Arizona Twin Project

The Center is currently in the process of forming a new twin study focusing on the impact of the early environment (prenatal and infancy periods) on developing resilience. There are no early childhood twin studies that focus on resilience. We have a lot to learn about how genes and environment work together to give children the capacity to bounce back after trauma, adversity and stress. Furthermore, this project will be the only early childhood twin study of primarily Hispanics. This demographic will afford the opportunity to consider the impact of acculturation, and the interaction of culture and genetics.

Social Emotional Development

Capturing Children's Emotions using the Emotion-Modulated Startle
Previous research with rats, monkeys and adult humans has found that individuals startle more when they are experiencing a negative emotion, and they startle less when they are experiencing a positive emotion, both compared to a neutral state. This effect occurs because there are connections between some of the emotion centers of the brain (i.e., amygdala and stria terminalis) and the brain stem, which controls the startle reflex. We reasoned that this paradigm could be used to measure emotions in children. In this study, we selected ten videoclips taken from recent movies that seemed to elicit either positive emotion (joy, laughter), negative emotion (wariness, fear), or no emotion. Embedded on the audio track of these videoclips were short bursts of white noise, probes that would elicit an eyeblink response from children watching the films. While 6-7 year old children watch the films, we carefully videotape their facial expressions and their eyeblink responses to the noise probes. We also conduct a puppet interview with the children to obtain their self-report of their typical levels of emotion expression, and we ask parents and teachers about the children's emotions as well. Using all of these methods, we are better understanding the association between brain activation and emotions in children.

Wisconsin Twin Project

The goal of the Wisconsin Twin Project is to uncover characteristics of children and their environment that influence the development of childhood disorders. The disorders we focus on include internalizing disorders such as depression, generalized anxiety, and separation anxiety, and externalizing disorders such as oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

By understanding the development of childhood disorders we hope to reveal ways to prevent these problems and help children develop in healthy ways. The longitudinal study is comprised of young twins born in the state of Wisconsin, and includes numerous environmental, physiological, and biological measures. These twins were selected based on their symptoms of psychopathology, and include a large proportion of children with DSM-IV diagnoses. Some examples of our measures include child temperament, parenting, and DNA. The fact that the participants are twins allows us to examine how genetics and the environment contribute to risk and resilience and their influence on childhood disorders. In collaboration with the Translational Genomics Institute (http://www.tgen.org), we are ready to start analyzing our DNA samples and considering how genes and environments work together to influence child development. The Wisconsin Twin Project is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to Professors Hill Goldsmith (PI) and Kathyrn Lemery-Chalfant (co-PI). Currently, research assistants at the ASU Child Emotion Center have been coding videotaped home observations at eight years of age (Phase 3 of the project). The observations tap the sibling and parent-child relationships and help us understand how they relate to childhood disorders. In one observation the twins play together with a Play-Doh machine. In another, the twins and one of their parents play a card game.

Research funded by:
2005-2006 Institute for Mental Health Research, "Social Relations and Child Psychopathology: A Twin Study." (PI: Kathryn Lemery)

2001-2006 NIMH, "Longitudinal Twin Studies of Emotional Development," R01-MH50560 (PI: H. Hill Goldsmith, Co-I: Dr. Kathryn Lemery)

1999-2011 NIMH, "Risk for Child Psychopathology: A Twin-Study Perspective," R01-MH59785 (PI: H. Hill Goldsmith, Co-PI: Kathryn Lemery).

Resilience Project

Resilience and Health in Communities and Individuals.

The fundamental question asked in this investigation is whether candidate measures of resilience capacity, identified from recent theoretical advances and empirical study, will predict physical and emotional functioning beyond that provided from well-established risk factors for disease and psychological ill-health for community residents from a wide range of backgrounds. A representative sample of men and women aged 40 to 65 (total N = 800) will be drawn from 40 census neighborhoods that vary in average income, age, and ethnic composition. Using multi-level methods, participants and their neighborhoods will be evaluated on global indices of risk and resilience. Deeper probing of the underlying bio-behavioral mechanisms of risk and resilience will be conducted through laboratory testing and field observations over time with a sub-sample (N = 200) drawn from the larger pool of participants. Current functioning and precursors of future health status of the mid-aged adults will be taken as outcomes. For those mid-aged adults with children, the outcome measures will also be assessed in one of their children approaching adult life (aged 16 to 24 years; N = 160) to probe the transmission of resilience across generations.

