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Updated: Jul 23, 2025

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) dynamics matter for children's emotion regulation: RSA inertia and instability
Jianjie Xu1, Hui Wang2, Kayley Elizabeth Morrow3
1Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, National Virtual Simulation Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
The present study employed two key dynamic indicators (i.e., inertia and instability) to the psychophysiological research of child emotion regulation (ER) and examined whether respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) dynamics were associated with child ER during a stress task. Eighty-nine Chinese school-age children (Mage = 8.77 years, SD = 1.80 years; 46.1% girls) and their primary caregivers participated in the study. After controlling for RSA static reactivity, multiple regression analyses indicated that lower RSA inertia was related to fewer in-task negative emotions rated by children and their caregivers, and higher RSA instability was associated with better child trait ER. This study introduces physiological indicators of the dynamic aspects of parasympathetic activity to the study of child ER.
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