Trajectory of emotion dysregulation in positive and negative affect across childhood predicts adolescent emotion dysregulation and overall functioning

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 1722-1733
Author(s):  
Alecia C. Vogel ◽  
Rebecca Tillman ◽  
Nourhan M. El-Sayed ◽  
Joshua J. Jackson ◽  
Susan B. Perlman ◽  
...  

AbstractEmotion dysregulation is cross-diagnostic and impairing. Most research has focused on dysregulated expressions of negative affect, often measured as irritability, which is associated with multiple forms of psychopathology and predicts negative outcomes. However, the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) include both negative and positive valence systems. Emerging evidence suggests that dysregulated expressions of positive affect, or excitability, in early childhood predict later psychopathology and impairment above and beyond irritability. Typically, irritability declines from early through middle childhood; however, the developmental trajectory of excitability is unknown. The impact of excitability across childhood on later emotion dysregulation is also yet unknown. In a well-characterized, longitudinal sample of 129 children studied from ages 3 to 5.11 years through 14 to 19 years, enriched for early depression and disruptive symptoms, we assessed the trajectory of irritability and excitability using multilevel modeling and how components of these trajectories impact later emotion dysregulation. While irritability declines across childhood, excitability remains remarkably stable both within and across the group. Overall levels of excitability (excitability intercept) predict later emotion dysregulation as measured by parent and self-report and predict decreased functional magnetic resonance imaging activity in cognitive emotion regulation regions during an emotion regulation task. Irritability was not related to any dysregulation outcome above and beyond excitability.

Author(s):  
Chen ◽  
Chun

Background: Previous studies revealed that female adolescents are more likely than males to engage in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) to regulate negative emotions; however, the dimensions of emotion regulation that are associated with NSSI behavior in adolescents require further examination. The present study aimed to identify Taiwanese female adolescent clusters with NSSI engagement frequency and to evaluate the association of specific forms of emotion dysregulation with NSSI. Methods: The participants were 438 female adolescents (mean age = 15.23 years, SD = 1.24, range between 13 and 18) recruited from 11 high schools. Self-report questionnaires assessing NSSI, difficulties in emotion regulation, and positive and negative affect were administered, and 37% of respondents reported a history of NSSI. Results: The analysis of NSSI frequency yielded three groups: severe, moderate, and non-NSSI. High negative affect, low positive affect, and difficulties in all aspects of emotion regulation differentiated female adolescents in the severe NSSI group from their counterparts in the non-NSSI group. The moderate and severe NSSI groups were further distinguished by age of onset, negative affect, emotion regulation strategies, and impulse control. Adolescents classified in the severe group reported earlier onset of NSSI, higher negative affect, less emotion regulation strategies, and more difficulty with impulse control. Conclusions: The results indicate that assessments of NSSI and emotion regulation should be incorporated in youth mental health screening. The clinical implications of NSSI behavior intervention require further discussion.


Author(s):  
W. Michael Vanderlind ◽  
Jutta Joormann

Depression is a disorder of emotion dysregulation. Indeed, emotion regulation difficulties are clearly evident in the hallmark features of the disorder: sustained negative affect and anhedonia. Whereas an abundance of research has focused on the downregulation of negative affect, only recently has empirical work begun to untangle depression-related difficulties experiencing and maintaining positive emotions. This chapter first reviews the phenomenology of positive emotion disruptions within major depression and then identifies emerging findings that highlight potential mechanisms of these disruptions. Various forms of methodology (e.g., self-report, behavioral tasks, psychophysiology, neuroimaging) are integrated to address the following questions: Where does positive emotion fall apart in depression and why? The chapter concludes by discussing implications for the assessment of major depression as well as the refinement of interventions aimed at treating this debilitating disorder.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Ngombe ◽  
Klaus Kessler ◽  
Daniel J Shaw

