Dynamics of mother‐infant parasympathetic regulation during face‐to‐face interaction: The role of maternal emotion dysregulation

Abstract

The dynamics of parent‐infant physiology are essential for understanding how biological substrates of emotion regulation are organized during infancy. Although parent‐infant physiological processes are dyadic in nature, research is limited in understanding how one person's physiological responses predict one's own and as well as the other person's responses in the subsequent moment. In this study, we examined mother‐infant respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) dynamics during the Still‐Face Paradigm (SFP) among 106 mothers (Mage = 29.54) and their 7‐month‐old infants (55 males). Given mothers' role in shaping dyadic interactions with their infant, we also tested how mothers' self‐reported emotion dysregulation (measured via the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale) associated with these dynamics. Results showed that both mothers' and infants' RSA tended to return to their respective homeostatic points (i.e., exhibited return strength) during each SFP episode, indicating stability in RSA for mother‐infant dyads. Significant shifts in mother and infant RSA return strength were observed across SFP episodes, highlighting the role of contextual demands on each individual's physiological dynamics. Mother‐infant RSA dynamics varied as a function of maternal self‐reported emotion dysregulation. Specifically, RSA levels of infants with more dysregulated mothers had a weaker tendency to return to homeostasis during the Reunion episode and were less affected by their mothers' RSA during the Still‐Face and Reunion episodes of the SFP, suggesting a less effective coregulatory influence. Our findings have implications for the intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation via mother‐infant physiological dynamics.

Parent–child coregulation as a dynamic system: a commentary on Wass et al. (2024)

“…In the present paper, Wass and colleagues apply specific dynamic systems principles and emphasize the importance of allostatic processes and passive/ active regulatory behaviors to better understand early parent-child coregulation. This work builds well on existing theoretical and empirical research on allostatic interpersonal and parent-child coregulation (Butler & Randall, 2013;Fuchs, Lunkenheimer, & Lobo, 2021;Gao et al, 2023;Saxbe, Beckes, Stoycos, & Coan, 2020). Researchers interested in how parents act as external regulators in the early years, fostering the emergence and internalization of children's regulatory skills, can benefit from the authors' deeper consideration of allostasis, regulatory versus dysregulatory influences, and active versus passive behaviors in moment-to-moment interactions.…”

“…Concurrent and time‐lagged relations between parent and child, and time lags on varying scales (e.g., 3 s, 5 s, 10 s, 30 s), may have different utility and meaning for child development depending on the domain in question (affect, cognition, behavior, biology), the degree to which the phenomena of interest are oscillatory, and the temporal length of those oscillations. We can also consider individual, within‐dyad, and between‐dyad differences in allostatic processes: individuals and dyads may have differing degrees of return strength to homeostasis (Gao et al., 2023), ranges of reactivity, and homeostatic set points, which may also vary depending on the context and demands of the interaction. Future work is needed to map these varying temporal scales, reactivity ranges, and variations across contexts to draw more robust conclusions about the basic operations and meaning of allostasis in parent–child coregulation.…”