Poster #19 - “Katerina Gets Mad”: Infants’ Physiological and Behavioral Responses to Co-Viewing Educational Media

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Media and electronic devices are becoming a ubiquitous part of young children’s lives (Eisen et al., 2021; Robb, 2020). There is increasing concern about the potential impact of media content as well as the potential displacement of other developmentally advantageous activities, such as parent-child interactions and sleep (Barr & Linebarger, 2016; Stockdale et al., 2020). A growing body of research has focused on the physiological impact of media on older children and adolescents. Less research has been focused on the potential physiological impact of media on infants and younger children, especially media designed to be age-appropriate and educational in content. In line with polyvagal theory, we anticipated that with the social nature of the co-viewing task, involving not only media viewing but caregiver-infant interactions, most infants would likely demonstrate vagal augmentation during co-viewing (e.g., Porges & Furman, 2011). At the same time, we recognized that some children may show a contrasting physiological response (i.e., greater vagal withdrawal as indexed by decreased HRV relative to the neutral baseline) such that the same media content may produce more physiological arousal. An additional goal of this study was to compare potential differences across children demonstrating contrasting responses to media by examining possible links to individual differences in children’s sleep routines, sleep quality, tablet use at bedtime and overall media use. We did this by examining respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in infants (N = 269, M age = 17.13 months) while they co-viewed an educational video clip from the children’s program Daniel Tiger that models an emotion regulation strategy following an anger episode. We then contrasted infants’ physiological response to media to an unoccupied baseline and a frustration paradigm (arm-restraint). Repeated-measures ANOVA showed that relative to baseline, most infants demonstrated an increase in RSA (N = 173) while co-viewing, suggesting greater parasympathetic (regulatory) activation consistent with behavioral calming (F = 75.16, p <.001). However, infants who demonstrated vagal withdrawal (N = 61) during co-viewing (decrease in RSA relative to baseline) were more likely given a tablet to help them go to sleep at night (F = 6.97, p = .01, see Figure 1). Vagal withdrawal during co-viewing was also associated with increased levels of negative affect observed during the co-viewing task relative to infants who showed vagal augmentation (F = 9.78, p = .002, see Figure 2). Finding matches prior behavioral reports of parents which highlight how parents often use media to manage young children’s problematic emotions (e.g., Coyne et al., 2021; Gordon-Hacker & Gueron-Sela, 2020) and help children relax or calm down in stressful situations (Nikken & Schols, 2015). For a smaller minority of infants, media use was associated with heightened physiological and negative emotional arousal and these infants were significantly more likely to use the media to fall asleep at night. Findings will be discussed in relation to the contextual effect of co-viewing age-appropriate educational media on children’s physiological responses and the potential effect of problematic media use at bedtime on children’s regulatory responses while viewing media.

Authors

• Chris L Porter, Brigham Young University
  Presenting Author

• Laura Stockdale, Brigham Young University

• Peter J Reschke, Brigham Young University

• McCall Booth, Indiana University

• Noah Chojnacki, Brigham Young University

• Sarah M Coyne, Brigham Young University