University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, CC72, P.O. Box 30.001, Groningen 9700 RB, The Netherlands.
Dev Psychopathol. 2011 May;23(2):679-88. doi: 10.1017/S0954579411000095.
Effortful control is thought to foster adaptive action in defensive contexts and may thereby protect individuals against anxious inhibition and focus on their own distress. We examined if effortful control predicted adolescents' perceived arousal, unpleasantness, and control as well as autonomic (heart rate [HR]) and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (cortisol) responses during social stress. The data came from a focus sample of the Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey, a prospective population study of Dutch adolescents (N = 715, 50.9% girls; mean age = 16.11, SD = 0.59), who participated in a laboratory session including a social stress task (public speaking and mental arithmetic). Perceived and physiological stress measures were assessed before, during, and after the social stress task. Effortful control was measured using various questionnaires and informants, as well as by means of a reaction time (RT) task assessing response inhibition. Overall, adolescents with high questionnaire-based effortful control tended to feel more relaxed, pleasant, and in control during the laboratory session than adolescents with lower levels of control and had stronger HR responses to the stress test. Adolescent girls with high inhibitory control as measured by the RT task also had strong HR responses, but inhibitory control was associated with high rather than low perceived arousal. Our results suggest that both questionnaire and RT measures of effortful control predict strong HR responses to challenging situations, but associational patterns diverge with regard to perceived stress measures.
努力控制被认为可以促进防御情境下的适应性行为，从而保护个体免受焦虑抑制和关注自身痛苦的影响。我们考察了努力控制是否可以预测青少年在社交压力期间的感知唤醒、不愉快和控制程度，以及自主神经系统（心率 [HR]）和下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺轴（皮质醇）的反应。这些数据来自荷兰青少年个体生活追踪调查的焦点样本，这是一项前瞻性的青少年人群研究（N=715，女生占 50.9%；平均年龄=16.11，标准差=0.59），他们参与了一个实验室会议，包括一个社交压力任务（公开演讲和心算）。在社交压力任务之前、期间和之后，都评估了感知和生理压力指标。努力控制使用各种问卷和报告人进行测量，同时还使用反应时（RT）任务来评估反应抑制。总体而言，与控制水平较低的青少年相比，基于问卷的努力控制水平较高的青少年在实验室会议期间往往感到更放松、愉快和有控制感，并且对压力测试的 HR 反应更强。在 RT 任务中表现出高抑制控制的青少年女孩也有强烈的 HR 反应，但抑制控制与高感知唤醒而不是低感知唤醒相关。我们的结果表明，努力控制的问卷和 RT 测量都可以预测对挑战性情境的强烈 HR 反应，但在感知压力测量方面的关联模式存在差异。
