Interactive Effects of Physiological Arousal and Regulation in Relation to Parenting Outcomes

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Biological Processes: Psychophysiology

Abstract

Prior research from one sample has demonstrated that the interaction between mothers’ skin conductance level (SCL) augmentation, reflecting activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) withdrawal, reflecting activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, predicts parenting and infant outcomes. Specifically, mothers who were highly aroused and poorly regulated (i.e., high SCL augmentation and low RSA withdrawal) when exposed to crying relative to a resting baseline engaged in more negative and less positive social cognition about infant distress, which in turn predicted lower maternal sensitivity in distressing contexts (Leerkes et al., 2015, 2016). Further, infants of such mothers were more likely to exhibit subsequent disorganized attachment to mothers and higher behavioral problems than other infants (Leerkes et al., 2017). The purpose of this study was to see if the interactive effects between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity when exposed to crying could be replicated in an independent sample given most other studies of this type focus on main effects only (Ostlund et al., 2019) or use alternative methods to consider joint effects of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity (Miller et al., 2015; Sturge-Apple et al., 2011). In this case, cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) shortening served as the measure of sympathetic arousal. We predicted that high PEP shortening would predict low accuracy identifying infant distress and less responsiveness to distress only among women who demonstrated low RSA withdrawal.

109 female college students (52% White, 40% Black, 8% other) reported their demographics via Qualtrics before visiting the lab. At the lab, they were fitted with electrodes to measure autonomic nervous system activity before engaging in a resting baseline and viewing four 1-minute long video clips of crying infants. After each video clip, participants rated the infant’s affect and noted the specific emotions expressed by the infant (compared to expert coders to yield measures of accurate distress detection), and indicated how likely they would be to respond promptly by picking/calming the baby up. Total scores for PEP shortening, RSA withdrawal (both scored as baseline – clip), accuracy and responsiveness were calculated by averaging scores across the 4 clips (all alphas > .70).

Path analysis results are summarized in Figure 1. Consistent with prior research, there were no main effects of RSA or PEP, but there was a significant interaction between PEP and RSA in relation to accurate distress detection over and above the covariate prior experience caring for infants. PEP shortening was only negatively associated with accuracy among women with low RSA withdrawal (see Figure 2). In addition, accuracy predicted higher reported responsiveness, and the indirect effect between PEP X RSA to responsiveness via accuracy was significant, B = .011, SE = .005, β = .098, p=.028.

These results replicate prior research demonstrating that (a) joint patterns of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity in response to crying are more predictive of parenting outcomes than either in isolation and (b) arousal in response to infant crying is only maladaptive when poorly regulated. Replication in a sample of parents and in relation to observed parenting is needed.

Authors

• Esther M. Leerkes, UNC Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Lauren Bailes, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mairin Augustine, Case Western Reserve University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret M Swingler, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pamela Linton Norcross, Meredith College
  Non-Presenting Author