Biological Signatures of Emotion Regulation in Children

Emotion regulation (ER) is a key predictor of positive adjustment throughout the lifespan. Despite decades of research on discrete ER strategy use, ER may be more appropriately measured in terms of the breadth of emotional range, or the degree to which one can flexibly modulate emotional responses. Yet little is known about ER flexibility in childhood. Also, given the crucial role of caregiver support in children’s emotional lives, ER may be most accurately measured in developmentally appropriate and ecologically valid social contexts. Further, few developmental studies have capitalized on the growing evidence base surrounding biological signatures of ER. This study harnessed two target biological signatures that highlight emotional range as an aspect of ER flexibility: the late positive potential (LPP), an index of neurocognitive flexibility, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an index of physiological flexibility. These metrics were examined as predictors of child behavioral ER and emotional adjustment, and evaluated in terms of their sensitivity to social context. Eighty-six (44 female; Mage = 6.94, SD = 1.13) 5-to-8-year-olds completed a Directed Reappraisal Task (DRT) in which unpleasant pictures were paired with either reappraisal or negative interpretations while EEG and ECG were recorded. Social context was systematically manipulated such that children either completed the task alone, with parent present but not interacting, or with parent scaffolding child ER. ECG was recorded while dyads completed two emotionally challenging behavioral tasks. Neurocognitive flexibility indexed by the LPP was bolstered by experimentally-manipulated parent presence or scaffolding of child ER during the DRT, and also by spontaneous patterns of behavioral parent scaffolding. In contrast, while RSA was not sensitive to social context, greater physiological flexibility indexed by RSA suppression predicted greater parent-reported ER, and fewer symptoms of psychopathology. Taken together, results highlight the importance of bio-behavioral multimethod approaches to examine biological signatures of ER in children in terms of context-sensitivity and flexibility

Study Protocol: Temperament, Evolving Emotions, and Neuroscience Study

Social anxiety disorder is among the most common forms of pediatric psychopathology. Social anxiety symptoms peak in adolescence and are associated with significant impairment encompassing familial, social, and academic domains. Considerable heterogeneity in symptomatology, risk factors, and biological underpinnings exists across anxious adolescents, which has implications for (1) understanding the developmental etiology of who is at highest risk, (2) identifying individual patterns of symptom course. In particular, fearful temperament is the best early-emerging predictor of the development of anxiety symptoms, and attention bias to threat and other neurobiological processes have been implicated as mechanisms but it is unknown for whom and to what degree these factors impair functioning and what the developmental course looks like across adolescence. The current study employs a longitudinal design capturing a wide range of anxiety symptom presentation (i.e., low risk, temperamental risk, and clinical anxiety). We follow adolescents (N = 195) annually across the transitions to middle- and high-school – ages 13, 14, 15, & 16 years. We implement a rich assessment of anxiety symptoms, temperament, attention bias, endocrine (cortisol), physiological (RSA) and neurobiological (EEG, ERP) processes. We aim to (1) characterize a biobehavioral (i.e., biased attention, neuroendocrine, physiological, and neural processes) pattern associated with fearful temperament and social anxiety in adolescence, (2) characterize trajectories of social anxiety in adolescence, with an emphasis on linking fearful temperament and anxiety across development, and (3) examine how social contextual factors, sex, and pubertal development shape social anxiety trajectories and moderated links between temperament and SA

Variability in Caregiver Attention Bias to Threat: A Goldilocks Effect in Infant Emotional Development?

Attention biases to threat are considered part of the etiology of anxiety disorders. Attention bias variability (ABV) quantifies intraindividual fluctuations in attention biases, and may better capture the relation between attention biases and psychopathology risk versus mean levels of attention bias. ABV to threat has been associated with attentional control and emotion regulation, which may impact how caregivers interact with their child. In a relatively diverse sample of infants (50% white, 50.7% female), we asked how caregiver ABV to threat related to trajectories of infant negative affect across the first two years of life. Families were part of a multi-site longitudinal study, and data were collected from 4 to 24 months of age. Multilevel modeling examined the effect of average caregiver attention biases on changes in negative affect. We found a significant interaction between infant age and caregiver ABV to threat. Probing this interaction revealed that infants of caregivers with high ABV showed decreases in negative affect over time, while infants of caregivers with low-to-average ABV showed potentiated increases in negative affect. We discuss how both high and extreme patterns of ABV may relate to deviations in developmental trajectories

Online food advertisements and the role of emotions in adolescents’ food choices

Adolescence is a critical period for future health outcomes. Food habits and cognitive development are underway, and it is a period of heightened sensitivity to external influences and emotional shifts. We experimentally test the individual and combined influence of food advertisements and emotional primes (i.e., positive, negative, neutral) on adolescent food choices. Participants completed a food choice task selecting five snacks out of twenty healthy and unhealthy options in an online experiment. Prior to the food choice, we randomized whether adolescents were exposed to unhealthy food or non-food online advertisements. To induce experimental variation in adolescents’ emotions, they were assigned to watch two, two-minute film clips validated to elicit the targeted emotion. The online food advertisement did not significantly impact food choices, except that Black and Hispanic groups selected a higher share of calories from unhealthy foods. Participants in a negative emotional state selected more unhealthy sweet snacks. Finally, we find only weak evidence that a positive emotional state amplified the impact of food advertisements on the nutritional quality of food selection. Together, results suggest that while a negative emotional state drives food choices, this pattern occurs independently from food advertisement exposure