title: The relationship between maternal responsivity, socioeconomic status, and resting autonomic nervous system functioning in Mexican American children.
abstract: Adversity, such as living in poor socioeconomic conditions during early childhood, can become embedded in children's physiology and deleteriously affect their health later in life. On the other hand, maternal responsivity may have adaptive effects on physiology during early childhood development. The current study tested both the additive and interactive effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and maternal responsivity measured at 1year of age on resting autonomic nervous system (ANS) function and trajectory during the first 5years of life. Participants came from a birth cohort comprised of Mexican-origin families living in California. Children's resting ANS functioning (respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA; pre-ejection period; PEP; and heart rate; HR) was collected at 1, 3.5, and 5years of age (N=336) and modeled across time using Hierarchical Linear Modeling. Consistent with hypotheses, results showed that low SES predicted flatter trajectories of resting HR and PEP over early childhood (i.e., patterns of consistently higher heart rate; shorter PEP), whereas children who experienced positive maternal responsivity had steeper trajectories in RSA and PEP over time (i.e., increasing parasympathetic activation; decreasing sympathetic activation). The interaction between SES and maternal responsivity significantly predicted RSA intercept at age 5, such that among children living in low SES environments, high maternal responsivity mitigated the negative effect of poverty and predicted higher resting RSA at 5years of age. Results are consistent with the early life programming theory that suggests that environmental influences become biologically embedded in the physiology of children living in socially disadvantaged contexts, and identify increased maternal responsivity as a developmental mechanism that could offset the deleterious effects of low SES.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health (CERCH), 1995 University Avenue, Suite 265, Berkeley, CA 94704, United States. Electronic address: meganjohnson@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health (CERCH), 1995 University Avenue, Suite 265, Berkeley, CA 94704, United States. Electronic address: jdeardorff@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Julianna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Deardorff
authors.affiliation: University of California, Riverside, Department of Psychology, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, United States. Electronic address: elizabeth.davis@ucr.edu.
authors.forename: Elizabeth L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.affiliation: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health (CERCH), 1995 University Avenue, Suite 265, Berkeley, CA 94704, United States. Electronic address: wmartinez@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Martinez
authors.affiliation: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health (CERCH), 1995 University Avenue, Suite 265, Berkeley, CA 94704, United States. Electronic address: eskenazi@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Brenda
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Eskenazi
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Nursing, San Francisco, 2 Koret Way, SF, CA 94143-0606, United States. Electronic address: abbey.alkon@nursing.ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Abbey
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alkon
mesh_terms: D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008425:Maternal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D017058:Mexican Americans; D065809:Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia / Q000502:physiology*; D012923:Social Class
keywords: Adversity; Autonomic nervous system; Maternal responsivity; Rest; Social economic status