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Developmental changes in neural correlates of cognitive reappraisal: An ERP study using the late positive potential
Abstract
Objective:
The reduction of the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) following cognitive reappraisal has been used as a neural marker of emotion regulation. However, studies employing this neural marker in children are scarce and findings are not conclusive, with most studies showing a lack of LPP modulation after reappraisal in children in the age range of 5-12 years. The aim of the current study was therefore to investigate developmental changes in sensitivity of LPP modulation to cognitive reappraisal. To do so, LPP modulation due to cognitive reappraisal of negative pictures was compared between two age groups (8- to 11- versus 12- to 15-year-olds) and regression analyses were applied within the total sample to test whether sensitivity of LPP modulation shows a linear increase with age.
Method:
In 63 children the LPP was measured after negative pictures that were either combined with a negative story or with a neutral, reappraising story.
Results:
Although groups did not differ for self-reports on reappraisal, a significant reduction of LPP following cognitive reappraisal was only found in the older children, whereas such an effect was absent in the younger children. Findings were similar for boys and girls. Additional analyses showed a linear increase in sensitivity of LPP modulation with age.
Conclusions:
The results indicate that LPP modulation as measured in the current paradigm can be used as a valid index of emotion regulation in boys and girls but that caution is recommended using it in younger children.
... Studies measuring self-reported affect during emotion regulation tasks show that by around 7 or 8 years of ageand possibly as young as 6-children report reduced negative affect when they are instructed to reappraise negative stimuli. Studies using directed reappraisal paradigms, in which children are provided with a story for interpreting each stimulus, show that children around 7 or 8 years old report lower negative affect following negative stimuli that are paired with a reappraisal story (Pitskel et al., 2011;Dougherty et al., 2015;Leventon and Bauer, 2016;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). Furthermore, studies using non-directed reappraisal paradigms have revealed that, by middle childhood, children report reduced negative affect when they generate and use their own reappraisals for emotional stimuli. ...
... This is particularly problematic for developmental research since younger children may have less insight into their emotional experiences than do older children and adolescents. In support of this point, Van Cauwenberge et al. (2017) observed that the younger children in their sample (those aged 8-11 years) showed a greater effect of reappraisal on self-reported negative affect despite showing lesser effects of reappraisal on neural indices of emotional reactivity relative to adolescents aged 12-15 years. Additionally, since the instruction to reappraise is given explicitly, participants' self-reports are subject to social desirability biases-that is, they may report reduced negative affect in reappraisal conditions because they know that is the desired response. ...
... In contrast, several studies have shown no significant effect of reappraisal on LPP amplitudes to negative images in samples of children aged 5-7 years (DeCicco et al., 2012), 7-9 years (DeCicco et al., 2014), and 8-11 years (Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017), and no reduction in amygdala activation with reappraisal of sad film clips in children aged 8-10 years (Lévesque et al., 2004). Contrary to expectation, some studies have even provided evidence of increased emotionality during reappraisal of negative images in children, including enhanced amygdala activation in children aged 6-9 years (Dougherty et al., 2015;Silvers et al., 2017) and enhanced LPP amplitudes in children aged 8-9 years (Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). ...
Cognitive reappraisal is an important emotion regulation strategy that shows considerable developmental change in its use and effectiveness. This paper presents a systematic review of the evidence base regarding the development of cognitive reappraisal from early childhood through adolescence and provides methodological recommendations for future research. We searched Scopus, PsycINFO, and ERIC for empirical papers measuring cognitive reappraisal in normative samples of children and youth between the ages of 3 and 18 years published in peer-reviewed journals through August 9th, 2018. We identified 118 studies that met our inclusion criteria. We first present a quantitative review of the methodologies used to investigate cognitive reappraisal in children and adolescents, with attention to variations in methodologies by the sample age range. We then present a qualitative review of findings with attention to: (1) the age at which children begin to effectively use cognitive reappraisal to regulate their emotions, and (2) developmental changes in cognitive reappraisal from early childhood through adolescence. We consider how methodological differences may contribute to inconsistencies in findings, highlight gaps in the literature that remain to be addressed, and make recommendations for future directions.
... The ERP responses generated when employing emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal, are mostly found in later stages of stimulus processing (i.e. during the P3/LPP time window). The LPP was reduced in healthy children when instructed to reappraise by interpreting threatening images as neutral [21,22]. This LPP reduction has been thought to reflect successful emotion regulation via reappraisal. ...
... Reappraisal ability seems to improve continuously from childhood until early adulthood, likely due to prefrontal cortex maturation [23,24]. Consequently, studies report linear relationships between enhanced reappraisal-induced LPP modulation and increasing age [22,25]. Taken together, these results suggest that the LPP can be modulated by reappraisal, particularly in older children, but no study to date has investigated how these effects present in children with SAD. ...
... smaller reappraisal-related reductions of subjective arousal and LPP amplitudes). Third, we expected reappraisal to be more effective in older children compared to younger children, consistent with the predictions of developmental literature [22,25]. Since other childhood anxiety disorders (e.g. ...
Cognitive models of social anxiety suggest that social anxiety disorder (SAD) is
characterized by both enhanced emotional reactivity and deficits in emotion regulation.
Emotional reactivity to socially threatening children’s faces and their modulation through
reappraisal were measured via subjective ratings and electrocortical responses in children (age 10-13) with SAD (n = 28), clinical controls with mixed anxiety disorders (n = 28), and healthy controls (n = 29). Children with SAD showed higher subjective reactivity to the images of angry children’s faces while all children reported reduced reactivity in their subjective ratings following reappraisal. Reduced electrocortical reactivity after reappraisal was only evident in older children and boys and was unrelated to anxiety. The present study indicates that cognitive reappraisal may be beneficial in reducing subjective reactivity in children with anxiety disorders, while neural effects of reappraisal may emerge at older ages.
... Reappraisal appears to be highly effective in down-regulating the experience of negative emotions with few cognitive and physiological costs (Gross, 1998(Gross, , 2002Hermann, Kress, & Stark, 2017;Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, 2012;Shafir, Schwartz, Blechert, & Sheppes, 2015;Silvers, Buhle, Ochsner, & Silvers, 2013). The effects of reappraisal aimed to decrease negative emotions are reflected behaviorally in the reduction of self-reported negative experience (Staudinger, Erk, Abler, & Walter, 2009;Wager, Davidson, Hughes, Lindquist, & Ochsner, 2008), that is, reduced unpleasantness of, and arousal associated with, negative stimuli (Foti & Hajcak, 2008;Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Thiruchselvam, Blechert, Sheppes, Rydstrom, & Gross, 2011;Van Cauwenberge, Leeuwen, Hoppenbrouwers, & Wiersema, 2017;Yuan, Zhou, & Hu, 2014). Furthermore, numerous studies suggest that reappraisal can influence many aspects of emotional responding, such as self-reported negative affect (Gross, 1998), peripheral physiology (Ray, McRae, Ochsner, & Gross, 2010), and neural indicators of emotional arousal (Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006). ...
... In the current study, both reappraisal success and failure groups processed the negative-watch stimuli as equally unpleasant, and they had TA B L E 4 Mean LPP amplitudes (SD in parentheses) of each stimulus type in the early, middle and late time windows on frontal, central and occipital regions for the success and failure groups similar arousal ratings, consistent with previous research (Foti & Hajcak, 2008;Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Thiruchselvam et al., 2011;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017;Yuan et al., 2014). These results suggest that both groups were equally impacted by the negative stimuli. ...
... A number of previous studies reported that reappraisal of negative stimuli reduced the amplitude of LPP relative to the passive viewing of negative stimuli (Foti & Hajcak, 2008;Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Parvaz et al., 2012;Thiruchselvam et al., 2011). Nevertheless, a few recent studies failed to demonstrate this effect of reappraisal on the LPP amplitude in both normal adults (Gardener et al., 2013;Sarlo et al., 2013;Yuan et al., 2014) and young children (DeCicco, O'Toole, & Dennis, 2014;DeCicco et al., 2012;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). ...
Introduction:
Cognitive reappraisal, an important strategy of emotion regulation, can change emotional experience and attention to emotional information. However, not all individuals can deploy reappraisal strategies successfully. In the current study, we investigated event-related potential (ERP) characteristics of reappraisal success and of reappraisal failure.
Methods:
Twenty-six participants were divided into the success group or the failure group based on self-report ratings of how successful they were in reducing their response to negative images using cognitive reappraisal strategy. All participants viewed 30 neutral images and 30 negative images which they were asked to just watch, and 30 negative stimuli that they were asked to reappraise, while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded.
Results:
The success group reported a significant reduction in the unpleasantness of negative images than the failure group in the negative-reappraisal condition. The ERP data indicated that two time windows differentiated between the success and failure groups. In 200-300 ms, P200 was significantly more positive to the negative-watch condition relative to both negative-reappraisal and neutral conditions in the failure group, while no difference was observed in the success group. In 300-5,000 ms, cognitive reappraisal led to increased late positive potential (LPP) relative to negative-watch in the early and middle latency windows (300-3,100 ms) in both groups; in the late latency window (3,100-5,000 ms), the reappraisal success group showed the LPP amplitude to the negative-reappraisal stimuli to be more positive than to the negative-watch stimuli, while no difference was found in the reappraisal failure group.
Conclusion:
Our study provided direct evidence that different neurophysiological features were associated with reappraisal success and failure while engaging in the reappraisal of negative stimuli. This result will contribute to better understanding of the neural mechanism of emotion regulation in emotional disorders (i.e., depression and anxiety).
... These findings converge with neurodevelopmental evidence that these prefrontal regions undergo protracted development through this age window (Ahmed, Bittencourt-Hewitt, & Sebastian, 2015;Gogtay et al., 2004;Shaw et al., 2008). However, not all studies have found age-related improvements in cognitive reappraisal success across childhood and adolescence, either when down-regulating negative affect in response to aversive stimuli (Ahmed et al., 2018;Van Cauwenberge, Van Leeuwen, Hoppenbrouwers, & Wiersema, 2017) or when down-regulating craving in response to appetizing foods (Giuliani & Pfeifer, 2015;Silvers et al., 2014). Instead, these studies found no relations between reappraisal success and age. ...
... Similarly, the lack of developmental differences in reappraisal success in this study is inconsistent with some prior studies (McRae, Silvers et al., 2012Silvers et al., , 2015Silvers et al., , 2017b and consistent with others (Ahmed et al., 2018;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). These discrepancies suggest that there may be important conceptual factors that moderate whether or not a study will find Note. ...
... One potential moderating variable is the type of reappraisal strategy under investigation. Lack of developmental effects have been found when reinterpretations were provided by the task and when participants were instructed to project themselves temporally into the future (Ahmed et al., 2018;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017), and increased cognitive reappraisal success across age has been found when participants were instructed to psychologically distance themselves from the content of images (Silvers et al., 2012(Silvers et al., , 2015(Silvers et al., , 2017b. However, two studies found increased reappraisal success across age when participants were given general instructions to reinterpret the meaning of aversive images, similar to the prompt used in this study Silvers et al., 2012). ...
