College of Social & Behavioral Science
64 Physiological Responses to an Online Infant Cry Stimulus in Expectant Mothers
Shane Denherder (University of Utah); Dylan Neff (University of Utah); Joshua Marchant (University of Utah); Rose McLaughlin (University of Utah); K. Lee Raby (University of Utah); Sheila E. Crowell (University of Utah); and Elisabeth Conradt (Psychology, University of Utah)
Faculty Mentor: Elisabeth Conradt (Psychology, University of Utah)
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges for keeping participants and research assistants safe during laboratory visits. Many researchers altered their protocols in novel ways– for example, to an online platform– to adapt to the pandemic. The present study compares the physiological effects of an online adaptation of an infant cry stimulus to the traditional laboratory-based cry task. Video and audio recordings of an infant cry are commonly used by developmental studies to evoke and measure sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system responses to this attachment-relevant stressor in pregnant women.
Measuring respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and electrodermal activity (EDA) during infant cry presentation, we analyzed a unique sample (N = 115) of pregnant women in their third trimester, half of whom observed the infant cry stimulus in the laboratory before the pandemic. Results revealed that EDA increased, and RSA decreased as expected and that setting– online
versus laboratory– had no effect on RSA or EDA responses to stimulus. These results demonstrate the ability of remote tasks to elicit an attachment-relevant stress response in pregnant women for remote data collection. Implications include the possibility of these data being collected in more ethnically and geographically diverse populations of pregnant people, including rural and marginalized populations unable to travel to large research facilities.
Note: This is the abstract from the in-progress manuscript that will be submitted to a peer-review journal. Journal requirements stipulate that submissions may not be previously published elsewhere, the abstract and references are provided for the Undergraduate Research Journal.
Bibliography
Ablow, J. C., Marks, A. K., Shirley Feldman, S., & Huffman, L. C. (2013). Associations between first-time Expectant women’s representations of Attachment and their physiological reactivity to infant cry. Child Development, 84(4), 1373-1391. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12135
Baucom, B. R., Baucom, K. J., Hogan, J. N., Crenshaw, A. O., Bourne, S. V., Crowell, S. E., Georgiou, P., & Goodwin, M. S. (2018). Cardiovascular reactivity during marital conflict in laboratory and naturalistic settings: Differential associations with relationship and individual functioning across contexts. Family Process, 57(3), 662-678. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12353
Beauchaine, T. P. (2015). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia: a transdiagnostic biomarker of emotion dysregulation and psychopathology. Current Opinion in Psychology, 3, 43-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.01.017
Beauchaine, T. P. & Thayer, J. F. (2015). Heart rate variability as a transdiagnostic biomarker of psychopathology. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 98(2 Pt 2), 338-350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.08.004
Berntson, G. G., Cacioppo, J. T., & Quigley, K. S. (1993). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia: Autonomic origins, physiological mechanisms, and psychophysiological implications. In Psychophysiology (Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp. 183–196). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469- 8986.1993.tb01731.
Berntson, G. G., Quigley, K. S., & Lozano, D. (2007). Cardiovascular Psychophysiology. In J. T. Cacioppo, G. G. Berntson, & L. G. Tassinary (Eds.), Handbook of Psychophysiology (3rd ed., pp. 182–210). Cambridge University Press.
Boucsein, W. (2012). Electrodermal Activity (2nd ed.). Springer.
Christie, M. J. (1981). Electrodermal activity in the 1980s: a review. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 74(8), 616-622. https://doi.org/10.1177/01410768810740081.
