Gender Differences Among Preschoolers in Growth Dynamics of Parasympathetic Reactivity During a Cognitive Challenging Task

• In Event: 2-182 - Gender Differences in Psychophysiological Measures of Emotion Reactivity and Self-Regulated Behaviors

Integrative Statement

Young children’s ability to perform cognitively challenging tasks is associated with reactivity of the parasympathetic nervous system, indexed by measures of high-frequency heart rate variability (HRV). During cognitive challenge, children typically show reduced HRV relative to baseline, or HRV withdrawal, which is theorized to facilitate increased metabolic demands associated with increased demands on cognitive processing (Graziano & Derefinko, 2013). However, some studies have reported gender differences in HRV reactivity early in development, with boys showing exaggerated HRV withdrawal relative to girls (Beauchaine, 2001). Given that elevated HRV is generally associated with increased efforts of emotion regulation, it has been theorized that gender differences in HRV reactivity reflect gender differences in the socialization of self-regulation, such that girls learn to remain more emotionally-regulated during challenging events than boys (Beauchaine, 2001).
A major challenge for studies of HRV reactivity is that reactivity is often characterized by a single, static change score, indexing HRV activity averaged across a task relative to HRV activity averaged across a baseline period. This practice reduces the information present in continuously measured cardiovascular activity. Indeed, studies have demonstrated robust relationships between growth models of HRV activity over the course of a task and individual differences in behavior, when a static change score showed no associations with the same behavioral outcome (Brooker & Buss, 2010; Giuliano et al., 2015; Oppenheimer et al., 2013).
Here, we examined gender differences in growth models of HRV reactivity during a challenging puzzle task. Notably, we employ a dataset that has previously been demonstrated to show no gender differences in baseline values or static scores of HRV reactivity (Creaven et al., 2014). Measurements of HRV were obtained from 176 preschool-age children (84 boys; age, M = 3.73 years, SD = 0.73) during a 5-minute resting baseline, followed by a 5-minute task where children were given a model of a Duplo figure and asked to recreate this figure from a separate group of Duplo blocks. HRV reactivity was quantified in 30-second epochs across the puzzle task, and growth models were employed to examine linear and quadratic changes in HRV during the task. We hypothesized that HRV reactivity would show greater deviations from baseline levels over the course of the puzzle task for boys relative to girls.
Collapsing across gender, children showed a significant linear decrease in HRV (β = -.09, p < .01) accompanied by a significant quadratic deceleration in HRV withdrawal (β = .01, p = .02). However, this was carried by HRV reactivity observed in boys. As seen in Figure 1, HRV reactivity in girls remained relatively stable across the puzzle task, while boys showed steeper linear decreases (β = -.13, p = .04) and more pronounced quadratic changes in HRV (β = .02, p = .03).
Consistent with previous literature, boys showed greater parasympathetic reactivity than girls during a challenging task; yet, this was not observed with a static change score of HRV reactivity. Taken together, these results highlight the utility of quantifying dynamics in HRV reactivity using growth modeling.

Authors

• Ryan Giuliano, University of Manitoba
  Presenting Author

• Jessica Norman Wells, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• David DeGarmo, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth A. Skowron, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author