W. Thomas Boyce's research while affiliated with University of California, San Francisco and other places
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Publications (227)
This longitudinal study investigated how kindergartners’ position in the classroom social hierarchy and cortisol response relate to their change in school engagement across the first year of kindergarten (N = 332, M = 5.3 years, 51% boys, 41% White, 18% Black). We used naturalistic classroom observations of social hierarchy positions, laboratory‐ba...
Background
Although investigations have begun to differentiate biological and neurobiological responses to a variety of adversities, studies considering both endocrine and immune function in the same datasets are limited.
Methods
Associations between proximal (family functioning, caregiver depression, and anxiety) and distal (SES-D; socioeconomic...
Youths who are negatively affected by social determinants of health suffer adverse effects like increased risks of chronic health conditions and mental health issues. Part 3 of this series describes ways pediatricians can help fight these social determinants to promote health equity for our most vulnerable children. Available for purchase at https:...
As the science of adversity and resilience advances, and public awareness of the health consequences of stress grows, primary care providers are being increasingly asked to address the effects of adverse experiences on child wellbeing. Given limited tools for assessing these effects early in life, the authors explore how enhanced capacity to measur...
Mental disorders are among the most disabling health conditions globally. However, there remains a lack of valid, reliable, noninvasive, and inexpensive biomarkers to identify (at an early age) people who are at the greatest risk of experiencing a future mental health condition. Exfoliated primary teeth, when used in combination with established an...
The interplay of genes and environments (GxE) is a fundamental source of variation in behavioral and developmental outcomes. Although the role of developmental time (T) in the unfolding of such interactions has yet to be fully considered, GxE operates within a temporal frame of reference across multiple timescales and degrees of biological complexi...
Marla Sokolowski's work and humanity has influenced the careers of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of younger scientists. Her fundamental research on the neurogenetic underpinnings of behavior in Drosophila melanogaster is remarkable not only for its scientific brilliance, but for the humility, care, and humor with which it was conducted.
Advances in science are fundamentally changing the way we understand how inextricable interactions among genetic predispositions, physical and social environments, and developmental timing influence early childhood development and the foundations of health and how significant early adversity can lead to a lifetime of chronic health impairments. Thi...
Exposures to adverse environments, both psychosocial and physicochemical, are prevalent and consequential across a broad range of childhood populations. Such adversity, especially early in life, conveys measurable risk to learning and behavior and to the foundations of both mental and physical health. Using an interactive gene-environment-time (GET...
The development of child mental health problems has been associated with experiences of adversity and dysregulation of stress response systems; however, past research has largely focused on externalizing or internalizing problems (rather than their co-occurrence) and single physiological systems in high-risk adolescent samples. The present study ex...
There is emerging evidence that the development of problematic aggression in childhood may be associated with specific physiological stress response patterns, with both biological overactivation and underactivation implicated. This study tested associations between sex-specific patterns of stress responses across the sympathetic nervous system (SNS...
A now substantial body of science implicates a dynamic interplay between genetic and environmental variation in the development of individual differences in behavior and health. Such outcomes are affected by molecular, often epigenetic, processes involving gene-environment (G-E) interplay that can influence gene expression. Early environments with...
Objectives
To examine the association between prenatal stress and infant physical health in the first year of life within an understudied, racially and ethnically diverse, highly-stressed community sample. We expected that greater stress exposure would predict higher rates of infant illness.
Study design
Low-income, racially/ethnically diverse, ov...
The conceptualization of stress‐responsive physiological systems as operating in an integrated manner is evident in several theoretical models of cross‐system functioning. However, limited empirical research has modeled the complexity of multisystem activity. Moreover, few studies have explored developmentally‐regulated changes in multisystem activ...
Significance
DNA methylation is the most studied modification in human population epigenetics. Its information content can be explored in 2 principal ways—epigenome-wide association studies and epigenetic age. The latter likely reflects cellular/biological age and works with impressive accuracy across most tissues. In adults, it associates with var...
We conducted signal detection analyses to test for curvilinear, U-shaped relations between early experiences of adversity and heightened physiological responses to challenge, as proposed by biological sensitivity to context theory. Based on analysis of an ethnically diverse sample of 338 kindergarten children (4–6 years old) and their families, we...
