Human psychobiology in Scandinavia: II. Psychoneuroendocrinology—human stress and coping processes

This paper reviews psychoneuroendocrine research on stress and coping in Scandinavia during the last two decades. Two laboratories in Stockholm, led by Marianne Frankenhaeuser and Lennart Levi, respectively, have played a particularly important role for the development of this research area, where interest is concentrated on two neuroendocrine systems, the sympathetic-adrenal medullary and the pituitary-adrenal cortical systems. Stress research in Scandinavia first followed the pioneering work by Cannon and focussed on the adrenal medullary system and the secretion of the two catecholamines adrenaline and noradrenaline. The adrenal cortical system and the secretion of the corticosteroids (cortisol), which is the basis of Selye's formulations on stress and the “general adaptation syndrom”, has been studied too, during the last 10 years. During the 1960's, pharmacological experiments were performed in order to explore the relation between psychological and physiological arousal. Psychophysiological arousal was related to performance efficiency, subjective well-being, and social adjustment. In the beginning of the 1970's systematic relationships were demonstrated between psychosocial stimulation and neuroendocrine activity. Later, the modifying influence of cognitive factors on these relationships was examined in experimental studies performed in the laboratory as well as in natural settings. The results were fitted into theoretical models, describing the possible mechanisms involved in the relationship between psychosocial stress, psychoneuroendocrine response patterns and mental and physical health. During the last decade, parallel research has been carried out in the laboratory and in real life situations. A specific Scandinavian contribution has been the combination of social psychological and psychobiological strategies in the examination of stress at the work place. Another major line of research has been the study of sex differences in psychobiological stress responses.     

Type A behaviour in pre-school children: Interrater reliability, stability over six months and subcomponents

Type A behaviour was measured in 250 boys and 245 girls (ages 3-7) using a Swedish version of Matthews' Youth Test for Health (MYTH). In addition, speech and voice characteristics (speed, loudness, response latency) were measured. Each child was independently rated by two play group leaders and measurements were repeated after a six month interval. Interrater reliability (first session) was 0.76 for both sexes and did not change with the age of the child. Boys obtained significantly (p less than 0.0001) higher scores than girls. Correlations over the six month period were 0.64 and 0.60 (p less than 0.001) for the two possible combinations of different raters and slightly higher (0.75 and 0.68, p less than 0.001) when the same rater was used. Two components of Type A behaviour were identified from a factor analysis of the data: impatience and competitiveness, and they accounted for 57% of the total variance. As for the total scale, boys obtained significantly higher scores than girls on both subscales. Scores on the competitiveness scale increased systematically with age. Speech and voice characteristics correlated significantly with Type A scores (total Type A behaviour: r = 0.50, using different raters, and 0.71, using the same raters, p less than 0.001) and, once again, boys obtained significantly (p less than 0.001) higher scores than girls. The results are in close agreement with the American findings from the original scale. It was concluded that the scale provides a reliable and valid instrument for measuring Type A or Type A-like behaviours in pre-school children.     

Familial similarity in Type A behaviour and physiological measurements as related to sex

Thirty-one families with pre-school children were examined with regard to Type A behaviour and cardiovascular and neuroendocrine measurements. Type A scores (MYTH) of the children from the ages of three to six were positively correlated with independent Type A measurements (Jenkins Activity Survey, Bortner Type A scale) of the parents (significant for fathers but not for mothers). The children's resting systolic blood pressures were significantly correlated with maternal and paternal values, while no significant familial aggregation was found for diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, catecholamine or cortisol excretion. The children's systolic and diastolic blood pressures and adrenaline excretion were significantly correlated between ages three and six. The results are consistent with the assumption that genetic as well as environmental factors contribute to the development of Type A behaviour. No significant association was found between Type A scores and physiological measurements during routine activities in the children or the adults.     

The total workload of male and female white collar workers as related to age, occupational level, and number of children

A questionnaire assessing various aspects of paid as well as unpaid forms of productive activity was mailed to stratified samples of male and female white collar workers, approximately matched for educational and occupational level. Data from 501 men and 679 women employed full time revealed traditional gender differences in terms of main responsibility for household duties, child care etc. In keeping with this, women reported higher levels of work overload, stress and conflict than men, which increased significantly with the number of children at home. The various stress indices reached a peak between the ages of 35 and 39. Men reported more autonomy in their paid work whereas women reported more control at home. Men and women at the upper managerial levels reported more control over their total work situation and less conflict between demands.     

Early precursors and enabling skills of reading acquisition

Research on early linguistic precursors and enabling skills of reading acquisition among young children is reviewed. Language development starts early in infancy when the child learns to categorize the speech sounds according to the pattern typical of the mother tongue. Equipped with these sound categories the child is ready to learn to segment words from the sound stream and to understand and to use words. The precise phonological representation of words will facilitate the important development of phonological awareness, a basic prerequisite for reading acquisition. This paper reviews some of my longitudinal research and training studies indicating the causal direction of the relation between phonological awareness and reading and includes some ongoing studies, where gender differences, socio‐economic factors, dose‐response‐effects and motivational factors are explored. Preventive and remedial implications of the findings are pointed out. Finally, the complexity of the causal relationships between different aspects of early language development, including genetic influences and later reading is pointed out.     

Individual functions of subjective time distance and emotional reaction

Lundberg, U. & Ekman, G. Individual functions of subjective time distance and emotional reaction. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 29–33.-Data from a previous study ere analysed on an individual level. It was found that a simple power function could describe the relation between subjective and objective time, while an exponential function fitted the data for the relation between emotional reaction and subjective time distance. The same simple alternative functions also described the group data in the previous study.     

Type A behaviour and psychophysiological arousal

The "coronary prone" or Type A behaviour pattern, characterized by e.g., hard-driving competitiveness, impatience and aggressiveness, is associated with elevated systolic blood pressure and catecholamine secretion during challenge. In experiments at our laboratory, elevated psychophysiological arousal was found in Type A subjects during understimulation, but not during active performance on a self-paced reaction time task. Results suggest that differences in cardiovascular and behavioural reactivity between Type A and B persons tend to be related to the pace of the environment to which they are exposed. Studies of antecedents of Type A behaviour in children show that "Type A children" respond to challenge with a greater increase in sympathetic arousal than "non-Type As". This suggests the possibility that genetic dispositions and/or conditioned sympathetic reactivity play an important role in the development of the Type A behaviour pattern.     

Reading and spelling skills in the first school years predicted from phonemic awareness skills in kindergarten

A series of metalinguistic tasks, including segmentation and synthesis of words, were given to 143 children in kindergarten. The children were followed up in school where reading and writing achievement was assessed with several tests and ratings. A causal model was postulated concering the relationships between general abilities, metalinguistic competence, and reading and spelling skills. The quantitative implications of the model were worked out by path analysis, which revealed an orderly and interpretable picture. The most invariant and important determinant of basic reading and spelling skills was the analysis of simple words. Failure and success in school could be predicted with high accuracy on the basis of preschool data. Over 70% of the children were classified correctly in the extreme quartiles as to their future school achievement. The methodological advantage of applying path analysis instead of conventional multiple regression analysis on the present problem was discussed.     

The influence of emotional conditions on imilarity estimations of emotional terms

Abstract.— Twenty-four male university students made similarity estimations whilst under the influence of five strongly contrasting emotional inducing situations and in a neutral situation. Intra- and interindividual comparisons between the results indicate that a high degree of stability was maintained by each individual over time whereas differences appeared between individuals. The results suggest that subjects are well able to produce about the same result in spite of heightened levels of emotional state.