples experimentally exposed to acute laboratory stressors, but without background adversity (Smeekens et al, 2007; Souza et al, 2007; Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004). …”

The interaction of social risk factors and HPA axis dysregulation in predicting emotional symptoms of five- and six-year-old children

“…In order to obtain cortisol reaction scores that were controlled for baseline values, we used the regression method described by Twisk (2003) and Smeekens et al (2007): regression analysis was performed with post-task cortisol as the dependent variable and pre-test cortisol as the independent variable. Residuals were retained and defined as cortisol increase, which by definition was uncorrelated with cortisol baseline.…”

Interventions to Improve Cortisol Regulation in Children: A Systematic Review

“…[16][17][18] Dysregulation can entail both hyper-and hypoactivity, which may be reflected by atypical diurnal secretion and enhanced or reduced responsiveness to stress. 13,14,16,[19][20][21] Children exposed to adversity exhibit lower morning cortisol values, 22 blunted cortisol awakening response, 23 shallow morning to evening slope, 21,[24][25][26] greater area under the daytime cortisol curve, 24,27 and both blunted [28][29][30] and elevated 31,32 cortisol response to acute stressors relative to unexposed children. Dysregulated cortisol secretion has been associated with numerous chronic health problems, including metabolic syndrome, 33 coronary artery disease, 34 psychiatric disorders, [35][36][37] and others.…”