3-187 - Emotion Regulation, Responses to Stress, and Pathways to Internalizing Problems

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Recent research suggests that individual differences in emotion regulation and responses to emotion-eliciting stressful events may put children and adolescents at risk for a wide range of mental health problems, including internalizing symptoms, depression, and negative affect (see, e.g. Gross & Jazaieri, 2014). The three papers in this symposium examine whether maladaptive emotion regulation strategies explain the onset and/or maintenance of internalizing problems among children, young adolescents, and older adolescents. Each of the three offers a unique perspective on addressing mechanisms linking poor emotion regulation with disorder, and the discussion will aim to identify common themes and avenues for future research.
Paper 1 examines whether distress tolerance, a facet of emotion regulation, predicts greater perceived stress which in turn predicts greater change in internalizing symptoms in a 6-year longitudinal sample of 9-13 year olds including a behavioral measure of distress tolerance. Paper 2 examines the cognitive emotion regulation strategy of rumination, and specifically levels of internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms among youth high in anger rumination, sad rumination, both forms of rumination, or neither; results suggest that youth with anger rumination display the highest levels of both types of symptoms. Finally, Paper 3 examines whether adolescents high in emotional reactivity would display greater cognitive and behavioral inflexibility in response to stress, which would in turn predict increases in depressive symptoms. Discussant Dr. Lauren Alloy will examine how the three papers contribute to our understanding of the developmental relationship between emotion regulation strategies and psychopathology.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• Amy Mezulis, Seattle Pacific University

Discussant

• Lauren B. Alloy, Temple University

Individual Presentations

• Trajectories of Perceived Stress Mediate Between Emotion Regulation and Negative Affect Among Adolescents - Presenting Author: Julia W Felton, University of Maryland, College Park; Laura MacPherson, University of Maryland; Anne Banducci, University of Maryland; Victoria Brown, University of Maryland; C. W. Lejuez, University of Maryland

• Anger and Sadness Rumination as Predictors of Children's Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms and their Comorbidity - Sherelle Harmon, Florida State University; Kimberly A. Driscoll, Florida State University; Karla Kronquist Repper; Presenting Author: Janet Alice Kistner, Florida State University

• Emotional Reactivity and Vulnerability to Depression: Cognitive-Behavioral Inflexibilities as Potential Mechanisms - Presenting Author: Jonathan P. Stange, Temple University; Jessica Leigh Hamilton, Temple University; Christine Yim, Temple University; Allison J. Jessar, Temple University; Nicole Dana Seligman, Temple University; Lucas C. Waldburger, Temple University; David M. Fresco, Kent State University; Lauren B. Alloy, Temple University