Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Canada.
Infant Behav Dev. 2022 Nov;69:101754. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101754. Epub 2022 Aug 18.
Although correlates of temperamental regulatory processes in childhood have been well established, there is considerably less work examining correlates and moderators of rudimentary forms of temperamental regulation in infancy. We examined whether infants' physiological regulation indexed via changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) across phases of the Still-Face Paradigm moderated the association between maternal-reported infant regulatory capacity at 8 months (N = 50, M = 8.51 months, SD = 0.28 months, 25 girls) and behavior problems at 14 months. We found that cardiac vagal regulation from baseline to still-face moderated the relation between infant regulatory capacity at 8 months and behavior problems at 14 months. Among infants who displayed relatively high cardiac vagal regulation from baseline to still-face, regulatory capacity was negatively associated with behavior problems. There was no relation between regulatory capacity and behavior problems among infants who displayed average or relatively low cardiac vagal regulation. We speculate that high levels of regulatory capacity and cardiac vagal regulation may allow infants to focus their attention outward and cope with emotionally evocative environmental demands as they arise even in the absence of external regulation provided by their caregivers.
尽管儿童气质调节过程的相关性已经得到很好的证实，但对于婴儿基本形式的气质调节的相关性和调节因素的研究却相当少。我们研究了婴儿在“静止面孔范式”各个阶段的呼吸窦性心律失常（RSA）变化所反映的生理调节是否调节了 8 个月大的母亲报告的婴儿调节能力（N=50，M=8.51 个月，SD=0.28 个月，25 名女孩）与 14 个月大时的行为问题之间的关联。我们发现，从基线到静止面孔的心脏迷走神经调节调节了 8 个月大婴儿的调节能力与 14 个月大时的行为问题之间的关系。在从基线到静止面孔时表现出相对较高的心脏迷走神经调节的婴儿中，调节能力与行为问题呈负相关。在表现出平均或相对较低的心脏迷走神经调节的婴儿中，调节能力与行为问题之间没有关系。我们推测，高水平的调节能力和心脏迷走神经调节可以使婴儿即使在没有照顾者提供的外部调节的情况下，也能将注意力集中在外部，并应对情绪唤起的环境需求。
