Poster #20 - Baseline RSA and Physiological Synchrony Predicts Infant Distress in the Still Face Paradigm

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Biological Processes: Psychophysiology

Integrative Statement

Emotion regulation develops rapidly in early infancy and is dependent on behavioral, physiological and social factors. By the second or third month of life, infants begin to engage in highly coordinated face-to-face interactions with their mothers. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is considered to play a significant role in the physiological regulation of emotion and social behavior (Ham & Tronick, 2006). These social interactions, specifically the mother’s own physiological regulation and the attunement of both the infant’s and mother’s physiological systems, have been observed to determine behavioral outcomes and stress recovery of the infant (Moore et al., 2009; Ostlund et al., 2017). Although empirical research suggests that sensitive parenting contributes to infants’ physiological regulation, measuring the role of physiological synchrony between infant and mother has been elusive. Typically, physiological regulation is measured with RSA epochs lasting at least 15 seconds. This methodological limitation has made it difficult for researchers to understand the moment-to-moment effects of infant-mother physiological synchrony.

Here, we describe a solution to this problem, and illustrate how our new metric for physiological synchrony serves as an individual difference measure for infant-mother dyads. We then test whether dyadic synchrony and the infant’s own physiological regulation predict the proportion of time infants exhibit distress in each phase of the Face-to-Face Still Face Paradigm (FFSF). Distress was operationalized as the composite of infant distressed facial expressions, negative vocalizations, and gaze aversion. Infants’ capacity for physiological regulation was measured by baseline levels of RSA, with higher baseline scores indicating greater reactivity. Our procedure involves computing RSA in 10 sec epochs with Porges’ method (1985), and then applying a 10 sec sliding window to each data point sampled at 5 Hz. A cross-correlational analysis involving infants’ and mothers’ time series for each of the three phases of the FFSF is calculated as our measure of physiological synchrony. We applied this method to a sample of 119 infants (4- to 6-months-old) and mothers and used a classifier to divide the sample into two groups: positive or negative physiological synchrony. Infants’ baseline RSA was measured before the FFSF and was used to classify infants into either a low baseline RSA group or high baseline RSA group.

A univariate ANOVA with Still Face Distress as the dependent variable and Physiological Synchrony (Negative or Positive) and Infants’ Baseline RSA (Low or High) as independent variables revealed a significant interaction, F(1,118)=6.60, p=.01. High baseline RSA infants who experienced positive coordination synchrony during the initial play phase displayed more distress during the still face phase than high baseline RSA infants who experienced negative coordination synchrony. For low baseline RSA infants, distress did not vary across positive or negative physiological synchrony groups (see Figure 1). Our findings indicate that physiological synchrony during the initial interaction sets the course for how the dyad responds to the perturbation of the still face phase, while also suggesting that this synchrony does not benefit all infants equally. Consistent with transactional models of development, more reactive infants may be more susceptible to parental influences.

Authors

• Drew Abney, Indiana University
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth B. daSilva, Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bennett I. Bertenthal, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author