Department of Psychology Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel.
Dev Psychobiol. 2012 Mar;54(2):113-23. doi: 10.1002/dev.20580. Epub 2011 Jul 14.
Salivary cortisol has been useful for evaluating children's physiological responses to stress and for identifying factors that predict their magnitude and duration. However, results have been somewhat equivocal across studies, and this has motivated researchers to identify sources of variance and error. Here, we examined the prevalence of preschoolers' noncompliance during saliva collection and aimed to learn about noncompliant children in terms of their hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal function, behavior in other situations, and symptoms of behavioral problems. Results were based on measures of cortisol, children's behavior during saliva collection and a mother-child teaching interaction, and ratings of problem behavior by teachers and parents. Results show that 12% (21/174) of the sample was noncompliant on at least one of the collection trials. Children, who were noncompliant but did not outright refuse saliva collection, had higher cortisol than did compliant children. Children who were noncompliant during saliva collection were likely to be noncompliant during the teaching episode, and they were perceived as having more internalizing symptoms than compliant children. These results suggest that children's noncompliance during saliva collection can be a source of nonrandom missing data or extreme cortisol values, which should be considered in future studies.
唾液皮质醇一直被用于评估儿童对压力的生理反应，并确定预测其强度和持续时间的因素。然而，研究结果在不同研究中有些不一致，这促使研究人员确定了变异和误差的来源。在这里，我们检查了学龄前儿童在唾液采集过程中不配合的发生率，并旨在了解不配合儿童的下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺功能、其他情况下的行为以及行为问题的症状。结果基于皮质醇测量、儿童在唾液采集过程中的行为以及教师和家长对问题行为的评分。结果表明，样本中至少有 12%（21/174）的儿童在至少一次采集试验中不配合。不配合但没有直接拒绝唾液采集的儿童的皮质醇水平高于配合的儿童。在唾液采集过程中不配合的儿童在教学过程中也可能不配合，并且他们被认为比配合的儿童有更多的内化症状。这些结果表明，儿童在唾液采集过程中的不配合可能是无规律缺失数据或极端皮质醇值的一个来源，在未来的研究中应加以考虑。
