Caregiver Influence on Infants’ Self-regulation During a toy Removal Task

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

The caregiver plays a critical role in facilitating healthy emotional development, during and beyond the first post-natal year. For both caregivers and infants, emotion regulation can be assessed using psychophysiological indices (Busuito et al., 2019; Hastings et al., 2008). Specifically, respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) has been used as a physiological index of self-regulation to assess the variability between heart beats (Holzman & Bridgett, 2017; Morasch & Bell, 2012). Research using RSA has investigated how caregivers facilitate the development of emotion regulation in a stress-inducing still-face task (Busuito et al., 2019; Conradt & Ablow, 2010), however this effect has not been examined using other paradigms, such as the toy frustration task. The current study examined the ability of infants to regulate their cardiac activity and the co-regulation of emotions between mothers and infants, by comparing the similarities and differences in RSA, during each phase of a toy frustration task. At both 12 and 18 months, the primary caregiver and infant completed a toy frustration task while heart rate was recorded. This task consists of four phases: a 120-second play period in which both mother and infant jointly engage with a toy, a 90-second toy removal period in which the mother puts the toy out of reach of the infant and disengages from the infant, a 60-second reengage period in which the mother reengages the infant without returning the toy, and a 60-second return period in which the mother returns the toy and resumes interaction. Our primary hypothesis is that the RSA of infants will decrease during the toy removal period, which will indicate a period of physiological self-regulation. Our secondary hypothesis is that differential cardiac activity will be observed in mothers. Contrary to infants, mothers will show an increase in RSA during the toy removal period, and a decrease in RSA when regulating their infant’s emotions. This will indicate a period of low arousal for mothers and high arousal for infants during disengagement. Using repeated measures ANOVAs, we will examine the primary hypothesis and will analyze the differences in infants’ RSA, across toy removal phases. The secondary hypothesis will be analyzed using repeated measures ANOVAs to compare RSA between infant-mother dyads, across toy removal phases. To date, 41 typically developing infants and their mothers have completed assessment at 12 and/or 18 months of age. We will analyze both infant and mother data using the BioPac Acqknowledge software and will apply bandpass filters (1-35 Hz), eliminate artefacts, and extract RSA for each phase of the toy removal task. This plan is feasible because the data have already been collected and assessed for quality, thereby allowing the completion of analysis within the 6-month period prior to the SRCD biennial meeting. This research will contribute to the present literature on the physiological arousal associated with emotions within infancy and will determine a pattern of co-regulation within infant-mother dyads. As well, it will examine the importance of healthy emotion-regulation within mothers and how such patterns of regulation are related to the emotional development of infants.

Authors

• Menahal Latif, Ryerson University
  Presenting Author

• Shira Segal, Ryerson University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nicole Soriano
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret C Moulson, Toronto Metropolitan University
  Non-Presenting Author