Physiological Reactivity in Parents and Adolescents Exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences

Abstract

Physiological synchrony between parent and adolescent is important for children who have been exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) as it can reveal more about how both the parent and adolescent are regulating their stress. The current study examines two aspects of physiological reactions in response to a stressful task completed by both parents and their adolescent offspring. Both skin conductance (SC) levels, a sympathetic response, and RSA (respiratory sinus arrhythmia), a parasympathetic response, were measured for the parent-adolescent dyads and analyzed using 32-second epochs to create synchrony correlation coefficients. Results demonstrated that adolescents exposed to ACEs experienced a significant difference in SC between baseline and the conflict task, suggesting a heightened physiological response to stress. In addition, there was synchrony between adolescents and parents for SC levels but no synchrony in RSA levels. Furthermore, parenting behaviors, both positive and negative, were not related to child physiological responses. This suggests that the parenting behaviors and physiological synchrony between parent and child do not impact the child’s physiological reactivity. Future studies should look further into specific target areas for intervention, other than parents, for these adolescents and how these interventions could improve dysregulation in physiological reactivity.