Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA.
Dev Psychopathol. 2021 Feb;33(1):301-312. doi: 10.1017/S0954579419001779.
Stressful experiences affect biological stress systems, such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Life stress can potentially alter regulation of the HPA axis and has been associated with poorer physical and mental health. Little, however, is known about the relative influence of stressors that are encountered at different developmental periods on acute stress reactions in adulthood. In this study, we explored three models of the influence of stress exposure on cortisol reactivity to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) by leveraging 37 years of longitudinal data in a high-risk birth cohort (N = 112). The cumulative stress model suggests that accumulated stress across the lifespan leads to dysregulated reactivity, whereas the biological embedding model implicates early childhood as a critical period. The sensitization model assumes that dysregulation should only occur when stress is high in both early childhood and concurrently. All of the models predicted altered reactivity, but do not anticipate its exact form. We found support for both cumulative and biological embedding effects. However, when pitted against each other, early life stress predicted more blunted cortisol responses at age 37 over and above cumulative life stress. Additional analyses revealed that stress exposure in middle childhood also predicted more blunted cortisol reactivity.
应激体验会影响生物应激系统，如下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴。生活应激可能会改变 HPA 轴的调节，并与较差的身心健康有关。然而，对于在不同发育阶段遇到的应激源对成年期急性应激反应的相对影响知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们通过利用高危出生队列（N=112）37 年的纵向数据，探讨了应激暴露对经改良的 Trier 社会应激测试（TSST）中皮质醇反应的三种影响模型。累积应激模型表明，整个生命周期中的累积应激会导致反应失调，而生物嵌入模型则暗示儿童早期是一个关键时期。敏感化模型假设只有当儿童早期和同时期的应激都很高时才会出现失调。所有模型都预测了反应的改变，但并没有预测其确切形式。我们发现累积和生物嵌入效应都得到了支持。然而，当相互竞争时，与累积生活应激相比，生命早期的应激预测会导致 37 岁时皮质醇反应更加迟钝。进一步的分析表明，儿童中期的应激暴露也预测了更迟钝的皮质醇反应。
