Poster #147 - Paternal Emotional Negativity and its Relation to Father-Child Heart Rate Synchrony During a Child Frustration Task

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

Integrative Statement

Co-regulation of emotions in parent-child dyads scaffolds the growth of children’s self-regulation, especially for young children who often need to rely on external regulatory resources to cope with frustrating situations (Calkins, 2011; Putnam et al., 2002). Effective co-regulation has been shown for both behavioral/emotional attunement and physiological synchrony (Feldman, 2012; Kochanska & Aksan, 2004). Behavioral and emotional synchrony in free play or other joint collaboration/compliance tasks, especially in mother-child dyads, has been linked to children’s socioemotional development (Feldman et al., 2011; Lunkenheimer et al., 2015). This poster focuses on physiological synchrony between father and child when the child needs to cope with frustration, i.e., solving difficult puzzles while father is busy.
When facing child frustration, fathers with emotion regulation difficulty may experience sustained negative emotions, which may disrupt the dyadic synchrony with their child. To elucidate this process empirically, we studied father-child cardiac synchrony, using data from a laboratory-based frustration task and time-series analysis to examine whether fathers’ temperamental tendencies to react negatively to situations and difficulties in emotion regulation were associated with differences and changes in fathers’ heart rate levels and father-child heart rate (HR) synchrony.
Fathers (N = 45) and their children (ages 30 to 60 months, Mage = 46.08, SD = 8.78, 50% male) participated in a task in which children attempted to complete three increasingly difficult unsolvable puzzles (3 minutes each) while fathers completed questionnaires, including reporting their state-like negative emotions during the task (PANAS, Watson et al., 1988). Fathers were asked to act as they typically do when they must complete work and their child should play independently. Fathers’ and children’s moment-to-moment HR was tracked in 5-second epochs across the task. Prior to the visit, fathers completed the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (Evans & Rothbart, 2007) to assess trait-like Negative Affectivity and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004).
Multilevel analyses showed that fathers’ trait-like emotional negativity moderated the rate of increase in fathers’ HR and father-child HR synchrony across the task. Figure 1 shows that fathers with lower emotional negativity had lower HR at the task start that then increased with each new puzzle. Fathers with higher emotional negativity had persistently high HR across the task. Figure 2 shows that among fathers with lower emotional negativity, father-child HR synchrony was weak at the task start but became stronger across the three puzzles. In contrast, fathers with higher emotional negativity showed a persistent lack of HR synchrony with child. Differences in fathers’ state-like negative emotions were similarly related to changes of HR synchrony, but differences in emotion regulation difficulties were not related to HR or HR synchrony.
In sum, fathers who were less prone to negative emotions maintained lower levels of arousal, were more reactive to changes in task demands, and developed physiological synchrony with child when the situation got more challenging. The findings help elucidate how father emotion and emotion regulation may influence paternal contributions to co-regulation and children’s development of self-regulation.

Authors

• Xutong Zhang, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Madeline Kathleen Bennetti, Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pamela M. Cole, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nilam Ram, Penn State University
  Non-Presenting Author