Parasympathetic and Sympathetic Reactivity Moderate Maternal Contributions to Emotional Adjustment in Adolescence

• Published in: Developmental psychology 2018-09, Vol.54 (9), p.1661-1673
• Main Authors: Abaied, Jamie L, Stanger, Sarah B, Wagner, Caitlin, Sanders, Wesley, Dyer, W. Justin, Padilla-Walker, Laura
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent Development; Adolescent girls; Adolescents; Anatomy; Autonomic Nervous System; Central nervous system; Child development; Child Rearing; Childhood; Depression (Psychology); Emotional Adjustment; Emotional Development; Emotional Regulation; Emotional well being; Environmental aspects; Environmental Influences; Family Environment; Female; Home Environment; Human; Inhibition; Major Depression; Male; Maternal & child health; Measures (Individuals); Mental depression; Mental health; Mothers; Nervous system; Parasympathetic Nervous System; Parent Influence; Parent participation; Parental Involvement; Parents & parenting; Physiology; Problem solving; Psychophysiology; Reactivity; Sympathetic Nervous System; Symptoms (Individual Disorders); Teenage parents; Teenagers; Test Construction
• ISSN: 0012-1649; 1939-0599
• DOI: 10.1037/dev0000507

A burgeoning literature supports the role of autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning as an index of physiologic sensitivity to the environment, but extant research is limited in its focus on single branches of the ANS, childhood samples, and solely negative environmental factors. This study seeks to address these limitations by exploring whether reactivity in the parasympathetic (PNS) and sympathetic (SNS) nervous systems jointly moderate the prospective contributions of both positive (maternal involvement) and negative (maternal psychological control) aspects of the family environment to developmentally relevant outcomes in adolescence (depressive symptoms and emotion regulation). At Wave 1, adolescents (n = 352, 52% female, M age = 15.27, SD = 1.04; 65% White) and their parents completed a problem-solving discussion task, during which adolescent ANS activation was continuously monitored, and reports of maternal involvement, maternal psychological control, adolescent depressive symptoms, and adolescent emotion regulation were obtained. Adolescent depressive symptoms and emotion regulation were assessed again 1 year later (Wave 2). Results indicated that PNS and SNS reactivity jointly moderated the prospective contributions of maternal involvement and maternal psychological control to depressive symptoms and emotion regulation. Specifically, adolescents who exhibited reciprocal SNS activation appeared to be most sensitive to both positive and negative parenting environments. Adolescents exhibiting coinhibition or coactivation profiles of autonomic reactivity were comparatively unreactive to parenting. This study corroborates the notion that consideration of multiple physiological systems is critical to our understanding of biological processes in the development of emotional functioning in adolescence.