ÌìÌì³Ô¹Ï

Colloquium with Guest Speaker, Dr. Erika Lunkenheimer, Professor of Psychology at Pennsylvania State University

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ÌìÌì³Ô¹Ï's Department of Psychological Sciences to host colloquium on

Monday, November 17, 2025 @ 9:30-10:30 AM
102 ÌìÌì³Ô¹Ï Hall Annex

The Biological Embedding of Caregiving Adversity via Parent-Child Coregulation of Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia 

Dr. Erika Lunkenheimer is a Professor of Developmental Psychology and an Associate Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Pennsylvania State University. She received her doctorate in developmental psychology at the University of Michigan and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in prevention science at the University of Oregon. She has received multiple grants to fund her research from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Lunkenheimer’s research program revolves around uncovering critical risk and protective mechanisms in the early parent-child relationship, with special interest in the self-regulation and coregulation of physiology, emotion, and behavior between parent and child. Her work addresses how major parental risk factors such as child maltreatment and parent psychopathology influence parent and child self-regulation and coregulation, and in turn how such processes increase risk for or protect children from developmental psychopathology in early childhood. This work is grounded in dynamic systems theory and uses innovative dynamic analytic approaches to model dyadic patterns of moment-to-moment coordination of physiology, emotions, and behaviors in mother-child and father-child interactions.

Caregiving adversity is common and costly to individuals and society. Child maltreatment and parental psychopathology are common forms of early caregiving adversity that can impair children’s developing neurobiological stress regulation systems, with potentially serious negative effects on lifespan development and mental health. To better understand and prevent such effects, we have more to learn about how caregiving risk is biologically transmitted to children during parent-child interactions. In this talk, I will argue for the importance of parent-child coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as a biomarker of the embedding of caregiving risks such as child maltreatment and parental psychopathology. I will address how parent-child RSA coregulation varies by specific caregiving risks, acts as a mechanism of the transmission of risk, and will offer preliminary evidence on typical vs. risk-related longitudinal changes in parent-child RSA coregulation across early childhood.

The Ohio Psychological Association has approved the Department of Psychology, ÌìÌì³Ô¹Ï as a provider of continuing education for Psychologists. 1.0 credit hours for Psychologists is awarded by the
Ohio Psychological Association, Approval #00PO-316402079