Classrooms are key social settings that impact children's mental health, though individual differences in physiological reactivity may render children more or less susceptible to classroom environments. In a diverse sample of children from 19 kindergarten classrooms (N = 338, 48% female, M age = 5.32 years), we examined whether children's parasympa...
Background:
The widespread use of accessible peripheral tissues for epigenetic analyses has prompted increasing interest in the study of tissue-specific DNA methylation (DNAm) variation in human populations. To date, characterizations of inter-individual DNAm variability and DNAm concordance across tissues have been largely performed in adult tiss...
Harsh and restrictive parenting are well-established contributors to the development of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) among children. However, few studies have explored whether interpersonal relationships that develop outside the family environment attenuate the risk for ODD that is associated with harsh parenting. The current study tested mu...
The articles included in this collection on bullying provide a wide lens through which to view this complexity.
Aim:
To examine variation in child DNA methylation to assess its potential as a pathway for effects of childhood social adversity on health across the life course.
Materials & methods:
In a diverse, prospective community sample of 178 kindergarten children, associations between three types of social experience and DNA methylation within buccal e...
A growing body of research has documented associations between adverse childhood environments and DNA methylation, highlighting epigenetic processes as potential mechanisms through which early external contexts influence health across the life course. The present study tested a complementary hypothesis: indicators of children's early internal, biol...
Background
This exploratory qualitative study explored the life experiences of young adults who participated in a cohort study in their child care center 26 years ago.
The purpose of the study was to: (1) Describe the life trajectories of study participants who exhibited the extremes of high or low cardiovascular reactivity during their preschool a...
Objective:
To examine the moderating role of restrictive parenting on the relation of socioeconomic status (SES) to febrile illnesses (FI) and upper respiratory illnesses (URI) among ethnic minority and non-minority children.
Methods:
Children from diverse ethnic backgrounds (Caucasian, African American, Asian, Latino, Other, or Multiethnic) wer...
Objective:
Children from families with lower socioeconomic status (SES) evidence greater physiological dysregulation and poorer health. Despite recognition of environmental contributors, little is known about the influence of neighborhood characteristics. The present study examined the moderating role of community-level risks and resources on the...
Animal models of early postnatal mother–infant interactions have highlighted the importance of tactile contact for biobehavioral outcomes via the modification of DNA methylation (DNAm). The role of normative variation in contact in early human development has yet to be explored. In an effort to translate the animal work on tactile contact to humans...
Entry into kindergarten is a developmental milestone that children may differentially experience as stressful, with implications for variability in neurobiological functioning. Guided by the goodness-of-fit framework, this study tested the hypothesis that kindergarten children's ( N = 338) daily cortisol would be affected by the “match” or “mismatc...
This chapter begins with an assertion that, beyond the cultural traditions that affirm childhood as a period of special and lasting importance, a new science of child development reveals an influence of the early years throughout the life course. Through processes of “biological embedding,” early developmental experiences and exposures become neuro...
Sleep problems are common for young children especially if they live in adverse home environments. Some studies investigate if young children may also be at a higher risk of sleep problems if they have a specific biological sensitivity to adversity. This paper addresses the research question, does the relations between children’s exposure to family...
This paper—presented on the celebratory occasion of Dr. Robert Haggerty’s 91st birthday—describes how a 1962 article by Dr. Haggerty and his colleague Dr. Roger Meyer launched a previously unexplored, pediatric research enterprise by asserting that: “There are little precise data to explain why one person becomes ill with an infecting agent and ano...
The quality of parenting is a complex and multiply determined construct that is strongly influenced by the larger ecological context in which it evolves. A substantial body of literature has documented associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and parenting but has been limited in its consideration of factors that may explain or moderate the...
Importance Pediatricians are paying increased attention to the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on children’s health. Low SES is a robust predictor of obesity across the life course and may interact with genes affecting metabolism to influence obesity risk. Recent animal literature and burgeoning human research suggest that the hormone oxytoci...
Objective:
We tested the hypothesis that socioeconomic status (SES) would predict children's physical health problems at the end of kindergarten among children whose parent reported greater parent-child relationship (PCR) negativity and/or who exhibited greater parasympathetic (RSA) reactivity. We also tested whether RSA and PCR negativity mediate...
