Second-by-second infant and mother emotion regulation and coregulation processes

Abstract

Context-appropriate infant physiological functioning may support emotion regulation and mother–infant emotion coregulation. Among a sample of 210 low-income Mexican-origin mothers and their 24-week-old infants, dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM) was used to examine whether within-infant vagal functioning accounted for between-dyad differences in within-dyad second-by-second emotion regulation and coregulation during free play. Vagal functioning was captured by within-infant mean and variability (standard deviation) of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during free play. Infant emotion regulation was quantified as emotional equilibria (within-person mean), volatility (within-person deviation from equilibrium), carryover (how quickly equilibrium is restored following a disturbance), and feedback loops (the extent to which prior affect dampens or amplifies subsequent affect) in positive and negative affect during free play; coregulation was quantified as the influence of one partner's affect on the other's subsequent affect. Among infants with lower RSA variability, positive affect fluctuated around a higher equilibrium, and negative affect fluctuated around a lower equilibrium; these infants exhibited feedback loops where their positive affect dampened their subsequent negative affect. As expected, infants with higher mean RSA exhibited more volatility in positive affect, feedback loops between their positive and negative affect, and stronger mother-driven emotion coregulation. The results highlight differences in simultaneously occurring biological and emotion regulation.

Prenatal Programming of Behavior Problems via Second-by-Second Infant Emotion Dynamics

“…are influenced by each other (Somers et al, 2021), and this conclusion is consistent with transactional models of emotional development (e.g., Sameroff, 2010). Despite the historical prioritization of parent-driven effects (even within bidirectional models; e.g., Belsky, 1984), fetal neurodevelopment appears to prepare the infant for the emotional communication required to actively engage in caregiver-child interactions (Cole, 2016;Gingras et al, 2005;Reissland et al, 2011).…”

Effectiveness of extrinsic emotion regulation strategies in text-based online communication.

“…Moreover, supporting communication is increasingly occurring via texts with others outside of close relationships (Shu et al, 2021). Nevertheless, future research should investigate whether the current results can be replicated in different types of relationships such as among couples (Bar-Kalifa et al, 2021), between leader and follower (Vasquez et al, 2020), or between parent and child (Somers et al, 2021). Furthermore, Rains et al (2016) found that reduced social cues in online text-based communication increased the recipient’s motivation to process support message content itself and that this led support messages to have a greater impact than face-to-face communication.…”

Developmental foundations of physiological dynamics among mother–infant dyads: The role of newborn neurobehavior

“…Second, the time‐lag (30 s) of RSA sampling in our study may be too slow to capture the caregiver–infant coupling within the fast‐acting autonomic system. Recent methodological advancements have made it possible to model RSA dynamics at the second‐by‐second level (Abney et al, 2021; Ravindran et al, 2021; Somers et al, 2021) and may be considered by future studies to capture fluctuations in parasympathetic activity on a shorter time interval. Nevertheless, the appropriate timescale (if any) has yet to be determined (Davis et al, 2018; Depasquale, 2020).…”