The simultaneous assessment of and relations between children's sympathetic and parasympathetic psychophysiology and their reactive and proactive aggression

Abstract

The goal of the current study was to examine the link between children's psychophysiology and aggression when both constructs were assessed simultaneously in scenarios designed to provide the opportunity to aggress for either a reactive reason or a proactive reason. Both sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity (skin conductance) and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity (respiratory sinus arrhythmia or RSA), as well as their interaction, were included as physiological measures. Participants were 35 5th-grade children who were placed in two virtual-peer scenarios; one scenario provided the opportunity to aggress in response to peer provocation (i.e., reactive aggression) and the other scenario provided the opportunity to aggress for instrumental gain (i.e., proactive aggression). Both skin conductance and RSA were assessed at the time that children were given the opportunity to aggress; this simultaneous assessment of psychophysiology and aggression allowed for an examination of in-the-moment relations between the two constructs. For the reactive scenario, RSA moderated the in-the-moment relation between skin conductance and aggression such that the association was positive at low RSA but negative at high RSA. For the proactive scenario, skin conductance negatively predicted aggression in-the-moment, and RSA positively predicted aggression in-the-moment, but their interaction was not a significant predictor of aggression. Theoretical implications for reactive and proactive aggression and underlying physiological processes are discussed.

Proactive vs. Reactive Aggression Within Two Modified Versions of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm

“…Results from the pTAP indicated a negative association between proactive aggression and SCRs. In line with our findings, evidence in the literature has linked proactive aggression to low physiological arousal ( Hubbard et al, 2010 ; Bobadilla et al, 2012 ; Moore et al, 2018 ; Armstrong et al, 2019 ). Additionally, as similarly indicated in a few studies of young students, the arousal effect in proactive aggression here seems to be gender-specific as this link was observed predominantly in males.…”

“…To our knowledge, most empirical evidence on physiological arousal in situations that promote proactive and reactive aggression comes from studying children. Low SCRs could predict children’s proactive aggression in-the-moment, while high SCRs could predict reactive aggression in-the-moment only at low respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a measure of parasympathetic nervous system activity ( Moore et al, 2018 ). Another group measured SCRs in children playing a board game where they lose against a cheating confederate.…”

Parasympathetic Activity, Emotion Socialization and Internalizing and Externalizing Problems in Children: Longitudinal Associations Between and Within Families

“…However, the evidence for linear associations between baseline RSA and children's adjustment is not entirely consistent, including in community samples of preschool-aged children with predominantly sub-clinical symptoms of psychopathology (Beauchaine et al, 2007;Shader et al, 2018). Some studies fail to find direct relations between baseline RSA and children's problems (Hastings & De, 2008;Hinnant & El-Sheikh, 2009); others show positive associations between baseline RSA and IP and EP (Dietrich et al, 2007;Gao et al,2017;Moore et al, 2018).…”

“…High RSA also may be indicative of higher threshold for arousal (Hastings & Kahle, 2019), making children less responsive to subtle but important social cues from others (Hastings et al, 2006;Porges, 2003), and therefore less likely to terminate their own actions that others find aversive, or avoid such behaviors in future (Kochanska & Asksan, 2006;Raine, Venables, & Mednick, 1997). Similarly, atypically high RSA may contribute to autonomic under-arousal and thereby convey greater risk for aggression and other EP during early childhood (Gao et al, 2017;Moore et al, 2018). Children who are less prone to attending to the cues of others, or who experience insufficient arousal to motivate their orientation and attention to salient events, are less likely to learn from such cues or events (Miller et al, 2017).…”

Autocontrol y Agresión Reactiva en Adolescentes Mexicanos

“…Por otro lado, la agresión proactiva hace referencia a los actos o agresiones intencionadas, con el fin de controlar y obtener algún beneficio material o emocional (Ramírez y Andreu, 2003). Además, es un tipo de agresión regulada y planeada (Moore et al, 2018). Esta se relaciona con baja empatía (Deschamps, Verhulp, de Castro y Matthys, 2018), narcisismo y psicopatía (Vize, Collison y Lynam, 2020).…”