Mother-preschooler RSA synchrony and self-regulation as antecedents of developmental psychopathology in early childhood

Background: We examined whether mother-preschooler respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) synchrony and self-regulation, as potential biological antecedents of developmental psychopathology, interacted to shape children's later behavior problems directly and indirectly via harsh parenting. Methods: Mother-preschooler dyads (N = 135; 53% female) were oversampled for familial risk. Mother-rated harsh parenting and child behavior problems at ages 3 and 4 years were modeled as latent change scores across ages. Age 3 mother–child RSA synchrony was estimated with multilevel modeling as the concurrent effects of maternal RSA on child RSA during a challenging parent–child task. Age 3 child and maternal RSA self-regulation were measured as mean RSA during a resting task. Results: More positive RSA synchrony with children with stronger individual RSA self-regulation predicted greater decreases in harsh parenting. In contrast, more positive RSA synchrony with children with weaker RSA self-regulation predicted greater increases in harsh parenting. In turn, greater increases in harsh parenting were related to greater increases in children's externalizing problems. Conclusions: This study illustrates that individual differences in RSA self-regulation influence how parent–child RSA synchrony shapes developmental psychopathology over time and adds to prior research showing that parent–child coregulation patterns may be adaptive or maladaptive depending on the protective or risk-related qualities of the corresponding persons or context.