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The British Journal of Psychiatry (2001) 179: 144-150
© 2001 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Autonomic reactivity and psychopathology in middle childhood{dagger}

W. THOMAS BOYCE, MD and JODI QUAS, PhD

School of Public Health and the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley

ABBEY ALKON, PhD

School of Nursing and the Center for Health and Community, University of California, San Francisco

NANCY A. SMIDER, PhD and MARILYN J. ESSEX, PhD

Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison

DAVID J. KUPFER, MD, the MacArthur Assessment Battery Working Group of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Psychopathology and Development

Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine and the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Correspondence: Professor W. Thomas Boyce, School of Public Health, 570 University Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1190, USA

Declaration of interest Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Psychopathology and Development and the National Institute of Mental Health (R01-MH44340).

{dagger} See editorial, pp. 93–94, this issue.

Background Better indicators are needed for identifying children with early signs of developmental psychopathology.

Aims To identify measures of autonomic nervous system reactivity that discriminate children with internalising and externalising behavioural symptoms.

Method A cross-sectional study of 122 children aged 6-7 years examined sympathetic and parasympathetic reactivity to standardised field-laboratory stressors as predictors of parent- and teacher-reported mental health symptoms.

Results Measures of autonomic reactivity discriminated between children with internalising behaviour problems, externalising behaviour problems and neither. Internalisers showed high reactivity relative to low-symptom children, principally in the parasympathetic branch, while externalisers showed low reactivity, in both autonomic branches.

Conclusions School-age children with mental health symptoms showed a pattern of autonomic dimorphism in their reactivity to standardised challenges. This observation may be of use in early identification of children with presyndromal psychopathology.


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