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Differential susceptibility to the environment: an evolutionary—neurodevelopmental theory.
- Dev. Psychopathol.
, 2011
"... Abstract Two extant evolutionary models, biological sensitivity to context theory (BSCT) and differential susceptibility theory (DST), converge on the hypothesis that some individuals are more susceptible than others to both negative (risk-promoting) and positive (development-enhancing) environment ..."
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Abstract Two extant evolutionary models, biological sensitivity to context theory (BSCT) and differential susceptibility theory (DST), converge on the hypothesis that some individuals are more susceptible than others to both negative (risk-promoting) and positive (development-enhancing) environmental conditions. These models contrast with the currently dominant perspective on personal vulnerability and environmental risk: diathesis stress/dual risk. We review challenges to this perspective based on emerging theory and data from the evolutionary, developmental, and health sciences. These challenges signify the need for a paradigm shift in conceptualizing Person  Environment interactions in development. In this context we advance an evolutionary-neurodevelopmental theory, based on DST and BSCT, of the role of neurobiological susceptibility to the environment in regulating environmental effects on adaptation, development, and health. We then outline current thinking about neurogenomic and endophenotypic mechanisms that may underpin neurobiological susceptibility, summarize extant empirical research on differential susceptibility, and evaluate the evolutionary bases and implications of BSCT and DST. Finally, we discuss applied issues including methodological and statistical considerations in conducting differential susceptibility research; issues of ecological, cultural, and racial-ethnic variation in neurobiological susceptibility; and implications of differential susceptibility for designing social programs. We conclude that the differential susceptibility paradigm has far-reaching implications for understanding whether and how much child and adult development responds, for better and for worse, to the gamut of species-typical environmental conditions. Decades of research demonstrate that exposure to environmental adversity places children and adults at elevated risk for developing cognitive, social, emotional, and health problems 1. Individuals characterized by heightened environmental susceptibility display enhanced sensitivity to both negative and positive environments, that is, to both risk-promoting and development-enhancing environmental conditions. 2. This enhanced sensitivity increases developmental receptivity to the environment. That is, more susceptible individuals are more likely to experience sustained developmental change, not just transient fluctuations in functioning, in response to environmental exposures 3. Susceptibility to the environment is instantiated in the biology of the nervous system; it is neurobiological susceptibility. Genetic susceptibility factors operate through 7 neurobiological processes and behavioral indicators of susceptibility are grounded in neurobiology. 4. Developmental experience plays a role, along with heritable polygenic variation, in determining individual differences in neurobiological susceptibility. 5. Individuals of all ages (children and adults) vary in neurobiological susceptibility to environmental influences and, within individuals, susceptibility may vary across the life span. 6. Individual differences in neurobiological susceptibility are adaptive in the evolutionary sense and have been conserved by fluctuating selective pressures that generate different fitness payoffs across different social, physical, and historical contexts (or at least did so during the course of human evolution). 7. Variation in neurobiological susceptibility to the environment, therefore, constitutes a central mechanism in the regulation of alternative patterns of human development; specifically, differential susceptibility moderates the effects of environmental exposures on developmental and life outcomes. Ultimately, this means that the development of some individuals, more than others, will be influenced by their experiences and environments (even if these were exactly the same). We begin this paper by outlining the defining features of the currently dominant perspective on environmental risk and human frailty: diathesis-stress/dual risk. We then review challenges to this perspective based on emerging theory and data from the evolutionary, developmental, and health sciences. These challenges highlight the need for a paradigm shift in conceptualizing Person  Environment interactions in development. In this context we frame an evolutionaryneurodevelopmental theory of how individual differences in neurobiological susceptibility to the environment may account for the impressive variation in the potency of environmental effects on adaptation, development, and health. The Dominant Paradigm: Diathesis-Stress/Dual Risk Students of human development widely appreciate that individuals vary in whether and how much they are negatively affected by environmental stressors, ranging from