Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
08:09

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood

Published on: February 11, 2017

Child and parent behavioral and physiological reactivity to threat and distress predict children's proactive and

Kostas A Fanti1, Antonios I Christou2, Melina Nicole Kyranides1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus.

Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
|July 15, 2026
PubMed

Insights

Parental sensory processing sensitivity and child callous-unemotional traits predict aggression. Parent and child physiological reactivity interact to influence proactive aggression, impacting developmental psychopathology.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Behavioral Neuroscience
  • Child Psychiatry

Background:

  • Parenting and child psychophysiological reactivity influence antisocial behavior.
  • Few studies examine parent-child bio-behavioral reactivity interactions in aggression.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Investigate how parental sensory processing sensitivity and heart rate (HR) reactivity moderate the link between child HR reactivity, fearlessness, callous-unemotional traits, and aggression.
  • Examine reactive and proactive aggression subtypes.

Main Methods:

  • 124 parent-child dyads from a nationwide antisocial behavior study.
  • Assessed parental sensory processing sensitivity and HR reactivity.
  • Measured child HR reactivity to threat, fearlessness, and callous-unemotional traits.

Main Results:

  • Child callous-unemotional traits and parental sensory processing sensitivity predicted both reactive and proactive aggression.
  • Child fearlessness primarily predicted reactive aggression.
  • Child HR reactivity to threat interacted with parental HR reactivity to predict proactive aggression.

Conclusions:

  • Parent-child physiological concordance is crucial for understanding antisocial behavior.
  • Findings inform developmental psychopathology models of aggression.
Abstract

Keywords:
callous-unemotional traitsenvironmental sensitivityheart rate reactivityparent-child physiological concordanceproactive and reactive aggression

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