Dynamic self-regulation and coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia in mother-child and father-child interactions: Moderating effects of proximal and distal stressors.

This study examined how proximal and distal familial stressors influenced the real-time, dynamic individual and dyadic regulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in mother-preschooler and father-preschooler interactions in at-risk families (N = 94, M = 3.03 years, 47% males, 77% White, 20% Latinx, data collected 2013-2017). Proximal stressors were operationalized as changing task demands (baseline, challenge, recovery) across a dyadic puzzle task.

Observed child behavioral self-regulation and maternal supportive parenting are associated with dynamic physiological stress reactivity in preschoolers.

This study sought to advance our understanding of how observed child self-regulation, parenting, and their interaction were associated with children's dynamic physiological stress reactivity indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity trajectories. Participants were 85 three-year-old children (54% female) and their mothers oversampled for lower income, higher stressful life events, and higher child maltreatment risk. Child behavioral regulation, assessed as compliance and noncompliance, and maternal supportive parenting were observed during a challenging dyadic puzzle task.

Parent-child coregulation as a dynamic system: a commentary on Wass et al. (2024).

In this commentary, I argue that including and operationalizing allostatic processes will become increasingly important in future research on parent-child biobehavioral coregulation. In particular, the conceptualization and modeling of dyadic oscillatory rhythms that align in expected ways with the child's developmental stage and that distinguish typical and atypical development will be useful in future work. Despite the inherent asymmetry characteristic of parent-child relationships, we should not forget to consider the child's effects on the parent within and across time, the additional environmental demands upon parents that shape parent-child coregulation, and variations in parent-child asymmetry by parental risk factors.

Parental Regulation of Parent and Child Screen-Based Device Use.

Media use and screen time show both positive and negative effects on child development. Parents' behaviors, perceptions, and regulation of parent and child screen-based device (SBD) use may be critical understudied factors in explaining these mixed effects. We developed the Parent Screen-Based Device Use Survey (PSUS) to assess parental use of multiple SBDs (e.

The importance of parent self-regulation and parent-child coregulation in research on parental discipline.

Parent self-regulation is multifaceted, involving emotional, cognitive, and biological processes that support or constrain parenting behavior. It is highly relevant to disciplinary contexts in which parents' regulatory difficulties can contribute to harsh discipline, which is linked to children's maladjustment. In this article, we address why parents' self-regulation is an essential focus for basic and applied research on parental discipline.

Dimensions of child maltreatment and longitudinal diurnal cortisol patterns: The roles of resilience and child sex.

Informed by the dimensional approach to adversity, this study disaggregated child maltreatment effects to examine how abuse versus neglect influenced cortisol at the baseline assessment and longitudinal changes in diurnal cortisol among a sample of Chinese children and adolescents ( = 312; aged 9-13 years; = 10.80, = 0.84; 67% boys).

Maternal postnatal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing problems: The moderating role of mother-infant RSA synchrony.

Maternal depressive symptoms are a crucial risk factor for children's internalizing problems, though positive mother-child relationships may buffer this risk transmission. Mother-child physiological coregulation (e.g.

The roles of caregivers and friends in adolescent daily emotion dynamics.

Daily emotion dynamics provide valuable information about individuals' emotion processes as they go about their lives. Emotion dynamics such as (mean), (degree of fluctuation), and (strength of temporal connections among emotions) are associated with risks for various psychopathology in youth and adults. Prior work has shown that caregivers and friends play crucial socializing roles in adolescent emotional well-being, but less is known about their roles in daily emotion dynamics.

Longitudinal associations between maternal harsh parenting and child temperament: The moderating role of children's respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

To better understand biology by environment interactions in early temperament, we examined whether children's respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; resting RSA and RSA reactivity) operated as a biological marker of differential susceptibility to maternal harsh parenting in predicting children's temperament. Participants were 133 mother-child dyads (53% male children) from families oversampled for lower income, higher life stress, and child maltreatment risk. Mothers reported harsh parenting at age 3 and children's temperament, including negative affectivity, effortful control, and surgency, at ages 3 and 4.