exposures to poverty to hostile or insensitive parenting to low quality child care, to name just a few well-studied phenomena. Perhaps the most striking evidence that personal characteristics condition or moderate such environmental effects is found in developmental research on Temperament  Parenting interactions The "dual-risk" designation derives from the synergistic effect of a risk (or diathesis) inherent in the individual interacting with one operative in the environment. Where some people are regarded as especially susceptible to adversity because of their personal vulnerabilities, other people lacking such vulnerabilities who do not succumb to the adversity in question are considered to be resilient Beyond Diathesis-Stress/Dual Risk: Evolutionary Models of Adaptive Development An evolutionary perspective challenges the prevailing developmental psychopathological analysis of dysfunctional or maladaptive outcomes within settings of adversity. In particular, it contends that both stressful and supportive environments have been part of human experience throughout our evolutionary history, and that developmental systems shaped by natural selection respond adaptively to both kinds of contexts. Thus, when people encounter stressful environments, this does not so much disturb their development as direct or regulate it toward strategies that are adaptive under stressful conditions, even if those strategies are currently harmful in terms of the long-term welfare of the individual or society as a whole (see B. J. Ellis et al. 8 Consider the extensive experimental work conducted by Michael Meaney and colleagues showing that putatively low quality maternal care in the rat (i.e., low levels of maternal licking and grooming) alters pups' stress physiology and brain morphology. Although such changes seem disadvantageous (i.e., higher corticosterone levels, shorter dendritic branch lengths, and lower spine density in hippocampal neurons), they actually enhance learning and memory processes under stressful conditions It is important to note that optimal adaptation (in the evolutionary sense) to challenging environments is not without real consequences and costs. Harsh environments often harm or kill children, and the fact that children developmentally adapt to such rearing conditions (reviewed in Ellis,
SEE PROFILE
, 2014
"... Effects of maternal sensitivity on low birth weight children's academic achievement: A test of differential susceptibility vs. diathesis stress ..."
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Effects of maternal sensitivity on low birth weight children's academic achievement: A test of differential susceptibility vs. diathesis stress
Psychological and psychophysiological functioning of young adults born preterm: The Helsinki Study of Very Low Birth Weight Adults
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"... This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. PubMed citation for the paper: J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2014 Jul 15 Birth weight as an independent predictor of ADHD symptoms: a within-twin pair analysis ..."
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This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. PubMed citation for the paper: J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2014 Jul 15 Birth weight as an independent predictor of ADHD symptoms: a within-twin pair analysis
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"... Developmental psychologists have identified a discrete group of children who, despite similar biological or behavioral sus-ceptibilities, either wither or bloom depending on the environ-ments in which they are reared. The differential-susceptibility hypothesis (Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & v ..."
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Developmental psychologists have identified a discrete group of children who, despite similar biological or behavioral sus-ceptibilities, either wither or bloom depending on the environ-ments in which they are reared. The differential-susceptibility hypothesis (Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007) and the related theory of biological sensitivity to context (Boyce & Ellis, 2005) contend that within the right rearing environments, individuals with traits that make them suscep-tible to environmental influences will achieve levels of adap-tation that regularly exceed those of their less susceptible, presumably hardier peers (Ellis, Boyce, Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van Ijzendoorn, 2011). However, if susceptible individuals are born into environments that afford constant diets of adversity, their susceptibilities will function princi-pally as vulnerabilities that predispose them to many of the
Author's personal copy Fetal programming by maternal stress: Insights from a conflict perspective
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Individual Differences in Environmental Sensitivity
"... ABSTRACT-A fundamental trait found in most organisms is the ability to register, process, and respond to external factors. Although such environmental sensitivity is critical for adapting successfully to contextual conditions, individuals tend to differ in their sensitivity to the environment, with ..."
