Fred A. Rogosch - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of the most profound forms of chronic stress for the developing child is being subjected to abuse and neglect. As chronically stressed maltreated children develop, they are at substantial risk for substance use, abuse, and addiction. Thus, investigation of chronically stressed maltreated children provides a natural experiment for delineating the development of stress-induced vulnerabilities for substance use and abuse. Chronic stress exerts diverse negative effects on psychological and biological development, and understanding the impact of chronic stress on multiple developmental systems is critical for determining susceptibility to drug abuse. In this investigation, 400 chronically stressed maltreated 10-to 12-year-old children will be contrasted with 400 nonmaltreated children in order to determine the effects of chronic stress on neuroendocrine regulation, attention networks, executive function abilities, and emotion regulation capacities. Children will participate in a research day camp, and peer relations, personality organization, psychopathology, and substance use also will be assessed. Evaluations of child functioning in school will be obtained from classroom teachers, and the children's mothers also will provide information on additional sources of stress in the home. Based on a developmental psychopathology perspective and utilizing a person-centered approach, we expect to identify different forms of stress-induced vulnerability for substance use. The extent of aggregation of these forms of vulnerability within chronically stressed maltreated children who exhibit different types of personality organization and psychopathology will be investigated. The effects of additional forms of stress exposure and of a drug use promoting context on the susceptibility to substance use among children with different forms of vulnerability also will be investigated. The findings will hold promise for informing prevention and intervention initiatives.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The current proposal for this NIH Roadmap grant is designed to utilize insights gained from interdisciplinary collaboration to develop and integrate two complementary methodological tools aimed at assessing and modeling multiple levels of individual functioning within a dynamical systems framework. Through integrating unique contributions from the diverse disciplines of Engineering, Developmental Psychopathology, and Quantitative Psychology in service of a shared vision of furthering assessment and analysis capabilities and methodologies. It is our intent that the tools arising from this interdisciplinary partnership will further understanding of dynamic, coupled processes occurring at multiple levels of functioning in parents and children and associated implications for physical and mental health outcomes. The specific aims of the research application are: 1) to develop protocols, algorithms and sensors for unobtrusive mote-based wireless sensing systems that will reduce energy usage and memory requirements by capturing only relevant data during real- time, co-occurring physiological and behavioral processes among mothers and children during live interactions in a stress-inducing paradigm;2) to utilize these data to develop and refine new dynamical systems methods utilizing latent differential equations for modeling;and 3) to examine the influence of socioeconomic status and child maltreatment on variation in dynamic co-regulating physiological and behavioral processes, in order to advance understanding of the implications of differences in regulation of these processes for physical and mental health. To achieve these aims, the research team will utilize observational paradigms of mother-child interaction from families who differ in levels of stress in order to develop a mote-based wireless sensing system for extracting behavioral and physiological data. The data obtained from these assessments will then be used to develop the dynamic modeling techniques. Finally, the team will collaborate on building an integrated assessment and modeling tool for dissemination for future research endeavors. The tools to be developed in the present application will be of substantial interest to several NIH institutes cutting across different mission priorities and research objectives. The tools developed here will have many applications for assessing physiological and behavioral processes across the age span (of relevance to NIA) and in other ecological contexts (of relevance to IEHS). The modeling of processes between mothers and children and associated developmental, physical and mental health outcomes will be of relevance to both NICHD and NIMH. Finally, the National Hearth Lung and Blood Institute will be able to utilize the sophistication of the sensors in examining research pertaining to cardiac functioning and health outcomes. Relevance. The tools produced from this project will have important public health significance through the derivation of new methods for investigating dynamic patterns of physiological and behavioral regulation of stress in individuals and families from varying ecological niches. The tools will have the potential to lead to new discoveries of how aberrations in early stress regulation contribute to risk for physical and mental health disorders.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Child abuse, a form of violence inflicted on children, is a complex, insidious problem that, although occurring more frequently in families residing in poverty, cuts across all sectors of society. The human costs of child abuse are a litany of biological and psychological tragedies that may last a lifetime. The economic costs for American society are astronomical, with billions of dollars spent in psychiatric, social services, educational, and justice system costs, as well as lessened productivity for a generation of abused children. Discovering the processes underlying the development of psychopathology and resilience among these traumatized children offers great promise for translating these findings to inform prevention, intervention, and social policy initiatives. Child abuse is a pathogenic relational experience that represents one of the most adverse and stressful challenges confronting children. Before effective treatments can be developed, a clear understanding of the mechanisms and processes that initiate and maintain the developmental pathways to maladaptation and mental disorder in abused children is needed. The discovery of processes that contribute to abused children averting mental disorder can be very informative in guiding translational research and treatment development. Because research on the causes and consequences of child abuse has largely focused on a single level of analysis, the present application addresses this significant gap in the literature through implementing a multiple levels of analysis perspective. In the context of a research day camp, two cohorts of 8- to 10-year-old abused and nonmaltreated children (N = 500) will be assessed in two consecutive summers over four years. The interrelations among genetic, neuroendocrine, neurophysiological, neurocognitive, self-system, inter- personal, and emotion regulation domains will be examined in order to elucidate an integrative understanding of trauma-related psychopathology in abused children. The measurement battery is diverse and is comprised of interviews, observations, experimental paradigms, child and adult reports, and molecular genetic, neurophysiological, neuroendocrine and neurocognitive assessments of biological and behavioral functioning. This multi-level, multi-measure, multi-informant approach will enable researchers to comprehend the complexity of the full range of adaptation and maladaptation in abused children. The proposed research, through attention to expected individual differences among abused children, will emphasize varied patterns of adaptation to traumatic experiences and associated biological and psychological processes contributing to these differentiated patterns. The findings will augment the knowledge base regarding the sequelae of child abuse and the etiology of trauma-based psychopathology, and the knowledge gained will inform prevention and intervention initiatives to divert abused children from the development of trauma-related psychopathology and contribute toward reducing the burden of mental illness in traumatized children. