The Role of Physiological Reactivity in Understanding Resilience Processes in Children’s Development

Stress and adversity affect children in different ways. Some children exhibit negative outcomes when exposed to difficult environments, while others overcome challenges. For decades, researchers have studied this variability of developmental outcomes in hopes to identify processes that enable some children to demonstrate resilience or positive adaptation in the face of adversity. Most recently, researchers have turned to examining resilience processes across multiple levels of analysis, from children’s neurobiological sensitivity to the effects of neighbourhoods they are raised in. By investigating biological processes, researchers can shed more light on how adversity gets “under the skin” and why some children are more susceptible to both positive and negative environmental effects than others.