title: Marital conflict and growth in children's internalizing symptoms: the role of autonomic nervous system activity.
abstract: We assessed trajectories of children's internalizing symptoms, indexed through anxiety and depression, with a focus on the role of interactions between interparental marital conflict, children's sympathetic nervous system activity indexed by skin conductance level (SCL), and parasympathetic nervous system activity indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as predictors of growth. Children participated in 3 waves of data collection with a 1-year lag between each wave. At T1, 128 girls and 123 boys participated (M age = 8.23 years; SD = 0.73). The most important findings reveal that girls with either low RSA in conjunction with low SCL (i.e., coinhibition) at baseline or with increasing RSA and decreasing SCL in response to a challenging task (i.e., reciprocal parasympathetic activation) are susceptible to high or escalating anxiety and depression symptoms, particularly in the context of marital conflict. Findings support the importance of concurrent examinations of environmental risk factors and physiological activity for better prediction of the development of anxiety and depression symptoms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Auburn University.
authors.forename: Mona
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: El-Sheikh
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Auburn University.
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Keiley
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Auburn University.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Erath
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Brigham Young University.
authors.forename: W Justin
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Dyer
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000473:pathology*; D002657:Child Development; D003863:Depression / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D004562:Electrocardiography; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage / Q000523:psychology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D013223:Statistics as Topic