부산대학교 도서관

Summary: Socioeconomic status (SES) is robustly linked with health outcomes across the lifespan. Recent research on mechanisms that help explain the SES-health association points to key psychobiological pathways relevant to stress. However, missing from this literature is an examination of specific social-cognitive processes that underlie psychological responses to stress as a mechanistic pathway linking lower SES and health-relevant outcomes. Across two studies we examined threat vigilance as a plausible mediator of different time periods of SES and health-relevant indicators in healthy and clinical samples of children and parents. A novel method of assessing threat vigilance was utilized to capture the automatic nature of threat vigilance. Study 1 examined threat vigilance in both adolescents (Research Question 1a) and their parents (Research Question 2a) as a possible mediator of the relationship between SES (current and early-life) and cardiovascular risk markers in healthy adolescents (BMI and systemic inflammation). Two key marginally significant mediation pathways were observed: the association between lower early-life SES and higher adolescent BMI was at least partially mediated by both adolescents and parents' threat vigilance tendencies. Significant effects were not observed for current SES, or for inflammation outcomes. Study 2 examined the same two research questions in a sample of children with pediatric asthma, using the same method of assessing threat vigilance. Four mediation pathways were observed: the association between current SES and parent-report of children's asthma symptoms was significantly mediated by children's threat vigilance; 2) children's threat vigilance significantly mediated the association between current SES and parent-report of children's asthma control; 3) children's threat vigilance marginally mediated the association between current SES and self-reported asthma control; finally, 4) the association between current SES and parents' asthma-related quality of life was marginally mediated by parents' threat vigilance. Significant effects were not observed for early-life SES, or for pathways to pulmonary function. Together, these findings indicate that threat vigilance tendencies in both children and parents may have implications for adolescent obesity, as well as clinical asthma outcomes.