# Social Buffering Over the Pubertal Transition: COVID-19 Repair Supplement

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2024 · $181,108

## Abstract

Project Summary
Original 5-year Project: The effectiveness of social buffering in regulating stress appears to
wane for a period with puberty at the same time that stress-reactivity increases and young
adolescents become more vulnerable to stress-related affective pathology. There is a dearth of
knowledge regarding the neural underpinnings of social buffering in children and the changes
with puberty. Two of the proposed experiments address this gap in knowledge. In addition, the
loss of social buffering effectiveness with puberty has been examined using cortisol as the
stress measure. All three proposed experiments will examine the pervasiveness of the effect by
examining autonomic, in addition to cortisol measures. Finally, the effectiveness of social
buffers during the peripubertal period has only been examined for social evaluative stressors.
The proposed experiments will also examine whether the loss of social buffering also extends to
threat stimuli and to situations in which two friends are both experiencing the stressful event
together. Participants will be 11-14 years old and Tanner staging by parent- and self-report will
index pubertal status. Our prior research uncovered the waning of the effectiveness of parents
to serve as social buffers of the HPA axis over the pubertal transition and the concomitant
failure of friends to “step in” as stress buffers. The proposed experiments are the logical
extension of this work. The results will have the potential to drive significant attention to the role
of developmental disruptions in social stress buffering as possible contributing factors in the rise
of affective problems in the early teen years. Administrative Supplement: Two of the studies
have been completed, a third study not proposed in the original application [administratively
approved] was conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown to create an on-line version of the
social evaluative stressor task to allow continued data collection for the non-imaging study. The
two imaging studies were shutdown and then severely hampered during the pandemic. We are,
thus, delayed in completing data collection and pre-processing for the 2nd imaging study. The
supplement will allow us to complete the work initially proposed.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11129244
- **Project number:** 3R01HD095904-05S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** Megan R Gunnar
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $181,108
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2019-05-01 → 2025-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11129244

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11129244, Social Buffering Over the Pubertal Transition: COVID-19 Repair Supplement (3R01HD095904-05S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11129244. Licensed CC0.

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