Poster #6 - Trajectories of Maternal Behavior and Infant’s RSA and Emotional Recovery Following the Still Face Paradigm

• In Event: Poster Session 11

Abstract

The development of emotion regulation is integral to children’s socioemotional adjustment and thought to be learned, in part, through one-on-one interactions with caregivers (Calkins & Hill, 2007). The Face-to-Face Still Face Paradigm (SFP, Tronick et al., 1978) has been extensively utilized to examine regulation in response to a social stressor and research details infants’ and mothers’ behavioral and physiological responses during the SFP (e.g., Moore et al., 2009; Provenzi et al., 2015). Respiratory Sinus Arrythmia (RSA) is a physiological measure that reflects parasympathetic regulation of cardiac arousal (Stifter & Corey, 2001). Despite the extensive use of the SFP to assess physiological and behavioral regulation, there is mixed evidence on the pattern of RSA associated with infant emotional recovery following the stressor, which hinders our ability to infer how RSA is associated with emotion regulation in real-world contexts. However, the role of mothers in supporting infants’ emotion regulation during the reunion episode is well-established (e.g., Conradt & Ablow, 2010). Thus, the goal of the current study is to investigate infant RSA as a mediator of the associations between maternal warmth and infant negative affect during the reunion episode. Additionally, previous research demonstrates that maternal behaviors can promote the development of regulatory skills in contexts of risk, including low income (Lengua et al., 2014). Therefore, it is particularly important to identify maternal behaviors that support infants’ regulation in these contexts. Using a series of latent growth curve models, the current study aimed to elucidate the associations among trajectories of maternal warmth (i.e., maternal positive affect and interactiveness), infant RSA, and infant negative affect across 5 minutes of the SFP reunion.

First-time mothers who reported their household annual income as less than 200% of the US federal poverty level and their 5-6 months old infants (N = 200) completed the SFP. RSA was derived from cardiac data and calculated at a 30-second timescale, and coders rated maternal and infant behaviors in 30-second epochs, resulting in 10 observations of each variable.

Results showed that higher initial levels of maternal warmth were associated with lower levels of infant negative affect at the end of the reunion. Increases in warmth across the 5-minute reunion were associated with increases in and ultimately higher levels of RSA, which, in turn, were associated with decreases in and ultimately lower levels of negative affect. However, the increases in RSA were only associated with the ultimate level of negative affect and not decreases in affect, suggesting that changes in infant’s RSA and negative affect may not occur at the same time scale.

Taken together, these initial results suggest that maternal warmth supports infant’s emotional and physiological regulation. Notably, infant RSA appears to be responsive to changes in maternal warmth. Specifically, when maternal warmth increased, infants’ RSA also increased. Our next steps include investigating time specific associations among these variables across the 5-minute episode using auto-regressive latent trajectory models. Findings suggest that supporting maternal warmth can promote infant emotion regulation in contexts of adversity, with potential long-term implications for children’s mental health.

Authors

• Lindsey Green, University of Washington
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie F Thompson, University of Washington

• Lisa Shimomaeda, University of Washington

• Liliana J Lengua, University of Washington