Zhang Na, Hoch John, Gewirtz Abigail H
REACH Institute, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, 900 S. McAllister, Psychology North, Rm 212, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA.
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 250 Education Sciences Bldg, 56 East River Rd, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
Prev Sci. 2020 Jul;21(5):691-701. doi: 10.1007/s11121-020-01122-6.
To make prevention programs more effective and understand "what works for whom," evidence regarding what individual characteristics predict intervention responsiveness is needed. Previous studies have evaluated a military parent training program known as After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools/ADAPT, yet less is understood about the program's varying effects for fathers. We tested the physiological regulation of emotion during social interactions as a moderator predicting fathers' responsiveness in a randomized trial of ADAPT, in which emotion regulation was operationally measured through vagal flexibility (VF; dynamic changes in cardiac vagal tone). Families with a child aged between 4 and 13 years for whom physiological data were gathered (n = 145) were randomly assigned to ADAPT (14-week face-to-face group intervention) or a control group (services as usual). Fathers in these families were National Guard/Reserve members who had been deployed to war in Iraq and/or Afghanistan and recently returned. Prior to the intervention, cardiac data was collected in-home throughout a set of family interaction tasks and VF was operationalized as the changes in high frequency (HF) power of heart rate variability (HRV) from a reading task to a problem-solving task. Parenting behaviors were observed and coded based on theory-driven indicators pre-intervention and at 1-year follow-up. Results of structural equation modeling showed that VF significantly moderated fathers' intervention responsiveness, such that fathers with higher vs. lower VF exhibited more effective parenting at 1-year follow-up if they were randomized into ADAPT vs. the control group. This study is the first to demonstrate that parasympathetic vagal functioning may be a biomarker to predict response to a military parenting intervention to enhance parenting in combat deployed fathers. The implications for precision-based prevention are discussed.
为了使预防项目更有效，并了解“什么对谁有效”，需要有关于哪些个体特征可预测干预反应性的证据。以往的研究评估了一个名为“部署后适应性育儿工具/ADAPT”的军事家长培训项目，但对于该项目对父亲的不同影响了解较少。在ADAPT的一项随机试验中，我们测试了社交互动过程中情绪的生理调节作为预测父亲反应性的调节因素，其中情绪调节通过迷走神经灵活性（VF；心脏迷走神经张力的动态变化）进行操作性测量。收集了生理数据的4至13岁儿童的家庭（n = 145）被随机分配到ADAPT组（为期14周的面对面小组干预）或对照组（照常提供服务）。这些家庭中的父亲是国民警卫队/预备役成员，他们曾被部署到伊拉克和/或阿富汗作战且最近返回。在干预前，在一系列家庭互动任务中在家收集心脏数据，VF被定义为从阅读任务到解决问题任务期间心率变异性（HRV）高频（HF）功率的变化。在干预前和1年随访时，根据理论驱动指标观察并编码育儿行为。结构方程模型的结果表明，VF显著调节了父亲的干预反应性，即VF较高与较低的父亲，如果他们被随机分配到ADAPT组与对照组，在1年随访时表现出更有效的育儿方式。本研究首次表明，副交感神经迷走神经功能可能是一种生物标志物，可预测对军事育儿干预的反应，以增强作战部署父亲的育儿能力。讨论了基于精准预防的意义。
