Poster #208 - Emotion Regulation Strategy Preference in Adolescents and its Relation With Executive Function

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Do children select different emotion regulation strategies with age? The use of emotion regulation gradually shifts from expressive suppression (a response-focused strategy that suppresses the behavioural responses to emotional-elicited events) to a less detrimental and more effective strategy - cognitive reappraisal (an antecedent-focused strategy that changes the potential thoughts) during adolescence, which parallels the maturation of prefrontal cortex. Previous research in adults indicates that the benefits of reappraisal become less effective when dealing with high-intensity contexts, as it is too challenging to reinterpret the incoming emotional relevant information. Therefore, the strategies adolescents select to regulate their emotion may vary as a function of the intensity of emotional arousal they are experiencing. Given this, the present study aims to investigate adolescent’s choice of emotion regulation strategies in different intensity contexts, and its relation with executive function - both abilities are supported by prefrontal cortex activity. 30 younger adolescents (M = 13.32 ± 0.56 years), 37 older adolescents (M = 16.04 ± 0.52 years) and 29 young adults (M = 20.81 ± 1.05 years) were recruited to complete an Emotion-Regulation Choice Task, in which they were free to use either suppression or reappraisal strategies to regulate their emotions aroused by negative pictures of low or high intensity. Besides, the major components of executive function – inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility were also measured with the Spatial Stroop task, the computer-based Corsi Blocks Test and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Consistent with the previous research, reappraisal strategies were increasingly frequent with advancing age. However, this developmental pattern was affected by the context. Despite a growing preference for reappraisal, older adolescents showed more expressive suppression in high than low intensity, and even young adults showed a tendency to use suppression over reappraisal in high-intensity contexts. Nonetheless, better cognitive flexibility was associated with a stronger preference for reappraisal in the high-intensity context. Taken together, the results point to a general shift from suppression to reappraisal during adolescence, while even young adult resort to suppression in high-intensity contexts, though their emotion regulation was supposed to be fully developed in previous studies. Cognitive flexibility, as the salient index of cognitive resources during adolescence, acts as a supportive factor for the increasing use of reappraisal. These findings suggest that emotion regulation is still developing from adolescence to young adulthood, as well as opening a new direction for interventions such as the training of cognitive flexibility.

Authors

• Xiaoyu Jin, University of Edinburgh
  Presenting Author

• Yanjie Su, Peking University
  Non-Presenting Author