Neurophysiological Correlates of Emotion Regulation in Children and Adolescents

& Psychologists consider emotion regulation a critical devel-opmental acquisition. Yet, there has been very little research on the neural underpinnings of emotion regulation across childhood and adolescence. We selected two ERP compo-nents associated with inhibitory control—the frontal N2 and frontal P3. We recorded these components before, during, and after a negative emotion induction, and compared their am-plitude, latency, and source localization over age. Fifty-eight children 5–16 years of age engaged in a simple go/no-go pro-cedure in which points for successful performance earned a valued prize. The temporary loss of all points triggered negative emotions, as confirmed by self-report scales. Both the frontal N2 and frontal P3 decreased in amplitude and la-tency with age, consistent with the hypothesis of increasing cortical efficiency. Amplitudes were also greater following the emotion induction, only for adolescents for the N2 but across the age span for the frontal P3, suggesting different but overlapping profiles of emotion-related control mechanisms. No-go N2 amplitudes were greater than go N2 amplitudes following the emotion induction at all ages, suggesting a consistent effect of negative emotion on mechanisms of re-sponse inhibition. No-go P3 amplitudes were also greater than go P3 amplitudes and they decreased with age, whereas go P3 amplitudes remained low. Finally, source modeling in-dicated a developmental decline in central-posterior midline activity paralleled by increasing activity in frontal midline re-gions suggestive of the anterior cingulate cortex. Negative emotion induction corresponded with an additional right ven-tral prefrontal or temporal generator beginning in middle childhood. &amp

Expanding 4-H Horizons Livestock Leader Guides

What does a 4-H volunteer do when a child asks to start a project they don’t know anything about? The Expanding 4-H Horizons Swine Leader Guide offers information and activities that can be used by anyone in a club or clinic setting. A team of western regional extension professionals have created and piloted a user friendly tool that can be utilized by 4-H leaders and state/county extension staff. The swine specific manual is the first of four being created that will eventually offer information and activities for the beef, sheep and goat projects. This series of leaders guides are being created to serve as a useful tool that can be utilized across a variety of counties and states by supplementing already existing member manuals. With this curriculum, adults will be able to conduct highly effective activities that emphasize project skills, life skill learning, the experiential learning model and 4-H SET

Contracting: a systematic body of knowledge

http://archive.org/details/contractingsyste00thorNAN

Attentional Conflict Moderates the Association Between Anxiety and Emotional Eating Behavior: An ERP Study

Emotional eating is an attempt to avoid, control, or cope with negative emotions through eating a large amount of calorie dense sweet and/or high fat foods. Several factors, including various attentional mechanisms, negative affect, and stress, impact emotional eating behavior. For example, attentional narrowing on negative events may increase attentional stickiness and thereby prevent the processing of more peripheral events, such as eating behavior. This study contributes to the extant literature by examining the neural correlates underlying the attentional conflict between processing negative events and regulating behavior within a task that emulates how negative life experiences might contribute to unrestrained eating behavior. We explore this question within a normative sample that varies in their self-reported anxiety symptoms. Dense-array EEG was collected while participants played the attentional blink game—a task in which excessive attentional resource allocated to one event (e.g., negative picture) interferes with the adequate attentional processing of a second event that requires action. To assess the attentional conflict, we measured N2 activation, an event-related potentials (ERPs; averaged EEG) associated with conflict processing. Results revealed that N2 activation moderates the association between anxiety and emotional-eating behavior. Thus, increased anxiety combined with more negative N2 activation can contribute to emotional-eating behavior. These results are discussed in the context of ineffective conflict processing contributing to poor emotion regulation

Beyond weight: associations between 24-hour movement behaviors, cardiometabolic and cognitive health in adolescents with and without obesity

ABSTRACTBackground Adolescence is a critical time for establishing behaviors. 24-hour movement behaviors, including physical activity, sleep, and sedentary time, are likely to influence obesity, cardiovascular, and cognitive health. The aim was to examine associations between 24-hr movement behaviors, cardiometabolic health and cognitive functions in adolescents with and without obesity.Methods This was a cross-sectional study that included adolescents (n = 30, ages 12–16) with obesity and normal weight controls matched on age and sex. 24-hr movement behaviors of physical activity, sedentary time, and sleep were assessed using waist-worn accelerometers. Cardiometabolic health was measured using flow-mediated dilation (FMD) in the brachial artery, body composition via dual x-ray absorptiometry, blood pressure, and blood analyses of cholesterol, glucose, and insulin. Cognitive health was assessed using two computer-based tasks. Linear regressions were used to examine associations between 24-hr movement behaviors, cardiometabolic health, and cognition.Results In examining relationships between 24-hr movement behaviors and cardiometabolic health, when adjusted for body fat percentage, MVPA was positively associated with cardiovascular health (FMD log difference 0.1, 95%CI: 0.003, 95%CI: .001, .01, p = .020), sedentary time was negatively associated (−0.7, 95%CI: −1.3, −0.2, p = .016), and total sleep time was negatively associated with HDL cholesterol (−0.1, 95%CI: −0.2, −0.005, p = .039). There were no statistically significant associations between 24-hr movement behaviors and cognitive outcomes, except sleep and reactive control. When examining relationships between cardiometabolic and cognitive outcomes, higher HDL was associated with improved cognitive accuracy and higher insulin was associated with slower reaction times.Conclusions 24-hour movement behaviors of MVPA, sedentary time, and sleep time were associated with cardiometabolic measurements in a small sample. 24-hr movement behaviors, particularly MVPA and sedentary time, may be important behaviors for cardiometabolic health in adolescents, independent of body composition. Additional research is needed on the triadic relationship between 24-hr movement behaviors, cardiometabolic health, and cognitive performance