The Pennsylvania State University
Grant: $725,382 - National Institutes of Health - Jul. 24, 2009
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Award Description: Being born a girl or boy carries implications for physical and psychological health and illness. Considerable scientific and public interest is focused on the development and maintenance of these sex-related processes, but there are noticeable gaps that we propose to address. Specifically, we will study how the interplay between biological predispositions and social experiences shapes variations in gender development at the adolescent transition and the consequences of gender development for mental health problems that begin or increase in adolescence. Taking a biopsychosocial perspective, we will study family socialization in 120 girls exposed to varying levels of androgen during prenatal development because of a genetic disease, congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). We focus on the processes by which hormones and socialization work together to produce change from late childhood to early adolescence in the gender-related characteristics of identity, interests, personal-social attributes, attitudes, and activities.
Project Description: The aims are: (a) to chart how changes in gendered characteristics in girls with CAH are linked to changes in family socialization experiences and how those links are moderated by the degree of prenatal hormone exposure and parent-child relationship quality; (b) to study self-socialization processes (niche-picking and evocation) in gender development, and the ways in which these processes are moderated by family socialization; and (c) to examine how gender development is linked to girls? psychological health, including self concept and internalizing and externalizing problems, and the mediators and moderators of these links. Evidence from this study will thus provide novel insights about the processes by which genes and social experiences work together to produce gender change during an important developmental period, and about the origins of gender-linked mental health problems. Data will also help to resolve controversies in pediatric medicine regarding management of children born with ambiguous genitalia. In light of the importance of gender in most domains of psychological functioning across the lifespan, information about gender development is information about psychological development broadly.
Jobs Summary: Nothing to report currently. (Total jobs reported: 0)
Project Status: Less Than 50% Completed
This award's data was last updated on Jul. 24, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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