Implicit measures of early-life family conditions: Relationships to psychosocial characteristics and cardiovascular disease risk in adulthood.

Abstract

Objectives An implicit measure of early-life family conditions was created to help address potential biases in responses to self-reported questionnaires of early-life family environments. We investigated whether a computerized affect attribution paradigm designed to capture implicit, affective responses (anger, fear, warmth) regarding early-life family environments was a) stable over time, b) associated with self-reports of childhood family environments, c) able to predict adult psychosocial profiles (perceived social support, heightened vigilance), and d) able to predict adult cardiovascular risk (blood pressure) either alone or in conjunction with a measure of early-life socioeconomic status. Method Two studies were conducted to examine reliability and validity of the affect attribution paradigm (Study 1, N = 94) and associated adult psychosocial outcomes and cardiovascular risk (Study 2, N = 122). Results Responses on the affect attribution paradigm showed significant correlations over a 6-month period, and were moderately associated with self-reports of childhood family environments. Greater attributed negative affect about early-life family conditions predicted lower levels of current perceived social support and heightened vigilance in adulthood. Attributed negative affect also interacted with early-life socioeconomic status to marginally predict resting systolic blood pressure, such that those individuals high in early-life SES but who had implicit negative affect attributed to early-life family conditions had SBP levels that were as high as individuals low in early-life SES. Conclusions Implicit measures of early-life family conditions are a useful approach for assessing the psychosocial nature of early-life environments and linking them to adult psychosocial and physiological health profiles.

Childhood Poverty and Blood Pressure Reactivity to and Recovery From an Acute Stressor in Late Adolescence

“…We also found that the childhood poverty effects on systolic but not diastolic blood pressure were mediated by exposure to family conflict. Prior work on social factors including childhood SES (71,72,73) as well as early family interpersonal relationships (74) reflect similar trends. It is not clear why systolic relative to diastolic blood pressure may be a more sensitive marker of stress outcomes to undesirable, early social conditions in life.…”

Hostile behavior links negative childhood family relationships to heart rate reactivity and recovery in young adulthood

“…A general interpretive style characterized by heightened vigilance and suspicion of others may develop in the context of stressful and unpredictable childhood environments (Chen et al, 2004); our findings suggest that such an interpersonal orientation may persist later in life. In a recent study of implicit affect, attributions of anger and fear to one’s early childhood family environment were associated a greater tendency to perceived threat in response to ambiguous cues among adults (Chan et al, 2011). …”

Threat vigilance and socioeconomic disparities in metabolic health

“…Fifth, another limitation was the use of only one measure of threat vigilance in the present study. Even though we validated this measure in prior work (e.g., there were significant associations between threat vigilance assessed in the same manner and angry or fearful responses subsequent to viewing childhood family photographs; Chan et al, 2011), future studies could benefit from assessing threat vigilance at multiple levels of analysis within the same study (e.g., self-report, behavioral, psychophysiological, and neural measures) in order to replicate and extend our results.…”

“…In a pilot study, test-retest reliability for this measure over a 1-month period was 0.79. This measure was previously validated with selfreport measures and shows correlations with other performance-based measures of implicit bias and cognitive control (Chan, Chen, Hibbert, Wong, & Miller, 2011;Payne, 2001Payne, , 2006.…”