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Physiological Self‐Regulation and Information Processing in Infancy: Cardiac Vagal Tone and Habituation
Author(s) -
Bornstein Marc H.,
Suess Patricia E.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8624.00143
Subject(s) - habituation , psychology , vagal tone , tone (literature) , developmental psychology , neuroscience , cognitive psychology , audiology , heart rate , autonomic nervous system , medicine , blood pressure , art , literature
This study investigates the role of physiological self‐regulation (cardiac vagal tone) in information processing (habituation) in 81 infants. Nucleus ambiguus vagal tone (V na , a measure of respiratory sinus arrhythmia) was used to index cardiac vagal tone. Physiological self‐regulation was operationalized as the change in V na from a baseline period of measurement to habituation. Decreases in V na consistently related to habituation efficiency, operationalized as accumulated looking time (ALT), in all infants twice at 2 months and twice at 5 months; however, this relation was accounted for by infants who met an habituation criterion on each task. Among habituators, shorter lookers also had greater V na suppression during habituation. Within‐age and between‐age suppression of vagal tone predicted ALT, but ALT did not predict suppression of vagal tone. Physiological self‐regulation provided by the vagal system appears to play a role in information processing in infancy as indexed by habituation. Les grandes pensées viennent du coeur. — Vauvenargués (1746), Maxime 127