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ABSTRACT-A fundamental trait found in most organisms is the ability to register, process, and respond to external factors. Although such environmental sensitivity is critical for adapting successfully to contextual conditions, individuals tend to differ in their sensitivity to the environment, with some more sensitive than others. Such differences in environmental sensitivity can be seen across many species, including humans. Although the notion of variability in environmental sensitivity is reflected indirectly in many traditional concepts of human psychology, several new frameworks address individual differences in environmental sensitivity more directly and from a perspective of developmental and evolutionary theory. In this article, I integrate these perspectives into a broad meta-framework before proposing ideas for research on individual differences in environmental sensitivity. I also emphasize that inter-individual variability in environmental sensitivity be considered in both theoretical and applied work. KEYWORDS-environmental sensitivity; developmental plasticity; diathesis-stress; vulnerability; resilience; differential susceptibility; vantage sensitivity Human development is fundamentally contextual. Without the specific and active support of a nurturing environment, no child would thrive or even survive. Given this dependence on external environmental resources, it is not surprising that humans register, process, and respond to many different aspects of their social and physical environment. However, individuals differ substantially in such sensitivity and responsivity, with some being more and others less responsive to the same environmental conditions. In this article, I look at individual differences in environmental sensitivity, drawing from several theoretical perspectives and emerging empirical evidence. Rather than discussing in detail conceptual differences between the various frameworks, I present an integrated view across concepts and perspectives. Finally, I propose research on individual differences in environmental sensitivity and suggest that we consider inter-individual variability in environmental sensitivity in both theoretical and applied work. VARIABILITY IN ENVIRONMENTAL SENSITIVITY Individual differences in the behavioral response to environmental factors can be seen across many species from pumpkinseed fish, zebra finches, mice, and nonhuman primates to humans (for review, see 1). The pattern that seems to emerge consistently is that some of the members of each of these species tend to be bold, aggressive, and impulsive when approaching new or threatening situations, whereas others appear to avoid such situations, behaving less aggressively and more cautiously and fearfully. These two prototypical behavioral types have been described as hawks and doves, reflecting two different behavioral strategies-proactive versus reactive coping (2)-that evolved over time, each characterized by specific advantages and disadvantages for health and reproductive fitness (3). Similar behavioral differences have been described in humans in many psychological frameworks, including extra-and introversion, behavioral activation and inhibition, high and low reactive temperament, physiological stress reactivity, sensory sensitivity, resilience and vulnerability, reaction norms, and developmental plasticity (4-6). Although these established psychological concepts differ from one another, they all seem to describe how people vary in their response to contextual factors, with some more affected than others, manifested in qualitatively different psychological or behavioral response patterns. The notion that individuals differ in how they perceive and process environmental
Using cross-species comparisons and a neurobiological framework to understand early social deprivation effects on behavioral development
"... Abstract Building upon the transactional model of brain development, we explore the impact of early maternal deprivation on neural development and plasticity in three neural systems: hyperactivity/impulsivity, executive function, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning across rodent, no ..."
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Abstract Building upon the transactional model of brain development, we explore the impact of early maternal deprivation on neural development and plasticity in three neural systems: hyperactivity/impulsivity, executive function, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning across rodent, nonhuman primate, and human studies. Recognizing the complexity of early maternal-infant interactions, we limit our cross-species comparisons to data from rodent models of artificial rearing, nonhuman primate studies of peer rearing, and the relations between these two experimental approaches and human studies of children exposed to the early severe psychosocial deprivation associated with institutional care. In addition to discussing the strengths and limitations of these paradigms, we present the current state of research on the neurobiological impact of early maternal deprivation and the evidence of sensitive periods, noting methodological challenges. Integrating data across preclinical animal models and human studies, we speculate about the underlying biological mechanisms; the differential impact of deprivation due to temporal factors including onset, offset, and duration of the exposure; and the possibility and consequences of reopening of sensitive periods during adolescence.
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, 2012
"... doi: 10.3389/fnint.2012.00036 Intentionality and “free-will ” from a neurodevelopmental perspective ..."
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doi: 10.3389/fnint.2012.00036 Intentionality and “free-will ” from a neurodevelopmental perspective