Regulating one’s emotions is an important psychological skill at all ages. Cognitive reappraisal—changing the meaning of a stimulus to alter its emotional impact—is an effective emotion regulation technique. Prior work shows that adults spontaneously reduce their use of present tense verbs and first-person singular pronouns (e.g., “I,” “me,” “mine”) when engaging in cognitive reappraisal, a linguistic shift that is thought to track increased psychological distance. Here, we investigated whether such linguistic distancing during emotion regulation varied across age. Participants aged 10 to 23 (N = 112) spoke aloud their thoughts and feelings while completing a classic cognitive reappraisal task. Participants’ verbal responses were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for linguistic distancing, compliance with reappraisal instructions, and use of 8 different reappraisal strategies identified by prior researchers. Results replicated prior work in a developmental sample: Reappraisal decreased negative affect and increased linguistic distancing, and stronger linguistic distancing during reappraisal was associated with more successful emotion regulation. Contrary to hypotheses, we found no age differences in linguistic distancing or reappraisal success, even after excluding trials on which participants did not comply with reappraisal instructions. However, reappraisal strategy use varied across age. Use of the changing circumstances and separating oneself (i.e., distancing) strategies increased across age whereas changing consequences use decreased across age. Additionally, in adolescence, challenging reality use was elevated and problem-solving use was reduced compared to other ages. Results suggest that linguistic distancing during emotion regulation is stable from age 10 to 23 but use of cognitive reappraisal strategies differs.
... Concordant with neuroimaging research on changes in the neural circuitry underlying emotion regulation across development [69], neurophysiological research has found differences in the ability to modulate the LPP under explicit emotion regulation instructions with age. Specifically, studies have shown minimal modulation of the LPP during reappraisal compared to passive viewing in late childhood and early adolescence, while significant LPP reductions during emotion regulation emerge by mid-to late adolescence [16,18,76]. These findings support the sensitivity of the LPP to individual differences in emotion regulation abilities, which could potentially help identify those at greatest risk for depression. ...
... The LPP was scored across frontal (Fz, FC1, FC2) and centroparietal (Pz, Cz, CP1, CP2) electrode sites (these sites were available for all participants regardless of electrode montage used) and are consistent with prior research examining LPP alterations during explicit emotion regulation [17,59]. Though the exact time frame of the LPP windows varies across studies depending upon the duration of the stimuli presentations, previous LPP research on emotion regulation consistently divides the LPP into relative early, middle, and late time windows [16,17,25,61,72,76]. We quantified the early LPP using a window that is commonly used in the literature examining emotional reactivity to images presented for relatively short durations (400-1000 ms; [8,41,73,79]), and then split the remaining 5000 ms into middle (1000-3500 ms) and late (3500-6000 ms) windows (see Fig. 1). ...
Depressed individuals tend to use maladaptive emotion regulation strategies more frequently than non-depressed individuals while using adaptive strategies (e.g., reappraisal) less frequently. Objective neural markers of emotion regulation ability could aid in identifying youth at greatest risk for depression and functional impairment more broadly. We used electroencephalography to examine emotion regulation in adolescents (aged 14–17; N = 201) with current depression (n = 94) and without any history of depression (n = 107) at high (n = 54) and low (n = 53) risk for depression based on a maternal history of depression. Results revealed group differences in event-related potential markers of emotion regulation using multiple scoring approaches. Never-depressed adolescents had significant reductions in mean-activity and principal component analysis-identified late positive potential responses to dysphoric stimuli under reappraisal instructions compared to passive viewing. There was no significant difference in neural responses between conditions among depressed adolescents. The magnitude of the reappraisal effects appeared slightly stronger for low-risk adolescents relative to high-risk. Exploratory analyses further demonstrated that the association between neural markers of emotion regulation and overall functioning was moderated by age, such that impaired emotion regulation abilities predicted poorer functioning among older adolescents. Findings support the sensitivity of the late positive potential to emotion regulation impairments in depression and psychopathology more broadly.
... The increased LPP amplitude elicited by viewing emotional stimuli is reduced through the application of ER strategies such as cognitive reappraisal (CR) (e.g. Parvaz et al., 2012;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). Interestingly, however, some studies demonstrated an increase of the LPP amplitude during ER (Baur et al., 2015;Cao et al., 2020;Langeslag and Surti, 2017), which might indicate the allocation of cognitive or attentional resources for ER strategy selection (Baur et al., 2015). ...
... Moreover, the application of CR might be more difficult for adolescents as neural regions that are involved in ER undergo continued maturation well into adulthood (Ahmed et al., 2015). Although some studies in adolescents demonstrated a decrease in the LPP when CR was applied, these studies either applied other ER strategies than CR or presented a predefined reappraisal of the emotional material (Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017), resulting in a less challenging task. Taken together, we suggest that the increased LPP amplitude reflects an increased cognitive effort during CR in our adolescent sample. ...
Background:
Adolescent major depression (MD) is characterized by deficits in emotion regulation (ER). Little is known about the neurophysiological correlates that are associated with these deficits. Moreover, the additional examination of visual attention during ER would allow a more in-depth understanding of ER deficits but has not yet been applied simultaneously.
Methods:
N = 33 adolescents with MD and n = 35 healthy controls (HCs) aged 12-18 years performed an ER task during which they either a) down-regulated their negative affective response to negative images via cognitive reappraisal or b) attended the images without changing their affective response. During the task, the Late Positive Potential (LPP), gaze fixations on emotional image aspects, and self-reported affective responses were collected simultaneously.
Results:
Compared to HCs, adolescents with MD demonstrated reduced ER success based on self-report but did not differ in LPP amplitudes. Participants in both groups showed increased LPP amplitudes when they reappraised negative pictures compared to when they attended them in the middle LPP window. Only in the HC group, increased LPP amplitudes during reappraisal were paralleled by more positive affective responses.
Limitation:
The applied stimuli were part of picture databases and might therefore have limited self-relevance.
Conclusions:
Increased LPP amplitude during ER in both groups might be specific to adolescence and might suggest that ER at this age is challenging and requires a high amount of cognitive resources. These findings provide an important starting point for future interventional studies in youth MD.
... Only four studies examined the relation between LPP and traditional measures of ER in youth. Van Cauwenberge et al. (2017b) found that LPP modulation did not correlate with selfreported reappraisal. Van Cauwenberge et al. (2017a) found a positive correlation between the LPP and a self-reported measure of cognitive reappraisal; however, this was determined to be driven by outliers. ...
... Gross' (1998) definition of reappraisal specifies that this process occurs prior to the experience of emotion. Dennis and Hajcak (2009), Leventon and Bauer (2016), Van Cauwenberge et al. (2017a), andVan Cauwenberge et al. (2017b) all first presented their visual stimuli, followed by the audio interpretation, and then the stimuli were presented again. Given that these studies employed reappraisal after the emotional response was experienced, the results of these studies should be interpreted with caution given that they may have captured a response-focused regulatory attempt as opposed to the anticipated "reappraisal." ...
The mental health of young people is a growing public health concern. With socio-emotional difficulties in youth often resulting in psychiatric disorders later in life and most with mental health conditions rather stabilizing in time, it is essential to support healthy socio-emotional development. With a comprehensive definition of mental health, since emotion regulation (ER) plays a critical role in prevention, it becomes imperative to better understand how children effectively manage their emotions from an early age. Determining effective use of ER skills relies on adequate measurements. Typical methods of data collection in children present consistent shortcomings. This review addresses research findings considering the suitability of the late positive potential measured through electroencephalogram as a neural indicator of ER in children and youth. There is growing evidence, as reported in this review, that indicates that the late positive potential may be a reliable neural indicator of children's cognitive reappraisal abilities more specifically. Results generally suggest that the late positive potential amplitudes are sensitive to directed reappraisal in children. However, given the scant research, questions remain regarding developmental trends, methodology, interindividual variability, reappraisal of various stimuli, and how the late positive potential may relate to more traditional measures of ER. Directions for future research are provided, which are expected to address unanswered research questions and fill literature gaps. Taken together, the findings reviewed indicate that the late positive potential is generally sensitive to directed cognitive reappraisal in children and that there is promise of establishing this neural marker as an indicator of ER.
... For example, the presentation of a preceding auditory cue affects the salience of subsequent emotional stimuli, including a reduction in LPP amplitude, indicating regulation of emotional reactivity (Foti & Hajcak, 2008;Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Hajcak, Moser, & Simons, 2006;MacNamara, Foti, & Hajcak, 2009). ERP studies of cognitive reappraisal with children have produced mixed results (DeCicco, O'Toole, & Dennis, 2014;Van Cauwenberge, Van Leeuwen, Hoppenbrouwers, & Wiersema, 2017). LPP amplitude in school-aged children has been found to modulate based on the valance/salience of audio contextual cues associated with a visual emotional stimulus ), but not in other studies (DeCicco et al., , 2014. ...
... LPP amplitude in school-aged children has been found to modulate based on the valance/salience of audio contextual cues associated with a visual emotional stimulus ), but not in other studies (DeCicco et al., , 2014. Mixed findings involving LPP modulation as a neural marker of cognitive reappraisal may be due to developmental changes in the neural correlates of emotion regulation throughout childhood (Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). For example, DeCicco et al. (2014) argued that neural correlates of cognitive reappraisal may not develop until older childhood given their finding that a positive contextual narrative did not influence LPP amplitude to negative images in school-age children. ...
Purpose
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the neural correlates of emotion processing in 5- to 8-year-old children who do and do not stutter.
Methods
Participants were presented with an audio contextual cue followed by images of threatening (angry/fearful) and neutral facial expressions from similarly aged peers. Three conditions differed in audio-image pairing: neutral context-neutral expression (neutral condition), negative context-threatening expression (threat condition), and reappraisal context-threatening expression (reappraisal condition). These conditions reflected social stimuli that are ecologically valid to the everyday life of children.
Results
P100, N170, and late positive potential (LPP) ERP components were elicited over parietal and occipital electrodes. The threat condition elicited an increased LPP mean amplitude compared to the neutral condition across our participants, suggesting increased emotional reactivity to threatening facial expressions. In addition, LPP amplitude decreased during the reappraisal condition— evidence of emotion regulation. No group differences were observed in the mean amplitude of ERP components between children who do and do not stutter. Furthermore, dimensions of childhood temperament and stuttering severity were not strongly correlated with LPP elicitation.
Conclusion
These findings are suggestive that, at this young age, children who stutter exhibit typical brain activation underlying emotional reactivity and regulation to social threat from peer facial expressions.
... ERP studies of cognitive reappraisal with children have produced mixed results (Babkirk et al., 2014;DeCicco et al., 2014;Dennis and Hajcak, 2009;Hua et al., 2015;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). DeCicco et al. (2014) found that the provision of a positive contextual narrative did not influence the amplitude of LPP elicitation to negative images in school-age children, leading to the conclusion that the neural correlates for reappraisal may not develop until later childhood. ...
... DeCicco et al. (2014) found that the provision of a positive contextual narrative did not influence the amplitude of LPP elicitation to negative images in school-age children, leading to the conclusion that the neural correlates for reappraisal may not develop until later childhood. To the contrary, an increase of LPP amplitude to unpleasant pictures preceded by negative descriptions compared to similar pictures preceded by neutral descriptions has been observed in preschool and school-age children Hua et al., 2015;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). These findings are suggestive that LPP modulation as a marker of reappraisal may be contingent on specifics of the task and the social development of the child. ...
The school-age years is a period of increasing social interaction with peers and development of emotion regulation in facilitating that interaction. This study was an investigation of the neural correlates of emotional reactivity and reappraisal in typically developing school-age children elicited by threatening facial expressions of same-aged peers. This experimental paradigm is novel in eliciting event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to social stimuli that are ecologically valid to the everyday life of children. ERPs of 5- to 8-year-old children (N = 41, 18 females) were elicited by threatening (i.e., angry and fearful) and neutral child facial expressions, which were preceded by audio contextual cues. Three conditions differed in audio-image pairing: neutral context-neutral expression (neutral condition), negative context-threatening expression (threat condition), and reappraisal context-threatening expression (reappraisal condition). In addition, parental reporting of childhood temperament was collected to determine if elicited ERP morphologies were associated with temperamental dimensions of negative affect, extraversion, and effortful control. Elicitation of the P100 and N170 did not largely differ between conditions; however, amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP), a marker of heightened emotional reactivity and attention, was greater for threatening faces relative to neutral faces. During the reappraisal condition, no differences in ERP activity was observed compared to the threat condition. Neural substrates of emotional reactivity to social threat from peers were evident; however, the lack of ERP modulation facilitating reappraisal and the lack of strong associations between ERP morphology and temperamental dimensions is indicative of heterogeneity in LPP elicitation underlying emotion regulation in children.