The interplay between individuals forms building blocks for social structure. Here, we examine the structure of behavioural interactions among kindergarten classroom with a hierarchy-neutral approach to examine all possible underlying patterns in the formation of layered networks of ‘reciprocal’ interactions. To understand how these layers are coor...
Correlation analysis between clustering of Submissive interactions and Leadership interactions. (A) The correlation when measuring local clustering. (B) The correlation when measuring the average clustering per classroom. Kindergarteners are colored by classroom.
Observed, expected and Z-scores for dyadic motifs. Significant Z-Scores are indicated in bold. *Motifs IDs are indicated along with their reciprocal IDs if the layers were reversed.
Observed, expected and Z-scores for triadic motifs. Significant Z-Scores are indicated in bold. *Motifs IDs are indicated along with their reciprocal IDs if the layers were reversed.
Principal Component (PC) analysis of subsequent interaction transitions. The first and second principal components account for 22.11% of the total variance in a kindergartener's transition probabilities between interaction types. There appears to be a subset of kindergarteners that are defined by their shared propensity to transition from Prosocial...
Correlation analysis using the Z-scores of the triadic motifs. (A) The Leadership/Followship network displays correlated significant motifs when compared to the Submissive/Aggressive network, even with very highly up-regulated motifs. (B,C) The Resource Struggle/Prosocial network correlates well with under-represented motifs, but poorly with over r...
The study examined how the interplay between children’s cortisol response and family income is related to
executive function (EF) skills. The sample included one hundred and two 5- to 6-year-olds (64% minority). EF
skills were measured using laboratory tasks and observer ratings. Physiological reactivity was assessed via
cortisol response during a...
The nature versus nurture debate is centuries old, yet accumulating evidence from the past few decades has made real the current position that variation in the onset and course of most human disorders will be most likely ultimately explained by interactions among biological and environmental forces. This chapter outlines some of the theories and em...
Background:
Exposure to parental chronic illness is associated with adverse developmental outcomes.
Objective:
We examined the association between parental multiple sclerosis (MS) and parental MS-related clinical factors on developmental health.
Methods:
We conducted a population-based cohort study in British Columbia, Canada, using linked hea...
The study of autonomic nervous system responses and contextual factors has shed light on the development of children's negative outcomes, but the vast majority of these studies have not focused on minority populations living under adversity. To address these gaps, the current longitudinal study included a sample of poor, immigrant Latino families t...
A swiftly growing volume of literature, comprising both human and animal studies and employing both observational and experimental designs, has documented striking individual differences in neurobiological sensitivities to environmental circumstances within subgroups of study samples. This differential susceptibility to social and physical environm...
Human afflictions were due almost exclusively to the acute and chronic, cumulative influences of environmental agents of disease. Such agents included psychological stressors, impoverished living conditions, physical toxins, infectious pathogens, and inadequate or malevolent parenting. Prevention and treatment required alterations in these causativ...
To assess the relationship between the 5 min Apgar score and developmental vulnerability at 5 years of age.
Population-based retrospective cohort study.
Manitoba, Canada.
All children born between 1999 and 2006 at term gestation, with a documented 5 min Apgar score.
5 min Apgar score.
Childhood development at 5 years of age, expressed as vulnerabil...
Evolutionary-minded developmentalists studying predictive-adaptive-response processes linking childhood adversity with accelerated female reproductive development and health scientists investigating the developmental origins of health and disease (DOoHaD) may be tapping the same process, whereby longer-term health costs are traded off for increased...
It is estimated that 6.3 million children worldwide died in 2013 before attaining 5 years of age, from mostly preventable diseases.¹ Within North America, nearly 1.2 million US children are homeless, more than 1 in 3 children of color younger than 5 years live in poverty, and 1 in 9 lack access to adequate food.² Further, as many as 153 million chi...
Recent research shows that by age 5, children form rigid social hierarchies, with some children consistently subordinated, and then later, bullied. Further, several studies suggest that enduring mental and physical harm follow. It is time to analyze the health burdens posed by early social dominance and to consider the ethical implications of ongoi...
Background:
Exposure to parental chronic illness is associated with several adverse developmental outcomes.
Objectives:
We examined the association between parental multiple sclerosis (MS) and childhood developmental outcomes.
Methods:
We conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study in Manitoba, Canada, using linked databases. The o...
