SynthesisBrain and behavior2021
Physiological measurement of emotion from infancy to preschool: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Brain and behavior, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Emotion regulation in children and adolescents: a systematic review and quality assessment of behavioral and physiological assessment methods and their theoretical foundations.BMC psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Physiological measurement of emotion from infancy to preschool: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Brain and behavior · 2021Pooled it
- Variation in Everyday Maternal Sensitivity Predicts Infants' Real-Time Physiological Regulation.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Regulation of Stress Physiology Across Social Contexts in Preterm-Born Preschoolers.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Developing Context-Appropriate Emotions: Longitudinal Changes in Emotion Reactivity and Emotion Regulation From 6 to 12 Months.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Roads to regulation: Indirect paths from effortful control and respiratory sinus arrhythmia to emotion regulation across childhood.Developmental psychology · 2026Article
- Dynamic Interaction of Affect and Language in Children's Home Environments.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Coupling of Rhythms in Prefrontal Cortex and Autonomic Nervous System in School-Age Children.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Examining Preschoolers' Emotion Regulation Strategies: Psychometric Properties of the Translated Dutch Early Emotion Regulation Behavior Questionnaire (EERBQ-Dutch).Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Multicomponent approach reveals differences in affective responses among children and adolescents.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Assessing Children's Autonomic Nervous System Activity During Structured Tasks: A Feasibility and Reliability Study in Ghana.Developmental psychobiology · 2024Article
- Infant emotion regulation in the context of stress: Effects of heart rate variability and temperament.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2024Article
- Spontaneous infant crying modulates vagal activity in real time.Developmental psychobiology · 2023Article
- More than meets the eye: Examining physiological and behavioral regulation during delay of gratification task.Developmental psychobiology · 2022Article
- Affect and gaze responses during an Emotion-Evoking Task in infants at an increased likelihood for autism spectrum disorder.Molecular autism · 2021Article
- A Neural Network Reveals Motoric Effects of Maternal Preconception Exposure to Nicotine on Rat Pup Behavior: A New Approach for Movement Disorders Diagnosis.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionEmotion regulation, the ability to regulate emotional responses to environmental stimuli, develops in the first years of life and plays an important role in the development of personality, social competence, and behavior. Substantial literature suggests a relationship between emotion regulation and cardiac physiology; specifically, heart rate changes in response to positive or negative emotion-eliciting stimuli.
methodThis systematic review and meta-analysis provide an in-depth examination of research that has measured physiological responding during emotional-evoking tasks in children from birth to 4 years of age.
resultsThe review had three main findings. First, meta-regressions resulted in an age-related decrease in baseline and task-related heart rate (HR) and increases in baseline and task-related respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Second, meta-analyses suggest task-related increases in HR and decreases in RSA and heart rate variability (HRV), regardless of emotional valence of the task. Third, associations between physiological responding and observed behavioral regulation are not consistently present in children aged 4 and younger. The review also provides a summary of the various methodology used to measure physiological reactions to emotional-evoking tasks, including number of sensors used and placement, various baseline and emotional-evoking tasks used, methods for extracting RSA, as well as percentage of loss and reasons for loss for each study.
conclusionCharacterizing the physiological reactivity of typically developing children is important to understanding the role emotional regulation plays in typical and atypical development.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.