Increases in Arousal are More Long‐Lasting than Decreases in Arousal: On Homeostatic Failures During Emotion Regulation in Infancy

Abstract

In emotion regulation, negative or undesired emotions are downregulated, but there are also opponent processes to emotion regulation—in which undesired emotions are exacerbated dynamically over time by processes that have an amplifying or upregulating impact. Evidence for such processes has been shown in adults, but little previous work has examined whether infants show similar patterns. To examine this, we measured physiological arousal in 57 typical 12 month olds while presenting a 20‐min mixed viewing battery. Fluctuations in autonomic arousal were measured via heart rate, electrodermal activity, and movement. We reasoned that if transitions in autonomic arousal are random (stochastic), then (1) arousal would be normally distributed across the session, and (2) episodes where arousal exceeded a certain threshold above the mean should be as long‐lived as those where arousal exceeded the same threshold below the mean. In fact we found that (1) heart rate and movement (but not electrodermal activity) were positively skewed, and (2) that increases in arousal have a lower extinction probability than decreases in arousal. Our findings may suggest that increases in arousal are self‐sustaining. These patterns are the opposite of the homeostatic mechanisms predicted by naïve approaches to emotion regulation.

In infancy, it’s the extremes of arousal that are ‘sticky’: Naturalistic data challenge purely homeostatic approaches to studying self‐regulation

“…Previous research has shown that, when infants are sitting on their parents' lap watching an experimental test battery, with the parents asked to restrain the infant if they try to get down, then only high arousal states are more persistent than expected (Wass et al, 2018). Our findings are consistent with this, but suggest that, in naturalistic home settings, both low-and high arousal states are more persistent than expected.…”

“…This series of events -being abruptly told 'no', a tug of war, the toy breaking, being stared at by strangers -are all triggered by the child's behaviour, as a function of their arousal state (Cole et al, 2017). But they are also independent, exogenous causes of further increases arousal -a positive feedback look (Potegal et al, 2009;Wass et al, 2018).…”

“…As a result of these limitations, an increasing number of studies with humans are starting to use different methods to measure self-regulation (Cole et al, 2017(Cole et al, , 2020Morales et al, 2018). For example, in one previous study, rather than taking an event-locked approach, we instead analysed spontaneous fluctuations in arousal in 12-month-old infants during the presentation of age-appropriate (and not deliberately anxiogenic) static and dynamic viewing materials (Wass et al, 2018). Arousal was measured via a composite of peripheral measures of physiological arousal including electrocardiography (inter-beat interval), heart rate variability, electro-dermal activity and movement.…”

How the development of executive function influences our moment-by-moment interactions with the real-world environment

“…Other research has questioned whether allostastic mechanisms actually influence real-world arousal patterns at all during early development. One study examined day-long recordings of arousal fluctuations in infants 138 (see also 139 (see Figure 4)). Based on allostasis, they predicted that, if fluctuations above and below the mean are corrected for via self-regulation, then high or low arousal states should be more short-lived than intermediate arousal states.…”

In infancy, it’s the extremes of arousal that are ‘sticky’: naturalistic data challenge homeostatic models of self-regulation

“…In previous research we took a different method: rather than taking an event-locked approach, we instead analysed spontaneous fluctuations in arousal during the presentation of ageappropriate (and not deliberately anxiogenic) static and dynamic viewing materials (Wass, Clackson, & Leong, 2018). Arousal was measured via a composite of peripheral measures of physiological arousal including electrocardiography (inter-beat interval), heart rate variability, electro-dermal activity and movement.…”