Emotion Regulation In Adolescents Research Articles

The Mediation of Family Context and Youth Depressive Symptoms by Adolescent Emotion Regulation

During adolescence, young people develop crucial capacity for emotion regulation, and family context can be a risk or protective factor for adolescents developing affective disorders. We leveraged data from the Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey ( N = 7664) to propose adolescent emotion regulation as a mediator between family conflict, family protection, and adolescent depressive symptoms in the social development model. Latent moderated structural equation modeling revealed that adolescent regulation of negative emotions mediated the relationship between family conflict and depressive symptoms—adolescents with higher family conflict had more emotion regulation difficulties and more depressive symptoms. Adolescent age was a moderator such that associations between family protective factors and reduced depression, and between family conflict and emotion regulation difficulties were weaker in high school compared to middle school. Findings highlight the importance of youth emotion regulation processes and family emotional context in reducing adolescent depressive symptoms.

ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE AND EMOTION REGULATION IN ADOLESCENTS AGED BETWEEN 15-17

Psychological resilience situation gained importance associated with psychological science began to examine people's strengths along their weaknesses. It is claimed that psychological resilience plays an active role in people's emotions and in the interpretation of these emotions in the mind. For this reason, analysis of the relationship between psychological resilience and emotion regulation in adolescents aged between 15-17 is the main purpose of this study. Psychological Resilience Scale (PRS) and Emotion Regulation Scale (ERS) were used to collect the data of the study. The study was planned on all active students which are registered in Vocational High Schools and Anatolian High Schools in Bursa province. The sample of the study consists of 904 volunteer participants from Vocational and Anatolian High School students. According to the results of the study, psychological resilience and emotion regulation skills of adolescents differ according to socio-demographic variables. According to the findings of the regression analysis, it was determined that the increase in the skills of emotion regulation affected 14% of the increase in psychological resilience. In addition, it was determined that 22% of the variance in emotion regulation skills was explained by the sub-factors which affect their psychological resilience.

The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-based Group Therapy (MBGT) on Cognitive Emotion Regulation (CER) in Female Adolescents

The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-based Group Therapy (MBGT) on Cognitive Emotion Regulation (CER) in Female Adolescents

The Mediating Role of Difficulties in Emotion Regulation in the Correlation Between Attachment Styles and Childhood Trauma with Self-harming Behaviors in Adolescents

Background: Self-harming behaviors are significantly associated with difficulty in emotion regulation. Attachment styles and childhood trauma increase the frequency and intensity of self-harming behaviors through disrupting emotion regulation. Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the mediating role of difficulties in emotion regulation in the correlation between attachment styles and childhood trauma with self-harming behaviors in adolescents. Methods: The sample population included adolescents aged 15 - 18 years in Kermanshah, Iran in 2019. In total, 400 participants were selected via random sampling. Data were collected using instruments of Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Adult Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ), and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). In addition, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to evaluate the proposed model. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 24 and AMOS version 23. Results: The proposed model had a good fit. Attachment styles with the mediation of difficulties in emotion regulation (β = 0.174) and childhood trauma with the mediation of difficulties in emotion regulation (β = 0.111) had an indirect, significant correlation with self-harming behaviors (P < 0.05). Conclusions: According to the results, attachment styles and childhood trauma affected self-harming behaviors through difficulties in emotion regulation. Therefore, their impact on self-harming behaviors could be reduced by improving emotion regulation in adolescents.

The Mediating Role of Adolescent Emotion Regulation in the Relationship between Parental Marital Conflict Resolution Styles and Adolescent Conflict Resolution Behaviors

The Mediating Role of Adolescent Emotion Regulation in the Relationship between Parental Marital Conflict Resolution Styles and Adolescent Conflict Resolution Behaviors

Implicit and explicit emotion regulation in adolescents with dispositional optimism

The development of adaptive emotion regulation (ER) plays a pivotal role in adolescent mental health and socio-emotional adaptation. Dispositional optimism, as an important protective factor for adolescent adjustment, may affect adolescent ER and subsequently influence adaptive outcomes. In this review, the changes and challenges, the role of ER in socio-emotional adjustment, and the developmental characteristics of implicit and explicit ER during adolescence are described. Subsequently, by employing the top-down model of personality, coping, and emotion, how dispositional optimism may affect psychological adjustment from the perspective of ER is analyzed. Furthermore, how the differences in adolescents’ dispositional optimism may be reflected by the differences in implicit ER is discussed. Finally, recommendations for future research are outlined.

Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a serious game targeting interpersonal emotion regulation in early adolescents

BackgroundAdaptive interpersonal emotion regulation (iER) is a vital tool for positive relations. During early adolescence, peer relations become increasingly important, making this age group a relevant target group for interventions promoting positive interactions with each other, yet no evidence-based intervention exists for iER and early adolescents specifically.MethodsThis randomised controlled trial (RCT) aims to test effectiveness and feasibility of a serious game training iER skills in early adolescents by comparing outcomes with a control group playing a game without psychoeducational content in a pre- and post-test design. German- and English-speaking early adolescents (10–14 years) are eligible for participation. IER skills improvement as assessed by a vignette task is the primary outcome and will be analysed with a chi-square test. Secondary outcomes include feasibility and acceptability, emotional competence, personal emotion regulation, gender, and sex.DiscussionThis RCT will test whether playing a serious game about iER strategies results in an improvement of iER skills and whether the game is feasible and acceptable for early adolescents with the ultimate aim to implement the game in schools and help early adolescents achieve positive peer relationships.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.govNCT04808102, Registered on 19 March 2021

The Evaluation of Boost Camp: A Universal School-Based Prevention Program Targeting Adolescent Emotion Regulation Skills

The Evaluation of Boost Camp: A Universal School-Based Prevention Program Targeting Adolescent Emotion Regulation Skills

Evidence Base Update for Questionnaires of Emotion Regulation and Reactivity for Children and Adolescents

ABSTRACT Objective: Emotion regulation (ER) is a multi-faceted and dynamic process relevant to both normative emotional development and transdiagnostic emotional dysfunction for a range of psychological disorders. There has been tremendous growth in ER research over the past decade, including the development of numerous new measures to assess ER. This Evidence Base Update included a systematic review to identify self- and informant-report questionnaire measures of ER for children and adolescents, including measures of ER strategies and effectiveness (or emotion dysregulation).Methods: PubMed, PsycInfo, and Health and Psychosocial Instruments databases were searched using the terms emotion OR affect AND regulation OR control OR reactivity OR response, as well as terms related to questionnaires and psychometrics, restricted to articles on youth (< 18 years old). Each measure’s psychometrics was evaluated based on modified criteria by De Los Reyes and Langer (2018).Results: Nine-hundred ninety-seven papers were identified yielding 87 measures that met inclusion for review. Although the majority (60%) of identified ER measures could not be recommended based on these criteria, 8% were Excellent, 14% were Good, and 17% were Adequate. The recommended measures included: 11 general ER measures (5 focused on strategies, 5 focused on dysregulation/ effectiveness), 13 measures of ER as it relates to specific emotions or contexts such as irritability or peer stress (4 focused on strategies, 9 focused on dysregulation/effectiveness), and 11 measures of other constructs that include an ER subscale (all focused on dysregulation). Conclusions: The characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of the recommended ER measures are described in order to guide measure selection for clinical or research uses. A synthesis of themes identified during this review includes commonly observed areas of weakness and gaps in the literature to provide a foundation for future research and measure development.

Relationship between early language competence and cognitive emotion regulation in adolescence.

Cognitive emotion regulation improves throughout adolescence and promotes good mental health. Here, we test whether language skills at school entry predict success in emotion regulation in an experimental task at age 10–11, using longitudinal data from the Surrey Communication and Language in Education Study. We additionally compared the performance of children with and without language disorder (LD). Across the whole sample (N = 344), language skills at school entry predicted emotion regulation success in Year 6 (β = 0.23), over and above the concurrent association between language and regulation success. There was no evidence that children with LD that could engage in the task were less successful regulators compared to peers with typical language. However, a quarter of children with LD were unable to complete the task. These children had more severe language difficulties, lower non-verbal IQ and more comorbid conditions. This has implications for clinicians addressing mental health needs for children with neurodevelopmental conditions that affect language, as conversations about emotions and emotion regulation are an integral part of therapy. The longitudinal relationship between language skills and the capacity to use temporal distancing for emotion regulation in early adolescence suggests that language may drive improvements in emotion regulation.

