We thank the children and families who have participated in our studies and the research assistants of the Emotion Regulation Lab for their assistance with data collection and coding.

<ol>
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The authors have nothing to disclose.

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...

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 scientists in recent years. This interest is driven, in part, by research linking emotion regulation processes to a host of social, emotional, and cognitive outcomes with substantial consequences for children&#39;s daily lives (e.g., academic achievement3, friendships4, and psychopathology5).
The method described here focuses on two cognitive emotion regulation strategies that have received the lion&#39;s share of empirical attention to date: reappraisal and distraction. Studies done with adults have shown that reappraisal and distraction are effective methods for alleviating emotion6,7,8,9,10,11. Reappraisal, which involves changing or reframing how one interprets an emotion or problem, has been shown to be effective in reducing the intensity of negative emotions in school-aged children12,13. Distraction, in contrast, involves changing what one is thinking about, such as when a child about to receive a vaccine thinks instead of the ice cream they will enjoy with their parent afterwards. Children can also begin to use these cognitive strategies to regulate negative emotions effectively, from as young as 5 - 6 years of age14.
The Theoretical and Practical Challenges of Studying Emotion Regulation
Emotional reactivity and regulatory processes are intertwined, bidirectional, and iterative15,16. Thus, a key conceptual challenge for developmental scientists is to identify and employ methods that meaningfully distinguish between emotion responding and regulatory processes. The approach described here takes the view of emotions as regulated (in contrast to emotions as regulating)15. Emotion regulation is defined as the process of changing an experienced emotion17 in ways that alter the intensity, duration, and/or valence of the emotion18.
Despite promising behavioral evidence that cognitive emotion regulation strategies like distraction and reappraisal reduce negative emotions14, there are many limitations to the predominant self-report or observational methodologies that constrain the conclusions that can be drawn from existing empirical studies, especially with young children. For example, self-report of emotional experience is subject to inaccuracies and demand characteristics. Although behavioral observation (e.g., of facial expressions) to index emotional responding is ostensibly more objective than self-report, observation is still subject to automatic and explicit regulatory processes that mask or hide the true experience of distress or negative emotion. To address these conceptual and methodological issues, this paper describes a method of examining the effects of emotion regulation strategies on children&#39;s subsequent psychophysiology that allows researchers to more clearly distinguish between reactivity to and active regulation of negative emotions. This experimental paradigm for eliciting negative emotions and assessing the consequences of different instructed emotion regulation strategies provides an approach that can be used with children of a wide range of ages, adolescents, or adults.
Psychophysiology Is a Non-Invasive Index of Emotion Regulation
Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) is a commonly used index of parasympathetic cardiac psychophysiology, and has emerged as a key correlate of children&#39;s emotion regulatory ability19,20. RSA is derived from the measurement of heart rate variation (controlled by efferent fibers of the vagus nerve) within the respiratory cycle21,22. High baseline RSA indicates better emotional regulation and socio-emotional competencies21, whereas lower baseline RSA is linked to negative socio-emotional outcomes23. Baseline RSA reflects the system&#39;s regulatory capacity to respond to stress, whereas changes in RSA from baseline levels under conditions of challenge (RSA reactivity) enable greater sympathetic influence and resource mobilization. This process reflects a shift away from homeostatic demands to the facilitation of sustained attention, behavioral self-regulation, and the generation of coping strategies to control affective or behavioral arousal20,26. RSA reactivity to challenging lab tasks is associated with better emotion regulatory abilities and general adaptive functioning, including less negative emotionality and risk for behavior problems and better sustained attention21,23,24,25,26,27. RSA reactivity to challenge can be described as increasing (RSA augmentation) or decreasing (RSA suppression) parasympathetic influence. The flexibility with which parasympathetic influence over the heart is regulated across contexts is thought to underlie adaptive emotion regulation.
Indeed, changes in children&#39;s RSA amplitudes during a series of challenging tasks predict their emotional regulatory skill28. RSA is responsive in emotionally challenging contexts as well. For example, RSA suppression (a decrease from baseline level to task level) is linked to experiencing fear and sadness, but augmentation (increase from baseline to task) is linked to effective regulation of emotion when sadness and fear are evoked via film clips29,30. Previous work that has capitalized on the utility of this non-invasive method for assessing in vivo emotion regulation processes has demonstrated how children&#39;s use of specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies predicted RSA reactivity while they were watching emotion-eliciting videos31. This paper describes a novel experimental paradigm that uses the physiological patterns associated with active emotion regulation to index regulatory ability, providing an innovative method to parse the experience and regulation of negative emotions.

