UCLA

Daily interactions may function as opportunities for family members to impact one another in ways that replenish or deplete coping resources. Evidence of synchronization in affect, behavior, and arousal has been observed in parent-infant dyads and coregulaton of mood and physiology has also been demonstrated in marital partners. However, little is known about whether pre-adolescents and their parents may serve a similar regulating function for one another. The current study draws upon three repeated measures samples to test transmission of daily mood states and physiology in pre-adolescent children aged 7-13 and their mothers and fathers. Synchrony hypotheses predict bidirectional transmission between parent and child, and child and parent in both daily mood and diurnal cortisol. The hypothesis that mother-child dyads would show synchrony in daily positive mood was supported by all three samples. Father-child dyads did not evidence positive mood synchrony. Father-child and mother-child dyads evidenced negative mood synchrony in one of three samples. In both of the sample that included diurnal cortisol measures, pre-adolescents showed synchrony with both mothers and fathers. Overall, the current project supports a reciprocal view of parent-child influences in both physiology and mood during the pre-adolescent period of development.