Traditionally, research into emotion regulation (ER) has focused primarily on the intra-personal processes through which we regulate our own emotions intrinsically. More recently, however, studies have begun to explore the inter-personal nature of intrinsic ER – that is, how we regulate our emotions under the guidance of others. Preliminary evidence suggests that the ER is more effective when implemented inter- rather than intra-personally, but these findings are based exclusively on subjective ratings that capture only the experience of emotions. The current study therefore investigated whether this apparent superiority of inter-personal intrinsic ER could be replicated and extended to physiological measures of affective reactions – namely, metrics of electrodermal activity. In addition, we administered several self-report instruments to measure behavioural phenotypes associated with individual differences in intrinsic ER to identify groups that might benefit maximally from inter-personal guidance. In a within-subjects design, a large sample (N=146) were required to down-regulate their emotional reactions to negatively valenced images using an ER strategy they had chosen themselves intra-personally or one that had been recommended to them inter-personally. Subjective ratings and physiological responses converged to demonstrate the greater effectiveness of inter- over intra-personal ER in decreasing negative affective reactions, illustrating its potential therapeutic application for conditions characterised by emotion dysregulation. Interestingly, though, data from the self-report instruments did not reveal patterns of behaviour associated with its efficacy, and so it remains to be seen if and how the benefits of inter-personal ER extend to clinical populations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 1023-1035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Lotte Van Beveren ◽  
Sven C. Mueller ◽  
Caroline Braet

AbstractAlthough numerous studies reveal altered respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) among children, adolescents, and adults who exhibit emotion dysregulation, effects of temperamental vulnerability and parental mental health on RSA remain unclear. We evaluated the relationship among emotion regulation, RSA, and RSA reactivity in a pooled sample of 24 vulnerable and 31 resilient adolescents (mean age = 13.69 years; 60% girls), including associations with temperamental vulnerability and parental depressive symptoms. Participants watched a neutral film clip while their resting RSA was recorded, and then completed a reward and frustration task, using an affective Posner paradigm. Temperament and emotion regulation were assessed via self-report and parent report, and parents reported on their own depressive symptoms. Low resting RSA was associated with temperamental negative emotionality, whereas greater RSA reactivity to frustration was associated with maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. No significant relations were found between RSA and parental depressive symptoms. This study elucidates the role of RSA as a biomarker of individual differences in emotion dysregulation and temperamental vulnerability and stresses the importance of considering multiple units of analyses, as well as functional domains, when studying emotional responding and regulation in adolescents.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Skye Fitzpatrick ◽  
Sonya Varma ◽  
Janice R. Kuo

Abstract Background Leading theories suggest that borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an emotion dysregulation disorder involving lower basal vagal tone, higher baseline emotion, heightened emotional reactivity, delayed emotional recovery, and emotion regulation deficits. However, the literature to date lacks a unifying paradigm that tests all of the main emotion dysregulation components and comprehensively examines whether BPD is an emotion dysregulation disorder and, if so, in what ways. This study addresses the empirical gaps with a unified paradigm that assessed whether BPD is characterized by five leading emotion dysregulation components compared to generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and healthy control (HC) groups. Methods Emotion was assessed across self-report, sympathetic, and parasympathetic indices. Participants with BPD, GAD, and HCs (N = 120) first underwent baseline periods assessing basal vagal tone and baseline emotional intensity, followed by rejection-themed stressors assessing emotional reactivity. Participants then either reacted normally to assess emotional recovery or attempted to decrease emotion using mindfulness or distraction to assess emotion regulation implementation deficits. Results Individuals with BPD and GAD exhibited higher self-reported and sympathetic baseline emotion compared to HCs. The BPD group also exhibited self-reported emotion regulation deficits using distraction only compared to the GAD group. Conclusions There is minimal support for several emotion dysregulation components in BPD, and some components that are present appear to be pervasive across high emotion dysregulation groups rather than specific to BPD. However, BPD may be characterized by problems disengaging from emotion using distraction.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Young ◽  
Christina Sandman ◽  
Michelle Craske

