Physiological Contagion in Parent-Child Dyads During an Emotional Challenge

• In Event: 3-054 - The Contributions of Child Physiology and Parent-Child Interactions to Children’s Emotion Regulation Strategy Use

Integrative Statement

Parents and children influence one another’s behavior and emotional states (e.g., Grusec & Hastings, 2014), but much less is known about whether and how they influence each other’s physiological functioning in an emotional context. The nature of the dyadic relationship between parent and child is implicated in interpersonal outcomes across the lifespan, from mother-infant affective synchrony (Feldman, 2007) to physical health concordance in long-married couples (Meyler, Stimpson, & Peek, 2007). But, little work has examined how parent-child dyads influence one another’s physiological responding under conditions of emotional challenge. This is important to understand more clearly, because physiological substrates undergird children’s development of self-regulatory processes (e.g., Shih, Quiñones-Camacho, & Davis, 2018). Guided by a systems perspective, in which we consider the reciprocal, transactional, and dynamic influence of members in a dyad across time (e.g. Lunkenheimer, Olson, Hollenstein, Sameroff, & Winter, 2011), we examined whether parents’ physiological activity would more strongly influence children’s subsequent physiological activity than vice versa. The goal of this study was to investigate the extent to which physiological contagion between the members of a parent-child dyad occurs across the changing contexts of a structured emotional challenge task.

We examined this in 97 parent-child dyads who participated in a frustrating laboratory challenge that first perturbed the affective state of the dyad and then allowed recalibration. Children were between age 3 and 7 (M = 5.79 years, SD = 1.25 years; 41 boys). Children and parents were instructed to attempt to complete a complex Lego puzzle within a specified amount of time so that the child could win a prize. During the first phase (dyad perturbation), parents were instructed not to help. During the second phase (dyad recalibration), parents were invited to help children or interact with the puzzle however they liked. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre-ejection period (PEP) were assessed continuously throughout the frustration task to index the functioning of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system activity, respectively.

Actor-partner interdependence models (APIMs; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006) were used to quantify the extent of physiological contagion between partners. APIMs were developed as a statistical framework for collecting and analyzing dyadic data, that stresses the importance of accounting for the interdependence between dyad members. The expected actor effects were found for RSA (β < .84; p < .0001) and PEP (β < .85; p < .0001), indicating that each member’s physiology during the perturbation phase was associated with their own physiology during the recalibration phase. We also found a partner effect for RSA only (β = .12, p = .008). Specifically, parents’ RSA reactivity to perturbation influenced children’s RSA reactivity during recalibration. This provides additional evidence for parent-child coregulation, during which parents support their children’s regulatory efforts. We found no partner effects for PEP.

Taken together, our results provide some of the first empirical evidence for theoretical perspectives that view the parasympathetic (but not sympathetic) system as foundational for effective social functioning, and highlight a novel aspect of the parent-child relationship that has implications for children’s developing self-regulation abilities.
 

Authors

• Emily Wu Shih, University of California, Riverside
  Presenting Author

• Laura Quinones-Camacho, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alex Karan, University of California, Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth L Davis, University of California, Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author