Browsing by Subject "Respiratory sinus arrhythmia"
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Item Parenting Gets Under the Skin: Mother-Child Physiological Synchrony and Child Self-Regulation in Post-Deployed Military Families(2021-05) Zhang, JingchenParent-child physiological synchrony, which is characterized by the matching or concordance of physiological states among parents and children, has been theorized to be linked to children’s self-regulation and adaptive outcomes. However, the link between physiological synchrony and child regulatory outcomes was rarely examined in empirical studies, especially in the at-risk populations (i.e., post-deployed military families). Also, no research has investigated the impact of parenting interventions on physiological synchrony. Study 1 employed a multilevel growth modeling approach to model dynamic changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during a dyadic problem-solving task, and results showed a positive association between physiological synchrony and child self-regulation. Also, younger children tended to show positive lagged synchrony with mothers while older children tended to show negative lagged synchrony. Mothers’ emotion dysregulation was found to be associated with higher levels of lagged synchrony. Additionally, synchrony was found to be linked to both positive (i.e., fewer displays of anger/disgust, more positive physical behaviors, and less negative directive behaviors) and negative parenting behaviors (i.e., fewer displays of positive affect). Study 2 explored the effect of the After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools/ADAPT parenting intervention on dyadic synchrony, as well as the moderation effect of synchrony at baseline on the indirect intervention effect on child self-regulation through changes in parental emotion socialization. Although the hypothesized intervention effect was not observed, dyads with negative synchrony at baseline were found to benefit more from the ADAPT intervention. The changes in emotion socialization behaviors were further associated with better child self-regulation. These two studies highlighted the importance of parent-child physiological synchrony in self-regulation development in children in military families who are at risk for developing maladaptive behaviors. The implications and future directions are discussed.Item Physiological and social cognitive correlates of preschool physical and relational aggression: a short-term longitudinal study.(2011-08) Gower, Amy LynnThis study examined physiological correlates and predictors of relational and physical aggression in early childhood. Preschoolers' baseline heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were measured in the fall. At the same assessment, heart rate and RSA reactivity were measured while listening to stories of peer conflict, and participants engaged in two effortful control tasks. Teachers reported on physical and relational aggression in the fall and the spring. With respect to baseline physiology, low baseline heart rate and higher RSA were associated with increased physical aggression only among children with lower effortful control scores. Higher baseline RSA predicted increased relational aggression, again only for children with lower effortful control scores. Among children with poorer effortful control, diastolic blood pressure positively predicted relational aggression and negatively predicted physical aggression. Greater heart rate increases and RSA decreases to stories of peer conflict were uniquely associated with elevated classroom physical aggression. These findings suggest the utility of examining the roles of baseline physiology and physiological reactivity in the development of aggressive behavior. Implications of these findings for the development of intervention and prevention programs targeting early physical and relational aggression are discussed.Item Vagal flexibility and parenting behaviors in post-deployed military fathers(2018-05) Zhang, NaThe lives of about two million American children have been affected by the military deployment of a parent. A parent's deployment influences children's adjustment through compromised parenting. While an emerging body of literature suggests that effective parenting requires parental emotion regulation, few studies have focused on fathers. In addition, limited knowledge exists about whether or how fathers' emotion regulation might affect their responsivity to a parent training program. With a focus on military fathers who had been deployed since 2001, the current research consisted of two studies that investigated vagal flexibility as an index of physiological emotion regulation and social engagement in relation to observed parenting behaviors. The first study, entitled "Military fathers' nurturing parenting: Psychological and physiological flexibility both matter", demonstrated that vagal flexibility buffers against the negative effects of psychological inflexibility (i.e. self-reported experiential avoidance) on observed emotion-related parenting. The second study, entitled "Adapting to 'ADAPT': Vagal flexibility predicts military fathers' changes in parenting following a parent training program", tested the effect of vagal flexibility in predicting the degree of changes in observed parenting skills at 1-year follow-up in a randomized controlled trial of the After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools/ADAPT program. These two studies provided evidence for the role of cardiac vagal tone as a correlate of emotion-related parenting and a tailoring variable to inform precision-based parenting programming for military fathers.