Preschoolers’ Dynamic Respiratory Sinus Arrythmia (RSA) Change During A Challenging Parent-Child Interactive Task: Relations with Preschoolers’ Socioemotional Health

• In Event: Predictors and Outcomes of Dynamic Parent-Child Neurophysiology: A Symposium Honoring Dr. Carrie DePasquale

Abstract

Respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA), a biomarker of physiological functioning, has been implicated in self-regulatory processes and shown to relate to children’s socioemotional health. RSA is a dynamic process reflecting an individual’s response to their environment; thus, temporally sensitive methods are critical to better understanding this self-regulatory process in different contexts. Prior work has primarily measured children’s RSA change using difference scores between baseline and an active period, which fails to capture moment-to-moment changes in RSA. The present study addresses critical gaps in the literature by examining: 1) preschoolers’ dynamic RSA change (i.e., moment-to-moment change) during a challenging task with their mothers, and 2) factors that may explain variability in children’s dynamic RSA change.
Preschoolers (N = 108; M age = 3.56 years) and their mothers from diverse backgrounds completed a challenging activity together while children’s physiological activity was monitored. Mothers reported on children’s positive affect, parent emotional support, and family cohesion and indicators of children’s socioemotional health. Growth models were applied to children’s RSA data to determine which model best described their trajectory of RSA change. Based on theoretical and empirical work (e.g., Miller et al., 2013, 2016), we hypothesized that children’s RSA would follow a nonlinear pattern of change characterized by an initial decrease of RSA (i.e., compared to baseline), followed by a subsequent increase in RSA (i.e., a rebound compared to the previous epoch). We also anticipated that children’s RSA would generally trend towards baseline levels during the remainder of the task as they continued to regulate and promote calm social engagement to complete the task. We expected individual differences in patterns of RSA, thus we examined whether child positive affect, parent emotional support, and family cohesion explain interindividual variability in children’s RSA change and, in turn, if children’s RSA change explained differences in children’s socioemotional health (i.e., emotion regulation, emotional lability, and behavior problems). We hypothesized that children’s greater positive affect, parent emotional support, and family cohesion would relate to more dynamic RSA change. Lastly, we expected that children’s RSA change would relate to parent-reported indicators of children’s socioemotional health (i.e., greater emotion regulation and less emotional lability and behavior problems). These relations would support the interpretation of the observed pattern of RSA change as indicating adaptive regulation during the task.
Growth curve modeling suggested that children’s RSA followed a nonlinear pattern of change, characterized by an initial decrease in RSA, followed by a subsequent increase in RSA (see Figure 1). Additionally, children’s positive affect and family cohesion explained variability in children’s dynamic RSA change, which concurrently related to better socioemotional health (see Figure 2). Parent emotional support was not related to children’s dynamic RSA change. Results suggests that a dynamic pattern of initial RSA suppression followed by a slight increase in RSA and a series of small fluctuations may be adaptive in the context of a challenging dyadic task during the preschool years. Findings also contribute to our understanding of ways that variables across three levels (child, parent, family) relate to children’s developing physiological self-regulation.

Authors

• Kara Braunstein West, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
  Presenting Author

• Anne E Shaffer, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author

• K.A.S Wickrama, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author

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

• Cynthia Mary Suveg, University of Georgia
  Non-Presenting Author