Poster #21 - Links between Children’s Physiological and Behavioral Emotion Regulation and Dyadic Conflict Resolution with Parents

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

Integrative Statement

Previous research has demonstrated that emotion-related processes (e.g., emotion regulation) of parent-child conflict are related to the likelihood of reaching an agreeable resolution to the dispute. For example, some studies have underscored the role of individuals’ ability to regulate their emotional responses, from behavioral or physiological perspectives, in fostering high-quality parent-child interactions (e.g., Connell, McKillop, Patton, Klostermann, & Hughes-Scalise, 2015; Moed et al., 2015). Fewer studies have incorporated multi-dimensional measures simultaneously (e.g., behavior and physiology). In addition, considering that parent-child interaction is an ever-changing process and within-individual dynamic changes in physiological responses are highly related to behavioral and emotional adjustment (Butler, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2006; Cui et al., 2015), researchers have started to apply time-series approaches to examine psychophysiological reactivity during parent-child tasks. Taken together, the current study aimed to (a) examine children’s behavioral emotion regulation and physiological emotion regulation, indexed by dynamic heart rate (HR) patterns, during a parent-child conflict resolution task and (b) explore their associations with the quality of dyadic conflict resolution.

Participants were 150 dyads of primary caregivers (121 biological mothers and 29 biological fathers, M age = 39.22 years, SD = 4.07) and their children (58% boys, M age = 8.54 years, SD = 1.67) who lived in a major city of China, and were part of a larger research project focusing on family emotional environment and child adjustment. Observations of child emotion regulation, dyadic conflict resolution and overall relationship quality were each coded on a 7-point scale from a 4-min parent-child conflict resolution task. Child HR was collected during both a 2-min resting session and the conflict resolution task.

Results of latent growth curve modeling revealed that children generally showed an HR decrease followed by an HR increase to peak levels and modest recovery in HR levels in response to conflictual interactions with their parents. In support of our hypotheses, the structural equation model demonstrated that both child physiological and behavioral emotion regulation are related to the quality of parent-child conflict resolution. Physiologically, the variation of dynamic HR change was negatively associated with dyadic conflict resolution. Behaviorally, parent-child conflicts were more likely to be resolved successfully when the children could effectively regulate and control their own emotions.

Findings reveal that children typically exhibited dynamic HR reactivity in response to multiple phases of parent-child conflict, which provide initial support for the view that physiological reactivity in emotional contexts may be best characterized by nonlinear change (Miller et al., 2016). This HR dynamic regulation may have served as a physiological resource for children’s emotional and behavioral adaptation to support appropriate reactions to different contextual demands. However, excessive physiological arousal may be maladaptive in supporting children’s ability to resolve disputes with their parents. This finding is in accord with the theory that excessive activation of the SNS system in response to stressors is a potential indicator of children's hypersensitivity to environmental challenges (Boucsein, 2012). In addition, children’s effective regulations of their own emotions in real-time conversations with parents seemed to promote the quality of parent-child interactions.

Authors

• Yannan Hu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Zhuo Rachel Han, Beijing Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author