Demographic Adversity Moderates Temporal Associations in Parent-Child Cortisol Synchrony

• In Event: Cortisol as a Stress Biomarker: Associations with Socioeconomic Risks, Racial Inequalities, and Family-Based Interventions

Abstract

Attunement is conceptualized as a dynamic, moment-to-moment process by which parents and children reciprocally share and influence emotions, behavior, and physiology. Behavioral attunement supports positive parent-child relationships and healthy child development (Provenzi et al., 2018). However, parent-child physiological attunement (e.g., cortisol synchrony) is less well characterized, with mixed findings (Bernard et al., 2016). Environments characterized by high levels of stressors are associated with disruptions in parental physiological regulation (Goldman-Mellor, Hamer, & Steptoe, 2012), which may moderate adaptability of parent-child physiological attunement. We examined parent-child physiological attunement as temporally contingent associations (i.e., lagged predictors) between parent and child salivary cortisol levels collected during in-home play and stress paradigms, testing demographic risk as a moderator.
Methods
Participants included 131 children (42% female, Mage= 25.07 months, SDage=9.55) and their parents (98% female, Mage= 31.44 years, SDage=6.48) recruited from early childcare settings. Parents identified as 66% Latinx, 11% White, 14% Black, 6% Biracial, 2% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 1% Native American. Saliva samples were collected from parent-child dyads at nine timepoints across a home visit (at 1, 6, 12, 18, 26, 32, 39, 61, and 75 minutes after arrival) and assayed for cortisol. Children with known conditions affecting cortisol levels were not included in analyses. Salivary cortisol values were inspected for normality and untransformed values were retained. The home visit included a “3-bag” task (NICHD SECCYD), 7-minute structured moderate stress paradigm with adapted Lab-TAB tasks (Gagne et al., 2011), and free play. A demographic risk composite summed dichotomously rated teenage mother, single mother, less than high school degree/GED, unemployment, and receiving TANF.
Results
Current-timepoint salivary cortisol was estimated as two separate outcomes using 2-level random coefficient models. We nested repeated cortisol measurements (Nchild= 974, Nparent = 1159) within parent-child dyads controlling for child age on overall intercept. Current parent cortisol (outcome 1) was predicted by level-1 lagged parent cortisol (b = .60, p <.001) and lagged child cortisol (b = .04, p<.001). Current child cortisol (outcome 2) was predicted by level-1 lagged child cortisol (b = .70, p<.001) and lagged parent cortisol (b = .30, p <.01). For both outcomes, level-2 demographic risk interacted with level-1 predictors such that between two parents of children with high lagged cortisol, parents with high demographic risk showed lower current cortisol (Figure 1). Between two children of parents with high lagged cortisol, children with high demographic risk showed lower current cortisol (Figure 2).
Discussion
Physiological attunement appeared for dyads with low demographic risk but not high demographic risk, whether examining child effects on parent cortisol (Figure 1) or parent effects on child cortisol (Figure 2). Findings suggest that when examining repeated observations of salivary cortisol across parent-child interactions and a moderate stress paradigm, the presence of demographic risk affects how strongly parents and children physiologically synchronize. As physiological attunement is one way that stress-related vulnerabilities are transmitted across generations, increased understanding of physiological attunement in relation to risk indicators is important. Future directions include examining whether low parent-child physiological attunement in context of high stressors may confer a protective effect for child outcomes. 

Authors

• Tiffany Phu, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• Neda Senehi, United States Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation (OPRE)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah E Watamura, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author