Inhibitory control moderates the quadratic association between resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia and prosocial behaviors in children

Abstract

Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is thought to be an important physiological correlate of prosocial behaviors. A negative quadratic association between resting RSA and prosocial behaviors has been found in recent studies. However, it remains unknown whether inhibitory control (IC), as an aspect of cognitive regulation, moderates this quadratic association. This issue was examined in the present study. One hundred and forty‐eight children (81 girls, 54.7%) aged 7–8 years completed a go/no‐go task to assess their IC, and the children's parents completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire‒Chinese version (SDQ‐CV) to assess children's prosocial behaviors. Resting RSA was calculated by electrocardiogram (ECG) data collected during a resting period in the laboratory. The results showed a significant quadratic association between resting RSA and children's prosocial behaviors. More importantly, IC had a significant moderating effect on the quadratic association between resting RSA and prosocial behaviors. Specifically, the quadratic effect of resting RSA on prosocial behaviors was observed only among children with low and average IC and disappeared in children with better IC. The findings suggest that IC interacts with resting RSA to contribute to prosocial behaviors in children. High levels of IC could attenuate the negative impact of high and low resting RSA on prosocial behaviors.

Biological basis of temperament: Respiratory sinus arrhythmia and inhibitory control across childhood.

“…Taylor et al (2015) extended this cross-sectional evidence prospectively during the early childhood years, finding a positive association between higher resting RSA when children were 3.5 years old and higher effortful control (a measure which included parent-reported inhibitory control) when children were 4.5 years old (albeit not controlling for previous levels of inhibitory control). In contrast, other studies found null associations between resting RSA and inhibitory control in early childhood using cross-sectional (e.g., Kahle et al, 2018;Noten et al, 2020;Scrimin et al, 2018;Utendale et al, 2014;Wilson et al, 2011) and longitudinal designs (e.g., Holochwost et al, 2018;Kahle et al, 2018), in middle childhood using cross-sectional designs (e.g., R. Zhang & Wang, 2020), as well as in cross-sectional studies that grouped both early and middle childhood together (e.g., Quiñones-Camacho & Davis, 2019). With the exception of Wilson et al (2011), which utilized parent reports, all other above-noted studies used behavioral observation tasks to examine inhibitory control.…”

Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia moderates the within‐person relations of parental emotional expressivity and children's prosocial behaviors

“…Unexpectedly, no main effects of quadratic resting RSA on children's average prosocial behaviors across the three measurements were found. Although resting RSA is a biological factor associated with children's prosocial tendencies, and numerous recent studies have revealed negative quadratic associations between children's resting RSA and prosocial behaviors (Acland et al., 2019; Miller et al., 2016; Zhang & Wang, 2019, 2020), the effect size of the associations was generally small (Acland et al., 2019; Miller et al., 2016; Zhang & Wang, 2020), which indicated that such relations may not be very robust and could be affected by other factors. Moreover, the average level of prosocial behaviors across a relatively long term (i.e., three years) can be affected by more complex and diverse factors, such as children's peer relationships and social skills received from the school setting, especially in the transition stage from preschool to elementary school (Mesman et al., 2001).…”

“…Lower resting RSA is usually found to be associated with children's lower prosocial behaviors (Graziano & Derefinko, 2013) because effectively downregulating their own distress and maintaining a calm state has been proposed as an essential condition for producing other‐oriented concern and prosocial behaviors (Song et al., 2018). However, in recent years, some studies have found that the relations between resting RSA and prosocial behaviors may not be a simple linear pattern but accorded with a quadratic pattern (Acland et al., 2019; Miller et al., 2016; Zhang & Wang, 2019, 2020). Specifically, it was found that prosocial behaviors would also decline if children had overly high resting RSA.…”

An autonomic nervous system context of harsh parenting and youth aggression versus delinquency

“…Therefore, children with low basal RSA are at a resting state that may increase their risk for development of maladaptive behaviors in adolescence, possibly via deficits in Theory of Mind (James Benjamin Hinnant & El-Sheikh, 2009;Quintana et al, 2012). Although nascent research has pointed to connections between physiological arousal and aspects of ToM (Gower & Crick, 2011;Zhang & Wang, 2020), more investigation is necessary to elucidate the nuances of these links.…”