An investigation of parenting responses to toddler distress: Interactions between parent physiology, behaviour, and socioemotional context

This dissertation examined physiological, behavioural, and psychological aspects of parents’ responses to children’s distress across infancy and toddlerhood through a series of three studies. Study 1 is a systematic review and narrative synthesis of the literature that characterized parents’ physiological responses to infants’ and toddlers’ (0-3 years) distress during experimental and naturalistic distress paradigms and examined concurrent associations between parents’ physiological and behavioural responses. General trends in parents’ physiological responses varied as a function of methodological factors including the physiological outcome (i.e., cortisol, cardiac outcomes, skin conductance, salivary alpha amylase), distress paradigm (e.g., fear-related distress, frustration-related distress), and baseline comparison condition used. Studies 2 and 3 used data from a sample of caregiver-toddler dyads (N=234) studied in a naturalistic high-distress context (i.e., toddler routine vaccination) to address the limitations and gaps in the literature identified in Study 1. Study 2 described the validation of a measure of insensitive (i.e., distress-promoting) caregiver behaviour during routine vaccination. Measure validity and reliability were investigated with correlations and autoregressive cross-lagged path analysis. Study 3 characterized the trajectory of caregivers’ physiological (i.e., high-frequency heart rate variability) responses during routine vaccination and associations of the trajectory with parents’ concurrent behaviour and psychological stress. Findings across all three studies are discussed in the context of the extant literature and relevant theoretical models. Clinical implications and directions for future research are offered.