Maternal‐child adrenocortical attunement in early childhood: Continuity and change

Abstract

This study evaluated continuity and change in maternal-child hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis attunement in early childhood. Participants were drawn from a prospective study of 1,292 mother–child dyads, which were racially diverse, predominantly low-income, and non-urban. Child focused stress tasks designed to elicit anger, fear, and frustration were administered during early infancy, later infancy, and toddlerhood. Mothers’ and children’s saliva samples (later assayed for cortisol) were collected before and after the tasks. The strength of mother–child adrenocortical attunement was conserved across infancy and toddlerhood. The magnitude of maternal-child adrenocortical attunement decreased in response to the child-focused stress tasks. Maternal sensitivity and the child’s task-related emotional reactivity moderated adrenocortical attunement across the task, with greater maternal sensitivity during a free-play, and lower levels of child emotional reactivity during the stress tasks, stabilizing attunement from pre- to post-task levels. The findings advance our understanding of individual differences in the social regulation of adrenocortical activity in early childhood.

Mother–Child Interaction: Links Between Mother and Child Frontal Electroencephalograph Asymmetry and Negative Behavior

“…A possible explanation is that maternal frontal asymmetry is contextual as previously claimed (Killen & Teti, 2012), but based on a history with the child and not solely on the “here and now” interaction. This supports recent findings related to cortisol, which proposed that adrenocortical attunement is a result of a combination of diurnal and momentary synchronicity (Hibel et al, 2015). Thus, children’s behavior is related to both baseline and task maternal frontal asymmetry.…”

“…However, there are studies that have assessed the association between child and parent physiological activity: One body of research investigated the coregulation of cortisol levels of children and parents during an interaction and revealed that maternal behavior and cortisol levels were associated with child’s adrenocortical activity (Granger, 1998; Hibel, Granger, Blair, & & Finegood, 2015). Additionally, Ruttle and colleagues (2011) provided evidence that mother-child dyads showed, overall, some systematic synchronization (“attunement”) of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which was particularly prominent during challenging tasks.…”

The Neuro-Environmental Loop of Plasticity: A Cross-Species Analysis of Parental Effects on Emotion Circuitry Development Following Typical and Adverse Caregiving

“…Parental physical presence, parent's emotional expression, and parent's own physiological reactivity act as phasic modulators of child emotional and physiological reactivityregulating the child's internal experiences and behavioral output in different environmental contexts. This phasic regulation may have an important long-term function, helping to calibrate children's set point of emotional and physiological reactivity (Blair and Raver, 2012;Hibel et al, 2014a). In addition, tonic levels of parental care experienced in early life appear to alter rates of child emotional development.…”

Cortisol covariation within parents of young children: Moderation by relationship aggression

“…The implications of cortisol covariation are complex (Timmons, Margolin, & Saxbe, 2015). Within parent-child dyads, covariation might facilitate children’s self-regulatory capabilities (Feldman, 2007), and it has been associated with greater physical proximity and behavioral sensitivity (e.g., Hibel et al, 2015; Ruttle et al, 2011). However, the couples’ literature has more frequently found stronger covariation among distressed couples (Levenson & Gottman, 1983).…”