The Effect of Temperamental Reactivity on Executive Function as Mediated by Vagal Tone (2013)

Undergraduate: Jenn Nowicki

Faculty Advisor: Jean Louis Gariepy
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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Executive function plays an important role in the development of goal-oriented abilities, which can determine the degree to which children can succeed in various endeavors throughout their lives (Brocki & Bohlin, 2004; Wiebe et al., 2011). Temperament has been shown to have an effect on executive function in previous studies (Rothbart & Bates, 2006), as has vagal tone (Hansen, Johnsen, & Thayer, 2003). This experiment examined the effect of temperament on executive function in children, while including vagal tone and RSA suppression as a potential mediating factor. This study found that though vagal tone and RSA suppression accounted for a significant amount of the relationship between temperamental reactivity, ethnicity accounted for a large portion of the remaining variance, and African American children tended to have higher temperamental reactivity and baseline RSA, and scored lower on the executive function tasks. These results may be explained by African American children being disproportionately exposed to risky environments, since high RSA under favorable environmental conditions may still result in high executive function, but high RSA in unfavorable environmental conditions increases subjects¿ susceptibility to low executive function scores. Future research may look to see whether a wider range of subjects¿ ethnicity and living environments will shed more light on the relationship between temperamental reactivity, RSA, and executive function.