New University of Washington research finds that children's early environments have a lasting impact on their responses to stress later in life, and that the negative effects of deprived early environments can be mitigated—but only if that happens before age 2.
Published April 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research is believed to be the first to identify a sensitive period during early life when children's stress response systems are particularly likely to be influenced by their caregiving environments.
"The early environment has a very strong impact on how the stress response system in the body develops," said lead author Katie McLaughlin, a UW assistant professor of psychology. "But even kids exposed to a very extreme negative environment who are placed into a supportive family can overcome those effects in the long term."
The study focuses on children who spent the first years of their lives in Romanian orphanages and others who were removed from orphanages and placed in foster care. It finds that the institutionalized children had blunted stress system responses—for example, less heart rate acceleration and blood pressure increases during stressful tasks and lower production of cortisol, the primary hormone responsible for stress response.
[For more of this story go to http://medicalxpress.com/news/...stress-response.html]
Comments (0)