Marital conflict and growth in children's internalizing symptoms: The role of autonomic nervous system activity.

Abstract

We assessed trajectories of children's internalizing symptoms, indexed through anxiety and depression, with a focus on the role of interactions between interparental marital conflict, children's sympathetic nervous system activity indexed by skin conductance level (SCL), and parasympathetic nervous system activity indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as predictors of growth. Children participated in 3 waves of data collection with a 1-year lag between each wave. At T1, 128 girls and 123 boys participated (M age = 8.23 years; SD = 0.73). The most important findings reveal that girls with either low RSA in conjunction with low SCL (i.e., coinhibition) at baseline or with increasing RSA and decreasing SCL in response to a challenging task (i.e., reciprocal parasympathetic activation) are susceptible to high or escalating anxiety and depression symptoms, particularly in the context of marital conflict. Findings support the importance of concurrent examinations of environmental risk factors and physiological activity for better prediction of the development of anxiety and depression symptoms.

Mother–infant dyadic reparation and individual differences in vagal tone affect 4-month-old infants’ social stress regulation

“…Findings from the current study corroborate previous research identifying that both environmental factors and individual differences in vagal tone have a protective role in infants' emotional development (El-Sheikh et al, 2013;Miller et al, 2013). Dyadic reparation and RSA individual differences jointly contributed to infants' reactivity to and recovery from the social stress elicited through the FFSF procedure.…”

“…These findings integrate the MRM (DiCorcia & Tronick, 2011) and PVT (Porges, 2007;Porges & Furman, 2011) theoretical frameworks, suggesting that vagal tone activity and mother-infant dyad reparation jointly support socioemotional regulation. Indeed, on the one hand, suppressor infants exhibited higher RSA during the Play episode compared with their non-suppressor counterparts; a higher level of RSA during normal social interactions is thought to be a marker of optimal stress regulation related to more pronounced vagal tone suppression during a challenge condition (El-Sheikh, Keiley, Erath, & Dyer, 2013). On the other hand, our findings highlight that infants who experience more frequent dyadic reparation within the interaction with the mother might be more prone to release the vagal brake and to suppress RSA when under stressful conditions.…”

The effect of daily challenges in children with autism on parents’ couple problem-solving interactions.

“…Finally, the present study examined the effect of daily child ASD symptoms and co-occurring behavior problems on couple interactions. However, couple interactions may also influence the functioning of children with ASD, as has been shown in research on the general population (e.g., El-Sheikh, et al, 2013). Thus, further research is needed to examine these dynamic relations.…”

Physiological Indicators of Pathologic Video Game Use in Adolescence

“…As is typical for assessing ANS reactions to cognitively challenging tasks, the Rubik's Cube was novel and challenging for the vast majority of participants (cf. the star-tracing task) [29]. Indeed, only 10 participants completed a single side and none completed two.…”