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psychophysiological assessment of the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies in childhood

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.

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...

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Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood

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.

Effective regulation of emotion is one of the most important skills that develops in childhood. Research interest in this area is expanding, but empirical ...

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11.4K Views.  University of California, Riverside (UCR). 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.

Video: Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood

Measurement of Fronto-limbic Activity Using an Emotional Oddball Task in Children with Familial High Risk for Schizophrenia

Adolescence is a critical developmental period where the early symptoms of schizophrenia frequently emerge. First-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia who are at familial high risk (FHR) may show similar cognitive and emotional changes. However, the neurological changes underlying the emergence of these symptoms remain unclear. This study sought to identify differences in frontal, striatal, and limbic regions in children and adolescents with FHR using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Groups of 21 children and adolescents at FHR and 21 healthy controls completed an emotional oddball task that relied on selective attention and the suppression of task-irrelevant emotional information. The standard oddball task was modified to include aversive and neutral distractors in order to examine potential group differences in both emotional and executive processing. This task was designed specifically to allow for children and adolescents to complete by keeping the difficulty and emotional image content age-appropriate. Furthermore, we demonstrate a technique for suitable fMRI registration for children and adolescent participants. This paradigm may also be applied in future studies to measure changes in neural activity in other populations with hypothesized developmental changes in executive and emotional processing.

This paper describes how to use the emotional oddball task and fMRI to measure brain activation in children and adolescents at familial high risk for schizophrenia (FHR).&#160;FMRI was used to measure differences in fronto-striato-limbic regions during an emotional oddball task. Children with FHR exhibited abnormal functional activation during adolescence.

Adolescence is a critical developmental period where the early symptoms of schizophrenia frequently emerge. First-degree relatives of people with ...

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation

The ability to control/regulate emotions is an important coping mechanism in the face of emotionally stressful situations. Although significant progress has been made in understanding conscious/deliberate emotion regulation (ER), less is known about non-conscious/automatic ER and the associated neural correlates. This is in part due to the problems inherent in the unitary concepts of automatic and conscious processing1. Here, we present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of both deliberate and automatic ER using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This protocol allows new avenues of inquiry into various aspects of ER. For instance, the experimental design allows manipulation of the goal to regulate emotion (conscious vs. non-conscious), as well as the intensity of the emotional challenge (high vs. low). Moreover, it allows investigation of both immediate (emotion perception) and long-term effects (emotional memory) of ER strategies on emotion processing. Therefore, this protocol may contribute to better understanding of the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation in healthy behaviour, and to gaining insight into possible causes of deficits in depression and anxiety disorders in which emotion dysregulation is often among the core debilitating features.

We present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of deliberate and automatic emotion regulation, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This protocol can be used in healthy participants, both young and older, as well as in clinical patients.

The ability to control/regulate emotions is an important coping mechanism in the face of emotionally stressful situations. Although significant progress ...

Neuroscience

Use of Galvanic Skin Responses, Salivary Biomarkers, and Self-reports to Assess Undergraduate Student Performance During a Laboratory Exam Activity

Typically, self-reports are used in educational research to assess student response and performance to a classroom activity. Yet, addition of biological and physiological measures such as salivary biomarkers and galvanic skin responses are rarely included, limiting the wealth of information that can be obtained to better understand student performance. A laboratory protocol to study undergraduate students&#39; responses to classroom events (e.g., exams) is presented. Participants were asked to complete a representative exam for their degree. Before and after the laboratory exam session, students completed an academic achievement emotions self-report and an interview that paralleled these questions when participants wore a galvanic skin sensor and salivary biomarkers were collected. Data collected from the three methods resulted in greater depth of information about students&#39; performance when compared to the self-report. The work can expand educational research capabilities through more comprehensive methods for obtaining nearer to real-time student responses to an examination activity.

