Trajectories of Maternal Behavior, Infant’s RSA, and Emotional Recovery Following the Still Face Paradigm

Abstract

The development of emotion regulation is integral to children’s socioemotional adjustment. Respiratory Sinus Arrythmia (RSA) reflects parasympathetic regulation of cardiac arousal and is an indicator of emotion regulation. However, it is unclear how changes in RSA are associated with positive maternal behaviors and infant emotional recovery throughout the reunion following a social stressor. Using a series of autoregressive latent trajectory models, the current study aimed to elucidate the associations among maternal warmth, infant RSA, and infant negative affect across a 5-minute observation. Mothers and their 5-6 months old infants (N = 143) completed the Still Face Paradigm. Cross-lagged effects indicated that increases in RSA precede decreases in NA during the first 2.5 minutes of the reunion. Change in maternal warmth was associated with change in RSA partially supporting our hypothesis that maternal warmth supports infant physiological, and in turn, emotional recovery.