The Physiology of Emotion Regulation in Parent-Child Dyads during Individual Vs. Joint Emotion Tasks

Effective ER is related to social competence, resilience, and better overall health (Seligman, 1991). Poor ER is implicated in nearly all forms of childhood psychopathology with sequential risk for psychosocial problems. Part of ER involves responding to social cues which requires physiological arousal from the autonomic nervous system indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). When RSA is engaged, social engagement and self-soothing behaviors are promoted. Thus, RSA has been proposed as a physiological index for ER. Physiological responses to emotional stimuli have also been implicated in social relationships. For example, varying degrees of RSA co-regulation observed in interacting pairs have been related to the quality of that relationship. It follows that differences in RSA responses to emotional tasks performed by parent and child individually vs. jointly may provide information useful for identifying relational issues and designing effective interventions (Saxbe et al., 2010).

The aim of the current study is to investigate whether mothers and children demonstrate attenuated RSA responsivity when viewing the clips individually vs. jointly. Children ranged in age from 9 to14 (M=11.6; n=44; 74% African American, 4% European American, 14% Hispanic; 54% Male). Participants completed two rounds of an emotion induction task designed to invoke a physiological response (measured by RSA). One round was completed with mother and child separately (individual) and another together (joint). The task included watching two 3-minute film clips, one chosen to elicit negative emotions, the other to elicit positive emotions. In between the negative and positive clips, they observe ten neutral images.

Separate General Linear Mixed Models for child and mother were fit using Proc Mixed with RSA as the dependent variable and task (individual, joint), condition (positive, neutral, negative) and the task*condition interaction as the independent variables. Results indicated that in both the positive and the negative emotion condition mothers engaged in more physiological regulation (higher RSA) in the joint condition than in the individual condition. For both the negative and positive emotion condition, there were no differences in RSA for children in the individual or joint condition. Follow up analyses will investigate patterns by mother/child characteristics (e.g. trauma history).

The results indicate mothers are more engaged in ER in the presence of their child than in solitude. Future work has implications for intervention programs aimed at reducing child behavior problems given the malleability of ER, potentially providing us with novel targets for parenting programs. It will be important to elucidate the role the parent plays in influencing the ER of their child.