Effects of adverse childhood experience on physiological regulation are moderated by evolved developmental niche history

ABSTRACT

Childhood experiences of early life stress and adversity can lead to long-term detrimental outcomes across the lifespan. Recent evidence suggests avoiding stressors is not enough for species-typical development. Nurturing and responsive care are needed to both buffer adverse experiences as well as promote healthy development, but little is known regarding the interaction between species-typical environmental support in childhood, Evolved Developmental Niche history (EDN-history), and adversity on physiological regulation in adult women. To investigate the interaction between species-typical nurturing and adversity (ACEs, adverse childhood experiences), women (N = 113) were asked to report on EDN-history and ACEs. Physiological regulation was measured using respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) across three conditions that included stress and relaxation. Applying latent basis coefficient modeling, EDN-history moderated vagal withdrawal from baseline to stress and supported vagal activation from stress to recovery, suggesting a link between EDN-history and vagal adaptability. EDN-history acted as a buffer against ACEs on physiological regulation supporting women’s vagal adaptability across differing conditions. Physiological adaptability is a key component of physical and psychological wellbeing and resilience. Experiences of the EDN in childhood may not only buffer adversity but also support the physiological building blocks of health and resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Adverse childhood experiences
• evolved developmental niche
• vagal flexibility
• vagal tone
• wellbeing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A study by Lewis et al. (2012) compared different indicators of vagal tone that included the Porges-Borhrer method, the same method used in our study, and found that the different indicators of vagal tone were highly correlated. The high correlations among these measurements have also been reiterated by Laborde et al. (2017). Other authors have pointed out the possible difficulties when examining correlations between metrics due to the lack of standard cut-offs or coefficients of determination. For example, Shaffer et al. (2020) describe the unresolved problem of evaluating and comparing two cardiac vagal tone metrics given the lack of standards or cut-offs for correlation or regression coefficients when comparing different methods. As such, more research is needed that examines the relationship among these metrics, providing researchers a better understanding of their similarity, correlation or unrelatedness.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.