... In other words, if people pay more attention to a cue, the elicited P3 would be higher. Furthermore, it has been argued that the reduction of late positive potential (LPP) can be used as a valid marker of emotion regulation (Hajcak and Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Thiruchselvam et al., 2011;Cauwenberge et al., 2017). ...
... Based on previous work, P3 was quantified by a mean amplitude measure that used Pz, P3, and P4 in a 350-450 ms time windows Chen et al., 2012;Koivisto et al., 2016); LPP was quantified by a mean amplitude measure that used POz, PO3, and PO4 in a 400-800 ms time window (Babkirk et al., 2014;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). Moreover, we decided to analyze difference waves calculated from the amplitude elicited by positive or negative picture judgment minus the amplitude elicited by neutral picture judgment (using the neutral picture judgment condition as a baseline). ...
Current research on emotion regulation has mainly focused on Gross’s cognitive strategies for regulating negative emotion; however, little attention has been paid to whether social cognitive processes can be used to regulate both positive and negative emotions. We considered perspective-taking as an aspect of social cognition, and investigated whether it would affect one’s own emotional response. The present study used a block paradigm and event-related potential (ERP) technology to explore this question. A 3 (perspective: self vs. pessimistic familiar other vs. optimistic familiar other) × 3 (valence: positive vs. neutral vs. negative) within-group design was employed. Thirty-six college students participated and considered their own or target others’ feelings about pictures with different valences. Results showed that positive emotional responses were more neutral under a pessimistic familiar other perspective, and more positive under an optimistic familiar other perspective, and vice versa for negative emotional responses. In ERP results, compared with a self-perspective, taking familiar others’ perspectives elicited reductions in P3 (370–410 ms) and LPP (400–800 ms) difference waves. These findings suggested that taking a pessimistic or optimistic familiar other perspective affects emotion regulation by changing later processing of emotional information.
... To obtain LPP values, participant data were averaged within the four conditions and finally within four distinct regions of interest (ROIs). Adapted from previous publications measuring the LPP (e.g., Auerbach et al., 2015;Langeslag & Surti, 2017;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017), as well as based on visual inspection of signal localization, the following ROIs were chosen: frontal (electrodes 16. 11, 19, 12, 5, 4), central (electrodes 7, 106, 129, 31, 55, 80), parietal (61, 62, 78, 67, 72, 77), and occipital (71, 76, 70, 75, 83, 74, 82). Data from individual electrodes were only included in the analysis if at least 20 of 36 trials per condition per participant were available to be analyzed. ...
Difficulties in emotion regulation (ER) are thought to contribute to the development and maintenance of major depression (MD) in adolescents. In healthy adults, a task-based training of ER has previously proven effective to reduce stress, but no such studies are available for MD. It is also unclear whether findings can be generalized onto adolescent populations. The final sample consisted of n = 70 adolescents with MD, who were randomized to a task-based ER training (n = 36) or a control training (n = 34). Across four sessions, the ER group was trained to downregulate negative affect to negative images via reappraisal, while the control group was instructed to attend the images. Rumination, stress-, and affect-related measures were assessed as primary outcomes, behavioral and neurophysiological responses (late positive potential, LPP), as secondary outcomes. The trial was preregistered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03957850). While there was no significant differential effect of the ER training on primary outcomes, we found small to moderate effects on rumination in the ER group, but not the control group. During reappraisal (compared to attend), the ER group showed an unexpected increase of the LPP during the first, but not during later training sessions. Although replication in large, multicenter trials is needed, our findings on effect sizes suggest that ER training might be promising to decrease rumination in adolescent MD. The LPP increase at the first session may represent cognitive effort, which was successfully reduced over the sessions. Future studies should research whether training effects transfer to daily life and are durable over a longer time period.
... The LPP is one of the important indicators of emotional processing and usually refers to a positive component occurring 300 ms to 6 s after stimulus onset (Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017;Wei et al., 2021). As it occurs later in processing, it may reflect conscious engagement in information processing (Hajcak et al., 2010) and attentional allocation to emotional stimuli (Simonetti et al., 2019). ...
Expression suppression, a common emotion regulation strategy, involves continuous efforts of the individual to suppress the behavioral expression of their emotional responses. Previous studies on the effect of expression suppression on emotion regulation have reported inconsistent findings. Based on neurophysiological research, the role of expression suppression should be revisited. Therefore, we investigated electroencephalogram (EEG) changes in individuals unconsciously initiating expression suppression while passively observing emotional pictures. We then compared these EEG data with those obtained from individuals engaging in unconscious cognitive reappraisal. Using subjective reporting of emotional experience and event-related potentials (ERPs), i.e., the P1 and late positive potential (LPP), in EEG data, we compared the effects of different emotion regulation strategies on the unconscious emotional responses of 28 college students. Regarding the subjective emotional experience, the reported emotional arousal in the unconscious cognitive reappraisal group and the unconscious expression suppression group was significantly lower than that in the control group, but no significant difference was found between the two groups. The arousal in response to negative pictures was significantly higher than that in response to neutral pictures. Compared with the control group, P1 amplitudes in the parietal and occipital lobes were significantly reduced in the unconscious expression suppression group, and P1 amplitudes in the parietal lobe were significantly decreased in the unconscious expression suppression group. Regarding the LPP amplitude, LPP amplitudes of the unconscious expression suppression group were significantly lower than those of the control group in the three periods, and there was no significant difference with those of the unconscious cognitive reappraisal group in the three periods. The LPP amplitude of the unconscious cognitive reappraisal group was significantly lower than that of the control group at 450–650 ms and 650–800 ms. Therefore, expression suppression occurred slightly earlier than cognitive reappraisal. The P1 latency in the parietal-occipital region of individuals was significantly faster than that in the frontal region. The LPP first manifested in the parietal-occipital region during the 250–800 ms period and expanded to other brain regions over time. The LPP presented differences due to valence at 250–450 ms, but with increased time, the abovementioned differences gradually disappeared. Cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression initiated under unconscious conditions regulated cortical activity in the visual attention and perceptual processing stages. In the early stage of visual attention, unconsciously initiating the two emotion regulation strategies reduced processing of emotional stimuli. In the later stage of perceptual processing, unconsciously initiating the two emotion regulation strategies effectively regulated individuals’ perceptual processing of stimuli.
... To obtain LPP values, participant data were averaged within the four conditions and finally within four distinct regions of interest (ROIs). Adapted from previous publications measuring the LPP (e.g., Auerbach et al., 2015;Langeslag & Surti, 2017;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017), as well as based on visual inspection of signal localization, the following ROIs were chosen: frontal (electrodes 16. 11, 19, 12, 5, 4), central (electrodes 7, 106, 129, 31, 55, 80), parietal (61, 62, 78, 67, 72, 77), and occipital (71, 76, 70, 75, 83, 74, 82). Data from individual electrodes were only included in the analysis if at least 20 of 36 trials per condition per participant were available to be analyzed. ...
... Meanwhile, task-based data have more consistently demonstrated age-related improvements in reappraisal capacity (i.e., how effectively reappraisal is used) from childhood through late adolescence (Silvers et al., 2017;Silvers et al., 2012;Theurel and Gentaz, 2018). While age-related differences in reappraisal capacity appear weaker for appetitive stimuli (Giuliani and Pfeifer, 2015;Silvers et al., 2014) and in narrower age bands (Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017;Ahmed et al., 2018), on whole there is evidence for linear age-related improvements in regulatory ability. These distinctions in cross-modality observations regarding emotion regulation are consistent with current empirical and theoretical findings suggesting an underappreciated distinction between individuals' regulatory "tendency" and "capacity" (Guassi Moreira et al., 2022;Silvers & Guassi Moreira, 2019;Gruber et al., 2023). ...
Emotion regulation is particularly important for adolescents as they undergo normative developmental changes in affective systems and experience heightened risk for psychopathology. Despite a high need for emotion regulation during adolescence, commonly studied emotion regulation strategies like cognitive reappraisal are less beneficial for adolescents than adults because they rely on neural regions that are still developing during this period (i.e., lateral prefrontal cortex). However, adolescence is also marked by increased valuation of peer relationships and sensitivity to social information and cues. In the present review, we synthesize research examining emotion regulation and peer influence across development to suggest that sensitivity to peers during adolescence could be leveraged to improve emotion regulation for this population. We first discuss developmental trends related to emotion regulation at the level of behavior and brain in adolescents, using cognitive reappraisal as an exemplar emotion regulation strategy. Next, we discuss social influences on adolescent brain development, describing caregiver influence and increasing susceptibility to peer influence, to describe how adolescent sensitivity to social inputs represents both a window of vulnerability and opportunity. Finally, we conclude by describing the promise of social (i.e., peer-based) interventions for enhancing emotion regulation in adolescence.
... Although reappraisal is regarded as one of the most effective ER strategies, it is also one of the most complex forms of cognitive ER that depends on semantic, working memory (Adamczyk et al., 2022), and inhibition processes . Effective implementation of this strategy shows a linear increase with age and is not fully developed until adolescence (McRae et al., 2012;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). In contrast to reappraisal, distraction is an attention disengagement strategy which downregulates emotion responding by limiting the attention and working memory resources devoted to processing the affective meaning of a stimulus (Adamczyk et al., 2022;McRae, 2016). ...
Evolutionary threats (ETs), such as predatory animals and heights, elicit stronger fear responses and are more often the subject of specific phobias, as compared to modern threats (MTs, such as guns and motorcycles). Since processing of ET depends on lower-order, phylogenetically conserved neural fear circuits, it may be less susceptible to higher-order (vs. simpler) cognitive emotion regulation. Given the relevance for treatment of specific phobias, we tested this hypothesis in an ERP study. Sixty-one female participants passively watched high-and low-threat pictures of evolutionary (snakes, lizards) and modern (guns, water-guns) origin, and downregulated responses to the high-threat pictures (snakes and guns) using either cognitive reappraisal or a simpler cognitive distraction strategy. ET elicited stronger early (EPN) and sustained (LPP) attention processing compared to MT. Both strategies successfully downregulated subjective and LPP (but not EPN) responses compared to passive watching. Although reappraisal was more effective subjectively, distraction downregulated the LPP earlier and stronger than reap-praisal, irrespective of the threat type. These findings provide novel evidence that neural responses to physical threat might be less susceptible to cognitive emotion regulation via higher-order (reappraisal) versus simpler (distraction) strategies, irrespective of the evolutionary or modern relevance of threat. Combining both strategies could be beneficial for the emotion regulation-enhancing interventions for specific phobias. Distraction could be used during initial exposure, to reduce immediate emotion responding and help endure the contact with the feared stimulus , whereas reappraisal could be used subsequently, when emotions are less intense, to change maladaptive thoughts about the stimulus for future encounters.
... This positive linear trend has been replicated across these reappraisal-based laboratory paradigms both in and outside of the scanner (McRae et al., 2012b;Silvers et al., 2017b). However, some studies do not show this linear increase, suggesting that there may be task-or sample-level moderators that influence when children and young adults differ in their regulatory capacity (Ahmed et al., 2018;Nook et al., 2020;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). Similarly, investigations into the nonlinearities of regulatory success between broad developmental stages have returned mixed results. ...
