Socialization in the Family and Child Development: Emotionality, Regulation, and Sleep as Pathways and Moderators of Outcomes

Auburn University, Auburn AL

Investigators

Abstract

Forty percent of children in the U.S. live in homes characterized by high levels of marital conflict. And when parents fight, children suffer. Children who live in high conflict homes are more likely to experience depression, behavior problems, ill health, and academic difficulties. The damage is not uniform, however; some children survive high conflict families nearly unscathed, whereas other sustain substantial harm. How marital conflict exacts such a devastating toll on most children and why some children are able to defy the odds and function well despite stressful home environments are questions for which there are no answers. Yet, answers to these questions are needed to develop strategies to protect vulnerable children. This project examines physiological processes as mechanisms that explain the effects of marital conflict on children, and also as factors that put children at greater risk, or convey protection, in highly stressful homes, depending on children's autonomic reactivity. We propose that marital conflict induces physiological arousal, and that for some children, particularly for highly reactive children, this arousal is sufficiently intense and long lasting to disrupt sleep and interfere with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development. Less autonomically reactive children, and children who can recover, or calm their arousal, quickly, may be more immune to the negative effects of parental conflict. Children's reactivity and recovery in response to staged family conflict scenes are assessed with several measures of autonomic activity, including skin conductance and vagal tone. Vagal tone is an index of heart rate variability that reflects the intensity of physiological reaction and the time needed calm after arousal. Children's sleep is assessed with actigraph, a watch-like devise that children wear to bed and that records sleep quantity and quality. In high conflict homes, highly reactive children are expected to have more disturbed sleep, more behavior problems, more depression, and poorer academic performance in high conflict homes than do less reactive children. On the other hand, high reactivity may confer protection for children living in low conflict homes. Knowing which children are at risk because of high reactivity and stressful environments will help educators develop programs that help these children cope more effectively.