TY - JOUR
T1 - Child maltreatment severity and sleep variability predict mother-infant RSA coregulation
AU - Brown, Samantha M.
AU - Lunkenheimer, Erika
AU - Lebourgeois, Monique
AU - Heilman, Keri
N1 - Funding Information:
The research reported here was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K01HD098331 and the Society for Research in Child Development Victoria S. Levin Award for Early Career Success in Young Children's Mental Health Research awarded to S. M. Brown. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the Society for Research in Child Development.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2021/12/15
Y1 - 2021/12/15
N2 - Regulatory processes underlie mother-infant interactions and may be disrupted in adverse caregiving environments. Child maltreatment and sleep variability may reflect high-risk caregiving, but it is unknown whether they confer vulnerability for poorer mother-infant parasympathetic coordination. The aim of this study was to examine mother-infant coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in relation to child maltreatment severity and night-To-night sleep variability in 47 low-income mother-infant dyads. Maternal and infant sleep was assessed with actigraphy and daily diaries for 7 nights followed by a mother-infant still-face procedure during which RSA was measured. Higher maltreatment severity was associated with weakened concordance in RSA coregulation related to the coupling of higher mother RSA with lower infant RSA, suggesting greater infant distress and lower maternal support. In addition, higher infant sleep variability was associated with infants' lower mean RSA and concordance in lagged RSA coregulation such that lower maternal RSA predicted lower infant RSA across the still-face procedure, suggesting interrelated distress. The findings indicate that adverse caregiving environments differentially impact regulatory patterns in mother-infant dyads, which may inform modifiable health-risk behaviors as targets for future intervention.
AB - Regulatory processes underlie mother-infant interactions and may be disrupted in adverse caregiving environments. Child maltreatment and sleep variability may reflect high-risk caregiving, but it is unknown whether they confer vulnerability for poorer mother-infant parasympathetic coordination. The aim of this study was to examine mother-infant coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in relation to child maltreatment severity and night-To-night sleep variability in 47 low-income mother-infant dyads. Maternal and infant sleep was assessed with actigraphy and daily diaries for 7 nights followed by a mother-infant still-face procedure during which RSA was measured. Higher maltreatment severity was associated with weakened concordance in RSA coregulation related to the coupling of higher mother RSA with lower infant RSA, suggesting greater infant distress and lower maternal support. In addition, higher infant sleep variability was associated with infants' lower mean RSA and concordance in lagged RSA coregulation such that lower maternal RSA predicted lower infant RSA across the still-face procedure, suggesting interrelated distress. The findings indicate that adverse caregiving environments differentially impact regulatory patterns in mother-infant dyads, which may inform modifiable health-risk behaviors as targets for future intervention.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0954579421000729
DO - 10.1017/S0954579421000729
M3 - Article
C2 - 35431464
AN - SCOPUS:85121056793
VL - 33
SP - 1747
EP - 1758
JO - Development and Psychopathology
JF - Development and Psychopathology
SN - 0954-5794
IS - 5
ER -