Poster #89 - Associations between Mothers’ and Preschoolers’ Emotion Expression: Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia as Moderators

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Children’s affect is significantly influenced by their caregivers’ emotional responses, which is part of their emotional socialization process. However, little is known about how the association between mothers’ and preschoolers’ emotional expression varies by maternal physiological characteristics. As a widely recognized biomarker of the capacity to maintain or restore physiological homeostasis, maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) provide a physiological basis that differentiates the process of mothers’ influence on their child’s emotion expression during mother-child interaction. For example, previous studies indicated that higher levels of resting RSA in adults are related to greater variability and intensity of emotional experience whereas lower levels of resting RSA predict less emotional reactivity (Beauchaine, 2001). Limited research about the role of RSA in emotion regulation during a stressful situation. As such, the current study investigates the moderating role of maternal RSA in the association between mothers’ and children’s positive and negative affect in a challenging parent-child interactive task.

The participants of this study were drawn from a longitudinal study focusing on maternal depression and children's autobiographic memory. Participants included 125 Mother-child dyads (Agemom = 35.06; Agechild = 4.05; 52.4% boys). Mothers’ and preschoolers’ affect was coded during a puzzle task where children were asked to finish three puzzles with increasing difficulty. The task was timed by an experimenter who gave time reminders every 30 seconds. Trained coders coded mother/child positive and negative affect based on facial expression, verbal cues, gestures, and statements. Mother and child electrocardiogram (ECG) was collected during study visits using the Biopac MP150 wireless system. RSA was derived using the Mindware 3.2 software based on the interbeat interval.

We estimated two hierarchical linear regression models, separately for children’s positive/negative affect, and controlled for child sex and maternal depressive symptoms. Preliminary results indicated that the association between mothers’ and preschoolers’ positive and negative affect during a challenging task varied depending on maternal RSA. Probing these interactions suggests that maternal positive affect was positively associated with child positive affect, but only for mothers with low levels of RSA (b =.84, SE = .19, p < .01) (Figure 1). The association between maternal negative affect and child negative affect was positive only in mothers with high levels of RSA (b =6.17, SE = 1.45, p < .01), and negative only in mothers with low levels of RSA (b = - 6.68, SE = 1.90, p < .01) (Figure 2). Results indicated that under a stressful situation, mothers with lower levels of RSA are better at physiological regulation, which may elicit more empathy-related responses, whereas mothers with high levels of RSA may not adequately support their children, during negative affect in particular, by providing comfort and empathy. Hence, the physiological characteristics of the parents should be taken into account in preventive and therapeutic measures for the child's emotional socialization.

Authors

• Yihui Gong, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Xin Feng, The Ohio State University

• Qingqing Yang, Ohio State University

• Karis Inboden, Ohio State University