Considering context in the developmental psychobiology of self-regulation.

The developmental psychobiology of self-regulation in childhood has received increasing attention in recent years. As a next step in advancing research and theorizing about the processes by which early biological correlates of self-regulation are forged, a more nuanced consideration of the contexts in which these phenomena are embedded is needed. This review synthesizes insights from distinct but complementary approaches to studying the developmental psychobiology of early self-regulation, focusing on the idea of context at different time scales. Three types of context that differ in temporal resolution are considered: (a) The temporally immediate contexts occurring within a structured challenge, including the baseline-to-task context of reactive psychobiology, the within-task context of dynamic change, and the post-task context of recovery from challenge. (b) The temporally moderate contexts of task type, including variants like the specific emotion that is under study and whether the task involves (or allows for) self-regulatory behaviors. (c) The temporally chronic contexts of important social relationships within which children are embedded and developing. Future research efforts that incorporate a more nuanced appreciation for the temporal resolution of contexts in developmental psychobiology will allow for novel tests and refinement of theories of self-regulation, as well as other domains of child development.

An intervention that increases parental sensitivity in families referred to Child Protective Services also changes toddlers' parasympathetic regulation.

Experiencing maltreatment in early childhood predicts poor parasympathetic regulation, characterized by low baseline parasympathetic activity and strong withdrawal of parasympathetic influence in response to tasks. The Promoting First Relationships® (PFR) program improves parental sensitivity toward young children in families identified as maltreating. Using a subsample from a randomized control trial, we examined whether parental participation in PFR had lasting effects on toddlers' parasympathetic regulation, as measured by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), relative to a resource and referral control condition. In addition, we examined whether parental sensitive and responsive behavior mediated or moderated associations between parent treatment group and children's RSA. More than 6 months after completing treatment, 29 families in the PFR condition and 30 families in the control condition were visited at home, and toddlers' RSA was assessed at baseline and during five moderately challenging tasks. Groups did not differ in baseline RSA, but differed in RSA reactivity to the tasks. Across tasks, toddlers of parents in the control condition manifested significantly larger RSA decreases than toddlers of parents in the PFR condition. Parental behavior showed divergent associations with RSA change for toddlers of parents in the PFR versus control condition, with PFR treatment predicting RSA change ranging from small decreases to increases in toddlers of parents who showed the most sensitive, responsive behavior in the 6 months following treatment. This preliminary study showed that the same intervention that improved parenting also improved toddlers' parasympathetic regulation in response to everyday activities, warranting further experimental investigation.

Linking autonomic physiology and emotion regulation in preschoolers: The role of reactivity and recovery.

Physiological recovery from negative emotions may be important for effective self-regulation, but little is known about recovery processes in children. The current study investigated links between autonomic physiology, anger expressions, and emotion regulation in a sample of eighty-three 3.5-year-olds. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia and pre-ejection period were measured during an anger induction task as parasympathetic and sympathetic indices, respectively. We examined whether preschoolers' anger expressions and emotion regulation behaviors were associated with individual differences in physiology. Autonomic changes were more strongly linked with emotion regulation than with expressed anger. Verbalized regulatory strategies were linked with greater sympathetic reactivity and also with greater recovery. In contrast, attention diversion was associated with blunted patterns of sympathetic reactivity followed by increased sympathetic arousal in the recovery phase. Disengaging from an emotional challenge may be linked with reduced physiological arousal in the short term, this behavior but also appears to have delayed consequences for physiological recovery.

On Measuring and Modeling Physiological Synchrony in Dyads.

Physiological synchrony within a dyad, or the degree of temporal correspondence between two individuals' physiological systems, has become a focal area of psychological research. Multiple methods have been used for measuring and modeling physiological synchrony. Each method extracts and analyzes different types of physiological synchrony, where 'type' refers to a specific manner through which two different physiological signals may correlate. Yet, to our knowledge, there is no documentation of the different methods, how each method corresponds to a specific type of synchrony, and the statistical assumptions embedded within each method. Hence, this article outlines several approaches for measuring and modeling physiological synchrony, connects each type of synchrony to a specific method, and identifies the assumptions that need to be satisfied for each method to appropriately extract each type of synchrony. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how to test for between-dyad differences of synchrony via inclusion of dyad-level (i.e., time-invariant) covariates. Finally, we complement each method with an empirical demonstration, as well as online supplemental material that contains Mplus code.

