ATTACHMENT AND EMOTION REGULATION: CHANGES IN AFFECT AND VAGAL TONE DURING STRESS A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Mahsa Movahed Abtahi May, 2016 Thesis written by Mahsa Movahed Abtahi B.A., University of Isfahan, 2008 M.A., University of Isfahan, 2011 M.A., Kent State University, 2016 Approved by Kathryn A. Kerns , Advisor Manfred van Dulmen , Acting Chair, Department of Psychology James L. Blank , Dean, College of Arts and Sciences TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTERS I. INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Attachment and the Development of Emotional Competence .............................................1 A Dynamic Perspective on Emotion Regulation .................................................................3 Goals and Hypotheses: Attachment and Emotion Dynamics .............................................7 II. METHOD ..........................................................................................................................10 Participants .........................................................................................................................10 Procedure ...........................................................................................................................10 Measures ............................................................................................................................11 III. RESULTS ..........................................................................................................................15 Preliminary Analyses .........................................................................................................15 Main Analyses: Associations of Attachment Patterns with Baseline Emotion, Emotion Reactivity, and Emotion Recovery ...................................................................17 IV. DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................24 REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................32 iii APPENDICES ...............................................................................................................................42 A Administrative Procedures of Story Stem Assessment of Attachment Representations ...43 B Summary Table of Attachment Patterns and Criteria ........................................................45 C Story Stem Coding Sheet ...................................................................................................46 D Trier Social Stress Task Protecol .......................................................................................47 E How Do You Feel? ............................................................................................................49 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Partial Correlations between Ratings of Attachment with Indicators of Emotion in Each Stage of the Experiment, Controlling for Condition (Presence of Pet Dog) and Gender .........................................................................................................................17 2 Hierarchical Regression Analyses to Predict Positive Affect, and HF-HRV After Speech (Reactivity) ............................................................................................................20 3 Hierarchical Regressions to Predict Positive Affect, Negative Affect and HF-HRV After Rest (Recovery) ........................................................................................................22 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Attachment is a long-lasting emotional bond between a child and a caregiver, and the attachment system evolved as an emotion regulation mechanism (i.e., children go to parents for comfort when upset; Ainsworth, 1989; Bowlby, 1969). Further, interactions with attachment figures are thought to facilitate the development of children’s emotion regulation capacities (Cassidy, 1994), which become internalized and generalized to other contexts (Kerns, Abraham, Schlegelmilch, & Morgan, 2007; Sroufe, Schork, Motti, Lawroski, & LaFreniere, 1984). A growing body of evidence indicates that children who form secure attachments to caregivers are more advanced in their understanding of and ability to regulate emotion (Cassidy, 1994; Brumariu, 2015; Parrigon, Kerns, Movahed Abtahi, & Koehn, 2015; Zimmer-Gembek et al, 2015). To date, most studies have examined how attachment is related to traitlike measures of emotion (e.g., emotion knowledge, mean affect, typical coping strategies), rather than examining how attachment is related to emotion as regulated in response to ongoing environmental demands. The current study examined how secure and insecure patterns of attachment in children are related to dynamic changes in children’s emotions in response to a social challenge. Attachment and the Development of Emotional Competence Individual differences in attachment occur as a result of caregiving interactions in which emotion is a key to how the attachment system is organized. When a caregiver is responsive and sensitive to the child’s emotion signals, the child develops a secure attachment and is confident 1 that the caregiver is available when needed (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1969). Therefore, when distressed, the child freely goes to the caregiver and shares feelings, and within these affective communications, the child learns effective ways to regulate emotions (Cassidy, 1994). In contrast, insecurity in attachment is hypothesized to be related to deficiencies in children’s regulation of emotions. Avoidant children learn to minimize emotions because there is a history of rejection from the caregiver to the child’s signals, and emotion suppression is developed as a strategy to avoid rejection, whereas ambivalent children maximize emotions because they have experienced an inconsistency in caregiver’s responsiveness, and heightening of emotions increases the chance of getting attention from the caregiver (Cassidy, 1994). Patterns of affect regulation developed within the attachment relationship are hypothesized to generalize to other contexts (Kerns et al, 2007; Sroufe et al, 1984). In line with theory, research findings point to advantages in emotional competence for more securely attached children (Brumariu, 2015; Parrigon et al., 2015; Zimmer-Gembek et al, 2015), including adoption of more adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as coping through seeking support or problem solving (Abraham & Kerns, 2013; Colle & Del Giudice, 2011; Contreras, Kerns, Weimer, Gentzler, & Tomich, 2000; Gaylord-Harden, Taylor, Campbell, Kesselring, & Grant, 2009; Kerns, Abraham, Schlegelmilch, & Morgan, 2007; Psouni & Apetroaia, 2014) and constructively regulating discrete emotions such as anger and sadness (Schwartz, Stutz, & Ledermann, 2012; Brenning & Braet, 2013). The relationship between regulatory competencies and insecure patterns of attachment has been investigated less extensively. Brenning, Soenens, Braet, and Bosmans (2012) found that ambivalent children primarily use dysregulation, while avoidant children strongly use suppression. Also, Brenning 2 and Braet (2013) showed that more avoidant children use anger dysregulation and sadness suppression, whereas more ambivalent (anxious) children rely on dysregulation for both sadness and anger. Brumariu, Kerns, and Seibert (2012) found that attachment security was correlated with less difficulty in identifying emotions, and attachment disorganization was related to more catastrophizing interpretations and less active coping. A Dynamic Perspective on Emotion Regulation Emotion regulation has been defined in multiple ways. For example, Thompson (1994) defined emotion regulation as extrinsic and intrinsic processes that monitor, evaluate and modify emotional reactions to accomplish goals, and Cole, Martin and Dennis (2004) define it as “changes associated with activated emotions”. The proposed definitions suggest that emotion regulation refers to the ability to adaptively regulate emotions over time and across contexts, and indicate the need to study how emotion varies in response to environmental demands such as the introduction of a challenge. Specifically, emotional reactivity refers to the magnitude of change from an emotional baseline state that is elicited in response to specific external events (Gross, Sutton, & Ketelaar, 1998; Thompson et al., 2012), and emotional recovery is defined as the magnitude of adjustment in emotional responsiveness from when the stimulus is presented to the subsequent period in which the stimulus has been removed (Gruber, Harvey, & Purcell, 2011). A number of indices have been used to capture dynamic changes in emotion. Experiential affect refers to the valence of different types of affects that are experienced (Parrigon et al., 2015). Experiential affect is typically assessed with self-ratings of positive and negative affect. Physiological indices of emotion also have been used as a tool to represent emotion dynamics. Changes in vagal tone (See Zinser & Beauchaine, in press; Porges,