2-182 - Gender Differences in Psychophysiological Measures of Emotion Reactivity and Self-Regulated Behaviors

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Emotion regulation has been identified as a key factor for academic, social, and psychosocial outcomes. Gender differences often emerge for children’s emotion reactivity and regulation, yet applications for findings are limited due to task, assessment, or construct-specific measurement (Aldao, 2013). Investigating gender differences utilizing multiple methods and an interdisciplinary perspective will better inform our understanding of how gender differences manifest across developmental domains.
This symposium focuses on gender differences in psychophysiological measures shown to index emotion reactivity and regulation. The first paper examines parasympathetic nervous system activity of preschoolers during a challenging puzzle task, showing that girls maintain stable parasympathetic activity across task, whereas boys present enhanced parasympathetic reactivity marked by pronounced parasympathetic withdrawal. The second paper assesses the relation between response monitoring skills and persistent behavior in K-2nd children. Findings indicate this relation is moderated by child gender, such that boys with enhanced ERN and Pe components demonstrate higher persistence. The third paper reports extended processing of non-social rewarding images in 6-10-year-old boys compared to interpersonal-social images. Girls showed the opposite pattern. Larger LPPs to non-social images related to higher reports of aggression in boys. The final paper demonstrates an inverse pattern between negative parenting and ACC brain activation for adolescent boys but a positive relation for girls, with heightened reactivity predicting substance abuse and depressive symptoms. Together, papers suggest gender-differentiated patterns between biological measures of emotion and indices of physiological reactivity and self-regulated behaviors sampled across development, highlighting similarities across the fields of developmental, educational, and clinical neuroscience.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes: Psychophysiology

Chairs

• Sarah Jo Torgrimson, University of California Los Angeles

• Patricia Tan, UCLA, Semel Institute

Individual Presentations

• Gender Differences Among Preschoolers in Growth Dynamics of Parasympathetic Reactivity During a Cognitive Challenging Task - Presenting Author: Ryan Giuliano, University of Manitoba; Non-Presenting Author: Jessica Norman Wells, University of Oregon; Non-Presenting Author: David DeGarmo, University of Oregon; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth A. Skowron, University of Oregon

• Gender Differences in Cognitive Control and Student Persistence: A Neurophysiological Investigation - Presenting Author: Sarah Jo Torgrimson, University of California Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Patricia Tan, UCLA, Semel Institute; Non-Presenting Author: Jennie Grammer, UCLA

• Motivated Attention to Social and Non-Social Reward Stimuli: Exploring Gender-Related Risk of Externalizing Problems in Children - Presenting Author: Adaeze C. Egwuatu, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer M. McDermott, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Identifying Neurobiological Mechanisms of the Link between Parenting and Adolescent Substance Use and Psychopathology - Presenting Author: Tara Chaplin, George Mason University; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer (Jenny) Ann Poon, George Mason University; Non-Presenting Author: James Thompson, George Mason University; Non-Presenting Author: Rajita Sinha, Yale University; Non-Presenting Author: Laurie Chassin, Arizona State University; Non-Presenting Author: Emily B. Ansell, Syracuse University