The Dyadic Context of Preadolescent Girls’ Depressive Symptoms: Elucidating The Role of Biobehavioral Synchrony

= 1.51 years; 38.0% White) dyads participated in a 5-minute conflict discussion task, during which second-by-second estimates of parent unsupportive ERSB and parent and daughter affect and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were obtained. Parent self-reported depressive symptoms and rated child behavior problems. Contrary to hypotheses, path models suggested that neither parent depressive symptoms nor unsupportive ERSB was associated with dyadic synchrony of positive affect or RSA. However, as expected, parent depressive symptoms and unsupportive ERSB moderated predictions of daughters' depression symptoms from dyadic synchrony. The nature of these interactive effects depended on the synchrony modality (i.e., positive affect, RSA) and parent factor under investigation. RSA synchrony during parent-daughter conflict discussion buffered against the adverse effects of parent depressive symptoms on daughters. Importantly, these patterns were specific to daughters' depressive symptoms rather than general dimensions of child psychopathology. These results underscore the centrality of multimodal, dynamic processes through which parent-daughter interactions may shape depression risk in daughters. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10826-026-03300-6.