Age-related differences in emotional reactivity, regulation, and rejection sensitivity in adolescence.

Abstract

Although adolescents’ emotional lives are thought to be more turbulent than those of adults, it is unknown whether this difference is attributable to developmental changes in emotional reactivity or emotion regulation. Study 1 addressed this question by presenting healthy individuals aged 10–23 with negative and neutral pictures and asking them to respond naturally or use cognitive reappraisal to down-regulate their responses on a trial-by-trial basis. Results indicated that age exerted both linear and quadratic effects on regulation success but was unrelated to emotional reactivity. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings using a different reappraisal task and further showed that situational (i.e., social vs. nonsocial stimuli) and dispositional (i.e., level of rejection sensitivity) social factors interacted with age to predict regulation success: young adolescents were less successful at regulating responses to social than to nonsocial stimuli, particularly if the adolescents were high in rejection sensitivity. Taken together, these results have important implications for the inclusion of emotion regulation in models of emotional and cognitive development.

Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation

“…Yet, even sophisticated models do not include affect-biased attention within the taxonomy of regulatory processes. Rather, such attention is typically described as a symptom of reactive 'bottom-up' emotional response (e.g., [11,12]). …”

Regulación emocional en niños y adolescentes: conceptos, procesos e influencias

“…concepts, processes and influences al., 2014; Silvers McRae, Gabrieli, Gross, Remy, & Ochsner, 2012;Steinberg, 2008;Thompson et al, 2013;Van der Graaff, Branje, De Wied, Hawk, Van Lier, & Meeus, 2014;Zeman et al, 2006). Recent neuroimaging studies in adolescents between 11 and 19 years of age have confirmed that, when observed by peers, young adolescents show a weaker activation of brain areas associated with cognitive control and instead show higher neuronal activity in regions associated with rewards, which explains the youngsters' need to actively seek acceptance of their social group (Brodbeck et al, 2013;Chein et al, 2011;Guyer et al, 2014;Steinberg, 2008).…”

Performance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency: Mapping links with cognitive flexibility and perceived stress

“…Reappraisal capacity was assessed using a computerized paradigm adapted from prior reappraisal protocols Silvers et al, 2012;Silvers, Weber, Wager, & Ochsner, 2015). We chose to employ a reinterpretation variant of reappraisal in the current study because of its applied relevance.…”