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The Stress Response and Adolescents’ Adjustment: The Impact of Child Maltreatment

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Abstract

Experience with and management of stress has implications for adolescents’ behavioral and socioemotional development. This study examined the relationship between adolescents’ physiological response to an acute laboratory stressor (i.e., Trier Social Stress Test; TSST) and anger regulation and interpersonal competence in a sample of 175 low-income urban adolescents (51.8% girls). Findings suggested that heightened reactivity as indicated by cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure was associated with increased interpersonal competence and anger regulation. However, these findings were context dependent such that, for youth high in self-reported child maltreatment, heightened reactivity was associated with decreased interpersonal competence and anger regulation. Results highlight the importance of considering how context may condition the effect of stress reactivity on functioning during adolescence.

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Acknowledgments

Support for this project and time working on this manuscript was provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through grants T32DA019426 (Cook), K01-DA-024759 (Chaplin), P50-DA-16556 (Sinha), R01-DA-06025 (Mayes), R01-DA-017863 (Mayes), KO5-DA-020091 (Mayes), and a grant from the Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Research Foundation (Mayes). The study sponsors had no involvement in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; the writing of the manuscript; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Rhode Island College, 600 Mt. Pleasant Ave., Providence, RI, 02908, USA

    Emily C. Cook

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Tara M. Chaplin, Rajita Sinha & Jacob K. Tebes

  3. Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Linda C. Mayes

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  1. Emily C. Cook
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  2. Tara M. Chaplin
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Correspondence to Emily C. Cook.

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Cook, E.C., Chaplin, T.M., Sinha, R. et al. The Stress Response and Adolescents’ Adjustment: The Impact of Child Maltreatment. J Youth Adolescence 41, 1067–1077 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-012-9746-y

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