Dr. Lemery-Chalfant from the ASU Child Emotion Center is a co-investigator of the research study, and will consider genetic influences on resilience and health, and the transmission of resilience from parents to children. Genes will be typed in collaboration with the Translational Genomics Institute. In addition, researchers at the center will code facial expressions of emotion during the speech task in the home.

Research funded by:

2005-2010 NIA, "Resilience and Health in Communities and Individuals," R01-AG026006-01, (PI: Alex Zautra, Co-I: Kathryn Lemery).

2003-2004 Saint Luke's Health Initiative, "Resilience Through Healthy Aging: From Framingham to Phoenix." (PI's: Alex Zautra and John Hall, Co-I: Kathryn Lemery).

Health Disparities Project

Resilience Mechanisms in Low Income Hispanic Mothers and Their Infants: Accounting for Health Disparities.

Our colleague, Dr. Linda Luecken, Ph.D., worked with Maricopa County Department of Public Health to study psychological, social, and behavioral factors that predict prenatal health care utilization and newborn health in a large sample of low-income, community women. Previous research has uncovered an interesting paradox concerning infant outcomes and ethnicity. Overall, Latinos tend to have a lower socioeconomic status, less access to health care, and tend not to seek prenatal medical care until later in pregnancy compared to Caucasians. Although all of these variables are associated with increased risk for infant mortality, Latinos have similiar if not lower rates of infant mortality than Caucasians. Dr. Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant (primary investigator), along with co-investigators Dr. Linda Luecken, Dr. Carlos Valiente, Dr. Nancy Gonzales, Dr. Felipe Gonzáles Castro, and Dr. Keith Crnic are currently working on a follow-up study to identify cultural, familial, and parental mechanisms that protect infants from the ill effects of being born into poverty.

Research funded by:

2005-2006 Arizona State University Institute for Social Science Research, "Resilience Mechanisms in Low Income Hispanic Mothers and Their Infants: Accounting for Health Disparities." (PI: Kathryn Lemery)

Casa Grande Project

Relations Between Parental Socialization, Children's Coping, and Social Functioning.

Dr. Carlos Valiente designed this project to examine the ways that parents contribute to children's coping with life stressors and to examine the relations of coping and psychological adjustment. A representative sample of approximately 250 5th and 6th graders was drawn from the Casa Grande School District. This district contains a high percentage of Hispanics, yielding an ethnically diverse sample. Child, parent, and teacher report were obtained. Children completed measures on their coping, adjustment, and parent-child relationship. Parents completed measures on helping their child deal with stressful events, responding to their child's negative emotions, the parent-child relationship, and their child's behavior problems. Teachers reported on the child's academic work. Dr. Carlos Valiente is interested in examining ways parents socialize coping and the actual coping methods their children use. Also of interest is whether coping is related to children's problem behaviors, social, and academic competence. This study will fit into the literature by furthing the understanding of children's coping, social, and emotional development and by developing a comprehensive model of ways children and adolescents acquire their coping skills that also can explain how these skills buffer them from stressful events.

Predicting Academic Competence in Kids Project (P.A.C.K.)

Dr. Carlos Valiente is the primary investigator on this project to better understand how children's temperament (particularly effortful control and negative emotion) and school-related relationships and school engagement relate to children's academic competence. This is a longitudinal design that will follow children in the Phoenix-metropolitan area from kindergarten through second grade. Specific aims of the study are: to examine the contributions of effortful control and negative emotionality to children's school-related relationships, engagement, and academic competence, to examine mediational chains that account for the relations between children's effortful control and negative emotionality and their academic functioning, and to examine changes in the strength of relations as children age and to examine mean level changes in school-related relationships (and engagement) as children age.