Research on undergraduate students' academic achievement emotions have primarily relied on self-reports in laboratory settings. Studies rarely include bio-physiological measures to these self-reports. This protocol will describe a methodology that integrates self-reports with and bio-physiological measures to assess student response and performance during a laboratory examination activity.

Typically, self-reports are used in educational research to assess student response and performance to a classroom activity. Yet, addition of biological ...

Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Self-distancing in Young Children

Self-distancing (i.e., creating mental distance between the self and a stimulus by adopting a less egocentric perspective) has been studied as a way to improve adolescents' and adults' emotion regulation. These studies instruct adolescents and adults to use visual imagery or language to create distance from the self before engaging in self-regulation tasks and when thinking about past and future events. For example, adults are asked to recall past, negative emotional experiences from either a first-person perspective (no distance) or a third-person perspective (self-distanced). These studies show that a self-distanced perspective allows adults to cope more adaptively when recalling negative feelings. However, the self-distancing paradigm used with adults was not developmentally appropriate for young children. This modified self-distancing paradigm involves instructing children to think about their thoughts, feelings, and actions from different perspectives that vary in their distance from the self while completing a self-regulation task. The paradigm involves randomly assigning children to use one of three perspectives: self-immersed, third-person, or exemplar. In the self-immersed condition, children are asked to think about themselves using the first-person perspective (e.g., "How am I feeling?") and no distance is created from the self. In the third-person condition, children are asked to create distance from the self by using the third-person perspective (e.g., "How is [child's name] feeling?"). In the exemplar condition, the greatest distance from the self is created by asking children to pretend to be a media character and to think about that character's thoughts and feelings (e.g., "How is Batman feeling?"). Studies using the self-distancing paradigm with 4-6-year-olds have found that as the amount of distance from the self increases (self-immersed &lt; third-person &lt; exemplar), children perform better on self-regulation tasks. These findings suggest that the strategies implemented in the self-distancing protocol may be useful to include in self-regulation interventions for young children.

An experimental paradigm was created to measure the effects of self-distancing in young children (4-6-year-olds). Self-distancing is a process through which individuals adopt a less egocentric perspective. This paradigm has been used to examine the effects of self-distancing on young children&#39;s self-regulation.

Self-distancing (i.e., creating mental distance between the self and a stimulus by adopting a less egocentric perspective) has been studied as a way to ...

A Cross-Disciplinary and Multi-Modal Experimental Design for Studying Near-Real-Time Authentic Examination Experiences

Over the past ten years, research into students&#39; emotions in educational environments has increased. Although researchers have called for more studies that rely on objective measures of emotional experience, limitations on utilizing multi-modal data sources exist. Studies of emotion and emotional regulation in classrooms traditionally rely on survey instruments, experience-sampling, artifacts, interviews, or observational procedures. These methods, while valuable, are mainly&#160;dependent on participant or observer subjectivity and is limited in its authentic measurement of students&#39; real-time performance to a classroom activity or task. The latter, in particular, poses a stumbling block to many scholars seeking to objectively measure emotions and other related measures in the classroom, in real-time.
The purpose of this work is to present a protocol to experimentally study students&#39; real-time responses to exam experiences during an authentic assessment situation. For this, a team of educational psychologists, engineers, and engineering education researchers designed an experimental protocol that retained the limits required for accurate physiological sensor measurement, best-practices of salivary collection, and an authentic testing environment. In particular, existing studies that rely on physiological sensors are conducted in experimental environments that are disconnected from educational settings (e.g., Trier Stress Test), detached in time (e.g., before or after a task), or introduce analysis error (e.g., use of sensors in environments where students are likely to move). This limits our understanding of students&#39; real-time responses to classroom activities and tasks. Furthermore, recent research has called for more considerations to be covered around issues of recruitment, replicability, validity, setups, data cleaning, preliminary analysis, and particular&#160;circumstances (e.g., adding a variable in the experimental design) in academic emotions research that relies on multi-modal approaches.