How we manage emotional responses to environmental threats is central to mental health, as difficulties regulating threat-related distress can blossom into symptoms of anxiety disorders. Given that anxiety disorders emerge early in the lifespan, it is crucial we understand the multi-level processes that support effective regulation of distress. Scholars have given increased attention to behavioral and neural development of emotion regulation abilities, particularly cognitive reappraisal capacity (i.e., how strongly one can down-regulate negative affect by reinterpreting a situation to change one's emotions). However, this work has not been well integrated with research on regulatory tendency (i.e., how often one spontaneously regulates emotion in daily life). Here, we review research on the development of both emotion regulation capacity and tendency. We then propose a framework for testing hypotheses and eventually constructing a neurodevelopmental model of both dimensions of emotion regulation. Clarifying how the brain supports both effective and frequent regulation of threat-related distress across development is crucial to identifying multi-level signs of dysregulation and developing interventions that support youth mental health.
... The ERP results also showed that down-regulation reappraisal (lasting from 300 ms to 1,500 ms after images onset) and expressive suppression (during 300-600 ms) significantly reduced the LPP amplitude in the parietal region, which were in line with our expectations. The parietal LPP mainly revealed the intensity of emotional stimuli (Cuthbert et al., 2000;Moser et al., 2009;Cauwenberge et al., 2017;Yan et al., 2018). As such, the LPP reduction under the down-regulation reappraisal (from 300 ms to 1,500 ms) and expressive suppression conditions (only during 300-600 ms) signals that down-regulation reappraisal and expressive suppression can effectively mitigate the intensity of sad emotions, and down-regulation reappraisal works lasting longer than expressive suppression. ...
Previous studies have found differences in the cognitive and neural mechanisms between cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression in the regulation of various negative emotions and the recognition of regulated stimuli. However, whether these differences are valid for sadness remains unclear. As such, we investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression on sadness regulation and the recognition of sad scenes adopting event-related potentials (ERPs). Twenty-eight healthy undergraduate and graduate students took part in this study. In the regulation phase, the participants were asked to down-regulation, expressive suppression, or maintain their sad emotion evoked by the sad images, and then to perform an immediately unexpected recognition task involving the regulated images. The behavioral results show that down-regulation reappraisal significantly diminished subjective feelings of sadness, but expressive suppression did not; both strategies impaired the participants’ recognition of sad images, and expressive suppression had a greater damaging effect on the recognition of sad images than down-regulation reappraisal. The ERP results indicate that reappraisal (from 300 ms to 1,500 ms after image onset) and expressive suppression (during 300–600 ms) significantly reduced the late positive potential (LPP) induced by sadness. These findings suggest that down-regulation reappraisal and expression suppression can effectively decrease sadness, and that down-regulation reappraisal (relative to expression suppression) is a more effective regulation strategy for sadness. Both strategies impair the recognition of sad scenes, and expression suppression (compared to down-regulation reappraisal) leads to relatively greater impairment in the recognition of sad scenes.
... The late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential (ERP) component that is sensitive to emotional processing, is a positive deflection that begins approximately 300 ms following stimulus onset (Cuthbert et al., 2000;Babkirk et al., 2015;Van Cauwenberge et al., 2017). It has been established as an indicator of emotional reactivity that complements other measures of self-reported emotion (Allan et al., 2019;Hajcak & Foti, 2020). ...
The cortisol awakening response (CAR) refers to a sharp rise in cortisol concentrations within the 45 min following morning awakening. Alterations in CAR have been associated with various internalizing symptoms and brain function. The current study aimed to investigate the association between CAR and neural activity in response to unpleasant emotional pictures. A total of 46 healthy adults (22.55 years ± 1.69) collected saliva samples at 0, 30, and 45 min post-awakening on two days to assess the CAR. In the afternoon after CAR measurement on the first day, electroencephalograms were recorded when the participants completed a passive viewing task. The results showed that a greater CAR was associated with a decreased late positive potential difference score between unpleasant and neutral stimuli. This finding indicates that a larger CAR may be associated with decreased attentional engagement to unpleasant emotional information in healthy adults.
... First, the FEP group comprised a greater proportion of females than the CHR and HC groups did. Although one study has shown that LPP modulation by cognitive reappraisal did not differ between boys and girls, 38 others have reported that females presented higher LPP amplitudes in response to negative stimuli than males did. 39,40 Although sex was used as a covariate in the group comparison analysis, cautious interpretation is warranted because sex was not matched across groups in this study. ...
Background:
Emotion dysregulation is crucial to both poor social functioning and psychotic symptom formation in patients with schizophrenia. The efficient use of emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal, has been less frequently observed in the early phases of psychotic disorder. It is unknown whether neurophysiological responses related to emotion regulation by cognitive reappraisal are altered in early psychosis.
Methods:
Fifty-four patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP), 34 subjects at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis, and 30 healthy controls (HCs) participated in event-related potential recordings during a validated emotion regulation paradigm to measure the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotion regulation. Late positive potentials (LPPs), which reflect emotional arousal, were compared across the groups and the 3 conditions (negative, cognitive reappraisal, and neutral). The relationship among LPP modulation by cognitive reappraisal and social/role functioning and severity of psychotic symptoms was investigated in the early psychosis group.
Results:
The FEP and CHR participants showed comparably larger LPP amplitudes in the negative and cognitive reappraisal conditions than in the neutral condition, whereas the HCs presented larger LPPs in the negative condition than in the cognitive reappraisal and neutral conditions. LPP modulation by cognitive reappraisal was negatively correlated with positive symptom severity in the FEP patients and with disorganization severity in the CHR subjects.
Conclusions:
Inefficient use of cognitive reappraisal may be related to the impaired emotion regulation and psychotic symptoms from the very beginning of psychotic disorder. This study provides the first neurophysiological evidence regarding current concepts of emotion regulation in early psychosis.
... These findings converge with neurodevelopmental evidence that brain areas that are crucial for supporting cognitive reappraisal (Buhle et al., 2014) undergo protracted development through this age window (Ahmed, Bittencourt-Hewitt, & Sebastian, 2015). Interestingly however, not all studies have found age-related improvements in cognitive reappraisal success across childhood and adolescence, either when down-regulating negative affect in response to aversive vignettes or images (Ahmed, Somerville, & Sebastian, 2018;Van Cauwenberge, Van Leeuwen, Hoppenbrouwers, & Wiersema, 2017) or when downregulating craving using reappraisal in response to appetizing foods (Giuliani & Pfeifer, 2015;Silvers et al., 2014). This suggests that under some conditions, reappraisal is effective even for children; more research is needed to specify the particular affective challenges for which even young individuals can benefit from efficacious reappraisal. ...
Emotion concepts are the internally held representations of what defines any given emotion. Contemporary emotion theories posit that emotion concepts occupy a central role in shaping our perceptions and experiences of emotion. However, like other concepts, emotion concepts actively change over the life course. Here, we review classic and contemporary ideas, and recent empirical research, that concern how emotion concepts develop from childhood to adulthood. Emerging evidence suggests that emotion concepts change in complex ways across early life development, which has a tangible impact on the emotional experiences of children, adolescents, and adults. Charting emotion concept development in this way holds implications for basic theories of emotion and development as well as more clinical theories focused on helping children and adolescents overcome emotion-regulatory challenges.
... However, this same group of children showed the expected reappraisal-induced reductions in the LPP by 8 to 9 years of age (DeCicco et al., 2014). Another study (Van Cauwenberge et al. 2017) using the same within-subject experimental design approach, found that only children 12 years and older showed the effect of reappraisal on the LPP. Importantly, while these studies suggest developmental maturation of the LPP response to reappraisal in young children, another study (Babkirk et al., 2015) documented reappraisal-induced reductions in the LPP in children as young as 5 years of age. ...
Caregiver impact on the efficacy of cognitive emotion regulation (ER; i.e. reappraisal) during childhood is poorly understood, particularly across cultures. We tested the hypothesis that in children from Japan and the U.S., a neurocognitive signature of effective reappraisal, the late positive potential (LPP), will be bolstered by cognitive scaffolding by parents, and explored whether the two cultures differed in whether mere physical proximity of parents provides similar benefit. Five-to-seven-year-olds (N = 116; nJapan = 58; nUS = 58) completed a directed reappraisal task (DRT; EEG recorded) in one of three contexts: (1) parent-scaffolding; (2) parent-present; (3) parent-absent. Across cultures, those in the parent-scaffolding group and parent-present group showed effective reappraisal via the LPP relative to those in the parent-absent group. Results suggest that scaffolding is an effective method through which parents in these two cultures buttress child ER, and even parental passive proximity appears to have a meaningful effect on child ER across cultures.
The increasing prevalence of anxiety problems during adolescence underscores the importance of a better understanding of the development of anxiety. Existing literature has documented a prospective association between error responsivity - characterized by the ERP component of error-related negativity (ERN) - and anxiety in youths. However, it remains unclear to what extent the ERN-anxiety relationship may be moderated by emotion regulation, another attribute critical to the development of anxiety. We collected two waves of data from 115 healthy early adolescents (66 girls; Mean age/SD at T1 = 11.00/1.16 years), approximately one year apart. Participants completed an EEG Go/No-Go task and reported on their anxiety symptoms at T1 and T2; they also reported on their emotion regulation tendencies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal [CR] and expressive suppression [ES]) at T2. The ERN was quantified via a principal component analysis. We found a moderating effect of ES on the ERN-anxiety association. Specifically, a larger T1 ERN predicted greater T2 anxiety symptoms for youths with higher, but not lower, ES. Interestingly, the moderating effect of CR on the ERN-symptom association was conditioned on age. Among older youths (upper age tercile) only, the association between T1 ERN and T2 symptoms was significant for those with lower, but not higher, CR. These findings contribute novel evidence on the moderating effect of emotion regulation on the prospective ERN-anxiety relationship in early adolescence. Our results elucidate age-specific patterns in the moderating effect of CR. Future studies can leverage these findings to tailor emotion regulation interventions for youths of different ages.
Childhood trauma is associated with poor health outcomes in adulthood, largely due to the impact of chronic stress on the body. Fortunately, there are certain protective characteristics, such as constraint (i.e., impulse control, inhibition, and avoidance of unconventional behavior and risk) and cognitive reappraisal (i.e., reframing circumstances in a more positive light). In the present study, we investigated the interaction between childhood trauma, resilience, and neural correlates of emotion processing. Participants responded to survey questions regarding childhood trauma and resilient characteristics. They were later invited to passively view neutral, unpleasant, and pleasant images while their brain activity was recorded via electroencephalography (EEG). We analyzed two event-related potential (ERP) components of interest: the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) and Late Positive Potential (LPP). We found that childhood trauma was associated with decreased constraint and reduced sensitivity to unpleasant images (i.e., decreased LPP amplitude differences between neutral and unpleasant images as compared to controls). Further, constraint predicted increased sensitivity to pleasant images. In a hierarchical linear regression analysis, we found that constraint moderated the relation between childhood trauma and emotion processing, such that it predicted increased sensitivity to unpleasant images for adults with childhood trauma in particular. Childhood trauma and cognitive reappraisal independently predicted decreased sensitivity to unpleasant images, (i.e., decreased LPP amplitude differences between neutral and unpleasant images). Our findings suggest that childhood trauma and resilient characteristics independently and interactively influence emotion processing.
