Children's physiological reactivity in emotion contexts and prosocial behavior

Abstract

Introduction Building on prior evidence that prosocial behavior is related to the regulation of personal distress in difficult situations, and given that physiological regulation is a central contributor to effective emotion regulation, this investigation evaluated whether and how children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during emotion challenges influenced later expressions of prosocial behavior. Methods The current study utilized a diverse sample of school‐aged children (N = 169; 47.9% female; 47.3% Latinx) to evaluate relations between children's parasympathetic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) and sympathetic (i.e., pre‐ejection period; PEP) reactivity in response to each of three film‐elicited emotion challenges (i.e., sadness, happiness, and fear) at age 7 and both observed and parent‐reported prosocial behavior one year later. Results Children's parasympathetic reactivity to a film eliciting sadness evidenced a nonlinear relation with later prosocial sharing such that children who evidenced either RSA withdrawal or augmentation in response to the sad emotion challenge engaged in higher levels of prosocial behavior than children who evidenced relatively low or absent reactivity. Parasympathetic reactivity to films eliciting happiness or fear was not significantly related to later prosocial behavior. Likewise, children's sympathetic reactivity in response to the emotion challenges did not significantly predict later prosocial behavior. Conclusions These findings provide preliminary support for a nonlinear association between children's parasympathetic emotion reactivity and later prosocial behavior, and suggest that children's ANS regulation in sad emotion contexts may be particularly important for understanding prosocial development.

The Development of Generosity From 4 to 6 Years: Examining Stability and the Biopsychosocial Contributions of Children’s Vagal Flexibility and Mothers’ Compassion

“…First, studies have not focused on compassionate caregiving practices that are posited to be important for healthy parent-child relationships implicated in children’s own prosocial development ( Grusec et al, 2000 ; Mikulincer and Shaver, 2005 ; Hastings et al, 2015 ). Second, prior studies have primarily focused on children’s PNS activity at rest or in response to challenging or stressful contexts rather than tasks that provide children with opportunities to experience prosocial emotions and to engage in prosocial behaviors (e.g., Eisenberg et al, 1991 ; Miller et al, 2015 , 2016 ; Coulombe et al, 2019 ). Third, the existing research on biopsychosocial models of prosocial development has relied almost completely on questionnaire measures of prosocial behaviors and development.…”

More than meets the eye: Examining physiological and behavioral regulation during delay of gratification task

“…Autonomic regulation was measured by several derived cardiac regulatory markers, including basal (resting) indicators, task‐related indicators, changes between basal and task, and changes during tasks. Most studies to date have focused on basal and/or task‐related reactivity (Calkins, 1997; Coulombe et al., 2019; Hinnant & El‐Sheikh, 2009; Holzman & Bridgett, 2017; Kahle et al., 2018; Sturge‐Apple et al., 2016; Sulik et al., 2015). The current study found no associations between pretask values and physiologic response to task (pretask to task change) and delay ability.…”

“…Children who delayed showed a smaller increase in HR and a greater decrease in RSA from the start of the task to the end of the task than children who did not delay. Efficient suppression of vagal tone is necessary when attention is required for coping with environmental demands, often resulting in a decrease in RSA (and thereby an increase in HR) in response to a challenge (Coulombe et al., 2019; Hinnant & El‐Sheikh, 2009; Porges et al., 2007). The association between HR and RSA changes during the task and children's successful delay of gratification is likely an indicator of effective vagal tone suppression in response to adapting to challenging stimuli.…”

“…Changes in autonomic indicators and/or behavioral and emotional regulation strategies over a battery of self‐regulatory tasks have been examined (i.e., Coulombe et al., 2019; Manfra et al., 2014; Sacrey et al., 2021), but few have parsed these processes into delay‐specific tasks. Most studies examining associations between the ANS and children's regulation ability rely on measures of cardiac parameters as expressions of ANS control, including heart rate (HR) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), with greater focus on the latter.…”

Modeling techniques in counseling in high school to improve the behavior prosocial

“…Because parents are the first model that children see and imitate. Modeling has a strong relationship of how patterns of thinking and behavior are formed based on the identification of models in the family, especially the figures of parents who tend to be role models of children (Coulombe, Rudd & Yates, 2019).…”