Poster #144 - Mothers' attachment representations and autonomic physiological responding in (non)distressing caregiving contexts

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Infant distress is a salient emotional cue that promotes infant survival by motivating a caregiving response (Bowlby, 1973). It’s theorized that mothers’ capacity for regulating their physiological responding when confronted with distress supports their ability to provide sensitive care (Mills-Koonce et al., 2007). RSA is a physiological indicator of emotion regulation – when confronted with challenges, RSA withdrawal facilitates active coping (Porges, 2007), which might further support sensitive caregiving when confronted with distress. Indeed, mothers exhibiting greater RSA withdrawal during distressing contexts responded more sensitively to their infants (Mills-Koonce et al., 2007). Given such evidence, it’s important to understand the factors contributing to mothers’ capacity for emotion regulation when confronted with distress. According to attachment theory, attachment plays a crucial role in emotion regulation (Cassidy, 1994). Research also indicates that mothers with secure representations exhibited greater RSA withdrawal when confronted with infant crying (Ablow et al., 2013).
Despite such evidence, because prior research used pre-recorded infant cry stimuli, it remains unknown whether mothers’ attachment representations are associated with RSA withdrawal when interacting with their own infant in distressing contexts. Moreover, because prior research only focused on physiological responding to infant distress, it remains unclear whether mothers’ attachment is specifically associated with physiological responding within distressing (vs. non-distressing) contexts. To address these gaps, we examined the associations between mothers’ attachment representations and RSA withdrawal in both contexts.
Participants include 134 mothers (mean age=30 years) and their 6-month-old infant. Mothers completed the Attachment Script Assessment (Waters & Rodrigues-Doolabh, 2004) – a word-prompt procedure in which individuals develop attachment-relevant narratives coded for secure base script knowledge (SBSK), or an understanding that attachment relationships serve the secure base and safe haven functions. Mothers’ RSA was assessed during a resting baseline and the Still-Face Procedure (SFP, Tronick et al, 1978) in which mothers played normally with their infants (i.e., normal play), became emotionally and behaviorally unresponsive to their infants (i.e., still-face), and then re-engaged their infants in normal interaction (i.e., reunion). Consistent with prior research, the normal play and reunion episodes served as the nondistressing and distressing contexts, respectively (Groh et al., 2017). To examine RSA withdrawal during each SFP episode, an RSA change score was created by subtracting RSA during SFP episode form baseline RSA.
To examine links between mothers’ SBSK and their RSA withdrawal in (non)distressing contexts, mothers’ SBSK was regressed on mothers’ RSA withdrawal during each episode (i.e., normal play, still-face, reunion) of the SFP. As expected, mothers’ RSA withdrawal during the reunion episode, but not during the normal play episode, was significantly associated with mothers’ SBSK (see Table 1). Specifically, higher levels of SBSK were associated with greater RSA withdrawal during the reunion episode. Findings extend prior research by providing evidence that links between mothers’ attachment and RSA withdrawal generalize to mothers’ interactions with their own infant and are specific to distressing caregiving contexts. Together, these findings suggest that mothers’ attachment plays a role in their physiological self-regulation during distressing contexts, which in turn has implications for their caregiving behaviors.

Authors

• Nanxi Xu, University of Missouri-Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Ashley Groh, University of Missouri
  Non-Presenting Author