Sympathetic recovery from anger is associated with emotion regulation.

Prior work has focused on how and whether autonomic reactivity in response to emotionally evocative events is associated with better emotion regulation skills in children, but little is known about autonomic recovery processes in children and how they might relate to regulation. In a sample of 67 3.5-year-olds, we examined sympathetic responding during an anger provocation and during a repair period immediately following. Piecewise latent growth curve models were used to estimate changes in pre-ejection period (PEP) that occurred during the provocation period and during the repair period. Mothers reported on global aspects of emotion regulation. On average, children showed a small but significant increase in sympathetic activity (PEP shortening) during the provocation period. Although a significant mean pattern of change was not detected during the repair period, there was significant variability in individual trajectories. These individual differences in physiological change during the repair period were associated with emotion regulation, such that children who were rated as having better emotion regulation showed greater sympathetic recovery (PEP lengthening) during the repair period. This suggests that effectively well-regulated preschoolers are more capable of terminating sympathetic responding after a provocation of anger has ended rather than continuing to be physiologically primed for fight-or-flight responding.

Roots and Benefits of Costly Giving: Children Who Are More Altruistic Have Greater Autonomic Flexibility and Less Family Wealth.

Altruism, although costly, may promote well-being for people who give. Costly giving by adults has received considerable attention, but less is known about the possible benefits, as well as biological and environmental correlates, of altruism in early childhood. In the current study, we present evidence that children who forgo self-gain to help other people show greater vagal flexibility and higher subsequent vagal tone than children who do not, and children from less wealthy families behave more altruistically than those from wealthier families. These results suggest that (a) altruism should be viewed through a biopsychosocial lens, (b) the influence of privileged contexts on children's willingness to make personal sacrifices for others emerges early, and (c) altruism and healthy vagal functioning may share reciprocal relations in childhood. When children help others at a cost to themselves, they could be playing an active role in promoting their own well-being as well as the well-being of others.

How well socially wary preschoolers fare over time depends on their parasympathetic regulation and socialization.

Parasympathetic regulation and maternal overprotective parenting were examined in 101 children as moderators of links between preschool (M = 3.53 years) social wariness and childhood (M = 9.07 years) internalizing and anxiety problems, social skills, and scholastic performance. Across these three domains of functioning, more socially wary children were likely to manifest worse adjustment when they had low respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) or highly overprotective mothers. Conversely, maternal overprotection appeared to confer benefits for preschoolers with low wariness and low RSA. These findings point to the importance of both internal self-regulatory capacities and external support for autonomy and competence to understand and assist socially wary children and their families.

The development of frustration regulation over early childhood: Links between attention diversion and parasympathetic activity.

Diverting attention away from negative emotional stimuli has been associated with calmer physiological states in the moment, but little is known about the potential long-term effects of this emotion regulation strategy on physiology. Similarly, how physiological states, in turn, may contribute to the development of regulatory behaviors has seldom been examined. The current study investigated the concurrent and prospective associations between children's parasympathetic activity and attention diversion during a frustrating experience over 2.5 years. At 3.5 (n = 83) and 6 years (n = 58), children participated in age-appropriate frustration inductions. Multiphase latent growth curve models were used to model dynamic changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity to and recovery from frustration. At 6 years, attention diversion was associated with concurrent increases in RSA (increased parasympathetic influence). However, longitudinal path models showed the opposite association. Attention diversion at 3.5 years predicted heightened autonomic arousal at 6 years in the form of greater decreases in RSA throughout the reactivity phase. Additionally, RSA recovery at 3.5 years predicted less use of attention diversion at 6 years. These findings suggest a developmental process by which earlier emotion regulation behaviors shape later physiological responses, with different short- versus long-term correlates of attention diversion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Irritability Predicts Hyperactive/Impulsive Symptoms Across Adolescence for Females.

