Sarah Kahle

Roots and Benefits of Costly Giving Children Who Are More Altruistic Have Greater Autonomic Flexibility and Less Family Wealth

Altruism, although costly, may promote well-being for people who give. Costly giving by adults has received considerable attention, but less is known about the possible benefits, as well as biological and environmental correlates, of altruism in early childhood. In the current study, we present evidence that children who forgo self-gain to help other people show greater vagal flexibility and higher subsequent vagal tone than children who do not, and children from less wealthy families behave more altruistically than those from wealthier families. These results suggest that (a) altruism should be viewed through a biopsychosocial lens, (b) the influence of privileged contexts on children’s willingness to make personal sacrifices for others emerges early, and (c) altruism and healthy vagal functioning may share reciprocal relations in childhood. When children help others at a cost to themselves, they could be playing an active role in promoting their own well-being as well as the well-being of others.

Roots and Benefits of Costly Giving

Altruism, although costly, may promote well-being for people who give. Costly giving by adults has received considerable attention, but less is known about the possible benefits, as well as biological and environmental correlates, of altruism in early childhood. In the current study, we present evidence that children who forgo self-gain to help other people show greater vagal flexibility and higher subsequent vagal tone than children who do not, and children from less wealthy families behave more altruistically than those from wealthier families. These results suggest that (a) altruism should be viewed through a biopsychosocial lens, (b) the influence of privileged contexts on children’s willingness to make personal sacrifices for others emerges early, and (c) altruism and healthy vagal functioning may share reciprocal relations in childhood. When children help others at a cost to themselves, they could be playing an active role in promoting their own well-being as well as the well-being of others.

Developmental Affective Psychophysiology: Using Physiology to Inform Our Understanding of Emotional Development

There has been a marked shift in the study of emotional development in recent years, as increasing numbers of laboratories and researchers have incorporated assessments of biological activity into their efforts to understand emotional development. In this chapter, we briefly describe several established and emergent psychophysiological techniques, with examples of how researchers have used neurophysiological, neuroendocrinological, autonomic, and electromyographic measures to provide new insights into childrens emotions. We identify a number of issues and questions that have long posed challenges to the psychophysiological study of emotional development, and highlight our own recent and ongoing efforts to address these challenges in our studies of emotion regulation, expression and experience.

Sympathetic recovery from anger is associated with emotion regulation.

Prior work has focused on how and whether autonomic reactivity in response to emotionally evocative events is associated with better emotion regulation skills in children, but little is known about autonomic recovery processes in children and how they might relate to regulation. In a sample of 67 3.5-year-olds, we examined sympathetic responding during an anger provocation and during a repair period immediately following. Piecewise latent growth curve models were used to estimate changes in pre-ejection period (PEP) that occurred during the provocation period and during the repair period. Mothers reported on global aspects of emotion regulation. On average, children showed a small but significant increase in sympathetic activity (PEP shortening) during the provocation period. Although a significant mean pattern of change was not detected during the repair period, there was significant variability in individual trajectories. These individual differences in physiological change during the repair period were associated with emotion regulation, such that children who were rated as having better emotion regulation showed greater sympathetic recovery (PEP lengthening) during the repair period. This suggests that effectively well-regulated preschoolers are more capable of terminating sympathetic responding after a provocation of anger has ended rather than continuing to be physiologically primed for fight-or-flight responding.

Moderate Baseline Vagal Tone Predicts Greater Prosociality in Children.

Vagal tone is widely believed to be an important physiological aspect of emotion regulation and associated positive behaviors. However, there is inconsistent evidence for relations between children’s baseline vagal tone and their helpful or prosocial responses to others (Hastings & Miller, 2014). Recent work in adults suggests a quadratic association (inverted U-shape curve) between baseline vagal tone and prosociality (Kogan et al., 2014). The present research examined whether this nonlinear association was evident in children. The authors found consistent evidence for a quadratic relation between vagal tone and prosociality across 3 samples of children using 6 different measures. Compared to low and high vagal tone, moderate vagal tone in early childhood concurrently predicted greater self-reported prosociality (Study 1), observed empathic concern in response to the distress of others and greater generosity toward less fortunate peers (Study 2), and longitudinally predicted greater self-, mother-, and teacher-reported prosociality 5.5 years later in middle childhood (Study 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that moderate vagal tone at rest represents a physiological preparedness or tendency to engage in different forms of prosociality across different contexts. Early moderate vagal tone may reflect an optimal balance of regulation and arousal that helps prepare children to sympathize, comfort, and share with others.