Untangling heterogeneity: when, for whom, and how prenatal stress and early childhood risk and protection shape biopsychosocial competence in middle childhood - PROJECT SUMMARY The psychosocial functioning of youth in our society is currently the cause for widespread concern. By middle childhood, ~20% of children have behavior problems. To address growing concerns about the psychosocial functioning of our youth and consequences for society, the scientific community is interested in the earliest developmental origins of these problems. Stress during gestation and early childhood is a critical determinant of poor bio-psychosocial competence. However, the pronounced heterogeneity of outcomes among early life stress-exposed children makes it difficult to determine when, for whom, and how children are affected. Gaining such knowledge is the long-term goal of our research. This project leverages our previous R01- funded project (NICHD grants # R01HD085990, R01HD100469) that is following a cohort of 374 mother-child dyads oversampled for life stress, with data collection starting at gestation week 15 until age 6. We conducted a granular assessment of pregnancy stress (measured weekly by maternal report), as well as a frequent (every 3 month) assessment of early childhood stress with the goal of understanding critical periods when stress derails later childhood biopsychosocial functioning. The overall objective of this project is to examine when, for whom, and how prenatal and early childhood stress shape biopsychosocial development in middle childhood. Middle childhood is a developmental period in which much of the self-regulation developed in early childhood is consolidated and is highly predictive of functioning in adolescence and adulthood. Specifically, in Aim 1 we will determine when stress during the prenatal and early childhood periods and the interaction of this timing influences 5 salient domains of biopsychosocial competence in middle childhood (internalizing/ externalizing behaviors, stress reactivity, social/academic competence). In Aim 2, we will identify for whom by examining subgroup differences (i.e., sex and supportive contexts) in effects of the timing stress on middle childhood outcomes. Finally, in Aim 3, we will examine which domains of early childhood psychobiological regulation mediate the effects of early life stress. We will use advanced confirmatory data analytic methods to address these questions, as well as machine learning to follow-up our hypothesis testing by leveraging all data to identify which effects among when, for whom, and how are most salient. This project is innovative in its multimethod approach (e.g. observation, biomarkers of stress, lab tasks), its granular assessment of prenatal and early childhood stress, and the novel statistical approaches used to determine which epochs of stress are most relevant for biopsychosocial competence. This highly significant research will be the first longitudinal, prospective, multi-method study of how differential timing of early life stress influences the development of biopsychosocial competence in middle childhood. Thus, this study is critical in developing data-informed, targeted interventions for early-life stress to address the alarming mental health crisis among our youth.