Irritability is common in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but little is known about whether irritability predicts the course of ADHD symptoms over time. Adolescence is a dynamic period of emotional development as well as shifts in ADHD symptoms; an important goal is to identify youth at risk of increasing or persisting symptoms. We examined irritability as a longitudinal predictor of change in adolescents' ADHD symptoms, as well as how this link may differ in females versus males. The sample included 108 youth (72 males) age 12-16 years (M = 14.21 years, SD = 1.44 years), 62 of whom met criteria for ADHD. Approximately 18 months later, 80 participants (48 males) were followed up at Time 2. A dimensional approach was used to examine changes over time in parent-reported inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms. Longitudinal path analysis revealed that irritability at Time 1 predicted higher relative hyperactive/impulsive symptoms at Time 2 after controlling for age and longitudinal stability in all variables. A multiple-group analysis examining moderation by sex/gender revealed that this association was significant only for females. These results suggest that irritability may play a key role in the persistence and worsening of hyperactive/impulsive symptoms across adolescence for females, with potential implications for the diagnosis and treatment of females with ADHD.

The Development of Generosity From 4 to 6 Years: Examining Stability and the Biopsychosocial Contributions of Children's Vagal Flexibility and Mothers' Compassion.

Individual differences in children's prosocial behaviors, including their willingness to give up something of value for the benefit of others, are rooted in physiological and environmental processes. In a sample of 4-year-old children, we previously found evidence that flexible changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were linked to donation behavior, and that these physiological patterns may support greater sensitivity to the positive effects of compassionate parenting on donation behavior. The current study focused on a follow-up assessment of these children at age 6. First, we examined the stability of individual differences in donation behavior and related parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity from age 4 to 6. Second, we examined associations between donation behavior and RSA at 6 years. Third, we examined whether the association between children's RSA and donation behavior at age 6 varied depending on mothers' compassionate love. We found low to modest stability in donation behavior and RSA reactivity from age 4 to 6. These findings provide preliminary evidence that stable individual differences in altruism, as reflected by generosity, and in some aspects of parasympathetic functioning during opportunities to be prosocial, emerge in childhood. In addition, we found that some of the same associations between donation behavior, RSA, and compassionate love that we previously observed in children at 4 years of age continued to be evident 2 years later at age 6. Greater decreases in RSA when given the opportunity to donate were associated with children donating more of their own resources which, in turn, were associated with greater RSA recovery after the task. Lastly, mothers' compassionate love was positively associated with donation behavior in children who demonstrated stronger decreases in RSA during the task; compassionate parenting and RSA reactivity may serve as external and internal supports for prosociality that build on each other. Taken together, these findings contribute to the perspectives that individual differences in altruistic behaviors are intrinsically linked to healthy vagal flexibility, and that biopsychosocial approaches provide a useful framework for examining and understanding the environmental and physiological processes underlying these individual differences.

Heart Rate Variability and Acute Stress Among Novice Airway Managers.

