Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2023 Oct;60(10):e14354. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14354. Epub 2023 May 29.
Adaptive biological and emotional stress responding are both critical for healthy human development. However, the complex associations between the two are not fully understood. The current study addresses this gap in research by studying associations of child emotion regulation and lability with within-task changes in the biological stress response during a mirror-tracing task. Participants were 59 families including two parents and a child between 5 and 12 years old (52.2% female). Parents reported on family demographics and completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist. Child skin conductance level (SCL) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were recorded during a baseline task and during a 3-minute mirror-tracing task. Within-task patterns of SCL and RSA during the task were estimated with multilevel modeling (measures within persons). The emotion regulation subscale was unrelated to any facet of SCL/RSA time courses. However, lower emotion lability was related to SCL patterns that changed less during the task and were overall lower. For RSA, lower emotion lability was related to higher initial RSA that significantly decreased during the task. These findings suggest that higher child emotion lability may promote increased physiological arousal of target organs during challenging activities.
适应性的生物和情绪应激反应对于人类的健康发展都至关重要。然而，这两者之间的复杂关系还没有被充分理解。本研究通过研究儿童情绪调节和不稳定性与镜像追踪任务中生物应激反应的任务内变化之间的关联，填补了这一研究空白。参与者包括 59 个家庭，每个家庭由两名父母和一名 5 至 12 岁的儿童组成（女性占 52.2%）。父母报告了家庭人口统计学信息，并完成了情绪调节检查表。在基线任务和 3 分钟的镜像追踪任务期间，记录了儿童的皮肤电导率水平（SCL）和呼吸窦性心律失常（RSA）。使用多层次模型（个体内的测量值）来估计任务期间 SCL 和 RSA 的任务内模式。情绪调节分量表与 SCL/RSA 时程的任何方面都没有关系。然而，较低的情绪不稳定性与在任务中变化较小且总体较低的 SCL 模式相关。对于 RSA，较低的情绪不稳定性与较高的初始 RSA 相关，该 RSA 在任务中显著降低。这些发现表明，较高的儿童情绪不稳定性可能会促进目标器官在挑战性活动中的生理唤醒增加。