Parental working memory buffers associations between COVID-19 hardships and child mental health.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impaired young children's mental health, underscoring the need for research on protective factors. Using a cross-sectional design, we examined whether parental working memory (WM) buffered relations between COVID-19 hardships (home-life, economic, and quarantine) and child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Female parents ( = 339; 83.

Ecological validity in measuring parents' executive function.

Parents' executive functions (EFs), or cognitive skills facilitating thought and behavior management, are meaningful correlates of parenting behavior. EFs are theorized to support parents in inhibiting reactive responses, managing information during parent-child interactions, and adapting to novel developmental demands. Less effective EFs associate with risk for harsh parenting and physical abuse, underscoring the importance of research on parental EFs in promoting healthy child development.

Understanding How Child Temperament, Negative Parenting, and Dyadic Parent-Child Behavioral Variability Interact to Influence Externalizing Problems.

To better understand the development of externalizing behavior, the current study examines how multiple levels of influence (child temperament, negative parenting, and dyadic interactions) work together to increase externalizing behaviors over time. Negative parenting (NP) and observed dynamic dyadic behavioral variability (DBV) in parent-child interactions (e.g.

Parental Emotion Coaching Moderates the Effects of Family Stress on Internalizing Symptoms in Middle Childhood and Adolescence.

The present study examined the moderating effects of parental meta-emotion philosophy on the relation between family stress and youth internalizing symptoms. A two-study approach was applied to explore these relations in socioeconomically diverse samples with respect to a self-reported parental emotion coaching (EC) and parental emotion dismissing (ED) meta-emotion philosophy in Study 1 ( = 153; youth ages 10-17 years; 52% female; 49% White, 26% multiracial, 17% African American, 6% Asian American, 1% Latinx, and 1% American Indian) and observed parental EC and ED behaviors in whole-family interactions in Study 2 ( = 82; youth ages 8-11.75 years; 52% female; 57% White, 22% African American, 19% multiracial, and 2% Asian).

The influence of children's effortful control on parent-child behavioral synchrony.

Child temperament appears to evoke specific parenting behaviors that contribute to child development. However, questions remain about whether individual differences in children's temperamental self-regulation, namely, effortful control (EC), shape moment-to-moment parent-child interaction dynamics. Accordingly, we examined whether differences in children's EC were related to dynamic synchrony of parent and child behaviors during a challenging problem-solving task.

Child Maltreatment Severity and Sleep Variability Predict Mother-Infant RSA Coregulation.

Regulatory processes underlie maternal-infant interactions and may be disrupted in adverse caregiving environments. Child maltreatment and sleep variability may reflect high-risk caregiving, but it is unknown whether they confer vulnerability for poorer mother-infant parasympathetic coordination. The aim of this study was to examine mother-infant coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in relation to child maltreatment severity and night-to-night sleep variability in 47 low-income mother-infant dyads.

Parent-to-Child Anxiety Transmission Through Dyadic Social Dynamics: A Dynamic Developmental Model.

The intergenerational transmission of psychopathology is one of the strongest known risk factors for childhood disorder and may be a malleable target for prevention and intervention. Anxious parents have distinct parenting profiles that impact socioemotional development, and these parenting effects may result in broad alterations to the biological and cognitive functioning of their children. Better understanding the functional mechanisms by which parental risk is passed on to children can provide (1) novel markers of risk for socioemotional difficulties, (2) specific targets for intervention, and (3) behavioral and biological indices of treatment response.

Longitudinal changes in young children's strategy use for emotion regulation.

The development of strategies that support autonomous self-regulation of emotion is key for early childhood emotion regulation. Children are thought to transition from predominant reliance on more automatic or interpersonal strategies to reliance on more effortful, autonomous strategies as they develop cognitive skills that can be recruited for self-regulation. However, there are few longitudinal studies documenting age-related changes in different forms and dimensions of strategies.

