Poster #205 - Face Perception, Emotion Regulation, and Anxiety in Young Children: an N170 ERP Study

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Perceiving emotional expressions and regulating one’s own emotions are central elements of social functioning. The emotion dysregulation model of generalized anxiety disorder posits that maladaptive forms of emotion regulation are characteristic in anxiety, and result in difficultly in regulation during emotional experiences (Mennin et al., 2005). Related, prior research suggests that neural correlates of attention and inhibition during emotional face perception is related to emotion regulation (Dennis et al., 2009), and enhanced threat processing (angry faces) is uniquely predictive of childhood anxiety (O’Toole et al., 2009). Despite these links, to our knowledge, no known model has investigated how emotion regulation may mediate the relationship between neural correlates of processing threatening (angry) faces and anxiety symptoms. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of the brain offer a useful way to test possible links between affective face perception, emotion regulation, and anxiety. The negative ERP component ‘N170’ is thought to reflect perceptual processing of faces (Bentin et al., 1996) and is modulated by emotional facial expressions (Hinojosa et al., 2015). Individual differences in how the brain processes these emotional visual stimuli could be associated with one’s ability to regulate one’s own emotions, which in turn may impact anxiety.
The present study proposes a mediation model and examines links between the N170 ERP component to angry faces, emotion regulation, and anxiety as measured by parental report. We predicted that emotion regulation would mediate the relationship between face perception and anxiety, such that children with reported decreased emotion regulation would exhibit heightened anxiety symptoms, and faster latency and increased N170 amplitude to angry versus neutral faces. Faster latencies and larger amplitudes for angry faces could represent a greater allocation of neural resources to processing angry faces, and this more salient processing may reflect an attention bias to threat.
The current analysis includes 11 typically-developing children, 6-7 years of age, though data collection is ongoing. During EEG recording, participants passively viewed images of faces ranging in emotional expression (neutral, happy, fearful, angry) and intensity (high, low) from the NimStim stimulus set (Tottenham et al., 2009). Parents completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist, a 24-item parent report that yields measures of child’s emotion regulation and dysregulation (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997), and the Modified Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale, a parent report of child worry and anxiety (MSCAS; Lagattuta et al., 2012).
Preliminary results provide initial support for a mediation model. Parent report of decreased emotion regulation was significantly correlated with the N170 mean-amplitude difference between low-intensity angry faces and neutral faces increases (indicated by larger negativity) (r(9)=.67, p=.024) (Figure 1). There was no significant relationship between the N170 for fearful, happy, or neutral faces, and emotion regulation, suggesting this process is specific to angry faces. In addition, a significant relationship between parent report of emotion dysregulation and anxiety was revealed, such that children with increased emotion dysregulation exhibited increased anxiety symptoms (r (8)=.69, p=.027) (Figure 2). These findings suggest that children who are sensitive to angry faces exhibit reduced emotion regulation, and those who are most dysregulated exhibit increased anxiety symptoms.

Authors

• Mariya Chernenok, University of California-Davis
  Presenting Author

• Jillian Mclenithan, University of California-Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Courtney Jimenez, University of California-Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica L. Burris, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan M Rivera, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lindsay C Bowman, University of California Davis
  Non-Presenting Author