An experimental design was developed to investigate the real-time influences of an examination experience to assess the emotional realities students experience in higher education settings and tasks. This design is the result of a cross-disciplinary (e.g., educational psychology, biology, physiology, engineering) and multi-modal (e.g., salivary markers, surveys, electrodermal sensor) approach.

Over the past ten years, research into students&#39; emotions in educational environments has increased. Although researchers have called for more studies ...

Multimodal Protocol for Assessing Metacognition and Self-Regulation in Adults with Learning Difficulties

Learning disabilities (LDs) encompass disorders of those who have difficulty learning and using academic skills, exhibiting performance below expectations for their chronological age in the areas of reading, writing, and/or mathematics. Each of the disorders making up the LDs involve different deficits; however, some commonalities can be found within that heterogeneity, such in terms of learning self-regulation and metacognition. Unlike in early ages and later educational levels, there are hardly any evidence-based evaluation protocols for adults with LDs. LDs influence academic performance but also have serious consequences in professional, social, and family contexts. In response to this, the current work proposes a multimodal evaluation protocol focused on metacognitive, self-regulation of learning, and emotional processes, which make up the basis of the difficulties in adults with LDs. The assessment is carried out through analysis of the on-line learning process using a variety methods, techniques, and sensors (e.g., eye tracking, facial expressions of emotion, physiological responses, concurrent verbalizations, log files, screen recordings of human-machine interactions) and off-line methods (e.g., questionnaires, interviews, and self-report measures). This theoretically-driven and empirically-based guideline aims to provide an accurate assessment of LDs in adulthood in order to design effective prevention and intervention proposals.

The current work proposes a multimodal evaluation protocol focused on metacognitive, self-regulation of learning, and emotional processes, which make up the basis of the difficulties in adults with LDs.

Learning disabilities (LDs) encompass disorders of those who have difficulty learning and using academic skills, exhibiting performance below expectations ...

Measuring Cardiac Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) Activity in Toddlers - Resting and Developmental Challenges

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) consists of two branches, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, and controls the function of internal organs (e.g., heart rate, respiration, digestion) and responds to everyday and adverse experiences 1. ANS measures in children have been found to be related to behavior problems, emotion regulation, and health 2-7. Therefore, understanding the factors that affect ANS development during early childhood is important. Both branches of the ANS affect young children&#8217;s cardiovascular responses to stimuli and have been measured noninvasively, via external monitoring equipment, using valid and reliable measures of physiological change 8-11. However, there are few studies of very young children with simultaneous measures of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, which limits understanding of the integrated functioning of the two systems. In addition, the majority of existing studies of young children report on infants&#8217; resting ANS measures or their reactivity to commonly used mother-child interaction paradigms, and less is known about ANS reactivity to other challenging conditions. We present a study design and standardized protocol for a non-invasive and rapid assessment of cardiac autonomic control in 18 month old children. We describe methods for continuous monitoring of the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the ANS under resting and challenge conditions during a home or laboratory visit and provide descriptive findings from our sample of 140 ethnically diverse toddlers using validated equipment and scoring software. Results revealed that this protocol can produce a range of&#160;physiological responses to both resting and developmentally challenging conditions, as indicated by changes in heart rate and indices of parasympathetic and sympathetic activity. Individuals demonstrated&#160;variability in resting levels, responses to challenges, and challenge reactivity, which provides additional evidence that this protocol is useful for the examination of ANS individual differences for toddlers.

Measuring Cardiac Autonomic Nervous System ANS Activity in Toddlers - Resting and Developmental Challenges

We describe the methods for continuous monitoring of the autonomic nervous system under resting and challenge conditions with 18 month old children. Results revealed that this protocol can produce meaningful physiological responses in both branches of the autonomic nervous system and elicit significant individual variability in patterns of responses.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) consists of two branches, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, and controls the function of internal ...

