Affective Dynamics During Parent-Adolescent Interactions: Physiological Indices of Emotion Regulation Capacity, and Observed Positive and Negative Influence Functions, As Well As Repair Efforts

Parenting is a dynamic process that unfolds in the moment. A critical feature of a dynamic approach to parent-child relationships is examining the transactional influences of positive and negative emotions across members of the dyad, including the capacity to adaptively regulate emotions. As such, examining how emotional regulation skills impact emotional transactions “in the moment,” is a critical challenge to advancing research on parenting risk and its relation to child development. While emotional regulatory abilities are likely to influence emotional exchanges between parents and teens, surprisingly little is known about the role of emotion regulation during family interactions in high-risk families. Further, prominent emotion theories suggest that physiological reactions underlie changes in overt emotional responses, and yet most studies have relied on questionnaire or observational methods for examining emotions in parent-adolescent relationships. The current study addresses this limitation by incorporating an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning, Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), which may be central to an individual’s capacity to regulate emotions in social situations.

This study investigated RSA and maternal depression in relation to affective dynamics displayed during three discussion tasks between 59 mother-adolescent pairs (age 11 – 17 years).State space grids (SSG; Lewis, Lamey, & Douglas, 1999) were used to map the sequence and durations of dyadic states across interactions in real-time. Analyses examined parental RSA measured during baseline paced breathing and negative mood induction tasks in relation to several aspects of affective dynamics. Dynamic processes included influence functions for positive and negative dyadic states, as well as contingent “repair attempts,” defined by maternal or teen de-escalation following mutual engagement in negative affective displays.

Mixed effects regression analyses were used to test hypotheses. Maternal baseline RSA predicted decreased influence of mutual negative engagement across all discussion tasks, and greater influence of mutual positive engagement specifically in a task designed to induce positive discussions (but not during tasks designed to induce conflict).Further, higher maternal RSA predicted greater likelihood of teen repair attempts across tasks, but not maternal repair attempts during any interaction. Results support the central role of maternal RSA in promoting flexible and adaptive emotional responses during parent-child interactions, and also highlight that influences of RSA (and emotion regulation skills) may depend somewhat upon contextual demands.