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1. Children's physiological reactivity in emotion contexts and prosocial behavior

   https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.1380  

   Coulombe, Brianne R. ; Rudd, Kristen L. ; Yates, Tuppett M. ( September 2019 , Brain and Behavior)

   Building on prior evidence that prosocial behavior is related to the regulation of personal distress in difficult situations, and given that physiological regulation is a central contributor to effective emotion regulation, this investigation evaluated whether and how children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during emotion challenges influenced later expressions of prosocial behavior.

   The current study utilized a diverse sample of school‐aged children (N = 169; 47.9% female; 47.3% Latinx) to evaluate relations between children's parasympathetic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) and sympathetic (i.e., pre‐ejection period; PEP) reactivity in response to each of three film‐elicited emotion challenges (i.e., sadness, happiness, and fear) at age 7 and both observed and parent‐reported prosocial behavior one year later.

   Children's parasympathetic reactivity to a film eliciting sadness evidenced a nonlinear relation with later prosocial sharing such that children who evidenced either RSA withdrawal or augmentation in response to the sad emotion challenge engaged in higher levels of prosocial behavior than children who evidenced relatively low or absent reactivity. Parasympathetic reactivity to films eliciting happiness or fear was not significantly related to later prosocial behavior. Likewise, children's sympathetic reactivity in response to the emotion challenges did not significantly predict later prosocial behavior.

   These findings provide preliminary support for a nonlinear association between children's parasympathetic emotion reactivity and later prosocial behavior, and suggest that children's ANS regulation in sad emotion contexts may be particularly important for understanding prosocial development.

    

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2. A latent change score approach to understanding dynamic autonomic coordination

   https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13648  

   Rudd, Kristen L. ; Yates, Tuppett M. ( July 2020 , Psychophysiology)

   Children's self‐regulation is a core adaptive system in child development. Physiological indices of regulation, particularly the autonomic nervous system (ANS), have garnered increased attention as an informative level of analysis in regulation research. Cardiography supports the simultaneous examination of both ANS branches via measures of pre‐ejection period (PEP) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as indicators of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, respectively. However, despite their heavily intertwined functions, research examining autonomic coordination across sympathetic and parasympathetic systems is scarce. Moreover, extant efforts have favored static, mean level reactivity analyses, despite the dynamic nature of ANS regulation and the availability of analytic tools that can model these processes across time. This study drew on a sample of 198 six‐year‐old children from a diverse community sample (49.5% female, 43.9% Latinx) to examine dynamic autonomic coordination using bivariate latent change score modeling to evaluate bidirectional influences of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity over the course of a challenging puzzle completion task. Results indicated that children evidenced reciprocal sympathetic activation (i.e., PEP attenuation and RSA withdrawal) across the challenge task, and these regulatory responses were characterized by a temporally leading influence of PEP on lagging changes in RSA. The current findings contribute to our understanding of children's autonomic coordination while illustrating a novel analytic technique to advance ongoing efforts to understand the etiology and developmental significance of children's physiological self‐regulation.

    

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3. Baseline Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal Axis and Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity Interact to Predict Executive Functions in Low‐Income Children

   https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12267  

   Braren, Stephen H. ; Brandes‐Aitken, Annie ; Perry, Rosemarie E. ; Williams, Kevon ; Lyons, Krystalle ; Rowe‐Harriott, Sashana ; Blair, Clancy ( November 2020 , Mind, Brain, and Education)

   We examined interactions between baseline hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity in relation to executive functions (EF) in a sample (n = 1,005) of children in low wealth, nonurban communities at age 48 months. Salivary cortisol and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) represented baseline HPA axis and PNS activity, respectively. The interaction between RSA and cortisol predicted EF such that children with either lower RSA and lower cortisol, or higher RSA and higher cortisol had higher EF scores. These findings suggest a potential compensatory relation in which the PNS and HPA axis counterbalance each other to support cognition.

    

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4. Infant respiratory sinus arrhythmia and maternal depressive symptoms predict toddler sleep problems

   https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21480  

   Gueron‐Sela, Noa ; Propper, Cathi B. ; Wagner, Nicholas J. ; Camerota, Marie ; Tully, Kristin P. ; Moore, Ginger A. ( October 2016 , Developmental Psychobiology)

   This study examined the direct and interactive effects of infants’ respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) during the first 6 months of life in the prediction of children's sleep problems at age 18 months. Participants included 156 children and their mothers who were followed from 3 to 18 months of age. At ages 3 and 6 months, infants’ cardiac activity was recorded at rest and during the still‐face paradigm, a mother–child social challenge task, and estimates of infant baseline RSA (RSAB) and RSA withdrawal (RSAW) were calculated. Mothers reported about their depressive symptoms at 3, 6, and 18 months, and about infants’ sleep problems at age 18 months. Less RSAW and higher levels of MDS predicted more sleep problems at age 18 months. Additionally, RSAB moderated the link between MDS and children's sleep problems such that MDS were related to more sleep problems only for infants with high levels of RSAB. Results illustrate the importance of RSA as both a direct predictor and a moderator of maternal influences in the prediction of early sleep problems.

    

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5. Mother–child mutually responsive orientation and real‐time physiological coordination

   https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22200  

   Hu, Yannan ; McElwain, Nancy L. ; Berry, Daniel ( October 2021 , Developmental Psychobiology)

   From a biobehavioral framework, mother–child physiological and behavioral coordination are interdependent processes that contribute to children's socioemotional development. Little is known, however, about the temporal pattern of real‐time physiological coordination or its associations with global levels of mother–child behavioral coordination. We addressed these gaps using data from 110 mothers and their preschool‐aged children (56 girls,M_age = 53.63 months,SD = 7.74) across two play tasks (i.e., puzzle, pretend play). Using indices of maternal and child parasympathetic response (i.e., changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) across 15‐s epochs, we tested the extent to which within‐dyad physiological coordination was contingent on mutually responsive orientation (MRO; a global composite of behavioral coordination and shared positive affect assessed via observer ratings across each play task). Results from a series of two‐level coupled autoregressive models indicated that MRO moderated mother–lead RSA coordination, and this pattern emerged across both play tasks. Controlling for stability of within‐person RSA changes, increases in maternal RSA at timet – 1 predicted increases in children's RSA at timet, but only for dyads averaging higher MRO during play. No interactions of MRO emerged for child–lead RSA coordination. Findings highlight the importance of dyadic behavioral processes for mother–child physiological coordination.

    

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