Symptoms of depression and social anxiety elevate in late childhood. An identified cognitive risk to both depression and social anxiety is maladaptive self-schemas (or self-schematic processing). Beyond the behavioral indices of this construct, event-related potentials (ERPs) during self-schematic processing have also been observed to be associated with depression or depressive symptoms. However, no study has examined the ERPs underlying self-schematic processing in relation to social anxiety. More importantly, it was unclear to what extent behavioral and ERP indices of self-schematic processing were differentially associated with depression and social anxiety, especially in typical-risk youth with emerging symptoms. A hundred and fifteen community-dwelling children (66 girls; Mean age=10.91 years, SD=1.45) completed a self-referent encoding task (SRET) with EEG recorded. A Principal Component Analysis identified a late positive potential (LPP) component elicited in both the positive and negative SRET conditions. Multivariate multiple regression showed that in both conditions, behavioral SRET scores were associated with depressive symptoms while partialling out social anxiety symptoms, but not with social anxiety symptoms with depressive symptoms partialled out. The LPP amplitude elicited in both conditions showed marginally positive associations with social anxiety symptoms while partialling out depressive symptoms, but not with depressive symptoms while accounting for social anxiety. This study provides novel evidence concerning the ERP correlates of self-schematic processing in relation to social anxiety symptoms. More importantly, our findings for the first time speak to the differential associations between the behavioral SRET scores and SRET-elicited LPP and emerging symptoms of depression and social anxiety in late childhood.
Facial emotion processing (FEP) is critical to social cognitive ability. Developmentally, FEP rapidly improves in early childhood and continues to be fine-tuned throughout middle childhood and into adolescence. Previous research has suggested that language plays a role in the development of social cognitive skills, including non-verbal emotion recognition tasks. Here we investigated whether language is associated with specific neurophysiological indicators of FEP. One hundred and fourteen children (4-12 years) completed a language assessment and a FEP task including stimuli depicting anger, happiness, fear, and neutrality. EEG was used to record key event related potentials (ERPs; P100, N170, LPP at occipital and parietal sites separately) previously shown to be sensitive to faces and facial emotion. While there were no main effects of language, the P100 latency to negative expressions appeared to increase with language, while LPP amplitude increased with language for negative and neutral expressions. These findings suggest that language is linked to some early physiological indicators of FEP, but this is dependent on the facial expression. Future studies should explore the role of language in later stages of neural processing, with a focus on processes localised to ventromedial prefrontal regions.
Emotionally-salient stimuli receive selective attention and elicit complex neural responses that evolve considerably across development. Event-related potentials (ERPs) optimally capture the dynamics of emotion processing and regulation, with sensitivity to detect changes in magnitude, latency, and maximal location across development. In this selective qualitative review, we summarize evidence of developmental changes in neural reactivity to emotional stimuli and modulation of neural responses during emotion regulation indexed by ERPs across infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The cumulative ERP literature suggests the transition from childhood to adulthood is characterized by a gradual decrease in neural reactivity to emotional stimuli and increased efficiency in attentional allocation towards emotional stimuli. Some studies show sensitivity to emotional stimuli peaks in adolescence, but the evidence is mixed. While both early (<300 ms) and late (>300 ms) ERPs demonstrate sensitivity to emotional stimuli, emotional modulation is more consistently observed in relatively later ERPs across development. The literature additionally shows improvements in regulation abilities across development, though ERP research on developmental changes in emotion regulation is still relatively limited, highlighting a critical direction for future research. Finally, we briefly discuss changes in emotion-related ERPs relevant to the emergence of depression and anxiety. Findings from this review indicate that ERPs provide abundant information about the development of emotion processing and regulation, with potential clinical utility for detecting early-emerging vulnerabilities for internalizing forms of psychopathology.
Event‐related potential studies of emotional processing have focused on the late positive potential (LPP), a sustained positive deflection in the ERP that is increased for emotionally arousing stimuli. A prominent theory suggests that modulation of the LPP is a response to stimulus significance, defined in terms of the activation of appetitive and aversive motivational systems. The current review incorporates experimental studies showing that manipulations that alter the significance of stimuli alter LPP amplitude. Complementing these within‐person studies, also included is individual differences research on depression wherein the LPP has been used to study reduced neural sensitivity to emotional stimuli. Finally, the current review builds an existing framework that the LPP observed in studies in emotional processing and the P300 observed in classic oddball studies may reflect a common response to stimulus significance. This integrative account has implications for the functional interpretation of these ERPs, their neurobiological mechanisms, and clinical applications.
Background:
Childhood adversity is strongly linked to negative mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety. Leveraging cognitive neuroscience to identify mechanisms that contribute to resilience in children with a history of maltreatment may provide viable intervention targets for the treatment or prevention of psychopathology. We present a conceptual model of a potential neurobiological mechanism of resilience to depression and anxiety following childhood adversity. Specifically, we argue that neural circuits underlying the cognitive control of emotion may promote resilience, wherein a child's ability to recruit the frontoparietal control network to modulate amygdala reactivity to negative emotional cues-such as during cognitive reappraisal-buffers risk for internalizing symptoms following exposure to adversity.
Methods:
We provide preliminary support for this model of resilience in a longitudinal sample of 151 participants 8 to 17 years of age with (n = 79) and without (n = 72) a history of childhood maltreatment who completed a cognitive reappraisal task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Results:
Among maltreated youths, those who were better able to recruit prefrontal control regions and modulate amygdala reactivity during reappraisal exhibited lower risk for depression over time. By contrast, no association was observed between neural functioning during reappraisal and depression among youths without a history of maltreatment.
Conclusions:
These preliminary findings support the hypothesis that children who are better able to regulate emotion through recruitment of the frontoparietal network exhibit greater resilience to depression following childhood maltreatment. Interventions targeting cognitive reappraisal and other cognitive emotion regulation strategies may have potential for reducing vulnerability to depression among children exposed to adversity.
Objective:
The current study examined neural and behavioral responses to angry, happy and neutral faces in childhood social anxiety disorder (SAD).
Method:
Behavioral (reaction time and accuracy) and electrocortical measures (P100, N170, EPN, LPP) were assessed during a facial emotion identification task in children (age 10-13) with SAD (n = 32), clinical controls with mixed anxiety disorders (n = 30), and healthy controls (n = 33).
Results:
Overall, there were no group differences in behavioral or neural responses to emotional faces. However, children with SAD showed an attenuated LPP to male relative to female faces, while the opposite pattern emerged in the other two groups.
Discussion:
Stimulus gender, but not facial emotion drove group-specific effects, which became evident in later, more elaborate stages of attention processing. The present study provides preliminary indications of gender effects in childhood SAD which should be further investigated by future studies.
We examined sex-related effects in the amplitudes of the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential elicited by the presentation of emotional stimuli. Sixteen females and 18 males viewed emotional pictures to perform a visual detection task. In female participants, viewing unpleasant pictures elicited larger LPP (550–900 ms) when the pictures contained humans (human pictures) than when they did not contain humans (non-human pictures). For male participants, the results were reversed, with smaller LPP for unpleasant human pictures. Subjective ratings of valence in both female and male participants showed that unpleasant human pictures were evaluated less negatively than unpleasant non-human pictures. The results indicate that greater LPP amplitude for human than for non-human pictures occurred in females irrespective of subjective evaluations. This suggests that relatively robust processes in females cause sex-related effects in sensitivity to human pictures.
Emotion regulation is the ability to recruit processes to influence emotion generation. In recent years there has been mounting interest in how emotions are regulated at behavioural and neural levels, as well as in the relevance of emotional dysregulation to psychopathology. During adolescence, brain regions involved in affect generation and regulation, including the limbic system and prefrontal cortex, undergo protracted structural and functional development. Adolescence is also a time of increasing vulnerability to internalising and externalising psychopathologies associated with poor emotion regulation, including depression, anxiety and antisocial behaviour. It is therefore of particular interest to understand how emotion regulation develops over this time, and how this relates to ongoing brain development. However, to date relatively little research has addressed these questions directly. This review will discuss existing research in these areas in both typical adolescence and in adolescent psychopathology, and will highlight opportunities for future research. In particular, it is important to consider the social context in which adolescent emotion regulation develops. It is possible that while adolescence may be a time of vulnerability to emotional dysregulation, scaffolding the development of emotion regulation during this time may be a fruitful preventative target for psychopathology.
Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
Late positive potential (LPP) is associated with the magnitude and intensity of emotional reactivity. Studies have linked the adoption of cognitive reappraisal to the reduction of LPP amplitude in adults and school-age children but not in preschoolers. It may be due to preschoolers' difficulty in understanding and remembering given interpretations. We examined changes in LPP amplitudes following simplified interpretations of unpleasant pictures in 20 preschoolers (48-71 months). Results demonstrated that LPP amplitudes, following neutral interpretations, were lower as compared to negative interpretations, suggesting that preschoolers as young as four have developed the ability to use cognitive reappraisal strategies following instructions.
Theory suggests that stimulus evaluations automatically evoke approach-avoidance behavior. However, the extent to which approach-avoidance behavior is triggered automatically is not yet clear. Furthermore, the nature of automatically triggered approach-avoidance behavior is controversial. We review research on two views on the type of approach-avoidance behavior that is triggered automatically (arm flexion/extension, distance change). Present evidence supports the distance-change view and corroborates the notion of an automatic pathway from evaluation to distance-change behavior. We discuss underlying mechanisms (direct stimulus-response links, outcome anticipations, goals) as well as implications regarding the flexibility of the evaluation-behavior link.
The late positive potential (LPP), which is reduced following the use of reappraisal, is a potential neurosignature for emotion regulation capacity. This sensitivity of the LPP to reappraisal is rarely studied in children. We tested whether, in 26 typically developing seven- to nine-year-olds, LPP amplitudes were reduced following reappraisal and whether this effect varied with age and anxiety. For the full sample, LPPs were not significantly reduced following reappraisal. As predicted, reductions in the LPP following reappraisal were greater for older children and those showing less anxiety. The utility of the LPP as a neurosignature for emotion regulatory capacity is discussed.
Recent developments in the study of cognitive emotion regulation illustrate how functional imaging is extending behavioral analyses. Imaging studies have contributed to the development of a multilevel model of emotion regulation that describes the interactions between neural systems implicated in emotion generation and those implicated in emotional control. In this article, we review imaging studies of one type of cognitive emotion regulation: reappraisal. We show how imaging studies have contributed to the construction of this model, illustrate the interplay of psychological theory and neuroscience data in its development, and describe how this model can be used as the basis for future basic and translational research.
