Mother-Child Neurophysiological Synchrony Moderates the Relation Between Maternal Affect Experiences and Child Emotion Dysregulation

The parent-child emotion regulation dynamics model posits that child emotion regulation develops in the context of the parent-child relationship across multiple levels of functioning. Such a conceptualization dovetails newer conceptualizations of psychopathology, which argue that to most effectively understand and treat psychological problems, evaluation of individual and dyadic indicators across behavioral, physiological, and neural indicators is crucial. The present study adopted this multimethod, multilevel approach to examine the interacting role of maternal affect experiences with dyadic neurophysiological processes in relation to child emotion dysregulation – a transdiagnostic risk factor for both child internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Eighty mothers ( M age = 35.97, SD = 5.46) and their school-age children ( M age = 5.88, SD = 0.80; 54% girl; 46% boys) completed a dyadic stress task. Across the entire task, respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activation were measured for both mothers and children. Mother-child temporal concordance (i.e., synchrony) was then computed for each modality. Mothers also reported on their own affect experiences and children’s emotion dysregulation. In the context of positive RSA synchrony and positive left and right dlPFC synchrony, maternal positive affect experience was most strongly and negatively associated with child emotion dysregulation. Conversely, the relation between maternal positive affect and child emotion dysregulation was negative and weakest in the context of negative RSA synchrony and left dlPFC synchrony. Findings provide empirical support for the parent-child emotion regulation dynamics model, suggesting that multilevel synchrony processes have significant implications for child emotion dysregulation, a robust transdiagnostic indicator of psychopathology.