About this session

Thursday, 1:40 PM - 3:10 PM

Parent-Child RSA Synchrony and Child Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology: Across Development, Contexts, and Time Scales

Parent-child physiological synchrony is a critical socialization mechanism, influencing children's self-regulation and socio-emotional outcomes. However, the lack of systematic investigation across developmental stages and contexts limits our understanding of its developmental significance. We present research on parent-child synchrony of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)—a physiological indicator of emotion regulation—across infancy, early childhood, and adolescence, and in various contexts (e.g., child stress or parent-child interactions). RSA synchrony is modeled using highly advanced methods across multiple fine-grained time scales (e.g., 1-10s, 11-20s).
Papers 1 and 2 examine how RSA synchrony influences child emotion regulation, while Papers 3 and 4 investigate how RSA synchrony shapes child longer-term adjustment. Paper 1 explores the association between parent-child RSA synchrony during a stressful speech task and the development of interoceptive emotion awareness in children aged 5 years. Paper 2 examines how mother-child RSA synchrony during a mildly stressful collaborative task relates to child stress reactivity in 5-7-year-olds and how these associations vary across time scales of RSA synchrony. Paper 3 investigates developmental trajectories of mother-child RSA synchrony during a co-watching task and free play from 6 to 54 months and their prediction of child psychopathology. Paper 4 examines how parent-adolescent RSA synchrony during a social stress task is associated with adolescent psychopathology in the context of parental early-life adversity and how time scales of RSA synchrony moderate these associations.
This symposium will offer important novel developmental and clinical implications of parent-child RSA synchrony across development and contexts and provide methodological contributions by exploring synchrony across time scales.

Paper #1
Title	Parent-Child RSA Synchrony under Stress and the Development of Interoceptive Emotion Awareness in Early Childhood
Presenting author	Marisa N. Lytle, The Pennsylvania State University, United States

Paper #2
Title	Multiple Timescales of RSA Synchrony Explain Variability in Stress Reactivity in Different Ways
Presenting author	Grace Steffen, University of Georgia, United States

Paper #3
Title	Developmental Trajectories of Mother-Child RSA Synchrony across the First 5 Years: Implications for Child Adjustment
Presenting author	Dr. Qili Lan, Peking University, China

Paper #4
Title	Parental Early Adversity and Offspring Psychopathological Symptoms: Do Time Scales of Dyadic Physiological Synchrony Matter?
Presenting author	Cullin Howard, University of Georgia, United States

View all paper details

Session chairs
Dr. Qili Lan, Peking University, China; Dr. Erika S. Lunkenheimer, Ph.D., , United States

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