Topic Cognitive stimulation (executive functions) Introduction Emotional development involves increased ability to feel, understand and differentiate progressively more complex emotions, as well as the ability to self-regulate them in order to adapt to the social environment or to accomplish present or future goals. Often, children face situations where they must select among competing options, such as finishing homework before playing or eating a snack now as opposed to saving room for a healthier meal. In making such decisions, they need to reconcile the conflict between competing choices available in the context with a specific set of expectations and rules, as well as to regulate impulses for immediate gratification in the service of a choice that is less immediate and automatic. This sort of behavioural and cognitive control is related to the concept of executive functions. Executive function refers to multidimensional cognitive control processes that are characterized by being voluntary and highly effortful. They include the ability to evaluate, organize and achieve goals, as well as the capacity to flexibly adapt behaviour when confronted with novel problems and situations. Evidence from cognitive development and developmental cognitive neuroscience has shown that the development of emotion regulation is strongly supported by several core executive functions, such as attention control, inhibition of inappropriate behaviours, decision making and other high cognitive processes that take place in emotionally demanding contexts. 1,2 Subject As humans are predominantly social, understanding emotions in oneself and others is an important skill to have, and a good part of the brain is devoted to that effort. 3 Basic emotions, such as happiness or fear differ from the so-called moral emotions (e.g., shame, guilt, pride, etc.), that arise in social interactions, where a normative or ideal behaviour is either explicitly or implicitly established. Understanding and managing moral emotions requires internalization of norms and moral principles shared by the community. It is also necessary to perceive and understand other people's emotions (empathy) and make attributions of their mental states (theory of mind), including understanding of their beliefs and attitudes. As such, emotional and social development are tightly linked to one
The field of emotion regulation has now come of age. However, enthusiasm for the topic continues to outstrip conceptual clarity. In this article, I review the state of the field. I do this by asking-and attempting to succinctly answer-10 fundamental questions concerning emotion regulation, ranging from what emotion regulation is, to why it matters, to how we can change it. I conclude by considering some of the challenges that confront this rapidly growing field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
The appeal of simple, sweeping portraits of large-scale brain mechanisms relevant to psychological phenomena competes with a rich, complex research base. As a prominent example, two views of frontal brain organization have emphasized dichotomous lateralization as a function of either emotional valence (positive/negative) or approach/avoidance motivation. Compelling findings support each. The literature has struggled to choose between them for three decades, without success. Both views are proving untenable as comprehensive models. Evidence of other frontal lateralizations, involving distinctions among dimensions of depression and anxiety, make a dichotomous view even more problematic. Recent evidence indicates that positive valence and approach motivation are associated with different areas in the left-hemisphere. Findings that appear contradictory at the level of frontal lobes as the units of analysis can be accommodated because hemodynamic and electromagnetic neuroimaging studies suggest considerable functional differentiation, in specialization and activation, of subregions of frontal cortex, including their connectivity to each other and to other regions. Such findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of functional localization that accommodates aspects of multiple theoretical perspectives.
J. A. Gray (1981, 1982) holds that 2 general motivational systems underlie behavior and affect: a behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and a behavioral activation system (BAS). Self-report scales to assess dispositional BIS and BAS sensitivities were created. Scale development (Study 1) and convergent and discriminant validity in the form of correlations with alternative measures are reported (Study 2). In Study 3, a situation in which Ss anticipated a punishment was created. Controlling for initial nervousness, Ss high in BIS sensitivity (assessed earlier) were more nervous than those low in BIS sensitivity. In Study 4, a situation in which Ss anticipated a reward was created. Controlling for initial happiness, Ss high in BAS sensitivity (Reward Responsiveness and Drive scales) were happier than those low in BAS sensitivity. In each case the new scales predicted better than an alternative measure. Discussion is focused on conceptual implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The need for a multimethod approach to the study of emotion in children and adolescents is crucial, as is a multilevel analysis in which emotional experience is assessed at a variety of levels (Solomon, 2002). This review highlights the critical role of emotion theory when constructing and selecting appropriate assessment tools with a focus on Functionalist theory that emphasizes the importance of contextual variables (Barrett & Campos, 1987). The review begins with an examination of theoretical and pragmatic issues in emotion measurement followed by discussions of four basic methods of emotion assessment (i.e., self-report, other-report, observation, neurophysiology). Implications of emotion assessment for clinical practice and future directions for research conclude the review.
The present study examined electrocortical evidence for a negativity bias, focusing on the impact of specific picture content on a range of event-related potentials (ERPs). To this end, ERPs were recorded while 67 participants viewed a variety of pictures from the International Affective Picture System. Examination of broad categories (i.e., pleasant, neutral, unpleasant) found no evidence for a negativity bias in two early components, the N1 and the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN), but revealed that unpleasant images did elicit a larger late positive potential (LPP) than pleasant pictures. However, images of erotica and mutilation elicited comparable LPP responses, as did affiliative and threatening images. Exciting (i.e., sports) images and disgusting images elicited smaller LPPs than other emotional images, similar to neutral images containing people-which were associated with the largest LPPs among neutral pictures. When these three anomalous categories (exciting, disgusting, and scenes with people) were excluded, unpleasant images no longer elicited a larger LPP than pleasant images. Thus, including exciting images in pleasant ERP averages disproportionately reduces the LPP. The present findings are discussed in light of the motivational significance of specific picture subtypes.
Individuals differ in their adjustment to stressful life events, with some exhibiting impaired functioning, including depression, while others exhibit impressive resilience. The present study examined the hypothesis that the ability to deploy a particularly adaptive type of emotion regulation-cognitive reappraisal-may be a protective factor. It expands upon existing research in three ways. First, participants' ability to use reappraisal (cognitive reappraisal ability: CRA) was measured by using a behavioral challenge that assessed changes in experiential and physiological domains, rather than questionnaires. Second, all participants had been exposed to one or more recent stressful life events, a context in which emotion regulation may be particularly important. Third, a community sample of 78 women aged 20 to 60 was recruited, as opposed to undergraduates. Results indicate that, at low levels of stress, participants' CRA was not associated with depressive symptoms. However, at high levels of stress, women with high CRA exhibited less depressive symptoms than those with low CRA, suggesting that CRA may be an important moderator of the link between stress and depressive symptoms.
To examine whether reappraisal modifies responses to subsequent encounters with stimuli, participants viewed neutral and unpleasant
pictures that were preceded by negative or neutral descriptions which served as reappraisal frames. A half an hour later,
the same pictures were presented, without preceding frames; EEG was recorded and participants rated each picture on arousal
and valence. In line with previous work, unpleasant compared to neutral pictures elicited more positive early- (359 ms), mid-
(1074 ms) and late-latency (2436 ms) centrally-distributed ERP components. Pictures previously preceded by negative compared
to neutral reappraisal frames were rated as more unpleasant and more emotionally arousing; these pictures elicited a larger
mid-latency (1074 ms) occipital positivity. Together, the data suggest that reappraisal exerts an enduring effect on both
subjective and neural responses to stimuli.
Emotion regulation involves intrinsic and extrinsic processes responsible for managing one's emotions toward goal accomplishment. Research on emotion regulation has predominantly focused on early developmental periods and the majority of emotion regulation research examining the pre-adult years has lacked a comprehensive theoretical framework. The current study examined the use of two strategies of emotion regulation during childhood and adolescents, as conceptualised within Gross's (1998) process-oriented model.
To determine the use, norms and development of the Expressive Suppression and Cognitive Reappraisal strategies, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA) was administered to 1,128 participants aged between 9 and 15 years. Three data collection phases, each one year apart, enabled investigation of developmental patterns in the use of the two strategies.
As predicted, Suppression use was found to be lower for older participants compared to their younger peers, and over time participants reported less use of this strategy. Older participants also scored lower on Reappraisal but stability over time was found. Also as expected, males reported more Suppression use compared to females.
By documenting the development and norms for Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression in a community sample of children and adolescents, the current study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of these two ER strategies during these developmental periods.
Emotional pictures elicit enhanced parietal positivities beginning around 300 ms following stimulus presentation. The magnitude of these responses, however, depends on both intrinsic (stimulus-driven) and extrinsic (context-driven) factors. In the present study, event-related potentials were recorded while participants viewed unpleasant and neutral pictures that were described either more neutrally or more negatively prior to presentation; temporospatial principal components analysis identified early and late positivities: Both emotional images and descriptions had independent and additive effects on early (334 ms) and midlatency (1,066 ms) positivities, whereas the latest positivity (1,688 ms) was sensitive only to description type. Results are discussed with regard to the time course of automatic and controlled processing of emotional stimuli.
In this experiment, we combined the measurement of observable facial behavior with simultaneous measures of brain electrical activity to assess patterns of hemispheric activation in different regions during the experience of happiness and disgust. Disgust was found to be associated with right-sided activation in the frontal and anterior temporal regions compared with the happy condition. Happiness was accompanied by left-sided activation in the anterior temporal region compared with disgust. No differences in asymmetry were found between emotions in the central and parietal regions. When data aggregated across positive films were compared to aggregate negative film data, no reliable differences in brain activity were found. These findings illustrate the utility of using facial behavior to verify the presence of emotion, are consistent with the notion of emotion-specific physiological patterning, and underscore the importance of anterior cerebral asymmetries for emotions associated with approach and withdrawal.
The purpose of the present study was to examine the prediction of adults' situational and dispositional empathy-related responses from measures of emotionality (emotional intensity and positive and negative affect) and regulation. A multimethod approach including self-reported, facial, and heart rate (HR) responses was used to assess situational vicarious emotional responding; Ss' (and sometimes friends') reports were used to assess the dispositional characteristics. In general, dispositional sympathy, personal distress, and perspective taking exhibited different, conceptually logical patterns of association with indexes of emotionality and regulation. The relations of situational measures of vicarious emotional responding to dispositional emotionality and regulation varied somewhat by type of measure and gender. Findings for facial and HR (for men) measures were primarily for the more evocative empathy-inducing stimulus. In general, the findings provided support for the role of individual differences in emotionality and regulation in empathy-related responding.
In affective Simon studies, participants are to select between a positive and negative response on the basis of a nonaffective stimulus feature (i.e., relevant stimulus feature) while ignoring the valence of the presented stimuli (i.e., irrelevant stimulus feature). De Houwer and Eelen (1998) showed that the time to select the correct response is influenced by the match between the valence of the response and the (irrelevant) valence of the stimulus. In the affective Simon studies that have been reported until now, only words were used as stimuli and the relevant stimulus feature was always the grammatical category of the words. We report four experiments in which we examined the generality of the affective Simon effect. Significant affective Simon effects were found when the semantic category, grammatical category, and letter-case of words was relevant, when the semantic category of photographed objects was relevant, and when participants were asked to give nonverbal approach or avoidance responses on the basis of the grammatical category of words. Results also showed that the magnitude of the affective Simon effect depended on the nature of the relevant feature.
Individual differences in emotionality and regulation are central to conceptions of temperament and personality. In this article, conceptions of emotionality and regulation and ways in which they predict social functioning are examined. Linear (including additive) and nonlinear effects are reviewed. In addition, data on mediational and moderational relations from a longitudinal study are presented. The effects of attention regulation on social functioning were mediated by resiliency, and this relation was moderated by negative emotionality at the first, but not second, assessment. Negative emotionality moderated the relation of behavior regulation to socially appropriate/prosocial behavior. These results highlight the importance of examining different types of regulation and the ways in which dispositional characteristics interact in predicting social outcomes.
In the adult literature, emotional arousal is regarded as a source of the enhancing effect of emotion on subsequent memory. Here, we used behavioral and electrophysiological methods to examine the role of emotional arousal on subsequent memory in school-age children. Furthermore, we implemented a reappraisal instruction to manipulate (down-regulate) emotional arousal at encoding to examine the relation between emotional arousal and subsequent memory. Participants (8-year-old girls) viewed emotional scenes as electrophysiological (EEG) data were recorded and participated in a memory task 1 to 5days later where EEG and behavioral responses were recorded; participants provided subjective ratings of the scenes after the memory task. The reappraisal instruction successfully reduced emotional arousal responses to negative stimuli but not positive stimuli. Similarly, recognition performance in both event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavior was impaired for reappraised negative stimuli but not positive stimuli. The findings indicate that ERPs are sensitive to the reappraisal of negative stimuli in children as young as 8years. Furthermore, the findings suggest an interaction of emotion and memory during the school years, implicating the explanatory role of emotional arousal at encoding on subsequent memory performance in female children as young as 8years.
