How early life experiences shape teens' body awareness and emotion skills
Official title: Emotional Granularity and Interoceptive Accuracy: Affective Skills Linking Dimensions of Childhood Adversity with Adolescent Stress Vulnerability
Funded at California State Univ-Dominguez Hills · NIH-11173803 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project looks at whether early-life neglect or threat change how children and teens notice bodily signals and name feelings, and how that relates to stress vulnerability.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | California State Univ-Dominguez Hills NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Carson, United States) |
| Project start | August 20, 2024 |
| Project end | June 30, 2028 |
| Funding year | 2025 |
| Award (this year) | $183,750 |
| NIH project number | 5R16GM154604-02 |
| Project ID | NIH-11173803 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal participants are children and adolescents with histories of early-life deprivation or threat, roughly in the teen age range, who can attend lab visits and complete tasks and questionnaires.
✕Less likely to help
People without a history of childhood adversity, adults outside the study's age range, or those seeking immediate clinical treatment should not expect direct personal benefit from participation.
What this research studies
From your point of view, researchers will compare young people with different kinds of childhood adversity to see how that history relates to how they sense their bodies and label emotions. You may be asked to do lab tasks that track heartbeat or other body signals, complete emotion-labeling exercises, and answer questionnaires about stress and past experiences. The team will link those measures to emotional reactions during mild stress tasks and follow changes over time. The goal is to figure out whether different adversity types (deprivation versus threat) relate to different emotional skills that affect stress risk.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could point to new ways to teach teens body-awareness and emotion labeling to lower their stress-related mental health risks.
How similar studies have gone: Prior studies have linked childhood adversity to stress sensitivity and shown ties between interoception/emotion labeling and mental health, but applying these ideas specifically to deprivation versus threat in youth is relatively new.
Where this research is happening
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California State Univ-Dominguez Hills
Carson, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Weissman, David G — California State Univ-Dominguez Hills
- Study coordinator: Weissman, David G
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.