School-aged children with higher anxiety symptoms show greater correspondence between subjective negative emotions and autonomic arousal

Individuals exhibit variability in the degree of correspondence between autonomic and subjective indicators of emotional experience. The current study examined whether convergence between autonomic arousal and negative emotions during emotion-inducing story vignettes is associated with internalizing symptoms in school-aged children. A diverse sample of 97 children aged 8 to 12 years participated in this study in which they reported on their anxiety and depression. Children's electrodermal activity was assessed while they read vignettes depicting children experiencing sadness and fear. Participants also reported on their emotional reaction to the vignettes. Children's anxiety and electrodermal activity to fear vignettes were associated only at high levels, but not mean or low levels, of self-reported negative emotions to fear vignettes. These findings suggest that hyperawareness, in which self-reported negative emotionality is high when physiological reactivity is also high, is associated with greater risk for anxiety, but not depression, during middle childhood.