Premium
Firm parenting and youth adjustment: Stress reactivity and dyadic synchrony of respiratory sinus arrhythmia
Author(s) -
Oshri Assaf,
Liu Sihong,
Huffman Landry G.,
Koss Kalsea J.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.22019
Subject(s) - psychology , vagal tone , developmental psychology , reactivity (psychology) , coping (psychology) , context (archaeology) , clinical psychology , autonomic nervous system , heart rate , medicine , paleontology , alternative medicine , pathology , biology , blood pressure , radiology
Abstract Parental behaviors are potent risk and protective factors for youth development of externalizing problems. Firm control is a parenting strategy that is inconsistently linked to youth adjustment, possibly due to variations in individual biological contexts. Growing research shows that dyadic coregulation of the autonomic nervous system (e.g., parent–child physiological synchrony) is a neurobiological mechanism that links parenting to youth adjustment. However, physiological synchrony may be context‐dependent (e.g., adaptive in positive interactions, maladaptive in negative interactions). We aimed to test the role of dyadic synchrony in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during parent–child conflict as a mediator between parent firm control and youth's externalizing problems. To capture youth's stress reactivity, we also tested how galvanic skin response reactivity (GSR‐R) moderated this indirect path. The sample included 101 dyads of low socioeconomic‐status at‐risk preadolescents and parents. Results indicated that youth higher levels of GSR‐R significantly intensified the link between parent firm control and dyadic RSA synchrony during conflict. Dyadic RSA synchrony further predicted youth increased in externalizing problems. Overall, results suggest that when parents employ firm control parenting with highly reactive teens, dyadic RSA synchrony elevates, potentially modeling less optimal coping with conflict for the youth, which is associated with increased externalizing problems.