This report builds on the previous report in this series, Foundations for Understanding Self-Regulation from an Applied Developmental Perspective, which describes a theoretical framework that is utilized in the present review of empirical ecological, biological, and developmental studies. Our literature review attempts to address important unanswered questions regarding the impact of stress on self-regulation development including how lasting these effects may be, if there are particular periods of development that are more sensitive to its effects, and how individual differences moderate the impact of stress on self-regulation. We also examine data on environmental and contextual factors that may increase vulnerability to and protect children from the effects of stress. Our approach is based in cross- disciplinary theory on self-regulation and stress, and includes non-human animal studies as well as human studies in order to provide a broad and comprehensive perspective on the current literature.
We included studies if they made reference to specific stress-related constructs AND self-regulation constructs and were published in the past five years. Overall, we identified 394 studies, the majority of which were conducted on humans, with methodologies ranging from self-report correlational studies, to laboratory experiments with volunteers, to analysis of neurocognitive correlates of self-regulation and physiological measures of brain activity relating to self-regulation. The largest number of studies was focused on parenting or family context factors. Key findings are as follows:
Experiments in laboratory animals establish the biologically toxic effects of stress on indicators of self- regulation. In rodents, experimental administration of cumulative acute and chronic stressors induces measurable change in brain anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry relevant to self-regulation. These stressors also change cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes that can be mapped onto self- regulation as defined in humans. Results are consistent with a smaller body of stress manipulation studies in humans, although those studies are limited by the volunteer nature of the participating samples and to examination of acute stressors rather than chronic stressors which may have much more toxic effects on self-regulation. Thus, our conclusions are strengthened by the laboratory animal studies.
Strong associations between stress and self-regulation exist across a range of human development studies using a variety of self-report and observational methods. Children who have experienced harsh parenting, maltreatment, and environment adversity such as poverty and food insecurity do more poorly on indicators of self-regulation across cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains; differences can also be seen in the physiology of their stress response and their brain function. Severe childhood stress appears to have lasting effects, with self-regulation-related difficulties seen into adulthood.
There is a well-established link between parenting and development of self-regulation in childhood.
Parental warmth, responsiveness, and sensitivity predict self-regulation development and may buffer the effects of other stressors in the family and environment. Parenting may impact self-regulation through ecological factors and parent characteristics like depression as well as specific parenting behaviors. These results are based on correlational designs that cannot show that certain parenting behaviors cause specific self-regulation effects. Experimental intervention studies addressing the question of causation are included in the third report in this series entitled A Comprehensive Review of Self-Regulation Interventions from Birth through Young Adulthood.
Stress responsivity may be influenced by a variety of individual and environmental characteristics in addition to parenting. One important finding seen across laboratory animal and human studies is that previous exposure to stress may sensitize children to have more difficulties self-regulating when faced with acute stress later. Other individual differences that protect or increase vulnerability to stress
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