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

Abstract

Emotion regulation skills develop substantially across adolescence, a period characterized by emotional challenges and developing regulatory neural circuitry. Adolescence is also a risk period for the new onset of anxiety and depressive disorders, psychopathologies which have long been associated with disruptions in regulation of positive and negative emotions. This paper reviews the current understanding of the role of disrupted emotion regulation in adolescent anxiety and depression, describing findings from self-report, behavioral, peripheral psychophysiological, and neural measures. Self-report studies robustly identified associations between emotion dysregulation and adolescent anxiety and depression. Findings from behavioral and psychophysiological studies are mixed, with some suggestion of specific impairments in reappraisal in anxiety. Results from neuroimaging studies broadly implicate altered functioning of amygdala-prefrontal cortical circuitries, although again, findings are mixed regarding specific patterns of altered neural functioning. Future work may benefit from focusing on designs that contrast effects of specific regulatory strategies, and isolate changes in emotional regulation from emotional reactivity. Approaches to improve treatments based on empirical evidence of disrupted emotion regulation in adolescents are also discussed. Future intervention studies might consider training and measurement of specific strategies in adolescents to better understand the role of emotion regulation as a treatment mechanism.

Associations of trait positive emotion regulation with everyday emotions: An experience sampling approach

“…An individual's trait positive rumination has important implications for the development of psychological disorders (Gilbert, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Gruber, 2013;Kraiss et al, 2019). Previous studies have shown that trait positive rumination was inversely associated with depressive symptoms (Feldman et al, 2008;Raes, Daems, Feldman, Johnson, & Van Gucht, 2009;Young, Sandman, & Craske, 2019). Trait emotion-focused positive rumination has also been found to mediate the negative relationship between trait psychological resilience and anxiety symptoms among Chinese college students, such that trait resilience was associated with higher trait emotion-focused positive rumination, which was associated with lower anxiety symptoms (Hou & Ng, 2014).…”

“…A handful of recent cross-sectional studies have reported the associations of savoring and positive rumination with psychological well-being (Cheung et al, 2019;Kiken et al, 2017;Kraiss et al, 2019;Young et al, 2019). Although some studies have adopted longitudinal or experimental designs (Gomez-Baya et al, 2018;Olofsson et al, 2016;Rueschkamp et al, 2018), they did not contextualise the association of savoring and positive rumination with emotions within the daily events (i.e.…”

“…Perceived capability of savoring has been shown to be associated with psychological well-being among individuals who reported fewer positive experiences (Jose et al, 2012;Rueschkamp et al, 2018). Moreover, previous studies have also proposed that higher levels of trait positive rumination predicted lower psychological distress and higher psychological well-being (Bijttebier et al, 2012;Kraiss et al, 2019;Raes, Smets, Nelis, & Schoofs, 2012;Young et al, 2019). Our results extend these previous findings by providing evidence that higher levels of capability of savoring through reminiscence and trait emotion-focused positive rumination could amplify the association between valence ratings of positive events and positive emotions in everyday life.…”

Hot and Cool Executive Function in Elite- and Amateur- Adolescent Athletes From Open and Closed Skills Sports

“…On the other hand, it is known from research on decisionmaking that the decision-making process can be impaired in emotionally arousing situations, especially among adolescents (van Duijvenvoorde et al, 2010). Adolescence, in turn is characterized by sensitivity to impulsivity (Leshem, 2016) and challenging phases of emotion regulation (Young et al, 2019), that promote risky behavior (Hartley and Somerville, 2015), which is more pronounced in boys (Cross et al, 2011;Romer et al, 2017). Although impulsivity is multidimensional and decision-making is a complex process, there appears to be a close interaction in adolescence.…”

Degree centrality of key brain regions of attention networks in children with primary nocturnal enuresis: A resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

“…Studies have shown that s. Psychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been associated with PNE comorbidities. These psychiatric disorders depend on cortical control, for example ADHD is thought to be associated with the prefrontal lobe et al (Albajara Sáenz et al, 2019), while depression and anxiety are both related to the dysfunction of amygdala‐prefrontal cortical circuitries (Young et al, 2019). At present, researches on enuresis mainly focus on the symptoms of enuresis, while few researches on its cognitive dysfunction.…”