دانلود رایگان مقاله مقررات عاطفی در نوجوانان: یک مطالعه ERP

ABSTRACT

Aims: The use of emotion regulation strategies can reduce the intensity of negative emotional experiences. Event related potentials (ERPs), specifically the late positive potential (LPP), are known to be sensitive to this modulation in adults. This is the first study to explore the neural correlates of expressive suppression in adolescents. We sought to replicate previous findings from emotion regulation studies with adult populations, show that the LPP can be modulated by expressive suppression in healthy adolescents, and examine the influence of age on LPP changes. Method: ERPs of 53 healthy adolescents (12–17 years old) performing an emotion regulation task (expressive suppression) were recorded. Results: Expressive suppression altered the LPP in adolescents with both increases and decreases noted depending on time window and recording site. The LPP during expressive suppression was decreased with increasing age. Conclusions: The findings suggest that 1) the LPP is an effective tool to study processes associated with emotion regulation in adolescents, and 2) expressive suppression, in terms of its neural indicators, seems to become more effective with age. The nature and utility of expressive suppression as a specific form of emotion regulation in adolescents are discussed.

5. Conclusion

The present study is the first to examine the ERP correlates of expressive suppression in an adolescent sample. This study had successfully replicated and extended previous adult findings by demonstrating that the LPP is sensitive to emotion regulation instructions in an adolescent population. The main findings were 1) age-related LPP decreases suggestive of greater facility with expressive suppression in older adolescents, which is likely due to normative developmental changes in emotion regulation networks; 2) an occipitally-focused LPP, not reported in adults but previously found in child studies, and 3) early, middle, and late window LPP effects due to expressive suppression. Further, both LPP increases and decreases were noted, depending on electrode site and time window. More broadly speaking, the current findings support the idea that expressive suppression is effective in significantly modulating the neural correlates of emotion regulation in adolescents. The decreased LPP with increasing age in our study may serve as a useful metric of normative brain and emotion regulation maturation. With continued exploration of the experimental constraints on the LPP and individual-difference variations in the LPP, it may come to serve as clinically relevant marker to index emotion-regulation processes in normally developing adolescents and those at risk for psychopathology.