Parent‐adolescent physiological synchrony: Moderating effects of adolescent emotional insecurity

Abstract

Physiological synchrony is defined as reciprocal and coordinated physiological activity between partners during social interaction (Feldman, Magori-Cohen, Galili, Singer, & Louzoun, 2011). From infancy, parent and child begin to show coordinated physiological states through timely adaptation to each other's signals (e.g., vocalization, touch). Parent-child synchrony provides children with the opportunity to match their biological rhythm and physiological states with parents in a coordinated manner, which facilitates shared-timing and coregulation among parents and children. In turn, physiological synchrony has been proposed to serve as a foundation for children's emerging abilities for attachment, social bonding, and emotion regulation, which shape the lifelong development of socioemotional competence (e.g., empathy; Feldman, 2007). Toward this, empirical research on parent-child synchrony has examined physiological synchrony in different age groups (e.g., young children, Lunkenheimer et al.

Parent–child physiological synchrony: Concurrent and lagged effects during dyadic laboratory interaction

“…On the one hand, a sample of 47 preschoolers found that fluctuations in parent and child RSA were concurrently, positively associated with each other during a free play, clean up, and teaching task (Lunkenheimer et al, 2015;Lunkenheimer, Tiberio, Skoranski, Buss, & Cole, 2018). This finding was replicated in two studies of parents and adolescents engaged in problem-solving discussion tasks (Li et al, 2020;McKillop & Connell, 2018). On the other hand, a study of 83 preschoolers found that parent and child RSA were not concurrently associated with each other during reading and puzzle tasks (Helm et al, 2018).…”

“…Fluctuations in parent and child RSA can then be analyzed on multiple time frames (Obradović & Boyce, 2012). For example, researchers can examine concurrent synchrony by testing whether parent and child physiological activation both increase or decrease simultaneously, within each epoch of time (e.g., Li, Sturge-Apple, Liu, & Davies, 2020). In addition, researchers can examine time-lagged synchrony by testing whether increases or decreases in the physiological activation of one partner correspond with changes in the physiological activation of the other in a "subsequent" epoch (e.g., Helm, Miller, Kahle, Troxel, & Hastings, 2018).…”

Firm parenting and youth adjustment: Stress reactivity and dyadic synchrony of respiratory sinus arrhythmia

“…The effect of environmental context on dyadic RSA synchrony has been tested, and the direction of this effect varies depending on the nature of the context (Li, Sturge‐Apple, Liu, & Davies, 2020). Some studies show increased physiological RSA synchrony in high‐risk contexts (Gray, Lipschutz, & Scheeringa, 2018; Smith, Woodhouse, Clark, & Skowron, 2016).…”

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

“…For example, in one study examining pre-ejection period synchrony in 7-to 11-year-olds and their parents, synchrony was found in both mother-and father-child dyads, but directionality differed such that children were synchronized to their mothers, whereas fathers were synchronized to their children (Waters et al, 2020). Other studies with adolescents suggest no father-child RSA synchrony is present (Li et al, 2020;Roman-Juan et al, 2020). More data is needed to understand RSA synchrony in father-child dyads and to examine the parent and child factors that explain variations in these processes.…”