Baseline Interactions Between Intervention Mediators: Interactions Between Preschooler's Biological Sensitivity to Context and Executive Functions

Executive functions (EF), such as inhibition and attention, are essential for children’s academic and behavioral outcomes. To reduce the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged youth, preventive interventions should focus on strengthening EF and self-regulatory skills in early childhood. EF’s have been found to be more important for determining school readiness than IQ (Blair & Razza, 2007) and predict math and reading competence throughout schooling (e.g., Gathercole et al., 2004). Unfortunately EF development is significantly impaired by stress (Diamond & Lee, 2011).

Intervention efficacy has great individual differences, calling for rigorous research on mediators and moderators that explain differential efficacy and facilitate targeted treatment (La Greca, Silverman, & Lochman 2009). Gender, risk at baseline, parent affect and parenting skills are common intervention moderators, yet this literature remains limited by inconsistencies and small effects, leading to calls for research incorporating proximal, physiological substrates of self-regulation and executive function (Bierman et al. 2008); especially, autonomic and adrenocortical regulation (El-Sheikh, 2007; Gunnar & Donzella, 2002; Obradovic, Bush, Stamperdahl, Adler, & Boyce, 2010; Porges, 2007). Biological Sensitivity to Context (BSC) theory, now extensively validated (Boyce and Ellis 2005, Ellis, Essex, and Boyce 2005, Ellis and Boyce 2011), provides a framework for predicting developmental changes in autonomic and adrenocortical regulation. Adrenocortical and autonomic output may become dampened (hypo-responsive) under chronic ecological stress (Boyce and Ellis, 2005; Shirtcliff, Granger, Booth, & Johnson, 2005). Children in hyper-arousing environments, such as home or school, may demonstrate higher baseline EKG and may be hypo-responsive to arousing stimuli in comparison to their peers. This high EKG baseline and hypo-responsitivity to stressors may indicate greater ecological stress and difficulty regulating stress responses (insensitivity to changes in arousal).

Power PATH is a universal, dual-generation socio-emotional intervention designed to improve child school readiness, child, parent, and family well-being. Power PATH integrates PATHS preschool curriculum (Domitrovich et al., 1999) and an adapted Coping Power parent intervention (Wells, Lochman & Lenhart, 2008). Data are being collected at four time-points – baseline (pre-intervention), post-intervention, kindergarten and first-grade, across two waves. The first wave’s baseline data (N = 200 Head Start preschoolers) will be analyzed to compare children’s EF performance (with a comprehensive battery) to their Biological Sensitivity to Context to determine whether there are interactions between intervention mediators at baseline, providing further evidence of behavioral and physiological interactions in at-risk youth.