Key Findings
Maternal harsh parenting and child temperament interact, and RSA moderates this association
Children’s respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) emerged as a biological marker of differential susceptibility to harsh parenting. Specifically, harsh parenting played a role as a risk factor for children’s later negative affectivity among children with higher resting RSA and RSA reactivity, but not among those with lower levels. (Li, Sturge-Apple, & Lunkenheimer, 2023)
Child temperament, negative parenting, and parent-child behavioral variability interact to shape externalizing problem
Experiencing higher levels of maternal negative parenting at age 3 is associated with more externalizing problems at age 4 among children who exhibit exuberant temperament (e.g., high activity levels, high-intensity pleasure, impulsivity, and low shyness). Additionally, a higher frequency of changes in dyadic mother-child behaviors during a challenging problem-solving task at age 3 is linked to more externalizing problems at age 4 among children with exuberant temperament, especially in the context of lower levels of maternal negative parenting. (Brown, Pérez-Edgar, & Lunkenheimer, 2022)
Children’s better effortful control leads to greater parent–child behavioral synchrony.
Parent’s positive behaviors during challenging problem-solving task were observed to facilitate real-time behavioral synchrony in parent-child dyads. Moreover, children with higher effortful control (EC) were found to experience greater behavioral synchrony with their parents in both positive and negative behaviors. (Brown, Ram, & Lunkenheimer, 2022)
Attention bias to negative interactions is a risk factor for anxietyParental history of child maltreatment and child average RSA shape parent-child RSA synchrony
Children’s higher task average RSA predicted maternal RSA augmentation and lower task average RSA predicted maternal RSA withdrawal, regardless of whether child reactivity in the moment was low or high. When maternal child maltreatment history and child average RSA were both higher, mothers showed RSA augmentation. Father–child synchrony was not moderated by child average RSA but greater paternal child maltreatment history predicted fathers’ greater RSA withdrawal regardless of whether child RSA reactivity was low or high. (Fuchs & Brown, 2021)
Mother-child and father-child RSA synchrony vary by child self-regulation and dyadic affect.
For mother-child dyads, when children showed either higher externalizing or lower average RSA, negative RSA synchrony was observed as dynamic coupling of maternal RSA augmentation and child RSA withdrawal. However, when children showed both higher externalizing and lower average RSA, indicating greater regulatory difficulties overall, positive synchrony was observed as joint RSA withdrawal. The same patterns were found for father–child RSA synchrony but instead with respect to the moderators of higher externalizing and lower dyadic positive affect. (Lunkenheimer, Brown, & Fuchs, 2021)
Attention bias to negative interactions is a risk factor for anxiety
When adolescents show an attention bias towards angry interpersonal interactions, more negative interparental conflict relates to increased adolescent anxiety symptoms. When adolescents do not show this bias for angry interactions, however, there is no relation between interparental conflict and anxiety (Lucas-Thompson, Sieter, & Lunkenheimer, 2020).
Dyadic contingency and flexibility may be adaptive or maladaptive
More flexible and contingent parent-child affect when content is positive or neutral predicts greater child self-regulation. When content is more negative, however, more behavioral flexibility, as well as affective and behavioral contingency, predicts lower child self-regulation (Lobo & Lunkenheimer, 2020).
Maternal scaffolding and directive dynamics vary by risk status
When children go off-task, mothers with higher cumulative risk are less likley to redirect with scaffolding as compared to lower-risk mothers. When children get back on-task, mothers with higher cumulative risk are both less likely to respond with scaffolding and more likely to respond with directives – even when directives may be unnecessary (Diercks, Lunkenheimer, & Brown, 2020).
Parent RSA reactivity and symptom risk profiles predict child dysregulation
Risk profiles of respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) reactivity and psychopathology symptoms emerged for both mothers (four profiles) and fathers (three profiles). Mild risk profiles had higher resting RSA but did not vary in reactivity. Child dysregulation one year later was predicted by mild and moderate risk profiles as compared to typical profiles (Skoranski & Lunkenheimer, 2020).
Parental emotion socialization is a dynamic, dyadic process
Emotion-related socializations behaviors relate to dyadic positive synchrony with both mothers and fathers and their three-year-olds. Further, both mothers’ and fathers’ emotion-related socialization behaviors contribute to later lower child aggressive behavior via higher dyadic positive synchrony. (Lunkenheimer, Hamby, Lobo, Cole, & Olson, 2020).
Parasympathetic substrates of dyadic repair differ by maltreatment status
Higher maternal repair of negative interactions is protective for child stress physiology. However, when fewer repairs occur, non-maltreated children show an expected physiological arousal indicating a response to a challenge, whereas maltreated children’s physiology indicates disengagement (Lunkenheimer, Busuito, Brown, Panlilio, & Skowron, 2019).
Preschoolers’ task persistence profiles relate to later attention problems
More preschoolers show high task persistence with mothers than with fathers. Preschoolers whose persistence with mothers starts low and increases or stays stable across a task have the most teacher-rated attention problems in kindergarten; this relation was not found with fathers (Lunkenheimer, Lobo, Panlilio, Olson, & Hamby, 2019).
Physiological coregulation differs by maltreatment severity and subtype
Non-maltreating dyads show positive concordance of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), whereas maltreating dyads do not. Results show differences by subtype: physically abusive dyads show positive concordance and neglecting dyads show no concordance. For both subtypes, severity predicts discordant RSA (Lunkenheimer, Busuito, Brown, & Skowron, 2018).
Assessing biobehavioral self-regulation and coregulation using the Parent–Child Challenge Task
A new observational task, the Parent–Child Challenge Task developed by Dr. Lunkenheimer, demonstrates concurrent and predictive validity in assessing biobehavioral self-regulation and coregulation between parents and preschoolers. Parents and preschoolers generally exhibit expected changes in behavior, affect, and/or physiology at both individual (e.g., reduced maternal teaching, increased child negative affect) and dyadic (e.g., increased dyadic affective variability) levels in response to the experimental perturbation. Further, select measures of behavior, affect, and physiology show expected associations with children’s externalizing problems. (Lunkenheimer, Kemp, Lucas-THompson, Cole, & Albrecht, 2017)
Dyadic positive behavior coupling predicts decreasing problem behaviors
Children whose mothers respond to their autonomous behavior with further autonomy support exhibit fewer internalizing and externalizing problems over time; this pattern also relates to decreases in mothers’ harsh parenting. Effects appear unique to the dynamic coupling of autonomy-promotive behaviors (Lunkenheimer, Ram, Skowron, & Yin, 2017).
Maternal parenting behaviors and baseline RSA shape mother-child RSA coregualtion
Greater maternal teaching was associated with stronger coregulation in mother and child RSA over time. Maternal disengagement was related to weaker coregulation, specifically there was more divergent mother-child RSA at higher levels of maternal disengagement. Coregulation of mother-child RSA was also weaker when mothers’ baseline RSA was higher. (Skoranski, Lunkenheimer, & Lucas-Thompson, 2017)
Mother-child joint persistence supports child mastery motivation
When mothers and children show greater joint persistence at a challenging task, it predicts children’s higher levels of mastery motivation in preschool. Children who persist at an impossible task, even after failing, show higher levels of concurrent self-regulation and higher levels of mastery motivation in preschool (Lunkenheimer & Wang, 2017).