Date of Award

Summer 2026

Embargo Period

5-7-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Program

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Betty Lin

Committee Members

Betty Lin, Elana Gordis, Alex Pieterse

Subject Categories

Child Psychology | Clinical Psychology

Abstract

Symptoms of postpartum depression (PPD) are common, particularly for Black birthing parents who may face increased psychosocial risk during the perinatal period. Previous work has demonstrated that PPD can have significant ramifications not only for maternal wellbeing but for infants’ regulatory development. PPD may influence the concordance or mutual influence of biological states between parents and children (i.e., physiological synchrony). Physiological synchrony is thought to be implicated in the development of self-regulation and may be a mechanism through which PPD undermines infants’ emerging regulatory capacities. In Black families, cultural-contextual factors, like racism or cultural practices, may additionally shape birthing parent and infant outcomes but are critically understudied. The current project examined the mechanistic role of parent-infant physiological synchrony in the association between PPD and infant emotion dysregulation, as well as the moderating role of cultural risk and resiliency factors (racial discrimination and collective coping strategies). Participants were 27 Black birthing parent-infant dyads drawn from a larger, prospective longitudinal study. Physiological synchrony was assessed via concordance of parasympathetic nervous system activity as indexed by high-frequency heart rate variability, and synchrony was calculated via two methods (correlation coefficients and multilevel path analysis). Infant emotion dysregulation was observer-rated at six months infant age, and birthing parents reported on their experiences of discrimination, use of collective coping, and depressive symptoms. Synchrony was not a significant mediator of the association between PPD symptoms and infant emotion dysregulation. A significant interaction effect was found for the use of collective coping, although the direction of this effect varied depending on the method used to calculate synchrony. This work explores novel mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of emotional risk in Black families and may help to inform future work identifying culturally relevant risk and protective factors with implications for intervention.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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