Lunkenheimer Erika, Kemp Christine J, Lucas-Thompson Rachel G, Cole Pamela M, Albrecht Erin C
Colorado State University.
The Pennsylvania State University.
Infant Child Dev. 2017 Jan-Feb;26(1). doi: 10.1002/icd.1965. Epub 2016 Apr 5.
Researchers have argued for more dynamic and contextually relevant measures of regulatory processes in interpersonal interactions. In response, we introduce and examine the effectiveness of a new task, the Parent-Child Challenge Task, designed to assess the self-regulation and coregulation of affect, goal-directed behavior, and physiology in parents and their preschoolers in response to an experimental perturbation. Concurrent and predictive validity was examined via relations with children's externalizing behaviors. Mothers used only their words to guide their 3-year-old children to complete increasingly difficult puzzles in order to win a prize ( = 96). A challenge condition was initiated mid-way through the task with a newly introduced time limit. The challenge produced decreases in parental teaching and dyadic behavioral variability and increases in child negative affect and dyadic affective variability, measured by dynamic systems-based methods. Children rated lower on externalizing showed respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) suppression in response to challenge, whereas those rated higher on externalizing showed RSA augmentation. Additionally, select task changes in affect, behavior, and physiology predicted teacher-rated externalizing behaviors four months later. Findings indicate the Parent-Child Challenge Task was effective in producing regulatory changes and suggest its utility in assessing biobehavioral self-regulation and coregulation in parents and their preschoolers.
研究人员主张采用更具动态性且与情境相关的人际互动调节过程测量方法。作为回应，我们引入并检验了一项新任务——亲子挑战任务的有效性，该任务旨在评估父母及其学龄前儿童在面对实验性干扰时，对情感、目标导向行为和生理机能的自我调节与共同调节。通过与儿童外化行为的关系来检验同时效度和预测效度。母亲仅用言语引导她们3岁的孩子完成难度不断增加的拼图以赢取奖品（ = 96）。在任务进行到一半时，引入新的时间限制，启动挑战条件。通过基于动态系统的方法测量，挑战导致父母教导和二元行为变异性降低，儿童负面情绪和二元情感变异性增加。外化行为得分较低的儿童在面对挑战时表现出呼吸性窦性心律不齐（RSA）抑制，而外化行为得分较高的儿童则表现出RSA增强。此外，情感、行为和生理机能方面特定的任务变化可预测四个月后教师评定的外化行为。研究结果表明亲子挑战任务在产生调节变化方面是有效的，并表明其在评估父母及其学龄前儿童的生物行为自我调节和共同调节方面具有实用性。
