During dyadic interactions, well-regulated autonomic responses may support and be supported by socioemotional regulation, whereas autonomic responses that are inappropriate for the social context may be linked with socioemotional dysregulation. We evaluated women’s parasympathetic and socioemotional responses during playful interaction with their 24-week-old infants, hypothesizing that insufficient or excessive variability in second-by-second vagal functioning would be associated with concurrent socioemotional dysregulation. Among a sample of 322 low-income, Mexican origin mothers (M_age = 27.8; SD = 6.5 years), variability in second-by-second vagal functioning was indexed by within-mother standard deviation (SD) in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during a 5-min unstructured play task. A latent construct of socioemotional dysregulation was identified using factor analyses. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate linear and quadratic relations between within-mother SD of RSA and concurrent socioemotional dysregulation. Analyses revealed a positively accelerated relationship between within-mother SD of RSA and concurrent maternal socioemotional dysregulation during play with her infant. Within-mother SD of RSA during a non-interactive baseline task was not related to maternal dysregulation. The results illustrate mothers’ dynamic autonomic and socioemotional responses are intertwined during real-time interactions with her infant and lend support for the discriminant validity of within-mother SD of RSA during free play.

中文翻译：

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迷走神经功能的母亲变异性和并发的社会情绪失调

在二元交互过程中，调节良好的自主反应可能支持社会情绪调节并受到社会情绪调节的支持，而不适合社会环境的自主反应可能与社会情绪失调有关。我们评估了女性在与其 24 周大的婴儿进行嬉戏互动时的副交感神经和社会情绪反应，假设迷走神经功能逐秒变化不足或过度与并发的社会情绪失调有关。在 322 名墨西哥裔低收入母亲的样本中（M_年龄 = 27.8；SD  = 6.5 岁），逐秒迷走神经功能的变异性由母亲内部标准差（SD) 在 5 分钟的非结构化游戏任务中治疗呼吸性窦性心律失常 (RSA)。使用因子分析确定了社会情绪失调的潜在结构。结构方程模型用于评估RSA 的母亲内部SD与并发社会情绪失调之间的线性和二次关系。分析显示 RSA 的母亲内部SD与母亲在与婴儿玩耍时同时发生的社会情绪失调之间存在正向加速关系。母内SD非交互式基线任务期间 RSA 的发生与产妇失调无关。结果表明，母亲的动态自主反应和社会情绪反应在与婴儿的实时互动中交织在一起，并支持自由玩耍期间 RSA 的母亲内部SD的判别有效性。