Piccolo Luciane da Rosa, Salles Jerusa Fumagalli de, Falceto Olga Garcia, Fernandes Carmen Luiza, Grassi-Oliveira Rodrigo
Departamento de Psicologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Departamento de Psiquiatria e Medicina Legal, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Trends Psychiatry Psychother. 2016 Apr-Jun;38(2):80-9. doi: 10.1590/2237-6089-2015-0085.
According to the literature, children's overall reactivity to stress is associated with their socioeconomic status and family environment. In turn, it has been shown that reactivity to stress is associated with cognitive performance. However, few studies have systematically tested these three constructs together.
To investigate the relationship between family environment, salivary cortisol measurements and children's memory and executive function performance.
Salivary cortisol levels of 70 children aged 9 or 10 years were measured before and after performing tasks designed to assess memory and executive functions. Questionnaires on socioeconomic issues, family environment and maternal psychopathologies were administered to participants' families during the children's early childhood and again when they reached school age.
Data were analyzed by calculating correlations between variables and conducting hierarchical regression. High cortisol levels were associated with poorer working memory and worse performance in tasks involving executive functions, and were also associated with high scores for maternal psychopathology (during early childhood and school age) and family dysfunction. Family environment variables and changes in cortisol levels explain around 20% of the variance in performance of cognitive tasks.
Family functioning and maternal psychopathology in early and middle childhood and children's stress levels were associated with children's working memory and executive functioning.
根据文献记载，儿童对压力的整体反应性与其社会经济地位和家庭环境有关。反过来，研究表明对压力的反应性与认知表现有关。然而，很少有研究系统地同时测试这三个概念。
探讨家庭环境、唾液皮质醇测量值与儿童记忆及执行功能表现之间的关系。
对70名9岁或10岁儿童在执行旨在评估记忆和执行功能的任务前后测量唾液皮质醇水平。在儿童幼儿期及入学时，向其家庭发放关于社会经济问题、家庭环境和母亲精神病理学的问卷。
通过计算变量之间的相关性并进行分层回归分析数据。高皮质醇水平与较差的工作记忆以及执行功能任务中的较差表现相关，还与母亲精神病理学（幼儿期和学龄期）高分及家庭功能障碍相关。家庭环境变量和皮质醇水平变化解释了认知任务表现中约20%的方差。
儿童早期和中期的家庭功能、母亲精神病理学以及儿童的压力水平与儿童的工作记忆和执行功能有关。