Medicine

Exploring the Neural Correlates of Cognitive Reappraisal in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Using Task-based Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) show heightened brain activity in limbic and orbitofrontal regions when confronted with negative emotions, which could be associated with impairments in emotion regulation skills. The ability to regulate emotions is a necessary coping mechanism when facing emotionally distressing situations, and deliberate emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal have been extensively studied in the general population. Despite this, little is known about potential deliberate emotion regulation deficits in OCD patients and the associated neural correlates. Here, we describe a protocol to investigate the neural correlates of deliberate emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in OCD patients in comparison to a matched control sample. This protocol follows current gold standards for neuroimaging studies and includes both task activation and connectivity analysis (as well as behavioral data) to allow a more complete investigation. Therefore, we expect it will contribute to expanding the knowledge of the neural correlates of emotion (dys)regulation in OCD, and it could also be applied to explore emotion regulation deficits in other psychiatric disorders.

We introduce a protocol for exploring the neural correlates of a cognitive emotion regulation task, namely cognitive reappraisal, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This protocol was used in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and healthy controls but can also be used in other clinical samples.

Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) show heightened brain activity in limbic and orbitofrontal regions when confronted with negative ...

Physiological Correlates of Emotion Recognition

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls the activity of the body's internal organs and regulates changes in their activity depending on the current environment. The vagus nerve, which innervates many of the internal organs, is an important part of the system. When our brain senses danger, vagal tone is inhibited, leading to a set of changes in the body designed to make us more prepared to fight or flee; for example, our heart rate increases, our pupils dilate, and we breath more quickly. Conversely, when the vagal system is activated, these physiological responses are inhibited, leading to a calmer state. The vagus nerve, then, acts as a kind of "brake" on our arousal. One interesting consequence of this calmer state is that it tends to promote social interaction-when we are not tensed and afraid of our immediate environment we are instead receptive to interacting with others. Poor functioning of this regulatory mechanism, therefore, may be associated with difficulties in social behavior.
One index of autonomic regulation is heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a measure of how much the gap between one beat and the next varies over time. High HRV means there are continual fluctuations in the heart rate over time, a reflection of successful autonomic regulation. Low HRV means there is consistency of the heart rate over time, a condition associated with poor autonomic regulation. 
In this study we will test the hypothesis that increased HRV is associated with more accurate categorization of emotional stimuli.1,2 Following a study by Park et al., we will measure HRV and test its association on a task that measures skill at perceiving facial emotions.3

Correlating Heart Rate Variability with Emotion Recognition

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls the ...

Education

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Psychology

Neuropsychology

Coping Strategies: Emotion Focused

Emotion-focused coping refers to a set of strategies aimed at managing the emotional impact of stressors, rather than directly addressing their causes. This approach involves altering one&#39;s emotional response to stressful situations to reduce their psychological effects. For example, individuals might talk with a friend or engage in activities like journaling to express their feelings. Such actions can help achieve emotional clarity or release, providing the psychological stability needed to navigate challenges. By reframing a problem &#8212; viewing it as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat &#8212; individuals can shift their emotional perspective and lessen the stress associated with the situation.
These strategies include avoiding or denying the stressor, distancing oneself from it, or diminishing its perceived significance. Techniques like positive comparisons &#8212; evaluating one&#39;s situation favorably against others &#8212; and finding acceptance or meaning in adverse events also fall under this category.
Emotion-focused coping becomes particularly significant when stressors are perceived as overwhelming or beyond an individual&#39;s control. For instance, if someone experiences the loss of a job, instead of focusing solely on the immediate negative consequences, they might focus on opportunities for personal growth or career path reevaluation. This acceptance-based approach allows for reduced stress while considering future actions. In such cases, direct, problem-focused solutions would be less viable.
Another example can be seen in students who face the disappointment of failing an exam. Rather than continually revisiting the problem, which will not change the outcome, accepting the outcome or reframing it as a learning experience can help them regain emotional balance. This distinction is crucial in understanding how people adapt to uncontrollable circumstances and maintain psychological resilience.

Emotion-focused coping strategies aim to alter emotional responses to stressors, reducing their emotional impact and enhancing the capacity to address ...