Abstract
Background
Effective emotion regulation (ER) may be supported by 1) accurate emotion identification,
encoding, and maintenance of emotional states and related brain activity of regions
involved in emotional response (i.e., amygdala, ventral/posterior insula) and 2) cognitive
processes that implement reframing, supported by activation in cognitive control brain
regions (e.g., frontal, insular, and parietal cortices). The purpose of this project
was to examine how emotion labeling ability in early childhood is related to ER concurrently
and prospectively.
Methods
Data from a prospective longitudinal study of youths at risk for depression, including
measures of emotion labeling (i.e., Facial Affect Comprehension Evaluation) and ER
ability (i.e., Emotion Regulation Checklist) and strategy use (i.e., Cognitive Emotion
Regulation Questionnaire, Children’s Response Style Questionnaire), and functional
magnetic resonance imaging data during a sadness ER task (N = 139) were examined.
Results
Findings from multilevel modeling and linear regression suggested that greater emotion
labeling ability of more difficult emotions in early childhood was associated with
enhanced parent-reported ER in adolescence, but not with a tendency to engage in adaptive
or maladaptive ER strategies. Recognition of fear and surprise predicted greater activation
in cortical regions involved in cognitive control during an ER of sadness task, including
in the insula, anterior cingulate cortex, dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, and inferior
frontal gyrus.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that early ability to identify and label difficult facial emotions
in early childhood is associated with better ER in adolescence and enhanced activity
of cognitive control regions of the brain.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 11, 2020
Accepted:
August 31,
2020
Received in revised form:
August 12,
2020
Received:
July 6,
2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
