Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan.
Psychol Sci. 2021 Jul;32(7):998-1010. doi: 10.1177/0956797621994233. Epub 2021 Jul 2.
Adults are biologically responsive to context, and their responses to particular situations may differ across cultures. However, are preschoolers' biological systems also responsive to situational contexts and cultures? Here, we show that children's neurobiological stress responses, as indexed by salivary cortisol, are activated and responsive to psychosocial stressors relevant to their sociocultural emphases. By examining cortisol changes across different contexts among 138 preschoolers living in the United States, China, and Japan, we found that an achievement-related stressor elicited an increased cortisol response among Chinese preschoolers, whereas interpersonal-related stressors elicited an increased cortisol response among Japanese preschoolers. By contrast, U.S. preschoolers showed decreased cortisol responses after these stressors but consistently higher levels of anticipatory responses to separation at the beginning of each session. Our findings suggest that children's neurobiological stress systems may be a critical biological mechanism allowing societal-level cultural phenomena to be embodied in individual-level responses, even among preschoolers.
成年人在生物学上对环境有反应，他们对特定情况的反应可能因文化而异。但是，学龄前儿童的生物系统是否也对情境环境和文化有反应呢？在这里，我们表明，儿童的神经生物学应激反应，如唾液皮质醇所示，被激活并对与他们的社会文化重点相关的社会心理应激源有反应。通过在美国、中国和日本的 138 名学龄前儿童中检查不同情境下的皮质醇变化，我们发现，与成就相关的应激源会引起中国学龄前儿童皮质醇反应增加，而与人际关系相关的应激源会引起日本学龄前儿童皮质醇反应增加。相比之下，美国学龄前儿童在这些压力源后表现出皮质醇反应降低，但在每个会话开始时对分离的预期反应始终较高。我们的研究结果表明，儿童的神经生物学应激系统可能是一种关键的生物学机制，使社会层面的文化现象能够体现在个体层面的反应中，即使是在学龄前儿童中也是如此。
