Poster #212 - Training Adaptive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Early Adolescence

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Adolescence is characterized by different challenges and changes, which often trigger various emotions that need to be regulated in order to decrease the risk of developing psychopathology. (Heller & Casey, 2016; Inchley et al., 2016). Therefore, young adolescents need to master adaptive emotion regulation strategies like acceptance, distraction, cognitive reappraisal, and emotion-focused problem solving (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010; McRae et al., 2012). Teaching adolescents to use those skills might greatly benefit their well-being. However, research on training effects for stand-alone emotion regulation strategies are scarce. Therefore, we compared mental health outcomes between groups of adolescents (9-13 years, N =261) who were trained to use either acceptance, distraction, cognitive reappraisal or problem solving with those of adolescents who did not receive any emotion regulation training, but were instructed to use rumination or perform a cognitive control task instead. The training took place at school during school hours, provided by clinical psychology students and coordinated by experienced clinical psychologist. Positive and negative affect following mood-induction were assessed immediately after the training through the use of Visual Analogue Scales, while emotional awareness, emotion regulation, depression- and stress symptoms were measured with self-report questionnaires after one month follow-up. Experimental effects on immediate affect were analyzed using Repeated Measures Analysis of Variances, with time as a within factor and condition as a between factor. To analyze the effect after one month follow-up, a General Linear Model for each variable was used. Results showed a significant increase in happiness and decrease in sadness after using one of the four learned adaptive emotion regulation strategies on positive and negative affect, whereas rumination did not. Moreover, results showed that emotion regulation was most effective after distraction training, while effects were more modest for cognitive reappraisal and emotion-focused problem-solving training and even smaller for acceptance. However, differences with the cognitive control group were small and there were no significant pre-post differences on other outcomes. These results demonstrate that teaching young adolescents to use adaptive emotion regulation strategies is possible and can be effective. However, it is still not clear which core mechanisms underlie the effectiveness and what the best way is to learn young adolescents adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Further research should focus on this, so that it becomes possible to develop the most efficient and adequate emotion regulation intervention for young adolescents, in order to prevent psychopathology.

Authors

• Laura Wante, Ghent University
  Presenting Author

• Brenda Volkaert, Ghent University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leentje Vervoort, Ghent University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Caroline Braet, Ghent University
  Non-Presenting Author