The role of mother-youth biobehavioral synchrony during stress in predicting youth well-being

Abstract

Parent-child physiological synchrony may reflect coordinated regulatory processes, but its meaning appears to vary across developmental and interactional contexts. Greater synchrony has been associated with more and less adaptive functioning, suggesting that synchrony should not be interpreted as inherently beneficial. The current study examined whether mother-youth trend-level physiological synchrony during a dyadic stressor was associated with multiple indicators of wellbeing in preadolescence. One hundred seventy-three mother-child dyads (Mothers: M age  = 41.60 years; Youth: M age  = 9.54 years, range = 8–12; 53% female) completed the Performance Challenge Task, during which youth attempted unsolvable puzzles while mothers observed. Respiration rate, root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD), and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were assessed simultaneously in mothers and youth. Youth reported positive and negative affect, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and aggression; mothers reported youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Growth models estimated each participant's physiological trajectory across the task, and mother and youth trajectories were covaried to estimate trend-level synchrony. Greater RSA synchrony was associated with higher post-stressor positive affect after accounting for pre-stressor positive affect, higher mother-reported internalizing symptoms, and lower mother-reported externalizing symptoms. RMSSD synchrony showed a nonsignificant trend toward higher youth-reported anxiety ( p  = 0.08), and respiration-rate synchrony showed a nonsignificant trend toward lower mother-reported externalizing symptoms ( p  = 0.06). Most other associations were nonsignificant. Findings did not support a uniformly adaptive interpretation of physiological synchrony. Instead, associations varied across outcomes and physiological indices, underscoring the importance of considering what form of synchrony is measured and the context in which it occurs.