Cortisol and vagal tone responses to competitive challenge in preschoolers: associations with temperament.

Sixty-one 3- to 5-year-old nursery school children participated in a study of tempera ment and stress responses to competition. Each child individually participated in a competition against a familiar adult experimenter to determine who would win enough games to receive a prize. After initially winning three games (Win Period), the children lost the next three games (Lose Period), before winning the final games and receiving the prize. Salivary cortisol, vagal tone, affect and turn-taking behavior were measured in response to the competition and examined in relation to child temperament using a teacher-report version of the Child Behavior Questionnaire. Behavioral measures indicated that the procedures were emotionally engaging and the threat of losing was aversive. Surgency (extroversion) was positively correlated with positive affect during Win periods and tense/angry affect during the Lose period of the competition. Vagal tone decreased as the children began to play against the adult and children who were more tense/angry while losing showed additional suppression of vagal tone when they began to lose the competition. Most of the children did not show a cortisol response to the competition; however, the 15% who increased cortisol (responses >1 SD of classroom baselines) were described by teachers as more surgent and lower in effortful control. All but one of these children who increased in cortisol was male. Cortisol responsive children also displayed higher levels of tense/angry affect during the Lose period. Surgent, extroverted children appear to be vulnerable to competition stress.

[1]  N. Kalin,et al.  Stressor controllability and the pituitary-adrenal system. , 1986, Behavioral neuroscience.

[2]  M. Gunnar,et al.  Social behavior correlates of cortisol activity in child care: gender differences and time-of-day effects. , 1998, Child development.

[3]  M. Gunnar,et al.  Cortisol levels of young children in full-day childcare centers: relations with age and temperament , 1999, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[4]  K. Matthews,et al.  Type A behavior in children: demographic, behavioral, and physiological correlates. , 1986, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[5]  Clemens Kirschbaum,et al.  Social hierarchy and adrenocortical stress reactivity in men , 1997, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[6]  H. Nagaraja,et al.  Heart rate variability: origins, methods, and interpretive caveats. , 1997, Psychophysiology.

[7]  M. Gunnar,et al.  Familiar and novel contexts yield different associations between cortisol and behavior among 2-year-old children. , 1998, Developmental psychobiology.

[8]  U. Lundberg,et al.  Physiological reactivity and Type A behavior in preschool children: a longitudinal study. , 1991, Behavioral medicine.

[9]  M. E. Larson,et al.  The effects of control over high intensity noise on plasma cortisol levels in rhesus monkeys. , 1976, Behavioral biology.

[10]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Children's temperament in the US and China: similarities and differences , 1993 .

[11]  E. González-Bono,et al.  Effects of competition and its outcome on serum testosterone, cortisol and prolactin , 1999, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[12]  M. Reiser,et al.  Parental reactions to children's negative emotions: longitudinal relations to quality of children's social functioning. , 1999, Child development.

[13]  A. Malliani,et al.  Heart rate variability. Standards of measurement, physiological interpretation, and clinical use , 1996 .

[14]  N. Fox,et al.  Fear-potentiated startle responses in temperamentally different human infants. , 1998, Developmental psychobiology.

[15]  M. Gunnar,et al.  Temperament, social competence, and adrenocortical activity in preschoolers. , 1997, Developmental psychobiology.

[16]  Kenneth H. Rubin,et al.  Continuity and discontinuity of behavioral inhibition and exuberance: psychophysiological and behavioral influences across the first four years of life. , 2001, Child development.

[17]  J Licinio,et al.  Cardiovascular and neuroendocrine adjustment to public speaking and mental arithmetic stressors. , 1997, Psychophysiology.

[18]  K. Boller.  Preexposure effects on infant learning and memory. , 1997, Developmental psychobiology.

[19]  M. Gunnar,et al.  The start of a new school year: individual differences in salivary cortisol response in relation to child temperament. , 1999, Developmental psychobiology.

[20]  N. Fox,et al.  Behavioral and psychophysiological correlates of self-presentation in temperamentally shy children. , 1999, Developmental psychobiology.

[21]  Boyce Wt,et al.  Psychobiological differences in childhood stress response. II. Cardiovascular markers of vulnerability. , 1990 .

