Adolescent stress reactivity: Examining physiological, psychological and peer relationship measures with a group stress protocol in a school setting.

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents experience enhanced social sensitivity and biopsychosocial changes that can be challenging. Much remains unknown about the effect of psychological characteristics and peer relationships on adolescents' physiological responses to stress, due in part to methodological limitations. METHODS: To test how adolescents' peer relationships and psychological characteristics are associated with their physiological and psychological response to stress, we administered the Group Public Speaking Task for Adolescents (GPST-A) to 54 adolescents (n = 40 girls; Mage = 16.6 years) in two high schools in the United States. Salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase (sAA), and positive and negative affect were measured six times. Relationships among group members were measured, resulting in whole-network data. State and trait rumination, five factors of coping, and emotional reappraisal and suppression were measured along with symptoms of depression and anxiety. RESULTS: Greater levels of negative evaluation and victimization among group members were associated with a steeper increase and decline in the negative affect response, yet not associated with the physiological response to stress. Greater positive affect was associated with decreased cortisol reactivity, whereas negative affect was associated with steeper cortisol and sAA reactivity. Rumination, disengagement coping, and depression symptoms were related to the physiological response to stress. CONCLUSIONS: The GPST-A is feasible to administer in a school context with adolescents to collect both physiological and psychological stress responses. Findings from the present study suggest peer relationships are important for understanding adolescents' psychological response to stressors while psychological characteristics are important for adolescents' physiological response to stress.

Educators' emotion regulation strategies and their physiological indicators of chronic stress over 1 year.

Studies show teaching is a highly stressful profession and that chronic work stress is associated with adverse health outcomes. This study analysed physiological markers of stress and self-reported emotion regulation strategies in a group of middle school teachers over 1 year. Chronic physiological stress was assessed with diurnal cortisol measures at three time points over 1 year (fall, spring, fall). The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate the changes in educators' physiological level of stress. Results indicate that compared to those in the fall, cortisol awakening responses were blunted in the spring. Further, this effect was ameliorated by the summer break. Additionally, self-reported use of the emotion regulation strategy reappraisal buffered the observed blunting that occurred in the spring.

Cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase trajectories following a group social-evaluative stressor with adolescents.

Intraindividual variability in stress responsivity and the interrelationship of multiple neuroendocrine systems make a multisystem analytic approach to examining the human stress response challenging. The present study makes use of an efficient social-evaluative stress paradigm - the Group Public Speaking Task for Adolescents (GPST-A) - to examine the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA)-axis and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) reactivity profiles of 54 adolescents with salivary cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA). First, we account for individuals' time latency of hormone concentrations between individuals. Second, we use a two-piece multilevel growth curve model with landmark registration to examine the reactivity and recovery periods of the stress response separately. This analytic approach increases the models' sensitivity to detecting trajectory differences in the reactivity and recovery phases of the stress response and allows for interindividual variation in the timing of participants' peak response following a social-evaluative stressor. The GPST-A evoked typical cortisol and sAA responses in both males and females. Males' cortisol concentrations were significantly higher than females' during each phase of the response. We found no gender difference in the sAA response. However, the rate of increase in sAA as well as overall sAA secretion across the study were associated with steeper rates of cortisol reactivity and recovery. This study demonstrates a way to model the response trajectories of salivary biomarkers of the HPA-axis and ANS when taking a multisystem approach to neuroendocrine research that enables researchers to make conclusions about the reactivity and recovery phases of the HPA-axis and ANS responses. As the study of the human stress response progresses toward a multisystem analytic approach, it is critical that individual variability in peak latency be taken into consideration and that accurate modeling techniques capture individual variability in the stress response so that accurate conclusions can be made about separate phases of the response.