October 12, 2023
By: Clarissa Filetti
Adolescence is a developmental period of both heightened opportunity and risk. During this period, adolescents show marked changes in their social behavior as they begin to spend more time with peers, and subsequently away from their family, and begin to form their social identities. However, adolescents also become more sensitive to peer evaluation and thus more vulnerable to social evaluative threat (for example: giving a speech in front of a crowd), while at the same time their physiological stress response systems become more reactive. Over many years of research, we have learned that the support of social partners, termed social buffering, provides protection from stress.
In childhood, parents play a powerful role in buffering their children’s stress, however, parents become less effective in buffering stress as their children experience puberty and transition to adolescence. Most of the research studying parental social buffering during adolescence has only examined how parents’ presence and verbal support affects their adolescent’s stress response. Which leads to our question – does physical comfort from parents buffer stress reactivity in adolescents?
In the Examining Adolescent Stress Effects (EASE) study, we are testing this question by inviting adolescents, aged 14-17, to participate in two research sessions, one over Zoom and one in person at the Institute of Child Development (ICD). At ICD, participants will undergo a laboratory task with their parent who will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) parent will be in the same room as their child, 2) parent will be in the same room as their child and providing physical comfort, and 3) parent will not be in the same room as their child.
This study has recently started, and we are looking for participants to join us! Participants can earn up to $35 for their time. If you are interested, please contact us by email at EaseStudy@umn.edu or by phone at (612) 217-2880.