This paper argues that there is a revolution afoot in the developmental science of gene–environment interplay. We summarize, for an audience of developmental researchers and clinicians, how epigenetic processes – chromatin structural modifications that regulate gene expression without changing DNA sequences – may offer a strong, parsimonious accoun...
This chapter focuses on early childhood experiences and how they may contribute to cooperative and peaceful behaviors and outcomes in the later childhood years and into adulthood. Five interrelated topics are explored: (a) universal tensions ever pushing us toward competition or cooperation; (b) socioeconomic inequities that powerfully constrain ch...
Summary Both objective and, more recently, subjective measures of low social status have been linked to poor health outcomes. It is unclear, however, through which precise physiological mechanisms such standing may influence health, although it has been proposed that those of lower status may have biomarker profiles that are more dysregulated (and...
Moderating effects of non-parental preschool child care quality on the impact of maternal mental health risks on children's behavioral and mental health outcomes were examined. The paper presents data both on the concurrent buffering effects on children at the age of 4 ½ while they are in child care as well as on the longitudinal effects on the chi...
This study investigates the dynamic interplay between teacher-child relationship quality and children's behaviors across kindergarten and first grade to predict academic competence in first grade. Using a sample of 338 ethnically diverse 5-year-old children, nested path analytic models were conducted to examine bidirectional pathways between childr...
Despite widespread recognition that the physiological systems underlying stress reactivity are well coordinated at a neurobiological level, surprisingly little empirical attention has been given to delineating precisely how the systems actually interact with one another when confronted with stress. We examined cross-system response proclivities in...
Background
Families are the primary source of support and care for most children. In Western societies, 4 to 12% of children live in households where a parent has a chronic illness. Exposure to early-life stressors, including parenting stress, parental depression and parental chronic disease could lead to harmful changes in children’s social, emoti...
Background:
To understand whether the relationship between young children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses predicted their BMI, or vice versa, the association between standardized BMI (zBMI) at 2, 3.5, and 5 years of age and ANS reactivity at 3.5-5 years of age, and whether zBMI predicts later ANS reactivity or whether early ANS reactivi...
A rapidly expanding body of research indicates that early social environments characterized by adversity, subordination and stress, along with individual differences in susceptibility to such environments, create risks for lifelong chronic diseases, including declines in oral health. Emerging findings suggest that gene-environment interplay, result...
Although long a focus of developmental psychopathology, in recent years a variety of professional disciplines and the general public have demonstrated an increased interest in the manner in which early life experience relates to the development of health outcomes. Adding to the already rich empirical evidence of early life experience effects on chi...
The purpose of the study was to determine whether mothers' adversities experienced during early pregnancy are associated with offspring's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity trajectories from 6 months to 5 years of age. This cohort study of primarily Latino families included maternal interviews at 13-14 weeks gestation about their experience...
Prenatal exposure to serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI) antidepressants and maternal depression may affect prefrontal cognitive skills (executive functions; EFs) including self-control, working memory and cognitive flexibility. We examined long-term effects of prenatal SRI exposure on EFs to determine whether effects are moderated by maternal mood...
This paper presents a computationally efficient method to design an artificial bionic baroreflex. This work is built upon a physiology-based mathematical model of autonomic-cardiac regulation describing the regulation of heart rate and blood pressure as well as a system identification technique to identify a subject-specific mathematical model for...
Objective
To explore whether primary school entry is associated with changes in immune system parameters in HIV-affected children. HIV-affected children are vulnerable to psychosocial stressors, regardless of their own HIV serological status.Methods
Data from 38 HIV-positive and 29 HIV-negative children born to seropositive women were obtained. Mea...
Bad experiences in childhood may scar us – and our descendants – for life. Are we closing in on the biology behind the process?
Socioeconomic status (SES) is the single most potent determinant of health within human populations, from infancy through
old age. Although the social stratification of health is nearly universal, there is persistent uncertainty regarding the dimensions
of SES that effect such inequalities and thus little clarity about the principles of interventio...
Early life adversity has known impacts on adult health and behavior, yet little is known about the gene-environment interactions (GEIs) that underlie these consequences. We used the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to show that chronic early nutritional adversity interacts with rover and sitter allelic variants of foraging (for) to affect adult ex...
