Poster #62 - The Interaction between Emotion Regulation and Life Stressors in Relation to Generalized Anxiety in Adolescence

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Given the profound impairment associated with the onset of generalized anxiety disorder (Ruscio et al., 2017), it is critical to identify factors that may predispose youth to generalized anxiety symptoms during adolescence. A large body of work suggests that adolescent emotion regulation strategies (e.g., Zeman, Shipman, & Clyve, 2001), and stressful experiences (McLaughlin & Hatzenbuehler, 2012) are associated with the onset of anxiety symptoms during adolescence. Critically, however, relatively little adolescent-focused research has examined how emotion regulation strategies and stressful experiences may interact in relation to generalized anxiety during adolescence. This is a significant gap in the literature, because the management of emotions is important for social relationships, physiological experiences, attention, and memory (Gross, 1998). In particular, given the centrality of worry to adolescent generalized anxiety symptoms (e.g., Kertz & Woodruff-Borden, 2011), it is important to examine how different strategies for managing worry may predispose adolescents for generalized anxiety symptoms. Two emotion regulation strategies may be important to consider in the context of adolescent generalized anxiety symptoms: worry inhibition and the dysregulated expression of emotion. To date, no work has examined how specific strategies for managing adolescent worry may interact with the number of stressors adolescents experience to predict adolescent generalized anxiety symptoms. The current study is designed to address this gap in the literature.
It was hypothesized that the dysregulated expression of worry would interact with number of stressful events and affect the association with adolescent generalized anxiety symptoms such that as levels of stress increased, worry dysregulated expression would be more strongly, positively related to generalized anxiety symptoms. One hundred and twenty six adolescents (n = 78 males) between the ages of 13 and 17 years (Mage = 15.74; SD = 1.03) were included in this study. The Childhood Emotion Management Scale (CEMS; Zeman, Shipman, & Clyve, 2001) was used to measure emotion regulation strategies. The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS; Chorpita, Yim, Moffitt, Umemoto, & Francis, 2000) was used to index self-reported generalized anxiety symptoms. The number of stressful events adolescents experienced was summed. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted using the PROCESS custom dialog (Hayes, 2013) to examine study hypotheses. As hypothesized, a significant omnibus regression model emerged explaining 25.22% of the variance in generalized anxiety scores. In step one of the regression, there was a significant effect of adolescent dysregulated expression of worry, β = 0.88, p < .001, and the number of stressful events experienced on adolescent generalized anxiety symptoms, β = 0.32, p = .004. As hypothesized there was a significant interaction between number of stressful events and the dysregulated expression of worry, β = 0.19, p = .019. Post hoc probing analyses suggested number of stressful events was associated with elevated generalized anxiety symptoms, but only for adolescents who tended to have a more dysregulated expression of worry.

Authors

• Ashley Renee Karlovich, University of Arkansas
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Bilsky, University of Arkansas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Matthew Feldner, University of Arkansas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ellen Leen-Feldner, University of Arkansas
  Non-Presenting Author