Zhang Wei, Fagan Shawn E, Gao Yu
Department of Psychology, Queens College, City University of New York, New York CityNY, United States.
Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York CityNY, United States.
Front Psychol. 2017 Sep 11;8:1496. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01496. eCollection 2017.
Atypical respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a biomarker of emotion dysregulation, is associated with both externalizing and internalizing behaviors. In addition, social adversity and gender may moderate this association. In this study, we investigated if RSA (both resting RSA and RSA reactivity in an emotion regulation task) predicts externalizing and/or internalizing behaviors and the extent to which social adversity moderates this relationship. Two hundred and fifty-three children (at Time 1, mean age = 9.05, = 0.60, 48% boys) and their caregivers from the community participated in this study. Resting RSA and RSA reactivity were assessed, and caregivers reported children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors at both Time 1 and Time 2 (1 year later). We found that lower resting RSA (but not RSA reactivity) at Time 1 was associated with increased externalizing and internalizing behaviors at Time 2 in boys, even after controlling for the effects of Time 1 behavioral problems and Time 2 age. Moreover, there was a significant interaction effect between Time 1 resting RSA and social adversity such that lower resting RSA predicted higher externalizing and internalizing behaviors in boys only under conditions of high social adversity. Follow-up analyses revealed that these predictive effects were stronger for externalizing behavior than for internalizing behavior. No significant effects were found for girls. Our findings provide further evidence that low resting RSA may be a transdiagnostic biomarker of emotion dysregulation and a predisposing risk factor for both types of behavior problems, in particular for boys who grow up in adverse environments. We conclude that biosocial interaction effects and gender differences should be considered when examining the etiological mechanisms of child psychopathology.
非典型呼吸性窦性心律失常（RSA）是情绪调节失调的一种生物标志物，与外化行为和内化行为均有关联。此外，社会逆境和性别可能会调节这种关联。在本研究中，我们调查了RSA（静息RSA以及情绪调节任务中的RSA反应性）是否能预测外化行为和/或内化行为，以及社会逆境在多大程度上调节这种关系。来自社区的253名儿童（在时间1时，平均年龄 = 9.05，标准差 = 0.60，48%为男孩）及其照顾者参与了本研究。评估了静息RSA和RSA反应性，照顾者报告了儿童在时间1和时间2（1年后）的外化行为和内化行为。我们发现，在男孩中，即使在控制了时间1的行为问题和时间2的年龄影响后，时间1时较低的静息RSA（而非RSA反应性）与时间2时外化行为和内化行为的增加有关。此外，时间1静息RSA与社会逆境之间存在显著的交互作用，即只有在高社会逆境条件下，较低的静息RSA才预测男孩有更高的外化行为和内化行为。后续分析表明，这些预测效应在外化行为上比在内化行为上更强。未发现女孩有显著影响。我们的研究结果进一步证明，低静息RSA可能是情绪调节失调的一种跨诊断生物标志物，也是两种行为问题类型的易患风险因素，特别是对于在不利环境中成长的男孩。我们得出结论，在研究儿童精神病理学的病因机制时，应考虑生物社会交互作用效应和性别差异。
