Shaping Synchrony: The Patterns of Parent-Child Affective Synchrony

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Affective synchrony, a temporally structured reciprocation of emotion, is known to contribute to cognitive, emotional, and social development. With their often-differing synchronous patterns, father-child and mother-child synchrony have been shown to be linked to different developmental outcomes. Therefore, the modelling of synchronous interactions between children and their parents is central to providing a better understanding of child development and the roles that each interactor plays in it. To this end, the present study attempted to model the affective change within Israeli parent-child dyads during a free-play interaction (mean child age=6.61, SD=0.24, range=5.55-7.24). Each interaction lasted ten minutes, with every two-minute segment coded for positive and negative affect for each interactor. To evaluate affective synchrony, bivariate latent growth curves models (LGCMs) were applied to assess associated change during mother-child (N=838, 52.27% female) and father-child (N=382, 49.21% female) interaction. It was hypothesized that both mothers and fathers would be synchronized with their children in positive affect, but not in negative affect, and that given their age, children and parents would be equal interactors. Results (Figure 1) showed disparities between mother-child and father-child dyads for both positive and negative affect. In positive affect, only mothers displayed associated change with their children, or synchrony. Additionally, children whose mothers tended to be positive were more prone to increase in positivity over time and children who were initially less positive became more positive than those who were inclined to higher positivity. The lack of relatedness between mothers’ initial levels and their change over time indicates that their behavior was more related with child behavior than with their own. Fathers, like mothers, became more positive over time, but children did not display systematic growth, only significant variance in their change over time. Moreover, fathers who tended to be more positive had children who were more prone to change over time. As predicted, mother-child and father-child dyads were not synchronized in negative affect. In both dyads, children were generally more negative and also more varied in negative affect than their parents. However, only with mothers did children become more negative over time, with children who tended to be less negative becoming more negative faster than those who were initially more negative. Fathers and children did not display growth. Therefore, affective synchrony, the associated, parallel change between interactors, was only evidenced in mother-child dyads in positive affect. However, the correlation found in all interactions between parents’ and children’s initial levels points to an associated “baseline” between interactors. So though affective synchrony in its dynamical sense was, for the most part, not found, a shared propensity towards similar affective behavior between parent and child was. Additionally, a parental disposition towards positivity was found to be associated with greater change in child positivity over the interaction. These findings suggest that though there are extensive differences between mother-child and father-child positive and negative affective synchrony in middle childhood, there are also important similarities. These results show that the parent-child affective relationship is both reciprocal and dynamic.

Authors

• Cachal Neuburger, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Presenting Author

• Eric J. Connolly, Sam Houston State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ariel Knafo-Noam, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Non-Presenting Author