Current methods of assessing children's physiological "stress reactivity" may be confounded by psychomotor activity, biasing estimates of the relation between reactivity and health. We examined the joint and independent contributions of psychomotor activity and challenge reactivity during a protocol for 5- and 6-year-old children (N = 338). Measures of parasympathetic reactivity (respiratory si...

This research was designed to extend the literature on heart rate variability (HRV) in cognitive performance contexts by examining whether a subtle threat cue (the color red) in a test environment influences HRV reactivity and whether HRV reactivity is associated with change in cognitive performance. Thirty-three participants took an IQ test, briefly viewed red or a chromatic or achromatic cont...

BACKGROUND How is emotion disrupted in bipolar disorder? Two studies are presented that adopt a multi-method approach to investigate emotion reactivity and emotion recovery in bipolar I disorder. METHODS Across both studies, individuals with inter-episode bipolar disorder and healthy controls were shown three emotion-eliciting films (neutral, happy, and sad) and experiential and physiological...

Assessed the relation of behavioral codes of quiet versus active sleep state to neonatal health status in 62 very low birth weight preterm neonates. Sleep sessions (12 min) were coded for percentage time in active versus quiet sleep at 33, 34, and 35 weeks conceptional age. ECG was monitored during each sleep session to derive measures of heart rate, heart rate variability, and an index of card...

The current study examined the independent and additive contributions of maternal sensitivity measured prior to and following a social stressor, and infant behaviors to infants' physiological response to the still-face paradigm (SFP) in a sample characterized by poverty-related environmental risk. Ninety-one mother/infant dyads participated in the SFP when their infants were 5 months old. Mater...

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and heart period were evaluated in 5-month-old infants (N = 40) during interaction challenges requiring affective adjustment. The paradigm consisted of four 2-min experimental conditions designed to elicit behavioral and autonomic responses to object-mediated (Picture Attention and Toy Attention) and person-mediated (Still Face and Social Interaction) engageme...

We investigated cardio-respiratory coupling in patients with heart failure by quantification of bidirectional interactions between cardiac (RR intervals) and respiratory signals with complementary measures of time series analysis. Heart failure patients were divided into three groups of twenty, age and gender matched, subjects: with sinus rhythm (HF-Sin), with sinus rhythm and ventricular extra...

This research explores vagal flexibility--dynamic modulation of cardiac vagal control--as an individual-level physiological index of social sensitivity. In 4 studies, we test the hypothesis that individuals with greater cardiac vagal flexibility, operationalized as higher cardiac vagal tone at rest and greater cardiac vagal withdrawal (indexed by a decrease in respiratory sinus arrhythmia) duri...

In a sample of 127 mother-infant dyads, this study examined the predictive significance of mothers' physiological and observed emotional responding within distressing and nondistressing caregiving contexts at 6 months for infant attachment assessed with Fraley and Spieker's (2003) dimensional approach and the categorical approach at 12 months. Findings revealed that a lesser degree of maternal ...

Blood pressure and heart periods fluctuate at respiratory frequencies in healthy humans. Some researchers (8, 23) explain this as a cause-and-effect relation: blood pressure changes trigger baroreflex-mediated R-R interval changes. Here I make the case that respiratory sinus arrhythmia is a central phenomenon that is independent of blood pressure changes. I base this argument on several well-do...