Does Emotional Overarousal Interrupt Social Information Processing? A New Look at an Old Model

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Biological Processes: Psychophysiology

Abstract

According to Crick and Dodge (1994), children’s social information processing (SIP) patterns, such as their goals for and generation and evaluation of possible responses to social situations, have important implications for their aggressive behavior. Lemerise and Arsenio (2000) expanded the original model to include emotion processing, proposing that emotional style (e.g., emotionality, emotion regulation ability) influences children’s thinking and behavior. For instance, heightened negative emotional arousal may make children more likely to interpret a social partner’s intent as hostile, desire revenge, or have difficulty generating potential response options. As emotion is multifaceted and includes physiological responses to emotion-eliciting events (Thompson et al., 2008), dysregulated physiological responses to stress may interfere with adaptive SIP patterns. Skin conductance level reactivity (SCLR, an indicator of sympathetic “fight or flight” arousal; Dawson et al., 2007), may reflect dysregulated negative emotional responses that impair effective processing of social information. Moreover, the implications of SCLR may depend on respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA; El Sheikh et al., 2009), which reflects parasympathetic “rest and digest” activity and may serve as an indicator of emotion regulatory abilities (Porges, 2007). The goal of the present study was to investigate whether high levels of sympathetic activity, combined with a failure to exhibit parasympathetic withdrawal, predicted: 1) a tendency to infer hostility in one’s social partner; 2) generation of maladaptive goals (e.g., more focused on revenge); and 3) difficulty in generating response options (e.g., generating fewer responses).

One hundred children (50 girls) were recruited from a small Northeastern city (9 to 12 years; M = 10.47, SD = .92). Children’s physiological reactivity was assessed with a semi-structured interview, during which children relived a recent social stressor. To calculate reactivity, mean physiological arousal at baseline was subtracted from mean interview arousal. Inferred hostile intent of the aggressor (1 = not at all mean, 5 = very mean), maladaptive goal determinations (1 = revenge was not at all the goal, 5 = revenge was very much the goal), and number of coping strategies generated during the interview were rated during qualitative coding of interview transcripts.

Ratings of the three SIP components, respectively, were regressed onto SCLR, RSA reactivity (RSAR), and their interaction (see Table 1). Gender was included as a covariate. Greater inferred hostility was marginally related to blunted SCLR and RSA augmentation; however, these effects were qualified by a significant interaction between SCLR and RSAR. In the context of RSA withdrawal, higher SCLR appeared protective against inferring hostile intent (see Figure 1A). The interaction of SCLR and RSAR also predicted the number of coping strategies generated; in the context of RSA withdrawal, higher SCLR was associated with generating fewer strategies (see Figure 1B). Neither SCLR, RSAR, nor their interaction predicted the generation of maladaptive coping goals. Findings suggest that the implications of SCLR for SIP may primarily occur among children exhibiting RSA withdrawal; for these youth, high SCLR may protect against generation of hostile attributions but interfere with the generation of multiple strategies for coping. Implications, limitations, and future directions will be discussed.

Authors

• Maria Christopoulos Lent, University of Vermont
  Presenting Author

• Dianna Murray-Close, University of Vermont
  Non-Presenting Author