Coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia between parents and preschoolers: differences by children's externalizing problems

Abstract

The coordination of physiological processes between parents and infants is thought to support behaviors critical for infant adaptation, but we know little about parent-child physiological coregulation during the preschool years. The present study examined whether time-varying changes in parent and child respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) exhibited coregulation (across-person dynamics) accounting for individual differences in parent and child RSA, and whether there were differences in these parasympathetic processes by children’s externalizing problems. Mother-child dyads (N=47; Child age M=3½ years) engaged in three laboratory tasks (free play, clean up, puzzle task) for 18 min, during which RSA data were collected. Multilevel coupled autoregressive models revealed that mothers and preschoolers showed positive coregulation of RSA such that changes in mother RSA predicted changes in the same direction in child RSA and vice versa, controlling for the stability of within-person RSA over time and individual differences in overall mean RSA. However, when children’s externalizing behaviors were higher, coregulation was negative such that changes in real-time mother and child RSA showed divergence rather than positive concordance. Results suggest that mothers and preschoolers do coregulate RSA during real-time interactions, but that children’s higher externalizing behavior problems are related to disruptions in these processes.

Parent‐child coregulation of parasympathetic processes varies by social context and risk for psychopathology

“…Thus, we reanalyzed existing data (Lunkenheimer et al, 2015) with the additions of maternal aggression and depressive symptoms, children’s internalizing problems, the influence of particular social task contexts, and the three-level multilevel models needed for the integrated analyses of within-person physiological processes, risk factor, and context. We were interested in everyday social contexts for mothers and preschoolers that varied in their degree of structure and demands, namely free play, clean-up, and teaching tasks, and whether mother-child RSA concordance within these contexts varied by psychopathology risk in the form of maternal depressive symptoms and aggression and child externalizing and internalizing problems.…”

The effects of maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia and behavioral engagement on mother‐child physiological coregulation

“…Over time, mothers and children become sensitized to one another's behavioral and physiological cues, enabling greater coordination of parent-child states (Feldman, 2012). Prior research suggests that physiological synchrony between parents and children is normative (Lunkenheimer, Tiberio, Buss, Boker, & Timpe, 2015). For example, mothers' and children's thermal signatures, a measure of autonomic function, are synchronous while mothers watch their children perform emotionally challenging tasks (Ebisch et al, 2012;Manini et al, 2013).…”

Measuring physiological influence in dyads: A guide to designing, implementing, and analyzing dyadic physiological studies.

“…For example, the terms compliance, DYADIC PHYSIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE 8 coupling, and synchrony have all been used to refer to processes analyzed by the same approach: correlating two partners' physiology at the same time point (Chatel-Goldman et al, 2014; Henning, Boucsein, & Gil, 2011;Suveg et al, 2016). In contrast, the term coregulation has been used to refer to processes analyzed by different statistical methods: the degree that one partner's physiology predicts another's at a following time point (Helm et al, 2014) versus the same time point (Lunkenheimer et al, 2015).Just as a variety of terms have been used to refer to the relationships between two or more people's physiological responses, there has also been diversity in the analytic options used to assess these relationships. We outline four differences here.…”