BACKGROUND: The nature of medical emergencies places emergency physicians at risk for high levels of acute psychological stress (APS). Stress-modifying techniques like visualization, breath control, and mental practice may help mitigate APS, but objective markers of stress are difficult to measure in the clinical setting. We explored the relationship between heart rate variability (HRV), a real-time measure of autonomic arousal, and self-reported APS among emergency medicine (EM) residents learning to intubate on actual patients. METHODS: This was a prospective study of postgraduate year 1 (PGY-1) EM residents at a single academic medical center during their 1-month anesthesia rotation. We obtained repeated measures of HRV immediately before and during the first intubation attempt each day. Participants completed the modified Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-6) before intubation attempts and scored intubation difficulty using the Intubation Difficulty Scale. We analyzed HRV using root mean square of successive differences and analyzed data using clustered data methods and Pearson correlation coefficients. RESULTS: We enrolled eight PGY-1 residents and recorded 64 intubations. Mean HRV in the 2 minutes before intubation (17.88 ± 9.22) and during intubation (21.17 ± 13.46) was significantly lower than resting baseline (32.09 ± 15.23; adjusted mean difference [95% CI] = -13.90 [-20.35 to -7.45], p < 0.001; and -10.77 [-17.65 to -3.88], p = 0.02). Preintubation anxiety was negatively correlated with HRV (r = -0.39 [-0.58 to -0.16], p = 0.001). Intubation difficulty was not significantly correlated with HRV (r = -0.12 [-0.36 to 0.13], p = 0.35). CONCLUSIONS: HRV shows promise as a real-time index of autonomic arousal and may serve as an outcome measure in the evaluation of stress-modifying interventions.

Parasympathetic Regulation and Inhibitory Control Predict the Development of Externalizing Problems in Early Childhood.

The current report examined the longitudinal relations between cognitive self-regulation, physiological self-regulation, and externalizing problems. At age 4 (n = 98; 49 girls) and 6 (n = 87; 42 girls), children completed the Day-Night task, which taps the inhibitory control dimension of executive function. During the task, cardiac activity was measured and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was derived as an index of parasympathetic activity. Mothers reported on externalizing problems. A cross-lagged path model was used to estimate longitudinal predictions while controlling for stability in all constructs over time. Earlier inhibitory control negatively predicted later externalizing problems, but not vice versa. However, RSA reactivity moderated this link; better inhibitory control predicted fewer externalizing problems only when reactivity to the Day-Night task ranged from mild RSA suppression to RSA augmentation. Externalizing problems at 6 years were highest among preschoolers who augmented RSA but showed poor inhibitory control performance, suggesting that risk for psychopathology may be better delineated by viewing self-regulation from an integrated, multi-system perspective.

Moderate baseline vagal tone predicts greater prosociality in children.

Vagal tone is widely believed to be an important physiological aspect of emotion regulation and associated positive behaviors. However, there is inconsistent evidence for relations between children's baseline vagal tone and their helpful or prosocial responses to others (Hastings & Miller, 2014). Recent work in adults suggests a quadratic association (inverted U-shape curve) between baseline vagal tone and prosociality (Kogan et al., 2014). The present research examined whether this nonlinear association was evident in children. The authors found consistent evidence for a quadratic relation between vagal tone and prosociality across 3 samples of children using 6 different measures. Compared to low and high vagal tone, moderate vagal tone in early childhood concurrently predicted greater self-reported prosociality (Study 1), observed empathic concern in response to the distress of others and greater generosity toward less fortunate peers (Study 2), and longitudinally predicted greater self-, mother-, and teacher-reported prosociality 5.5 years later in middle childhood (Study 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that moderate vagal tone at rest represents a physiological preparedness or tendency to engage in different forms of prosociality across different contexts. Early moderate vagal tone may reflect an optimal balance of regulation and arousal that helps prepare children to sympathize, comfort, and share with others. (PsycINFO Database Record

Compassionate love buffers stress-reactive mothers from fight-or-flight parenting.

The links among mothers' compassionate love for their child, autonomic nervous system activity, and parenting behavior during less and more challenging mother-child interactions were examined. Mothers expressed and reported less negative affect when they exhibited autonomic patterns of increased parasympathetic dominance (high parasympathetic and low sympathetic activation) or autonomic coactivation (high parasympathetic and high sympathetic activation) during the less challenging interaction and autonomic coactivation during the more challenging interaction. Compassionate love predicted less reported and observed negativity in mothers who showed increased sympathetic nervous system dominance (high sympathetic and low parasympathetic activation). Compassionate love appeared to help mothers, and particularly those who experienced strong physiological arousal during difficult parenting situations, establish positive socialization contexts for their children and avoid stress-induced adverse parenting.