Title: Characterising Emotion Regulation Development in Adolescence
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Life is full of frustrations, annoyances and things that distress us. The ability to control or regulate our emotions when these occur is crucial to our mental health and wellbeing: evidence shows that poor emotion regulation is associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety and aggressive behaviour. Research suggests that emotion regulation abilities are still developing in adolescence (broadly, the second decade of life). This is not surprising because parts of the brain involved in regulating emotion are also still developing. At the same time, adolescents must deal with increasingly adult challenges as they grow up. Adolescence is a time of heightened emotions, and mental illness associated with poor emotion regulation is most likely to develop during the adolescent years. However, little research has studied how different aspects of emotion regulation develop in adolescence. The term emotion regulation refers to several mental processes, which can be broadly divided into 'explicit' and 'implicit' components. Imagine an adolescent has an argument with a friend and is very upset. Explicit emotion regulation would mean using conscious strategies to reduce distress, e.g. thinking 'my friend was just in a bad mood.' With implicit emotion regulation, the adolescent may not be consciously thinking about their distress, but it may nonetheless impact on their ability to concentrate, e.g. on schoolwork. Effective implicit emotion regulation means the distress would have only a small effect on ability to concentrate. One of the aims of the proposed project is to chart the development of both implicit and explicit emotion regulation in adolescents aged 11-16. Research suggests that brain development in regions involved in emotion regulation is especially pronounced in this age range. Implicit and explicit emotion regulation abilities will be measured using computerised tasks completed at school. Performance will be measured both cross-sectionally (comparing adolescents of different ages (11-15 years), tested at the same time) and longitudinally (seeing how performance develops in the same adolescents between one year and the next, i.e. at 11-15 years and then at 12-16 years). Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal methods will enable a more complete picture of emotion regulation development to emerge, as will the use of both implicit and explicit emotion regulation tasks. The aim is to provide a more comprehensive assessment of emotion regulation abilities than so far exists in adolescence. Another important aim of the study is to look at links between adolescents' emotion regulation abilities and their social and emotional wellbeing, including symptoms of anxiety, depression, and aggression. While the study will focus on the general population, the aim is to highlight potential mechanisms of early vulnerability to symptoms associated with poor emotion regulation. We will use questionnaires to ask adolescents how often they feel anxious, depressed or aggressive, as well as how they get on with peers. Parents and teachers will provide further information about adolescents' behaviour. Based on previous evidence, we predict that adolescents who perform well on the computerised emotion regulation tasks will report fewer symptoms of anxiety, depression and aggression. However, the dataset will enable several research questions to be addressed for the first time. We will look at whether specific aspects of emotion regulation relate particularly strongly to social and emotional wellbeing. If so, this could provide a specific target for future attempts at improving emotion regulation in adolescence, with a view to improving wellbeing. We will also study whether there are certain periods during adolescence that are especially important for emotion regulation development, and whether current emotion regulation ability affects future wellbeing (mental health, social skills, and academic performance) at the one-year follow-up.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH