University of Alberta/Autism Research Centre, Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Dalhousie University/Autism Research Centre, IWK Health Centre, Halifax, NS, Canada.
Brain Behav. 2021 Feb;11(2):e01989. doi: 10.1002/brb3.1989. Epub 2020 Dec 17.
Emotion regulation, the ability to regulate emotional responses to environmental stimuli, develops in the first years of life and plays an important role in the development of personality, social competence, and behavior. Substantial literature suggests a relationship between emotion regulation and cardiac physiology; specifically, heart rate changes in response to positive or negative emotion-eliciting stimuli.
This systematic review and meta-analysis provide an in-depth examination of research that has measured physiological responding during emotional-evoking tasks in children from birth to 4 years of age.
The review had three main findings. First, meta-regressions resulted in an age-related decrease in baseline and task-related heart rate (HR) and increases in baseline and task-related respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Second, meta-analyses suggest task-related increases in HR and decreases in RSA and heart rate variability (HRV), regardless of emotional valence of the task. Third, associations between physiological responding and observed behavioral regulation are not consistently present in children aged 4 and younger. The review also provides a summary of the various methodology used to measure physiological reactions to emotional-evoking tasks, including number of sensors used and placement, various baseline and emotional-evoking tasks used, methods for extracting RSA, as well as percentage of loss and reasons for loss for each study.
Characterizing the physiological reactivity of typically developing children is important to understanding the role emotional regulation plays in typical and atypical development.
情绪调节是指调节对环境刺激的情绪反应的能力，它在生命的最初几年发展，并在个性、社交能力和行为发展中起着重要作用。大量文献表明情绪调节与心脏生理学之间存在关系；具体来说，心率会因积极或消极的情绪诱发刺激而发生变化。
本系统评价和荟萃分析深入考察了测量从出生到 4 岁儿童在情绪诱发任务中生理反应的研究。
本研究有三个主要发现。首先，元回归导致基线和任务相关心率（HR）随年龄的下降，以及基线和任务相关呼吸窦性心律失常（RSA）的增加。其次，荟萃分析表明，无论任务的情绪效价如何，任务相关的 HR 增加和 RSA 及心率变异性（HRV）的降低。第三，在 4 岁及以下儿童中，生理反应与观察到的行为调节之间的关联并不总是存在。该综述还总结了用于测量情绪诱发任务中生理反应的各种方法，包括使用的传感器数量和位置、各种基线和情绪诱发任务、提取 RSA 的方法，以及每个研究的丢失百分比和丢失原因。
描述典型发展儿童的生理反应能力对于理解情绪调节在典型和非典型发展中的作用很重要。