[22]  Clemens Kirschbaum,et al.  Persistent High Cortisol Responses to Repeated Psychological Stress in a Subpopulation of Healthy Men , 1995, Psychosomatic medicine.

[23]  Kenneth H. Rubin,et al.  Behavioral and neuroendocrine responses in shy children. , 1997, Developmental psychobiology.

[24]  S. Mangelsdorf,et al.  Attachment, Temperament, and Adrenocortical Activity in Infancy. A Study of Psychoendocrine Regulation. , 1989 .

[25]  M. Gunnar,et al.  Coping with uncertainty: New models of the relations between hormonal, behavioral, and cognitive processes. , 1989 .

[26]  U. Lundberg,et al.  Cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity in preschool children: comparison between day-care and home levels. , 1993, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[27]  J. Kagan,et al.  Behavioral Inhibition in Childhood: A Risk Factor for Anxiety Disorders , 1993 .

[28]  M. Frankenhaeuser.  Psychobiological Aspects of Life Stress , 1980 .

[29]  S. Porges,et al.  Cardiac vagal tone: stability and relation to difficultness in infants and 3-year-olds. , 1994, Developmental psychobiology.

[30]  Kenneth H. Rubin,et al.  Emotionality, emotion regulation, and preschoolers' social adaptation , 1995, Development and Psychopathology.

[31]  D. Derryberry,et al.  Reactive and effortful processes in the organization of temperament , 1997, Development and Psychopathology.

[32]  J. Kagan,et al.  A 3-year follow-up of children with and without behavioral inhibition. , 1993, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[33]  Robert M. Sapolsky,et al.  Cortisol concentrations and the social significance of rank instability among wild baboons , 1992, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[34]  M. Rutter,et al.  Stress, coping, and development in children , 1983 .

[35]  S. Calkins.  Cardiac vagal tone indices of temperamental reactivity and behavioral regulation in young children. , 1997, Developmental psychobiology.

[36]  C. Kirschbaum,et al.  Cortisol and behavior: 1. Adaptation of a radioimmunoassay kit for reliable and inexpensive salivary cortisol determination , 1989, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

[37]  M. Gunnar,et al.  The stressfulness of separation among nine-month-old infants: effects of social context variables and infant temperament. , 1992, Child development.

[38]  Kagan,et al.  The physiology and psychology of behavioral inhibition in children. , 1987, Child development.

[39]  J. Harro,et al.  Association of depressiveness with blunted growth hormone response to maximal physical exercise in young healthy men , 1999, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[40]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Autonomic cardiac control. III. Psychological stress and cardiac response in autonomic space as revealed by pharmacological blockades. , 1994, Psychophysiology.

[41]  J. Kugler,et al.  Competition stress in soccer coaches increases salivary. Immunoglobin A and salivary cortisol concentrations. , 1996, The Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness.

[42]  S. Porges,et al.  Vagal tone: a physiologic marker of stress vulnerability. , 1992, Pediatrics.

[43]  B. Laursen,et al.  The Dynamics of Preschool Children's Conflicts. , 1989 .

[44]  W T Boyce,et al.  Psychobiological Differences in Childhood Stress Response. I. Patterns of Illness and Susceptibility , 1990, Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP.

[45]  J. Rosenbaum,et al.  Associations between expressed emotion and child behavioral inhibition and psychopathology: a pilot study. , 1997, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[46]  K. Eliasson,et al.  Personal control over work pace--circulatory, neuroendocrine and subjective responses in borderline hypertension. , 1986, Journal of hypertension.

[47]  S. Porges,et al.  Infant regulation of the vagal "brake" predicts child behavior problems: a psychobiological model of social behavior. , 1996, Developmental psychobiology.

[48]  J. Smyth,et al.  STRESSORS AND MOOD MEASURED ON A MOMENTARY BASIS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH SALIVARY CORTISOL SECRETION , 1998, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[49]  J. Thayer,et al.  Fitness and Gender-Related Differences in Heart Period Variability , 1998, Psychosomatic medicine.

[50]  C. Kopp.  Regulation of distress and negative emotions: A developmental view. , 1989 .