Citation

Gatzke-Kopp L, Zhang X, Creavey KL, Skowron EA. Psychophysiology 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Society for Psychophysiological Research, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/psyp.14093

PMID

35567524

Abstract

Research investigating the association between parents' physiological reactivity and their ability to self-regulate in parenting contexts typically examines the average physiological response across the duration of a dyadic task, conflating reactivity across a multitude of parent and child behaviors. The present study utilized a moving-window analytical technique to generate a continuous, second × second time series of mothers' high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) to conduct an event-based analysis of maternal reactivity in the 10 s following an aversive child event. Analyses examined whether maternal reactivity related to parenting behaviors similarly among maltreating (n = 48) and non-maltreating (n = 29) mother-preschooler dyads.

RESULTS indicate that maternal behavior was not associated with average HF-HRV reactivity, but mothers who demonstrated an increase in HF-HRV immediately following a negative child event were more likely to engage in behaviors to return the dyad to a positive state.

FINDINGS were specific to incidents of negative child behavior, and results were not moderated by maltreatment status. These results highlight the value of using an event-based design to isolate reactivity in response to targeted events to understand how physiological reactivity supports parenting.

Language: en

Keywords

parenting; methods; heart rate variability; respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA reactivity; self-regulation