Poster #137 - Maternal Emotion Dysregulation and HRV During Stress: The Role of Child Externalizing Behavior

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Difficulty regulating emotions is a central feature of several types of psychopathology and is increasingly recognized as a barrier to effective parenting. Furthermore, maternal emotion dysregulation is associated with elevated behavioral and emotional problems in children. Although mothers who struggle to regulate their emotions have been shown to engage in less consistent parenting (Crandall, Deater-Deckard, & Riley, 2015), the association between maternal emotion dysregulation and mothers’ physiological response to their children during difficult parent-child interactions has yet to be examined. We examined how heart rate variability (HRV), a physiological index of emotion regulation, unfolded across a difficult mother-child interaction task, and whether maternal emotion dysregulation, particularly in the context of having a child with externalizing behavior problems, was associated with increased HRV reactivity as this interaction progressed.
A sample of 68 mothers and their preschool children were recruited, oversampling for mothers with elevated features of Borderline Personality Disorder, a disorder marked by emotion dysregulation. Maternal emotion dysregulation was assessed using the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004) and children’s difficult behavior was assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist externalizing behaviors subscale (CBCL; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Maternal HRV was collected during a baseline task (watching a 5-minute video) and a frustrating parent-child interaction task in which mothers were tasked with helping their children build a complex Lego figure using only verbal instructions. HRV scores were obtained for 30-second epochs across the first 5 minutes of the Lego task and maternal HRV reactivity scores were calculated for each epoch (HRVreactivity = HRVLego epoch – HRVbaseline mean). An unconditional latent growth curve model showed an acceptable fit (2 (50)=63.80, p =.09, RMSEA =.066, CFI = .983, TLI = .984, SRMR = .056) and mean slope values were negative (b=-.032, p=.002), meaning that, on average, maternal HRV reactivity decreased during the Lego task.
We then tested the main and moderated effects of maternal emotion dysregulation and child externalizing problems on initial levels and slopes of maternal HRV during the Lego task, controlling for relevant covariates. As displayed in Table 1, maternal emotion dysregulation is positively associated with initial HRV levels. Further, a significant interaction predicting HRV slopes emerged between maternal emotion dysregulation and child externalizing problems. To interpret this interaction, mean HRV levels at each epoch were plotted for groups 0.5 standard deviations above and below the sample mean on both DERS and CBCL scores. This plot indicates that mothers high in emotion dysregulation whose children are also high in externalizing problems exhibit steeper HRV decline over the course of the task. Although these mothers begin the Lego task with relatively high HRV levels, their HRV declines more quickly and to lower levels than the HRV of other mothers. Taken together, although maternal emotion dysregulation predicts initial HRV responses, mothers’ sustained response over the course of a difficult parent-child interaction is better understood when considering child difficult behavior. These results contribute to our understanding of the interplay between child behavior and maternal emotion dysregulation on maternal physiology during parent-child interactions.

Authors

• Grace Binion, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Lewis, University of Oregon
  Presenting Author

• Jacqueline O'Brien, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ashley Miller, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maureen Zalewski, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author