Emotion regulation and self-criticism in children and adolescence: Longitudinal networks of transdiagnostic risk factors.

Adolescence is a time of heightened risk for the development of psychopathology. Difficulties in emotion regulation and heightened levels of self-criticism are two processes that have been proposed as critical risk factors. Considering the accumulating evidence that risk factors rarely work in isolation, there is a pressing need to examine how self-criticism and emotion regulations strategies interact. The present study utilizes a network analysis approach to address this goal. One-hundred thirty-five children and adolescents (ages 8-15) completed daily-diaries every evening for 21 days (total N of assessments = 2,564), reporting self-criticism and use of emotion regulation strategies focused on negative and positive emotions. Network analysis was applied to estimate contemporaneous, temporal, and between-person networks. Results show that emotion regulation strategies are generally positively associated with each other at the within and between individual levels. As predicted, self-criticism was positively associated with rumination and dampening at the between and within-person networks; unexpectedly, problem-solving also clustered with them in the contemporaneous network. Moreover, problem-solving led to next-day increases in rumination and dampening, whereas self-criticism led to next-day increases in rumination but decreases in dampening. Finally, distraction in response to negative affect was closely tied with strategies that up-regulate positive affect. Collectively, these results shed light on the complex pathways through which self-criticism and emotion regulation interact over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Immediate and Lasting Effect of Emotion Regulation in Adolescents: An ERP Study.

The immediate effect is an important index of the outcomes of emotion regulation. However, in daily life, whether the effect of emotion regulation lasts and the lasting mechanism have been examined less. The present research focused on the relationships between the immediate and lasting effect of the emotion regulation of adolescents. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from 51 adolescents (31 boys and 20 girls, Mage = 12.82) during online emotion regulation using the Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task (phase 1) and re-presentation of emotional stimuli after a period of time (phase 2). Event-related potentials (ERPs) related to emotion regulation, such as N2, P3, and the late positive potential (LPP), were examined in the two phases. The results showed that: (1) In both of the two phases, in negative emotion conditions, the amplitudes of P3 and LPP 300–600 of no-regulation conditions were significantly higher than those in reappraisal conditions. However, there was no significant difference under neutral conditions; (2) The amplitudes of P3, N2, and LPP 300–600 during emotion regulation in phase 1 positively predicted the amplitudes of P3, N2, and LPP300–600 in phase 2 in different experimental conditions. Results from the regression analysis implied that the immediate effect of online emotion regulation may predict the lasting effect when adolescents face the same emotions again. In addition, our findings provide neurological evidence that the use of cognitive reappraisal could effectively help adolescents to reduce the recruitment of cognitive resources when they regulate negative emotions and when they face those negative emotions again.

Emotion regulation in adolescents with anorexia and bulimia nervosa: Differential use of adaptive and maladaptive strategies compared to healthy adolescents.

Adolescents with anorexia (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) often struggle with emotion regulation (ER). These difficulties have predominantly been assessed across emotions, without considering adaptive and maladaptive ER separately. We compared adolescents with AN or BN to healthy adolescents (HCs) regarding the adaptive and maladaptive ER of three emotions. A treatment-seeking sample of 197 adolescents (atypical/full-threshold AN: N=118, atypical/full-threshold BN: N=32; HC: N=47) reported emotion-specific ER with the FEEL-KJ questionnaire. Mixed models were calculated for adaptive and maladaptive ER to assess differences between emotions (anxiety, anger, and sadness) and groups (AN, BN, and HC). Main effects of emotion (p < .001) and group (p < .001) were found, but no interaction effects were found (p > .05). Post hoc tests showed lower maladaptive and higher adaptive ER for anxiety than anger or sadness (p < .001). AN and BN reported lower adaptive (p < .001) and higher maladaptive ER than HCs (p < .001). BN showed the highest levels of maladaptive ER (p=.009). The differences between AN and BN in adaptive and maladaptive ER should be considered. Furthermore, investigating differences in ER of other emotions in eating disorders might be promising.

