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Poster #213 - More than Ability: Communication Skills predict Emotion Regulation in a Transdiagnostic Social Anxiety Adolescent Sample

Fri, March 22, 12:45 to 2:00pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Language is a gateway to children’s cognitive and socio-emotional abilities, including their ability to understand and manage both emotions and behaviors (Salmon et al., 2016). Emotion regulation (ER) in childhood is associated with language skills, including emotion recognition (Eisenberg, Sadovsky, Spinrad, 2006). High levels of anxiety lead to apprehension in efficient communication (Schlenker & Leary, 1982) and clinical problems, such as anxiety and autism, affect ER. Disentangling which aspects of oral communication are associated with ER is important to foster the development of ER skills. Although increased verbal abilities (i.e., vocabulary) have been linked to better ER, broader communication skills (i.e., how language is used) have not been explicitly examined in the context of ER. Further, these relationships have only been examined in early childhood, but not in adolescence. The aim of this study is to examine whether communication skills, when controlling for verbal abilities, predict emotion regulation abilities (Difficulties in ER Scale; DERS) in adolescence (N = 37; Age: M[SD]=15.06[1.84] years; IQ: M[SD]=109.20[13.88]).
Adolescents who were diagnosed with autism and social anxiety, social anxiety alone, and controls completed an assessment of verbal abilities (WASI-II Vocabulary T-score; VCT) and a questionnaire about their emotion regulation skills (the Difficulties in ER Scale; DERS). The DERS has six subscales (i.e., nonacceptance, goals, impulsivity, awareness, ER strategies, and clarity). Parents of the adolescents completed questionnaires about assessing communication skills (SRS Communication Subscale). We conducted two hierarchical linear regressions with verbal abilities included in the first step and communication skills included in the second step to predict ER difficulties. We found that when controlling for verbal abilities, communication predicted greater overall ER difficulties and explained 17.2% of the variance in overall ER difficulties, F(2, 36) = 3.53, p<.05, such that adolescents with higher social communication difficulties had greater ER difficulties. In the second step of the model, both verbal and communication abilities predicted ER, such that when controlling for verbal abilities, communication difficulties predicted difficulties in ER including: difficulties in goal-directed behaviors (p=.05), and limited access to emotional control strategies (p<01; Table 1).
Taken together, our results suggest that communication skills, more than verbal abilities alone, could be one avenue for strengthening ER skills in adolescents with social anxiety symptoms. For example, in addition to strengthening emotional vocabulary and awareness, it is important that teens learn how to effectively communicate their fears in order to successfully regulate their emotions (i.e., by talking to a friend or parent, challenging their own thoughts related to fears). This finding is essential in developing ER treatments that are better tailored to teens with low communication skills.

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