The role of resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia in the family functioning-internet addiction symptoms link
Introduction
Internet addiction (IA) or problematic internet use, is defined as: individuals characterized by using the internet in a compulsive and uncontrollable manner (Seki et al., 2019; Young, 1998), which could create psychological, social, educational and/or work difficulties (Geng et al., 2018; Gu, 2020; Spada, 2014; Zhai et al., 2019). Numerous empirical investigations have linked higher levels of IA symptoms to many adverse outcomes including health problems (Tsitsika et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2014), poor academic achievement (Zhang et al., 2018a), and psychosocial problems such as psychological distress, aggressive behaviors and even psychiatric disorder and suicidal ideation (Anand et al., 2018; Ko et al., 2009b; Ko et al., 2012; Sami et al., 2018; Yen et al., 2014). It is therefore imperative to understand factors that may place individuals at increased risk for developing IA symptoms. In the current study, we sought to explore the combined effect of contextual (i.e., family functioning) and individual physiological (i.e., resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia; resting RSA) factors on young adults' IA symptoms.
Researchers have identified a number of external family factors that are related to IA, such as parenting style, attachment and marital quality of parents (Chi et al., 2020; Gao et al., 2018; Liu, 2020; Ko et al., 2015). Among those factors, family functioning has been thought to be one of the most important ones, reason being the crucial role it plays in individuals psychological and social adaptation skills (Ko, et al., 2015; Li et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2019). Beyond the influences of other family factors (focused on one facet of the family impacts offspring), family functioning refers to a variety of characteristics of family environments as well as how a whole family system works (Deng & Zheng, 2012; Shi et al., 2017; Ross and Buriel, 2006). The family system theory (Beavers & Hampson, 2000) and the process model of family functioning (Skinner et al., 2000) have both proposed that the better the functioning of the family, the better the physical and psychological health status of the family members (Pan et al., 2020). In addition, considerable empirical studies have shown that healthy family functioning is negatively associated with IA, while poor family functioning might increase the likelihood of addiction (Jung and Shim, 2012; Kabasakal, 2015; Li et al., 2018; Shi et al., 2017; Wartberg et al., 2014). For example, Yu and Shek (2013) reported that better perceived family functioning significantly predicted lower probability of having internet addictive behaviors over time among adolescents.
Although poor family functioning is a significant external contextual risk factor for IA (Li et al., 2018; Shi et al., 2017; Wartberg et al., 2014), not all individuals whose exposure to a dysfunctional family will homogeneously become internet addicts (Lerner et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2017). Per the forementioned, it is vital to identify factors that may lessen (i.e., moderate) the strength of the relationship between poor family functioning and IA symptoms. According to the ecological system theory, the influence of ecological contexts on personal development might vary as a function of individual/internal characteristics (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 1998). The dual-risk theory also proposes that some people are disproportionately likely to be detrimentally affected by exposure to adverse environments because of their vulnerability characteristics (Monroe and Simons, 1991). In the present study, we have examined whether resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia would act as a moderator in the association between family functioning and internet addiction-related symptoms among young adults.
Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) refers to the rhythmic fluctuation of the heart rate across the breathing cycle which predominantly reflects the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system (Grossman and Taylor, 2007; Porges, 2011). Resting/basal RSA (i.e., measured at rest) is believed to represent a trait-like individual difference factor that index the capacity for sustaining attention, modulating emotion and engaging with the environment (Zhang et al., 2018b; Grady and Callan, 2019; Porges, 2007). High resting RSA has been investigated intensively as a physiological marker of emotion regulatory capacities and has been associated with behavioral flexibility and adaptive social competence (e.g., Geisler et al., 2013; Porges, 2007; Zisner and Beauchaine, 2016). Low resting RSA has been considered as a significant vulnerability factor for several forms of maladaptive outcomes (Beauchaine, 2015; Campbell et al., 2019; Jacobs et al., 2015) including internet addiction (Lin et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2017).
In addition, accumulating empirical studies have documented how contextual factors interacted with biological factors to predict individuals' adaptation outcomes (Dyer et al., 2016; Eisenberg et al., 2012; El-Sheikh et al., 2013; Holochwost et al., 2018; Obradović et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2018b). For example, Hinnant et al. (2015) found that higher levels of harsh parenting was associated with increased probability of substance use among adolescents with low (but not high) resting RSA (Hinnant et al., 2015). Recently, Zhang et al. (2017) showed that higher parental marital conflict positively predicted addictive internet use, but only for young men who exhibited lower levels of resting RSA. These findings suggest that high resting RSA may be served as an important protective factor to ameliorate the adverse effects of contextual risk factors. To date, however, little is known about whether the association between family functioning and IA symptoms is varied by individuals' resting RSA.
To sum up, the goal of the present study was to examine the role of resting RSA as a moderator in the association between family functioning and IA symptoms among young adults. Based on the existing theoretical and empirical work, we attempted to predict if resting RSA would moderate the relation of family functioning with young adults' IA symptoms. This was done to the extent that poorer family functioning would be more strongly related to higher IA symptoms among young adults showing lower resting RSA, compared with those showing higher resting RSA. In other words, lower resting RSA would exacerbate the negative influence of poor family functioning on IA symptoms.
Section snippets
Participants
Participants consist of 109 college students from 17 to 21 years of age (Mage = 18.94 years, SD = 0.916; 69 men). They were recruited from universities in northwestern China via flyers and advertisements. A priori power analysis indicated that at least 85 subjects were required for performing the multiple regression analyses (including 4 predictors: sex, family functioning, resting RSA, and family functioning × resting RSA) with a medium effect size (i.e., f 2 = 0.15) and a power of 0.80. Data
Zero-order correlations
Descriptive statistics and correlations among the study variables can be found in Table 1, Table 2, respectively. We found that scores on the CFAM_G were significantly, positively associated with scores on the CIAS (p = 0.006). Resting RSA was significantly, negatively related to scores on the CIAS (p = 0.046). No other statistically significant correlations were found (ps > 0.05).
Regression analyses
Results from the multiple hierarchical regression analyses were shown in Table 3. The analyses indicated that
Discussion
The aim of this study was to explore the association between family functioning and young adults' IA symptoms, as well as the potential moderation of this relation by resting RSA. We primarily focused on the issue whether variability in resting RSA helped clarify the nature of the link between family functioning and IA symptoms. As predicted, the present study indicated that resting RSA moderated the association between family functioning and IA symptoms. Specifically, we found that young
Declaration of competing interest
None.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by Humanity and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education in China (20YJC190028), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province in China (BK20200719), and the Key Project of Education Science Planning of Guizhou Province in China (2018A022).
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