The Immediate and Lasting Effect of Emotion Regulation in Adolescents: An ERP Study

Environmental and individual contextual factors profoundly influence how people regulate their emotions. The current article addresses the role of event intensity and psychopathology (an admixture of depression, anxiety, and psychoticism) on emotion regulation in response to naturally occurring events. For six days each evening, a youth sample (aged 15–25, N = 713) recorded the intensity of the most positive and most negative event of the day and their subsequent emotion regulation. The intensity of negative events was positively associated with summed total emotion regulation effort, strategy diversity, engaging in rumination, situation modification, emotion expression, and sharing and negatively associated with reappraisal and acceptance. The intensity of positive events was positively associated with strategy diversity, savoring, emotion expression, and sharing. Higher psychopathology symptoms were only related to ruminating more about negative events. We interpret these findings as support for the role of context in the degree of effort and type of emotion regulation that young people engage in.

Child abuse and automatic emotion regulation in children and adolescents.

Child abuse is associated with elevated risk for psychopathology. The current study examined the role of automatic emotion regulation as a potential mechanism linking child abuse with internalizing psychopathology. A sample of 237 youth aged 8-16 years and their caregivers participated. Child abuse severity was assessed by self-report questionnaires, and automatic emotion regulation was assessed using an emotional Stroop task designed to measure adaptation to emotional conflict. A similar task without emotional stimuli was also administered to evaluate whether abuse was uniquely associated with emotion regulation, but not cognitive control applied in a nonemotional context. Internalizing psychopathology was assessed concurrently and at a 2-year longitudinal follow-up. Child abuse severity was associated with lower emotional conflict adaptation but was unrelated to cognitive control. Specifically, the severity of emotional and physical abuse, but not sexual abuse, were associated with lower emotional conflict adaptation. Emotional conflict adaptation was not associated with internalizing psychopathology prospectively. These findings suggest that childhood emotional and physical abuse, in particular, may influence automatic forms of emotion regulation. Future work exploring the socioemotional consequences of altered automatic emotion regulation among youth exposed to child abuse is clearly needed.

Alexithymia and Emotion Regulation Strategies in Adolescent Gamblers with and Without At-Risk Profiles

Alexithymia, difficulties in emotion regulation, and negative affect play an important role in adolescents who present pathological gambling. Therefore, the objectives of the present study were, firstly, to analyze the differences between alexithymia, difficulties in emotion regulation, and positive and negative affect in adolescents with and without risk of gambling problems. Secondly, the relationships between all the variables of the study in adolescents with and without risk of problem gambling were analyzed separately. Thirdly, we analyzed the mediating role of positive and negative affect in the relationship between alexithymia and dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies (ERS) in adolescents at risk of gambling problems. The sample was composed of 206 adolescents with ages ranging from 12 to 18 years (M = 15.52; SD = 1.43). They were divided into two groups according to the score obtained in the South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents (SOGS-RA). Thus, 84 were included in the group without risk of gambling problems and 122 in the group at risk of gambling problems. The results obtained revealed higher scores in negative affect and pathological gambling in the group at risk of gambling problems. Likewise, positive relationships between alexithymia, maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (MERS), and affect were found. Mediation analyses showed that difficulties in identifying feelings were indirectly related to greater use of dysfunctional ERS through their relationship with negative affect in at-risk gamblers.

Adolescent Emotionality and Emotion Regulation in the Context of Parent Emotion Socialization Among Adolescents with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Call to Action with Pilot Data.

To date, only three studies have examined the role of emotion socialization in the emotional functioning of youth with neurodevelopmental disorders. As such, this review article with pilot data sought to provide a call to action and first step in addressing this limited research body. Pilot data was collected with 18 adolescents (Mage = 13.5, SD = 1.6; 70% male) with a neurodevelopmental disorder and their primary caregiver. All adolescents were diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and displayed a range of comorbid disorders: autism spectrum disorder (27.8%), anxiety (66.7%), depression (44.4%), and disruptive behavior disorders (50%). Adolescents and caregivers completed a conflict discussion task while physiological, observational, and self-report measures of emotion socialization and emotional functioning were measured. Observed supportive parent emotion socialization behaviors were significantly associated with more observed adaptive emotion regulation strategies, and decreased observed and adolescent-reported negative affect, whereas non-supportive emotion socialization behaviors were associated with more observed negative affect and less observed adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Our pilot findings support growing research suggesting that adaptive parent emotion socialization practices can help foster less negative emotionality and better emotion regulation in youth with neurodevelopment disorders. We make a call to action for more emotion socialization research focused on youth with neurodevelopmental disorders, and propose four important directions for future research: 1) Research examining emotion socialization behaviors during daily life, 2) Understanding the nuanced role of emotion socialization practices, 3) Considering diversity in emotion socialization practices with clinical populations, and 4) Longitudinal and intervention research studies.

