The Relation Between Parent-Child Synchrony And Children’s Emotion Regulation: The Moderating Role Of Children’s Sensory Processing Sensitivity

Parent-child synchrony refers to the consistency of emotion,behavior and physiological rhythm in the process of parent-child interaction.3-6 years old is the key period for the development of children’s emotional regulation ability.Previous studies on preschool children have found that children who experience more synchronization of parent-child interaction behavior will show higher emotional regulation ability.The study found that there was a significant correlation between the behavioral synchronization of parent-child interaction and the synchronization of brain activities.At the same time,the synchronization between prefrontal cortex,which is responsible for emotional control,was positively correlated with children’s emotional regulation ability.Therefore,the brain synchronization of prefrontal brain region may be the cognitive neural basis for the influence of parent-child interaction behavior synchronization on children’s emotion regulation ability.Although previous studies have found that parent-child synchrony has an impact on children’s emotional regulation ability,this impact may include the impact of parents’ response to children’s negative emotional response.At present,few studies have explored whether the impact of the synchronization of parent-child interaction on children’s emotional regulation ability will be independent of the impact of parents’ response to children’s negative emotional response.Secondly,previous studies on parent-child synchrony mostly explored the impact on children’s development results from the synchronization of parent-child interaction behavior,and there were few studies to verify the impact of the synchronization of parentchild interaction with different emotional titers on children’s emotional regulation ability.In addition,children’s trait is an individual difference index reflecting children’s emotional regulation ability.There is no research to test whether children’s sensory processing sensitivity has a regulatory effect on the impact of p parent-child synchrony on children’s emotional regulation ability.Finally,it is unclear whether the synchronization of brain activities between parents and children is the cognitive neural basis for the influence of parent-child interaction behavior and emotional synchronization on children’s emotional regulation ability.Therefore,this study took children aged 3-6 as the research object,combined with questionnaire survey and laboratory observation,and carried out two studies based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy(f NIRS),in order to systematically explore the impact of parent-child synchrony on children’s emotional regulation ability,influencing factors and cognitive neural basis.In Study 1,202 valid questionnaires were collected through questionnaire survey.The average age of children was 4.63 years old.The contents of the questionnaire include children’s emotional regulation checklist,parent-child interaction synchronization questionnaire,children’s sensory processing sensitivity questionnaire,parents’ response to children’s negative emotions questionnaire,etc.The results show that:(1)the synchronization of parent-child interaction has a significant predictive effect on children’s emotional regulation ability,that is,compared with children who experience lower synchronization of parent-child interaction,children who experience higher synchronization of parent-child interaction will show higher emotional regulation ability and lower emotional regulation instability;(2)After controlling the influence of parents’ response to children’s negative emotions,the synchronization of parent-child interaction can still significantly predict children’s emotional regulation ability;(3)The sensitivity of children’s sensory processing can not affect the effect of synchronization of parentchild interaction on children’s emotional regulation.In Study 2,through laboratory observation combined with near-infrared brain functional imaging technology(f NIRS),parents and children completed cooperative painting tasks and free conversation tasks in the laboratory environment,coded parent-child behavior synchronization and emotional synchronization in a 1s time window,and tested the impact of parent-child interaction behavior synchronization and emotional synchronization on children’s emotional regulation ability.Finally,29 pairs of effective subjects were included in the analysis,and the average age of children was 4.98 years old.The results showed that:(1)in the cooperative painting task,the positive emotional synchronization of parent-child interaction negatively predicted children’s emotional instability;In the task of free conversation phase,the positive emotional synchronization of parent-child interaction positively predicted children’s emotional regulation;(2)In the cooperative painting task,there was a significant positive correlation between the synchronization of parent-child interaction behavior and the synchronization of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.In the free conversation task,the synchronization of positive and neutral emotions in parent-child interaction was positively correlated with the synchronization of prefrontal cortex.This study did not find the mediating effect of brain synchronization on the effect of parent-child synchrony on children’s emotional regulation;(3)In the cooperative painting task and free conversation task,the sub dimension of sensory processing sensitivity is easy to stimulate,which plays a regulatory role in the impact of neutral emotional synchronization of parent-child interaction on children’s emotional regulation ability.That is,compared with children with low excitability,children with high excitability will show lower emotional regulation ability when experiencing higher neutral emotional synchronization;On the contrary,highly excitable children show higher emotional regulation ability when experiencing lower neutral emotional synchronization.Overall,the results of this study show that:(1)parent-child synchrony has a significant impact on children’s emotional regulation ability,which is independent of the impact of parents’ response to children’s negative emotions on children’s emotional regulation ability;(2)The effects of parent-child synchrony with different emotional titers on children’s emotional regulation ability are different.When children experience more positive emotional synchronization,they will show higher emotional regulation ability;(3)The synchronization of parent-child interaction behavior and emotion is closely related to the synchronization of brain;(4)Children’s excitability plays a regulatory role in the influence of the synchronization of parent-child interaction on children’s emotional regulation ability.From the behavioral level,the relationship between brain synchronization and behavior,this study explored the impact of parent-child interaction synchronization on children’s emotional regulation ability,behavioral performance and cognitive neural basis.It provides targeted practical guidance for improving children’s emotional regulation ability.