Children commonly experience negative emotions like sadness and fear, and much recent empirical attention has been devoted to understanding the factors supporting and predicting effective emotion regulation. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a cardiac index of parasympathetic function, has emerged as a key physiological correlate of children's self-regulation. But little is known about how children's use of specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies corresponds to concurrent parasympathetic regulation (i.e., RSA reactivity while watching an emotion-eliciting video). The current study describes an experimental paradigm in which 101 5- and 6-year-olds were randomly assigned to one of three different emotion regulation conditions: Control, Distraction, or Reappraisal. All children watched a sad film and a scary film (order counterbalanced), and children in the Distraction and Reappraisal conditions received instructions to deploy the target strategy to manage sadness/fear while they watched. Consistent with predictions, children assigned to use either emotion regulation strategy showed greater RSA augmentation from baseline than children in the Control condition (all children showed an overall increase in RSA levels from baseline), suggesting enhanced parasympathetic calming when children used distraction or reappraisal to regulate sadness and fear. But this pattern was found only among children who viewed the sad film before the scary film. Among children who viewed the scary film first, reappraisal promoted marginally better parasympathetic regulation of fear (no condition differences emerged for parasympathetic regulation of sadness when the sad film was viewed second). Results are discussed in terms of their implications for our understanding of children's emotion regulation and affective physiology.
Impairments in cognitive emotion regulation (CER) have been linked to functional neural abnormalities and the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD). Few functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have investigated the neural underpinnings of CER in samples with depression. As CER develops in childhood, understanding dysfunctional CER-related alterations in brain function during this period could advance knowledge of the developmental psychopathology of MDD.
This study tested whether neural activity in brain regions known to support cognitive reappraisal differed between healthy 7- to 15-year-old children and same-age peers with a history of MDD (MDD-ever). A total of 64 children participated in this event-related fMRI study, which used a developmentally appropriate and validated fMRI reappraisal task. Children were instructed to passively view sad or neutral images and to decrease negative emotions using cognitive reappraisal.
MDD-ever and healthy children showed similar patterns of cortical activation during reappraisal, but with a significant difference found in 1 key CER region, the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). In addition, individual differences in CER were associated with left IFG activity during reappraisal.
Alterations in the neurocircuitry of reappraisal are evident in children with a depression history compared to healthy controls. The finding that MDD-ever children showed reappraisal-related neural responses in many regions similar to healthy controls has clinical implications. Findings suggest that identification of alterations in reappraisal in children with remitted depression, for whom much, although not all, of the neural circuitry remains intact, may be an important window of opportunity for intervention.
Copyright © 2015 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Although neuroimaging studies in adults demonstrate that cognitive reappraisal effectively down-regulates negative affect and results in increased prefrontal and decreased amygdala activity, very limited empirical data exist on the neural basis of cognitive reappraisal in children. This study aimed to pilot test a developmentally-appropriate guided cognitive reappraisal task in order to examine the effects of cognitive reappraisal on children’s self-reports of affect and brain responses. Study 1 (N = 19, 4-10 years-old) found that children successfully employed guided cognitive reappraisal to decrease subjective ratings of negative affect, supporting the effectiveness of the guided cognitive reappraisal task. Study 2 (N = 15, ages 6-10 years-old) investigated the neural responses to guided cognitive reappraisal and found that the neural responses showed increased activation in the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during the cognitive reappraisal condition compared to the no regulation condition. In addition, amygdala activity was positively correlated with ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation during cognitive reappraisal. Findings suggest that the neural networks supporting cognitive reappraisal in children involve similar brain regions but brain responses deviate from findings in adults. Our findings suggest that the neural networks supporting emotion regulation are still developing during middle childhood, and future research is necessary to delineate age-related development of the neural network involved in cognitive reappraisal.
One of the fastest growing areas within psychology is the field of emotion regulation. However, enthusiasm for this topic continues to outstrip conceptual clarity, and there remains considerable uncertainty as to what is even meant by “emotion regulation.” The goal of this review is to examine the current status and future prospects of this rapidly growing field. In the first section, I define emotion and emotion regulation and distinguish both from related constructs. In the second section, I use the process model of emotion regulation to selectively review evidence that different regulation strategies have different consequences. In the third section, I introduce the extended process model of emotion regulation; this model considers emotion regulation to be one type of valuation, and distinguishes three emotion regulation stages (identification, selection, implementation). In the final section, I consider five key growth points for the field of emotion regulation.
The ability to use cognitive emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal may be a core component of emotional competence across development, but due to methodological challenges in measuring such strategies, they are rarely studied in young children. One neurophysiological measure, the late positive potential (LPP), has been examined in response to reappraisal as a potential neurosignature for emotion regulatory capacity in adults. The association between the LPP and emotion regulatory capacity in children is unknown. The present study examined whether the LPP during reappraisal could predict greater observed adaptive emotion regulation strategy use in school-aged children over a two-year period. Thirty-two 5- to 7-year-olds participated in two identical lab visits spaced two years apart. EEG was continuously recorded during a computerized reappraisal task in which children viewed unpleasant images paired with either reappraisal or negative stories. Next they completed a disappointing and a frustrating task during which emotion regulation strategies were observed. As predicted, children who showed reappraisal-induced reductions in the LPP at the first assessment used significantly more adaptive ER strategies concurrently and two years later. These findings provide observation-based evidence that the LPP may be a viable neurosignature for emotion regulatory capacity in children.
The late positive potential (LPP) may be a useful measure of individual differences in emotional processing across development, but little is known about the stability of the LPP across time. We assessed the LPP and behavioral measures of emotional interference following pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral images in 8- to 13-year-old youth. Approximately two years later, the same participants completed the task again (N=34). Results indicated that the LPP is moderately-to-highly reliable across development. Stability was lower and more inconsistent for behavioral measures. In addition, consistent with previous cross-sectional analyses, a decrease in occipital activity was observed at the second assessment. Results indicate that the LPP appears to be a stable measure of emotional processing, even across a fairly large period of development.
The late positive potential (LPP) is a commonly used event-related potential (ERP) in the study of emotion and emotion regulation. The LPP has also been evaluated as a neural marker of affective psychopathology. The psychometric properties of this component have not been examined, however. The current study was conducted with the aim of addressing two questions: how internally consistent is the LPP, and how many trials are necessary to obtain a stable LPP? Fifty-eight participants completed an emotion regulation task. First, split-half reliabilities were computed for the LPP and for difference waves revealing emotion effects (negative minus neutral) and regulation effects (reappraise minus negative). Second, averages including progressively more trials were evaluated and compared to overall participant averages. These data indicated good-to-excellent reliability for neutral, negative and reappraise trials, as well as difference waves. Furthermore, the LPP varies little after 8 trials are added to the average and the difference waves vary little after 12 trials are included. Together, the findings of the current study suggest that the LPP demonstrates good internal consistency and can be adequately quantified with relatively few trials.
The Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) measures automatic approach-avoidance tendencies and their regulation: Compatible reactions (approach positive, avoid negative) are faster than incompatible ones (approach negative, avoid positive). The present study assessed event-related potentials (ERPs) in 15 healthy persons for depicting neuropsychological sub-processes of such stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effects. Early attention allocation preparing efficient stimulus classification (N1 ERP) and response inhibition on the level of response representations (N2 ERP) were found to underlie the solution of the AAT-conflict. For positive stimuli, these processes were enhanced during the incompatible condition avoid positive compared to the compatible condition approach positive. Source localization analysis revealed activity in right occipital areas (N1 ERP), and in left DLPFC and insula (N2 ERP) to be neuronal generators of these electrophysiological SRC effects. This neuronal regulation resulted in no influence of incompatibility at the behavioural level. For negative pictures, we found the reversed pattern: There were no electrophysiological SRC effects, but clear behavioural SRC effects in both RTs and error frequency, i.e. participants were faster and made fewer errors during avoiding than approaching negative pictures. These valence-specific differences are in line with previous studies indicating negative stimuli-probably due to higher importance for survival-to more strongly influence behaviour.
Approach and avoidance are two basic behavioural principles. The current study investigated neuropsychological mechanisms underlying the influence of the personality characteristic goal-oriented pursuit on the efficiency of regulating such approach-avoidance reactions. Therefore, the P3 event-related potential (ERP) reflecting controlled attention allocation was assessed during the Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) with positive and negative pictures in 36 healthy participants. For negative pictures, analyses revealed the neuropsychological mechanism of controlled attention allocation to mediate the relation between personality and behaviour: Stronger goal-oriented pursuit was associated with higher controlled attention allocation to the incompatible compared to the compatible condition and - thereby - with less automatic avoidance tendencies in response to negative pictures, i.e., with higher efficiency of regulation. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future studies on mechanisms determining the influence of personality traits, situational factors and their interaction on approach-avoidance behaviour.
The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential (ERP) component that indexes sustained attention toward motivationally salient information. The LPP has been observed in children and adults, however little is known about its development from childhood into adolescence. In addition, whereas LPP studies examine responses to images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang et al., 2008) or emotional faces, no previous studies have compared responses in youth across stimuli. To examine how emotion interacts with attention across development, the current study used an emotional-interrupt task to measure LPP and behavioral responses in 8- to 13-year-olds using unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral IAPS images, as well as sad, happy, and neutral faces. Compared to older youth, younger children exhibited enhanced LPPs over occipital sites. In addition, sad but not happy faces elicited a larger LPP than neutral faces; behavioral measures did not vary across facial expressions. Both unpleasant and pleasant IAPS images were associated with increased LPPs and behavioral interference compared to neutral images. Results suggest that there may be developmental differences in the scalp distribution of the LPP, and compared to faces, IAPS elicit more robust behavioral and electrocortical measures of attention to emotional stimuli.
In adults, emotional (e.g., both unpleasant and pleasant) compared to neutral pictures elicit an increase in the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP); modulation of these ERP components are thought to reflect the facilitated processing of, and increased attention to, motivationally salient stimuli. To determine whether the EPN and LPP are sensitive to emotional content in children, high-density EEG was recorded from 18 children who were 5–8 years of age (mean age = 77 months, SD = 11 months) while they viewed developmentally appropriate pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System. Self-reported ratings of valence and arousal were also obtained. An EPN was not evident following emotional compared to neutral pictures; however, a positivity maximal at occipital–parietal recording sites was increased from 500 to 1000 ms following pleasant pictures and from 500 to 1500 ms following unpleasant pictures. Comparisons between the EPN and LPP observed in children and adults, and implications for developmental studies of emotion, are discussed.
Research on automatic attitude activation has documented a pervasive
tendency to nonconsciously classify incoming stimuli as good or bad.
Two experiments tested a functional explanation for this effect.
The authors hypothesized that automatic evaluation results directly
in behavioral predispositions toward the stimulus, such that positive
evaluations produce immediate approach tendencies, and negative evaluations
produce immediate avoidance tendencies. 52 participants responded
to attitude object stimuli either by pushing or by pulling a lever.
Consistent with the hypothesis, participants were faster to respond
to negatively valenced stimuli when pushing the lever away (avoid)
than when pulling it toward them (approach), but were faster to respond
to positive stimuli by pulling than by pushing the lever. This pattern
held even when evaluation of the stimuli was irrelevant to the participants'
conscious task. The automatic classification of stimuli as either
good or bad appears to have direct behavioral consequences. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
The late positive potential (LPP) reflects increased attention to emotional versus neutral stimuli in adults. To date, very few studies have examined the LPP in children, and whether it can be used to measure patterns of emotional processing that are related to dispositional mood characteristics, such as temperamental fear and anxiety. To examine this question,39 typically developing 5–7 year olds (M age in months = 75.27, SD = 5.83) passively viewed complex emotional and neutral pictures taken from the International Affective Picture System.Maternal report of temperamental fear and anxiety was obtained and fearful behavior during an emotional challenge was observed. As documented in adults, LPP amplitudes to pleasant and unpleasant stimuli were larger than to neutral stimuli, although some gender differences emerged. Larger LPP amplitude differences between unpleasant and neutral stimuli were associated with greater observed fear. The LPP as a measure of individual differences in emotional processing is discussed.
