Shyness, aggression, and empathy in children of shy mothers: Moderating influence of children's psychophysiological self‐regulation

Abstract

Maternal psychological factors are known to play a critical role in children's socioemotional development, particularly in pro‐ and anti‐social behaviors. Although shyness is a ubiquitous phenomenon and associated with social anxiety, relatively few have examined the relation between maternal shyness and children's socioemotional development. We explored the moderating influence of children's resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and RSA change on the relation between maternal shyness and children's shyness, empathy, and aggression in 129 (62 males) typically developing 4‐ (n = 81) and 6‐ (n = 48) year‐olds. We found that 6‐year‐olds' RSA change score from baseline to a cognitive challenge task acted as a moderator on the relation between mother's shyness and child observed empathy but not for maternal report of child aggression or child's observed shyness. These results were not found in the 4‐year‐olds. Six‐year‐olds with relatively high RSA change and relatively low maternal shyness displayed the highest levels of empathy. These results suggest that the maternal caregiving environment and biological characteristics of the child may confer individual differences in prosocial behaviors in children. Findings are discussed in terms of age‐related differences in socioemotional behaviors in children of shy mothers.

Pathways from maternal shyness to adolescent social anxiety

“…Our findings extend previous research relating maternal shyness and children's shyness (Daniels & Plomin, 1985;MacGowan & Schmidt, 2020). Maternal shyness may contribute to children's social wariness through genetic or environmental transmission.…”

Observed shyness leads to more automatic imitation in early childhood

“…The birthday speech involved the child talking about his/her most recent birthday in front of a video camera. Self‐presentation tasks such as this are widely used to elicit shy/anxious behaviors in children (Colonnesi et al., 2017; MacGowan et al., 2022; MacGowan & Schmidt, 2020, 2021a, 2021b; Poole & Schmidt, 2019, 2021a; Schmidt et al., 1999; Theall‐Honey & Schmidt, 2006). Although there has been some debate on the definition of shyness and how to measure this construct, this particular task is known to elicit a state of anxious preoccupation with the self in an imagined social situation with another person present, which is synonymous with how shyness is defined and operationalized.…”

“…Electrodes were placed on the child's back to avoid child distraction and/or tugging and removal. Previous studies have reliably recorded ECG data from the child's back, and this procedure has resulted in less behavior‐sourced artifact (e.g., MacGowan & Schmidt, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). The electrodes and respiration belt were connected to a MindWare Mobile Impedance Cardiograph, Model 50‐2303‐00, which was placed in an age‐appropriate backpack worn by the child.…”

“…Resting RSA was measured for 5 min while the child watched an emotionally neutral video clip from the animated motion picture, Finding Nemo , which has been used previously for collecting resting RSA data in young children (Hassan et al., 2018; MacGowan et al., 2022; MacGowan & Schmidt, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). This clip was chosen to hold the interest of the child but did not involve any strong emotions or important plot points that may elicit arousal.…”

Parental warmth predicts more child pro‐social behaviour in children with better emotion regulation

“…Yet, empirical associations between baseline RSA and prosociality have not been uniform (Hastings & Miller, 2014). In some research, baseline RSA was positively associated with prosociality, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally (e.g., Liew et al, 2011;Song et al, 2018;Taylor et al, 2015), while other studies documented null or negative associations (e.g., Cui et al, 2015;MacGowan & Schmidt, 2020;Miller et al, 2017;Schuetze et al, 2014). Also, a growing number of studies (e.g., Acland et al, 2019;Cui et al, 2015;Miller et al, 2017) have documented quadratic associations between children's baseline RSA and prosociality, linking moderate (rather than too low or too high) levels of RSA to the highest levels of PSBs.…”