Specificity of emotion regulation difficulties related to anxiety in early adolescence

Abstract

Etiological models identify difficulties in emotion regulation as potential contributors to the development and maintenance of anxiety. To date, studies with adolescents have not tested whether different types of anxiety symptoms are related to different emotion regulation difficulties. The current study aimed to examine specificity of associations between emotion regulation difficulties and symptoms of social and generalized anxiety in early adolescence. Ninety adolescents (ages 11–14 years) completed measures of emotion regulation and anxiety symptoms. Social and generalized anxiety symptoms showed similar bivariate correlations with emotion regulation. However, when controlling for generalized anxiety, social anxiety symptoms were uniquely related to emotion understanding, acceptance, evaluation, and reactivity. Generalized anxiety symptoms were uniquely related to emotion modification. The current study suggests that social and generalized anxiety symptoms have both common and unique associations with emotion regulation difficulties in early adolescence, and has implications for which emotion regulation skills to target in clinical interventions.

The Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Problem Gaming Among Adolescents: A Nationally Representative Survey Study

“…Acceptance—treated frequently as the opposite of experiential avoidance (98) or as a component of mindfulness (99, 100)—has been proved to be positively associated with psychological health in both adult (101) and adolescent samples (102, 103). However, in the present study, there was no relationship between this strategy and online problem gaming.…”

Positive and Negative Emotion Regulation in Adolescence: Links to Anxiety and Depression

“…Other work has sought to investigate patterns of disrupted emotion regulation specific to individual anxiety disorders. One study suggested greater deficits in emotional clarity and non-acceptance of emotions in social anxiety disorder compared to generalized anxiety disorder (using the DERS [38]). However, another found no differences between groups of adolescents with different anxiety disorder diagnoses (using the FEEL-KJ [37]).…”

A game for emotional regulation in adolescents: The (body) interface device matters

“…ER strategies have been researched mainly in adults, although recent studies have shown their relevance in childhood and adolescence (Betts, Gullone, & Allen, 2009;Gullone, Hughes, King, & Tonge, 2010;Gullone & Taffe, 2012;Larsen et al, 2013), and they have been related to psychological disorders in this population, such as anxiety, depression (i.e., Garber, Braafladt, & Weiss, 1995;Mathews, Kerns, & Ciesla, 2014;Silk, Steinberg, & Morris, 2003;Southam-Gerow & Kendall, 2002;Suveg & Zeman, 2004), aggressiveness (i.e., Bohnert, Crnic, & Lim, 2003;Dearing, Relyea, & Simons, 2002;Muñoz, Kimonis, Frick, & Aucoin, 2013;Sullivan, Helms, Kliewer, & Goodman, 2010) or eating disorders (i.e., Sim & Zeman, 2005, 2006, among others.…”