Early caregiving stress exposure moderates the relation between respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity at 1 month and biobehavioral outcomes at age 3

Abstract

There is a growing scientific interest in the psychophysiological functioning of children living in low-socioeconomic status (SES) contexts, though this research is complicated by knowledge that physiology–behavior relations often operate differently in these environments among adults. Importantly, such research is made more difficult because SES may be a proxy for a wide range of risk factors including poor caregiving and exposure to parental substance use. We used factor analysis to organize risk-exposure data collected from 827 children—many of whom were raised in low-SES contexts and exposed to substances prenatally—into dissociable components including economic stress, caregiving stress (e.g., stress the caregiver may experience, including parental psychopathology), and postnatal substance exposure. These factors, along with respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity at age 1 month, were used to predict behavior dysregulation and resting RSA at age 3 years. A significant RSA Reactivity × Caregiving Stress interaction indicated that infants who exhibited high RSA reactivity at 1 month experienced the greatest behavior dysregulation at 3 years, but only when they were exposed to high levels of caregiving stress. Among African Americans, the highest resting RSA at 3 years was found in infants with less RSA reactivity, but only if they also experienced less caregiving stress. Our work is consistent with biological sensitivity to context, adaptive calibration, and allostatic load models, and highlights the importance of studying Physiology × Environment interactions in low-SES contexts for predicting behavior and resting RSA.

Cumulative risk exposure moderates the association between parasympathetic reactivity and inhibitory control in preschool‐age children

“…Building on previous research, we hypothesized that (a) baseline RSA would be associated with better IC; (b) children who had experienced greater levels of cumulative risk would have lower IC; (c) greater parasympathetic reactivity (i.e., withdrawal) would be associated with better IC; and (d) parasympathetic reactivity (withdrawal) would be more predictive of IC for lower risk children. Results reported here support all four hypotheses and thus provide further evidence that, in young children, the presence of early environmental risk is associated with deficits on cognitive measures of self‐regulation (Fisher, Leve, Delker, Roos, & Cooper, ) and altered associations between physiological and behavioral indices of regulatory processes (Conradt et al, , ; Skowron et al, ).…”

“…In contrast to the group average effects reported in the meta‐analytic study, a growing number of findings suggests that the observed pattern of RSA withdrawal during cognitive challenge may not facilitate performance for all children. For example, Conradt et al () found that greater RSA withdrawal at age 1 month predicted greater behavioral dysregulation at age 3 years in children exposed to higher degrees of caregiver stress; however, a significant relationship between RSA reactivity and later behavioral dysregulation was not observed in children of caregivers reporting less stress related to caregiving. Amongst the same sample, Conradt et al () reported a similar pattern of increasing RSA withdrawal, assessed in yearly longitudinal measurements at ages 3–6 years, associated with more disinhibited behavior problems later in life (ages 8–14) for children exposed to a greater number of cumulative life stressors.…”

“…One theoretical explanation for these findings is that children who are more physiologically reactive may be more sensitive to environmental effects, such that greater parasympathetic reactivity may exacerbate the impact of exposure to a high degree of daily stressors on self‐regulation abilities (Conradt et al, ). An alternative, and perhaps complementary, explanation is that children with higher cumulative risk exposure have less‐coordinated activity amongst biological systems underlying self‐regulation (El‐Sheikh et al, ).…”

“…Moderation analyses were specified to examine the interrelationship between RSA reactivity and IC performance as a function of cumulative risk. Based on previous findings (Conradt et al, , ), we hypothesized that cumulative risk would moderate the relationship between RSA reactivity and IC, such that patterns of RSA reactivity would be differentially predictive of regulated behavior on the basis of degree of cumulative risk exposure. Specifically, we were interested in whether patterns of RSA withdrawal are similarly facilitative of behavioral regulation (indexed by IC) for children who have experienced lower and higher levels of cumulative risk.…”

Parent‐child coregulation of parasympathetic processes varies by social context and risk for psychopathology

“…Specifically, lower resting RSA, RSA reactivity, and heart rate variability have been linked to higher externalizing and internalizing symptoms in children and adults (Beauchaine, 2001; Blood et al, 2015; Crowell et al, 2005; Dietrich et al, 2007; Graziano & Derefinko, 2013; Yaptangco et al, 2015). Also, children showing excessive RSA withdrawal or RSA augmentation to challenge in the laboratory show higher levels of externalizing and/or internalizing problems (Calkins et al, 2007; Conradt et al, 2016; Hinnant & El-Sheikh, 2009; Shanahan, Calkins, Keane, Kelleher, & Suffness, 2014). …”