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Child abuse, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, exerts a pernicious toll on the biological and psychological development of children, rendering them likely to be more vulnerable to being subjected to and traumatized by community violence and to be at heightened risk for the emergence of mental disorders across the life course. The findings obtained in the shot-term longitudinal investigation of abused and nonmaltreated children describe in this application will enhance understanding of the biological and psychological pathways to psychopathology and resilience in abused children. Importantly, they also will guide translational research through informing preventive and intervention initiatives aimed at diverting abused children from psychopathology and reducing the burden of mental illness in these traumatized children.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Child maltreatment is a complex, insidious problem that exerts an astronomical toll on individuals, families, and society. Advancing knowledge regarding the early developmental processes that contribute to adverse outcomes in maltreated children is thus of high public health significance. The development of trust in young children is an expanding area of inquiry. In addition to further investigation of normative processes in trust competencies, limited research has been conducted to elucidate contributors to individual differences in trust development. Significantly, no research has investigated trust in maltreated children, despite the likelihood of trust capacities being jeopardized in these youngsters. Accordingly, research on emerging trust in maltreated children would address a critical barrier to understanding important, unstudied impairments in early social development that have crucial implications for subsequent interpersonal and relationship functioning in maltreated individuals, and consequent mental health liabilities. In the present application, we propose to recruit 300 36- to 42-month-old children from low income families; 150 children will have a history of child maltreatment and 150 will have no maltreatment history. The children and their mothers will participate in four laboratory sessions to assess components of epistemic trust, self- reliance vs. deference in trust decision-making, and source memory. The three epistemic trust tasks vary in terms of the degree of cognitive vs. socio-affective sources of information. Mother-child attachment security, theory of mind/false belief understanding, and inhibitory control also will be assessed. Additionally, separate Event Related Potential assessments will be conducted with stimuli yoked to that used in the three epistemic trust assessments. Accordingly, the measurements to be obtained constitute a multilevel assessment of diverse domains that are implicated in contributing to individual differences in the development of children's early trust capacities. Moreover, investigation of these domains holds great promise for identifying mechanisms that may contribute to difficulties that young maltreated children are likely to exhibit in the development of trust. Assessing the consequences of maltreatment occurring in the first three years of life on children's ability to develop trust in others has important implications for their social, interpersonal, and affective development, as well as subsequent mental health. The research also will greatly expand the understanding of normative trust development. This research will have important implications for public health. In addition to advancing knowledge regarding the multilevel developmental roots of early difficulties in trust development, the research will provide valuable direction for early prevention and intervention strategies. Given the multiple mechanisms that are likely to be identified in contributing to early, compromised trust development, insights into different intervention targets will be elucidated.

ABSTRACT RESEARCH PROJECT 2 Research Study 2 is integrated into the TRANSFORM Center to promote the next generation of research on child maltreatment, translation of research findings into clinical and preventive interventions, and dissemination of research and practice knowledge/skills to varied stakeholders. The research is informed by a developmental psychopathology perspective, incorporating multiple levels of analysis within a lifespan framework. Child maltreatment frequently results in serious adverse consequences to diverse psychological and biological systems in the course of development that have long-term detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Thus, increasing knowledge of the mechanisms through which child maltreatment impacts health and well- being, and advancing effective interventions, are of crucial public health significance. Project 2 evaluates the long-term consequences of child maltreatment on adult physical and mental health through longitudinal follow- up of individuals initially assessed in childhood during adulthood. The follow-up will include a randomly- selected sample of 600 individuals aged 21-44 years from a larger existing sample. During school-age years, these adults participated in research at Mt. Hope Family Center, and comprehensive measurements of diverse aspects of maltreatment since birth were obtained, providing a more in-depth coverage of maltreatment experiences than adult retrospective self-report. Multi-domain, multi-informant measurements of childhood adaptive/maladaptive functioning were assessed, including childhood measures of cortisol regulation, providing a rare opportunity to evaluate models of long-term predictors of adult mental and physical health. In adulthood a comprehensive battery of measures from participants will be obtained. In addition to current life status, we will assess cumulative life stress and history of trauma, as well as personal adaptive resources, i.e., self- efficacy, self-esteem, emotion regulation, personality. Cortisol regulation will be obtained through hair samples and in-home saliva samples. Anthropometric and cardiac measurements will be obtained as well as multiple biomarkers and immune functions assessed via blood samples. Blood draws will also provide DNA to determine targeted genotypes and epigenetic modifications. Finally, physical and mental health will be assessed by structured interviews and questionnaires. Analyses will evaluate long-term consequences of child maltreatment on cumulative stress, personal resources, allostatic load, epigenetic modifications, and physical and mental health outcomes. We also will evaluate developmentally how earlier quality of childhood adaptation and cortisol regulation may mediate adult outcomes, and genetic and epigenetic moderation of these mediational processes. This work will provide the foundation for the next generation of advances in child maltreatment research and insight into new prevention and intervention targets.