Relationship between Social Appearance Anxiety, Fear of Negative Evaluation and Emotion Regulation in Adolescents and Young Adults

The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between Social Appearance Anxiety, Fear of Negative Evaluation and Emotion regulation in Adolescents and Young Adults. Although extensive research about topics like Anxiety and Emotion regulation have taken place, the complex ever changing situation of the world and the development of advanced technology and social media creates the dire need to undertake research. Through purposive sampling, a total sample of 151 (72 males and 78 females) participants divided into 13-17 age groups (n=76) and 18-22 age groups (n=75) were considered for the study. A correlational research design and between groups research design was adopted. The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between Fear of Negative Evaluation and Social Appearance anxiety. Also, Expressive suppression; one of the components of Emotion Regulation was positively correlated with both Fear of Negative Evaluation and Social Appearance Anxiety. However, it is found that there is no significant correlation between Cognitive reappraisal and any other variable. The results also show a significant difference on the basis of gender in Social Appearance Anxiety, i.e, Females had more SAA than males. However, no significant difference is seen on the basis of age.

Neural Response to Social Exclusion Moderates the Link Between Adolescent Anxiety Symptoms and Substance Use

BackgroundSubstance use (SU) typically increases from middle to late adolescence. Anxiety is one factor associated with greater SU, although variability in who uses substances remains. Some models suggest that brain-based susceptibility markers could reveal which adolescents are at a higher risk for psychopathology, but it is unknown whether these individual differences attenuate or accentuate the association between anxiety and elevated SU even if normative. This study addressed this gap by testing whether neural response to social exclusion moderates the association between anxiety symptoms and increased SU from middle to late adolescence. MethodsParticipants were 181 Mexican-origin adolescents (48% female; 16–17 years old) who completed a social exclusion task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan and filled out questionnaires about their SU and anxiety symptoms. Analyses focused on neural response to social exclusion versus inclusion within 3 regions of interest and change in SU across 2 years. ResultsDorsal anterior cingulate cortex response to social exclusion, but not subgenual anterior cingulate cortex or anterior insula, moderated the relation between anxiety symptoms and SU, such that higher anxiety symptoms predicted a greater relative increase in SU only for those youth with a lower dorsal anterior cingulate cortex response to exclusion. ConclusionsBlunted dorsal anterior cingulate cortex response to social exclusion may serve as a neural susceptibility marker of altered conflict monitoring or emotion regulation in middle adolescence that, in combination with high levels of anxious feelings, elevates the risk for onset of and/or increased SU by late adolescence. These findings have implications for designing targeted interventions to mitigate SU among adolescents.

Mixed Results on the Efficacy of the CharacterMe Smartphone App to Improve Self-Control, Patience, and Emotional Regulation Competencies in Adolescents.

Unprecedented levels of access to adolescents' time and attention provide opportunities to convert traditional character and socioemotional competencies interventions into behavioral intervention technologies. However, these new tools must be evaluated rather than assuming previously validated activities will be efficacious when converted to a mobile platform. Thus, we sought to design and provide initial data on the effectiveness of the CharacterMe smartphone app to build self-control and patience, which are built on underlying social-emotional regulation competencies, in a sample of 618 adolescents (Mage = 16.07, Female = 56.6%). We also sought to examine whether framing the app activities as having a transcendent (spiritual connection or moral/prosocial) rather than instrumental purpose would increase engagement and change in self-control, patience, and emotion regulation. Finally, we tested the impact of framing activities as building strengths vs. fixing weaknesses. Results highlight the difficulty of translating psychological interventions to behavioral intervention technologies. Overall, the CharacterMe smartphone app was unsuccessful in increasing self-control, patience, or emotion regulation in adolescents, with analyses showing no significant mean changes over time. Framing conditions and user engagement were largely not significant predictors of change in self-control, patience, and emotion regulation.