Comprehensive Psycho-Physiological Approach to the Assessment of Adaptive Capacity of Teenage Schoolchildren with Different Types of Vegetative Regulation

Abstract

The present research featured the typological features of psycho-social, neurophysiological, and endocrine status of 214 schoolchildren of both sexes aged 14–16. The research objective was to identify the relationship between psychosocial and physiological adaptation of adolescents. Cardiorhythmography made it possible to divide the participants according to three types of vegetative regulation: sympathicotonia, vagotonia, and eutonia. The participants were tested for indicators of neurodynamics, emotional state, and socio-psychological adaptation, as well as for cortisol and testosterone content in saliva. Intersystem interrelations were evaluated by means of correlation analysis. The teenagers with predominating sympathetic influences appeared to possess the highest degree of conjugation of social-psychological and vegetative components of the functional system: as anxiety and manifestations of social-psychological misadaptation increased, so did the ergotropic impact on heart beat rate. The vagotonic teenagers demonstrated a much lower total number of correlations, with a distinct interrelation between the increasing anxiety level and the increasing parasympathetic impact. The teenagers with eutonia had a lower number of correlations between psychological, neurodynamic, and vegetative levels in comparison with other types. The analysis revealed the following adaptive strategies in adolescents. The trophotropic hyporeactive strategy was typical of male vagotonics with relatively high levels of steroid hormone secretion. The ergotropic hyperreactive strategy was popular in the sympathotonic group, especially boys with low levels of anabolic and catabolic steroids and girls with a relatively high content of testosterone. The adolescents with eutonia proved to have the balanced strategy. The data obtained can help to create pedagogical conditions for improving the adaptive capacity of schoolchildren, as well as for the development of individual style of activity and successful learning in teenagers.

Keywords

• educational activities
• socio-psychological adaptation
• neurodynamic indicators
• anxiety
• cortisol
• testosterone
• adaptive strategies
• activity styles