Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood

Summary

A detailed protocol for an experimental paradigm to assess the effectiveness with which children regulate emotion is described. Children are randomly assigned to use specific emotion regulation strategies, negative emotions are elicited with film clips, and changes in subsequent psychophysiology index the extent to which emotion regulation is effective.

Abstract

Effective regulation of emotion is one of the most important skills that develops in childhood. Research interest in this area is expanding, but empirical work has been limited by predominantly correlational investigations of children's skills. Relatedly, a key conceptual challenge for emotion scientists is to distinguish between emotion responding and emotion regulatory processes. This paper presents a novel method to address these conceptual and methodological issues in child samples. An experimental paradigm that assesses the effectiveness with which children regulate emotion is described. Children are randomly assigned to use specific emotion regulation strategies, negative emotions are elicited with film clips, and changes in subsequent psychophysiology index the extent to which emotion regulation is effective. Children are instructed to simply watch the emotion-eliciting film (control), distract themselves from negative emotions (cognitive distraction), or reframe the situation in a way that downplays the importance of the emotional event (cognitive reappraisal). Cardiac physiology, continuously acquired before and during the emotional task, serves as an objective measure of children's unfolding emotional responding while viewing evocative films. Key comparisons in patterns of obtained physiological reactivity are between the control and emotion regulation strategy conditions. Representative results from this approach are described, and discussion focuses on the contribution of this methodological approach to developmental science.

Introduction

Children experience negative emotions like sadness and fear every day. As they develop and mature, children learn regulatory strategies that allow them to manage a broad range of stressors and challenges to adapt to the world. Their emotion regulation repertoire expands, and shifts in composition from primarily behavioral strategies to include more cognitive strategies¹. By the end of middle childhood, children regulate their emotions using both cognitive and behavioral strategies². Understanding the effective regulation or management of unwanted negative feelings has become increasingly interesting to developmental scie....

Protocol

NOTE: The university's institutional review board approved all procedures before recruitment or data collection with human subjects began. Parents provide informed consent for children's participation, and children provide verbal (or, verbal and written if older than 7 years) assent to participate in these activities.

1. Randomly Assign Participants to Experimental Conditions

1. Test the effects of two different emotions and two different emotion regulation strategy instructions against a control group that receives no emotion regulation instructions, using a 2 (discrete emotion condition: sad or scary) x 3 (emotion regulation condition: control, distr....

Results

As shown in Figures 2 and 3, a typical result is that instructing children to use cognitive emotion regulation strategies leads to a different pattern of RSA reactivity than simply viewing the emotional film (Control). This supports the idea that instructions to regulate negative emotion using distraction or reappraisal give rise to different patterns of physiological responding during an emotionally challenging task, given the difference in responding am.......

Discussion

Critical Steps within the Protocol

Effectively eliciting negative emotion and instructing children to use specific emotion regulation strategies are the critical steps within the protocol.

Modifications and Troubleshooting

Film clips must be selected (and pilot tested) to be age-appropriate given the age range in question to ensure they evoke the target emotions of interest for the specified age ranges. Researchers should also take care to make.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
MindWare BioNex 2SLT Chassis Assembly	Mindware Technologies	50-3711-02	Hardware to acquire cardiac physiology
Mindware Ambulatory Impedance Cardiograph.	Mindware Technologies	50-1000-RB	Mobile acquisition device
MindWare Disposable Pediatric Tape Electrodes	Mindware Technologies	93-0101-00	EKG electrodes for children
MindWare HR/HRV Application w/Key	Mindware Technologies	60-1100-00	Scoring software to process EKG