A latent change score approach to understanding dynamic autonomic coordination

Children's self-regulation is a core adaptive system in child development. Physiological indices of regulation, particularly the autonomic nervous system (ANS), have garnered increased attention as an informative level of analysis in regulation research. Cardiography supports the simultaneous examination of both ANS branches via measures of pre-ejection period (PEP) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as indicators of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, respectively. However, despite their heavily intertwined functions, research examining autonomic coordination across sympathetic and parasympathetic systems is scarce. Moreover, extant efforts have favored static, mean level reactivity analyses, despite the dynamic nature of ANS regulation and the availability of analytic tools that can model these processes across time. This study drew on a sample of 198 six-year-old children from a diverse community sample (49.5% female, 43.9% Latinx) to examine dynamic autonomic coordination using bivariate latent change score modeling to evaluate bidirectional influences of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity over the course of a challenging puzzle completion task. Results indicated that children evidenced reciprocal sympathetic activation (i.e., PEP attenuation and RSA withdrawal) across the challenge task, and these regulatory responses were characterized by a temporally leading influence of PEP on lagging changes in RSA. The current findings contribute to our understanding of children's autonomic coordination while illustrating a novel analytic technique to advance ongoing efforts to understand the etiology and developmental significance of children's physiological self-regulation.