Cognitive emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraising the emotional meaning of events, are linked to positive adjustment and are disrupted in individuals showing emotional distress, like anxiety. The late positive potential (LPP) is sensitive to reappraisal: LPP amplitudes are reduced when unpleasant pictures are reappraised in a positive light, suggesting regulation of negative emotion. However, only one study has examined reappraisal in children using the LPP. The present study examined whether directed reappraisals reduce the LPP in a group of 5- to 7-year-olds, and correlate with individual differences in fear and anxiety. EEG was recorded from 32 typically developing children via 64 scalp electrodes during a directed reappraisal task. Mothers reported on child anxiety. Fearful behavior was observed. As predicted, LPP amplitudes were larger to unpleasant versus neutral pictures;counter to predictions, the LPP was not sensitive to reappraisal. The degree to which unpleasant versus neutral pictures elicited larger LPPs was correlated with greater anxiety and fear. Results suggest that reappraisal in young children is still developing, but that the LPP is sensitive to individual differences related to fear and anxiety. The utility of the LPP as a measure of cognitive emotion regulation and emotional processing biases in children is discussed.
Progress in the study of emotion and emotion regulation has increasingly been informed by neuroscientific methods. This article focuses on two components of the event-related potential (ERP)--the P300 and the late positive potential (LPP)--and how they can be used to understand the interaction between the more automatic and controlled processing of emotional stimuli. Research is reviewed exploring: the dynamics of emotional response as indexed at early and late latencies; neurobiological correlates of emotional response; individual and developmental differences; ways in which the LPP can be utilized as a measure of emotion regulation. Future directions for the application of ERP/electroencephalogram (EEG) in achieving a more complete understanding of emotional processing and its regulation are presented.
Recent models of anxiety disorders emphasize abnormalities in emotional reactivity and regulation. However, the empirical basis for this view is limited, particularly in children and adolescents. The present study examined whether anxious children suffer both negative emotional hyper-reactivity and deficits in cognitive emotion regulation. Participants were 49 children aged 10-17 with generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, or separation anxiety disorder as their primary diagnosis, as well as 42 age- and gender-matched non-anxious controls. After completing a diagnostic interview and self-report questionnaires, participants were presented with pictures of threatening scenes with the instructions either to simply view them or to use reappraisal, a cognitive emotion regulation strategy, to decrease their negative emotional response. Emotion ratings, content analysis of reappraisal responses, and reports of everyday use of reappraisal were used to assess negative emotional reactivity, reappraisal ability, efficacy and frequency. Relative to controls, children with anxiety disorders (1) experienced greater negative emotional responses to the images, (2) were less successful at applying reappraisals, but (3) showed intact ability to reduce their negative emotions following reappraisal. They also (4) reported less frequent use of reappraisal in everyday life. Implications for the assessment and treatment of childhood anxiety disorders are discussed.
We examined the relationships between six emotion-regulation strategies (acceptance, avoidance, problem solving, reappraisal, rumination, and suppression) and symptoms of four psychopathologies (anxiety, depression, eating, and substance-related disorders). We combined 241 effect sizes from 114 studies that examined the relationships between dispositional emotion regulation and psychopathology. We focused on dispositional emotion regulation in order to assess patterns of responding to emotion over time. First, we examined the relationship between each regulatory strategy and psychopathology across the four disorders. We found a large effect size for rumination, medium to large for avoidance, problem solving, and suppression, and small to medium for reappraisal and acceptance. These results are surprising, given the prominence of reappraisal and acceptance in treatment models, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and acceptance-based treatments, respectively. Second, we examined the relationship between each regulatory strategy and each of the four psychopathology groups. We found that internalizing disorders were more consistently associated with regulatory strategies than externalizing disorders. Lastly, many of our analyses showed that whether the sample came from a clinical or normative population significantly moderated the relationships. This finding underscores the importance of adopting a multi-sample approach to the study of psychopathology.
For over 60 years, ideas about emotion in neuroscience and psychology have been dominated by a debate on whether emotion can be encompassed within a single, unifying model. In neuroscience, this approach is epitomized by the limbic system theory and, in psychology, by dimensional models of emotion. Comparative research has gradually eroded the limbic model, and some scientists have proposed that certain individual emotions are represented separately in the brain. Evidence from humans consistent with this approach has recently been obtained by studies indicating that signals of fear and disgust are processed by distinct neural substrates. We review this research and its implications for theories of emotion.
The ability to modulate emotional responses, or emotion regulation, is a key mechanism in the development of mood disruptions. Detection of a neural marker for emotion regulation thus has the potential to inform early detection and intervention for mood problems. One such neural marker may be the late positive potential (LPP), which is a scalp-recorded event-related potential reflecting facilitated attention to emotional stimuli. In adults, the LPP is reduced following use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal. No studies to date have examined the LPP in relation to cognitive emotion regulation in children, and whether the LPP is related to parent-report measures of emotion regulation and mood disruptions.
To examine this question, high-density electroencephalograph (EEG) was recorded from 20 children (M age = 87.8 months, SD = 18.02; 10 girls) while they viewed unpleasant emotional pictures following either a directed negative or neutral interpretation of the picture.
As predicted, the LPP was smaller following neutral versus negative interpretations at posterior recording sites, except for younger girls (aged 5-6). The timing of this effect was later than that reported in studies with adults. For all children, greater modulation of the LPP by neutral interpretations was associated with reduced anxious-depressed symptoms, whereas larger LPPs for both interpretation types were associated with greater mood symptoms and worse parent-reported emotion regulation.
Results suggest that the LPP may represent a clinically relevant neural marker for emotion regulation and mood disruptions.
Consistent with the notion that emotional stimuli receive preferential attention and perceptual processing, many event-related potential (ERP) components appear sensitive to emotional stimuli. In an effort to differentiate components that are sensitive to emotional versus neutral stimuli, the current study utilized temporospatial principal components analysis to analyze ERPs from a large sample (N=82) while pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant images were passively viewed. Several factors sensitive to emotional stimuli were identified-corresponding to the N1, early posterior negativity (EPN), and P3; multiple factors resembling the late positive potential (LPP) emerged. Results indicate that the N1 represents the earliest component modulated by emotional stimuli; the EPN and the LPP represent unique components; the scalp-recorded LPP appears to include a P3-like positivity as well as additional positivities at occipital and central recording sites.
The present study examined the time-course of automatic and controlled modulation of the late positive potential (LPP) during emotional picture viewing.
Participants (N=32) viewed neutral and unpleasant stimuli for 6000 ms; at 3000 ms, one of two tones signaled participants to attend either to a more or less arousing portion of the picture. The time-course of the LPP was examined both during the passive viewing and directed attention portions of the trial using the method proposed by Guthrie and Buchwald [Guthrie D, Buchwald JS. Significance testing of difference potentials. Psychophysiology 1991;28(2):240-4].
During passive viewing, the LPP became reliably larger following the presentation of unpleasant pictures from 160 ms onward; the magnitude of the LPP became reliably smaller beginning 620 ms after participants were instructed to attend to the less arousing aspects of unpleasant pictures - and this difference was maintained throughout the duration of the trial.
The LPP reflects relatively automatic attention to emotional visual stimuli, but is also sensitive to manipulations of directed attention toward arousing versus neutral aspects of such stimuli.
These results shed further light on the time-course of emotional and cognitive modulation of the LPP, and suggest that the LPP reflects the relatively rapid and dynamic allocation of increased attention to emotional stimuli.
Ratings were collected on a rating scale comprised of the DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria for disruptive behavior disorders. Teacher ratings were obtained for 931 boys in regular classrooms in grades K through 8 from around North America. Means and standard deviations for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD), and conduct disorder (CD) scales are reported by age. Frequencies of DSM-III-R symptoms are reported by age, and suggested diagnostic cutoffs are discussed. A factor analysis revealed three factors: one reflecting ODD and several CD symptoms, one on which ADHD symptoms of inattention loaded, and one comprised of ADHD impulsivity/overactivity symptoms. Conditional probability analyses revealed that several hallmark symptoms of ADHD had very poor predictive power, whereas combinations of symptoms from the two ADHD factors had good predictive power. Combinations of ODD symptoms also had very high predictive power. The limited utility of teacher ratings in assessing symptoms of conduct disorder in this age range is discussed.
A new off-line procedure for dealing with ocular artifacts in ERP recording is described. The procedure (EMCP) uses EOG and EEG records for individual trials in an experimental session to estimate a propagation factor which describes the relationship between the EOG and EEG traces. The propagation factor is computed after stimulus-linked variability in both traces has been removed. Different propagation factors are computed for blinks and eye movements. Tests are presented which demonstrate the validity and reliability of the procedure. ERPs derived from trials corrected by EMCP are more similar to a 'true' ERP than are ERPs derived from either uncorrected or randomly corrected trials. The procedure also reduces the difference between ERPs which are based on trials with different degrees of EOG variance. Furthermore, variability at each time point, across trials, is reduced following correction. The propagation factor decreases from frontal to parietal electrodes, and is larger for saccades than blinks. It is more consistent within experimental sessions than between sessions. The major advantage of the procedure is that it permits retention of all trials in an ERP experiment, irrespective of ocular artifact. Thus, studies of populations characterized by a high degree of artifact, and those requiring eye movements as part of the experimental task, are made possible. Furthermore, there is no need to require subjects to restrict eye movement activity. In comparison to procedures suggested by others, EMCP also has the advantage that separate correction factors are computed for blinks and movements and that these factors are based on data from the experimental session itself rather than from a separate calibration session.
The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is a non-verbal pictorial assessment technique that directly measures the pleasure, arousal, and dominance associated with a person's affective reaction to a wide variety of stimuli. In this experiment, we compare reports of affective experience obtained using SAM, which requires only three simple judgments, to the Semantic Differential scale devised by Mehrabian and Russell (An approach to environmental psychology, 1974) which requires 18 different ratings. Subjective reports were measured to a series of pictures that varied in both affective valence and intensity. Correlations across the two rating methods were high both for reports of experienced pleasure and felt arousal. Differences obtained in the dominance dimension of the two instruments suggest that SAM may better track the personal response to an affective stimulus. SAM is an inexpensive, easy method for quickly assessing reports of affective response in many contexts.
Using a process model of emotion, a distinction between antecedent-focused and response-focused emotion regulation is proposed. To test this distinction, 120 participants were shown a disgusting film while their experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses were recorded. Participants were told to either (a) think about the film in such a way that they would feel nothing (reappraisal, a form of antecedent-focused emotion regulation), (b) behave in such a way that someone watching them would not know they were feeling anything (suppression, a form of response-focused emotion regulation), or (c) watch the film (a control condition). Compared with the control condition, both reappraisal and suppression were effective in reducing emotion-expressive behavior. However, reappraisal decreased disgust experience, whereas suppression increased sympathetic activation. These results suggest that these 2 emotion regulatory processes may have different adaptive consequences.
Two reports in the last issue of this journal attempted to replicate aspects of our previous studies on anterior electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry, affective style, and depression. In this commentary, an overview is provided of our model of anterior asymmetries, affective style, and psychopathology. Emphasis is placed on conceptualizing the prefrontal and anterior temporal activation patterns within a circuit that includes cortical and subcortical structures. The causal status of individual differences in asymmetric activation in the production of affective style and psychopathology is considered. Major emphasis is placed on EEG methods, particularly the need for multiple assessments to obtain estimates of asymmetric activation that better reflect an individual's true score. Issues specific to each of the two articles are also considered. Each of the articles has more consistency with our previously published data than the authors themselves suggest. Recommendations are made for future research to resolve some of the outstanding issues.