Parental history of childhood maltreatment and child average RSA shape parent-child RSA synchrony.

We examined whether dynamic parent-child RSA synchrony varied by individual differences in child average RSA and parental history of childhood maltreatment (CM), which has been linked to parental behavioral and physiological dysregulation. We also examined whether RSA synchrony was curvilinear, reflecting homeostatic regulation. Synchrony was defined as the dynamic association between parent and child RSA reactivity (change relative to their own mean) within epoch across a challenging task.

Individual differences in parent and child average RSA and parent psychological distress influence parent-child RSA synchrony.

Parent-child synchrony of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) varies by risk, but novel approaches are needed to capture individual contributions to synchrony. Multilevel state-trait modeling was applied to examine how parental psychological distress and parent and child average RSA during challenge (reflecting individual regulatory capacities) shaped RSA synchrony in mother-child (n = 71) and father-child (n = 47) interactions. RSA synchrony was curvilinear such that greater in-the-moment RSA reactivity in one partner prompted greater reactivity in the other.

Differences in mother-child and father-child RSA synchrony: Moderation by child self-regulation and dyadic affect.

Parents and preschoolers show respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) synchrony, but it is unclear how child self-regulation and the dyadic affective climate shape RSA synchrony and how synchrony differs for mothers and fathers. We examined child average RSA, externalizing problems, and dyadic positive affect as moderators of the synchrony of dynamic, within-epoch child and parent RSA reactivity during a challenging task. Mothers (N = 82) and fathers (N = 60) oversampled for familial risk participated with their 3-year-olds.

Parental depressive symptoms, parent-child dyadic behavioral variability, and child dysregulation.

Parental depressive symptoms are associated with greater variability and inconsistency in parenting behavior as well as children's emotional and behavioral dysregulation. The present study explored whether such relations extended to dyadic processes, examining whether maternal and paternal depressive symptoms at child age 3½ interacted with concurrent higher dyadic behavioral variability (DBV) in mother-child free play to heighten children's emotional and behavioral dysregulation at age 4 ( = 100). Child dysregulation was measured as mother-reported emotional lability-negativity and externalizing problems, and DBV was measured as the number of transitions among dyadic behavioral states using state space grids.

The dynamics of maternal scaffolding vary by cumulative risk status.

Parental scaffolding, or parenting behaviors that support children's independence and competence, can foster children's self-regulation development. Children facing higher cumulative risk may experience less scaffolding and more directives from parents, but it is unclear how cumulative risk affects the dynamics of parent-child interactions in real time. We examined the role of cumulative risk in mothers' moment-to-moment use of scaffolding and directives in response to preschoolers' off- and on-task behaviors ( = 117).

Person-centered profiles of parasympathetic physiology, anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms in mothers and fathers of young children.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is a biomarker of mental health, but RSA-symptom relations in parents of young children are understudied. We examined how anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, resting RSA, and RSA reactivity during challenging parent-child interactions clustered in a community sample of mothers (N = 126) and fathers (N = 87) of 3-year-olds and whether profiles predicted child emotional and behavioral dysregulation at age 4. Mothers fit four profiles (Typical, Mild Risk, Moderate Risk/Withdrawal, and Moderate Risk/Augmentation), suggesting that RSA reactivity was distinct by predominant symptom type at higher levels of risk: specifically, heightened RSA withdrawal was associated with a higher probability of anxiety symptoms and RSA augmentation was associated with a higher probability of depressive symptoms.

Understanding the parent-child coregulation patterns shaping child self-regulation.

Parent-child coregulation, thought to support children's burgeoning regulatory capacities, is the process by which parents and their children regulate one another through their goal-oriented behavior and expressed affect. Two particular coregulation patterns-dyadic contingency and dyadic flexibility-appear beneficial in early childhood, but their role in the typical development of self-regulation is not yet clear. The present study examined whether dynamic parent-child patterns of dyadic contingency and dyadic flexibility in both affect and goal-oriented behavior (e.