Critchley, H. D. (2002). Review: electrodermal responses: what happens in the brain. The Neuroscientist, 8(2), 132-142. https://doi.org/10.1177/107385840200800209
Dawson, M. E., Schell, A. M., & Filion, D. L. (2000). The Electrodermal system. Handbook of Psychophysiology, 200-223. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107415782.010
DuPont, C. M., Pressman, S., Reed, R. G., Marsland, A., Manuck, S. N., & Gianaros, P. J. (2022). An online Trier social stress paradigm to evoke affective and cardiovascular responses. Psychophysiology, 59(10). https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fcyqd
Gao M.M., Saenz C., Neff D., Santana M.L., Amici J., Butner J., Raby K.L., Crowell S.E., Conradt E. (2021). Bringing the laboratory into the home: A protocol for remote biobehavioral data collection in pregnant women with emotion dysregulation and their infants. Journal of Health Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591053211064984
Groh, A.M., & Roisman, G. I. (2009). Adults’ autonomic and subjective emotional responses to infant vocalizations: The role of secure base script knowledge. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 889-893. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014943
Gunnar, M. R., Reid, B. M., Donzella, B., Miller, Z. R., Gardow, S., Tsakonas, N. C., Thomas, K. M., DeJoseph, M., & Bendezú, J. J. (2021). Validation of an online version of the Trier social stress test in a study of adolescents. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 125, 105111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.105111
Harris, F. J. (1978). On the use of windows for harmonic analysis with the discrete Fourier transform. Proceedings of the IEEE, 66(1), 51-83.
Joosen, K. J., Mesman, J., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Pieper, S., Zeskind, P. S., Ijzendoorn, M. H. (2012). Physiological reactivity to infant crying and observed maternal sensitivity. Infancy, 18(3), 414-431. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7078.2012.00122.x
Kirschbaum, C., Pirke, K., & Hellhammer, D. H. (1993). The ‘Trier social stress test’ – A tool for investigating psychobiological stress responses in a laboratory
setting. Neuropsychobiology, 28(1-2), 76-81. https://doi.org/10.1159/000119004
Leerkes, E. M., Supple, A. J., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S. D., Haltigan, J. D., Wong, M. S., & Fortuna, K. (2015). Antecedents of maternal sensitivity during distressing tasks: Integrating attachment, social information processing, and psychobiological perspectives. Child Development, 86(1), 94-111. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12288
Nomikos, M. S., Opton, E., Averill, J. R., & Lazarus, R. S. (1968). Surprise versus suspense in the production of stress reaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(2), 204-208. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025274
Porges, S. W. (2007). The polyvagal perspective. Biological Psychology, 74(2), 116- 143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.06.009
Qu, M., Zhang, Y., Webster, J. G., & Tompkins, W. J. (1986). Motion artifact from spot and band electrodes during impedance cardiography. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 33, 1029–1036.
Rasmussen, H. F., Corner, G. W. & Margolin, G. (2018). Young adult couples’ behavioral and physiological responses to the infant simulator: a preliminary illustration of coparenting. Infant Behavior and Development, 56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.04.004
Shader, T. M., Gatzke-Kopp, L. M., Crowell, S. E., Jamila Reid, M., Thayer, J. F., Vasey, M. W., Webster-Stratton, C., Bell, Z., & Beauchaine, T. P. (2018). Quantifying respiratory sinus arrhythmia: Effects of misspecifying breathing frequencies across development.
Development and Psychopathology, 30(1), 351–366.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579417000669
Tabachnik, A.R., Sellers, T., Margolis, E., Labella, M., Neff, D., Crowell, S.E., Raby, K. Lee,
Saenz, C., Conradt, E., & Dozier, M. (2022). Adapting psychophysiological data collection for COVID-19: The “Virtual Assessment” model. Infant Mental Health Journal, 43(1), 185-197.
Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology and The North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology. (1996). Heart rate variability: Standards of measurement, physiological interpretation, and clinical use. European Heart Journal, 17, 354–381.
Tonhajzerova, I., Mestanik, M., Mestanikova, A., & Jurko, A. (2016). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a non-invasive index of ‘brain-heart’ interaction in stress. Indian Journal of Medical Research, 144(December), 815-822. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijmr.IJMR_1447_14
Waters, H. S., & Waters, E. (2006). The attachment working models concept: Among other things, we build script-like representations of secure base experiences. Attachment & human development, 8(3), 185-197.
Wysocki AC, Lawson KM, Rhemtulla M. (2022). Statistical Control Requires Causal Justification. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. 5(2), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459221095823