Conceptual and Methodological Advances in Emotion Regulation Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Emotion regulation difficulties that impact the development of mental and behavioral health problems emerge during childhood. The goal of this symposium is to highlight innovative methods that can advance understanding of individual differences in emotional experience, coping strategies, and elucidate mechanisms by which regulation during childhood may impact health outcomes later in development. Talk 1 conceptualizes boredom as a negative emotion that requires a specific set of coping strategies to resolve. A mixed-method study is reported that includes interview, parent-report, and behavior to examine the origins of trait boredom as understood in adolescence and adults as well as the coping strategies children use to resolve boredom. This pioneering research has important implications for prevention of unhealthy behaviors associated with boredom present by adolescence. Talk 2 examines the specificity of relations between fearfulness and inhibitory control over emotionally salient cues, as well as the role of neurophysiological and online attentional processes in these relations, shedding new light on the mechanisms that might link a behaviorally inhibited temperament to later developing mental health problems. Talk 3 reports one of the first studies on negative emotion differentiation in childhood. Using a mixed-method design, this study investigates children’s capacity to differentiate negative emotions as it relates to psychophysiology and coping strategies. Understanding these relations is important because the capacity to experience distinct, differentiated emotional states has consequences for the emotion regulation strategies children can use. A discussant will synthesize key insights, identify implications for understanding emotion regulation development, and point to future research needs.

Sub Unit

• Social, Emotional, Personality

Chair

• Sammy Perone, Washington State University

Discussant

• Martha Ann Bell, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Individual Presentations

• Boredom and Boredom Coping in Early Childhood: A Mixed-Methods Study - Presenting Author: Alana J Anderson, OMNI Institute

• The role of temperament in processing emotional cues: Insights from behavior and the brain - Presenting Author: Aryn M Vaughan, Washington State University; Sammy Perone, Washington State University

• Linking Emotion Differentiation to Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood - Presenting Author: Elizabeth L Davis, University of California - Riverside; Parisa Parsafar, SRCD Executive Branch Fellow, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH); Shannon Brady, University of California - Riverside