 
        |
Socioeconomic
status (SES) is negatively associated with children's health; however,
mediators for this association are not well-understood. In this pilot
study, we lay the foundation for testing one potential psychological pathway,
a cognitive bias toward interpreting ambiguous situations as threatening,
and its relationship with cardiovascular reactivity, a risk factor for
later cardiovascular disease. Children from lower SES backgrounds have
been found to display elevated cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory
stressors. It may be that these children, because of their more frequent
exposure to danger and stress, develop a bias toward interpreting a wide
range of situations, including ambiguous ones, as threatening. These
children may then display heightened physiological reactivity during such
situations. This type of cognitive bias (interpreting ambiguous situations
as threatening) may thus serve as a mediator explaining why lower SES children
display heightened cardiovascular reactivity. Ecologically valid measures
of cognitive bias that are relevant to children of various SES backgrounds
have not been developed, and thus the first goal of this study is to develop
and test professionally produced videos of ambiguous and negative social
situations. The second goal of this pilot study is to investigate children's
cardiovascular responses to these videos. We hypothesize that lower SES
will be associated with greater threat preception during ambiguous, but
not negative, scenarios and that the relationship between SES and cardiovascular
reactivity will be mediated by threat perception during ambiguous scenarios.
Finally, we expect that stressful life events will moderate the above relationships.
That is, only low SES children who experience many or at least one severe
negative life event will develop such a bias. To test these hypotheses,
we will first develop and test the feasibility of four videos of ambiguous
and negative scenarios using a sample of 40 Caucasian and African American
college freshmen. We then will test cardiovascular reactivity to
these videos in a laboratory protocol using a sample of 20 Caucasian and
African American adolescents. Adolescents will also be interviewed
about their perceptions of these scenarios, and will be asked about stressful
life events. Through this study, we seek to establish a methodology
for investigating the role of psychological processes in SES and health
relationships. (PDF
VERSION)(MS
WORD VERSION) |
