Social competence in early childhood: The role of pain, health, and parenting style.

This study investigated respiratory sinus arrhythmia and heart rate as functions of social competence. It was hypothesized that during an anxiety provoking social task, the group rated as high social competence would exhibit greater vagal tone than the low social competence group. Consistent with expectations, the high social competence group exhibited significantly higher vagal tone than the low social competence group during the task. Further, the high social competence group reacted with higher mean heart rate while anticipating the task but recovered more rapidly than the low social competence group. Styles of humor were explored as a mediating variable between social competence and cardiovascular activity. This study found, for the males, significant negative relationships between heart rate and positive styles of humor and a significant positive relationship between heart rate and self-deprecating humor. Overall, the findings were in support of existing theories on social stress as a determinant of health. --P.ii.