Emotion regulation skills develop substantially across adolescence, a period characterized by emotional challenges and developing regulatory neural circuitry. Adolescence is also a risk period for the new onset of anxiety and depressive disorders, psychopathologies which have long been associated with disruptions in regulation of positive and negative emotions. This paper reviews the current understanding of the role of disrupted emotion regulation in adolescent anxiety and depression, describing findings from self-report, behavioral, peripheral psychophysiological, and neural measures. Self-report studies robustly identified associations between emotion dysregulation and adolescent anxiety and depression. Findings from behavioral and psychophysiological studies are mixed, with some suggestion of specific impairments in reappraisal in anxiety. Results from neuroimaging studies broadly implicate altered functioning of amygdala-prefrontal cortical circuitries, although again, findings are mixed regarding specific patterns of altered neural functioning. Future work may benefit from focusing on designs that contrast effects of specific regulatory strategies, and isolate changes in emotional regulation from emotional reactivity. Approaches to improve treatments based on empirical evidence of disrupted emotion regulation in adolescents are also discussed. Future intervention studies might consider training and measurement of specific strategies in adolescents to better understand the role of emotion regulation as a treatment mechanism.


2016 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Jérôme Rimpel ◽  
Sandra Schönfelder ◽  
Michèle Wessa

Biomedicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1469
Author(s):  
Eva Rüfenacht ◽  
Eléonore Pham ◽  
Rosetta Nicastro ◽  
Karen Dieben ◽  
Roland Hasler ◽  
...  

Childhood maltreatment (CM) may have a long-term effect on emotion regulation. This study aimed to explore the relationship between CM and emotion dysregulation (ED) in a heterogeneous population. Four hundred seventy French-speaking outpatients (N = 279 ADHD, N = 70 BPD, N = 60 ADHD + BPD, N = 61 clinical controls) completed the Emotion Reactivity Scale (ERS), the Cognitive Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ). Reports of childhood maltreatment experiences were significantly associated with increased levels of emotion reactivity in all our groups and in the whole population, with a greater use of non-adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and insecure attachment patterns. Emotional abuse showed the strongest effect. Further analysis indicated that an anxious attachment style significantly mediated the relationship between CM and the use of non-adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and emotion reactivity. The results of our study suggest an impact of CM on ED and a potentially marked effect of emotional abuse. They also indicate a potentially mediating role of insecure attachment in the relationship between a history of childhood abuse and emotion reactivity and a higher use of non-adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies in adulthood.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizia Velotti ◽  
Claudia Civilla ◽  
Guyonne Rogier ◽  
Sara Beomonte Zobel

Background: The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak is currently putting a strain on the mental health resilience of the world's population. Specifically, it is likely to elicit an intense response to fear and to act as a risk factor for the onset of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some individuals may be more at risk than others, with pathological personality variables being a potential candidate as a central vulnerability factor. In addition, the pathways that lead the pathological personality to PTSD and intense fear responses to COVID-19 are likely to be explained by poor emotion regulation capacities, as well as by dissociative mechanisms.Aims: This study aimed to shed light on vulnerability factors that may account for the onset of PTSD and intense responses of fear in response to COVID-19 outbreak and to test the mediating role of emotion dysregulation and dissociation proneness in these pathways.Methods: We used a longitudinal design of research administered to a sample of community individuals (N = 308; meanage = 35.31, SD = 13.91; 22.7% were male). Moreover, we used self-report questionnaires to measure pathological personality, emotion regulation capacities, dissociative proneness at the beginning of the lockdown, and PTSD symptoms and fear of COVID-19 at the end of the Italian lockdown (from March 9 to May 18, 2020). Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.Results: We found that pathological personality levels longitudinally predicted PTSD and fear of COVID-19 levels. Moreover, the associations between emotion dysregulation and dissociation were shown to significantly and totally mediate the relationship between pathological personality and PTSD, whereas no significant mediation effects were observed in relation to fear of COVID-19.Conclusions: Individuals with pathological personality traits may be more vulnerable to the onset of negative psychological consequences related to COVID-19 outbreak, such as PTSD symptomatology and fear levels. Emotion regulation capacities appear to be relevant targets of interventions for PTSD symptomatology. Future research should explore the mediating variables linking pathological personality to intense fear responses to COVID-19.


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