Behavioral And Neural Correlates Of Positive Emotion Regulation By Cognitive Reappraisal In Adolescence

Adolescents experience more extreme affect (both positive and negative) and more variable mood states in their everyday lives than do their adult and children counterparts, and were also vulnerable to many emotion-related disorders such as anxiety and depression. Recent evidence suggests that Emotion regulation deficit plays an important role in these emotional characteristics, thus, it is important for us to understand development of emotion regulation in adolescence.While a few of recent researches have examined development of emotion regulation in adolescence, most of those studies have focused on regulation of negative emotion; few studies have examined development of positive emotion regulation in adolescence. The present studies sought to address the gaps in the literature. Study 1 adopted emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ) to investigate development of tendency to use cognitive reappraisal in Chinese adolescence, and its relationship to their depression and risk-taking behaviors. Study 2 used emotion reactivity and Regulation task to investigate development of ability to downregulate positive emotion by reinterpretation and distance (two substratigies of cognitive reappraisal), and its relation to depression and risk-taking behaviors. Study 3 investigated development of ability to upregulate positive emotion by cognitive reappraisal, and its relation to depression and risk-taking behaviors. Further, Studies 4-6 used ERP technique to investigate neural development of positive emotion regulation in adolescence. Results showed:(1) There was no age effect for tendency to use cognitive reappraisal during adolescence.Linear regression analysis revealed that tendency to use cognitive reappraisal negatively predicted depressive symptom, not risk-taking behavior.(2) The ability using reinterpretation to downregulate social positive emotion did not increase with age; there was age effect for the ability using reinterpretation to downregulate non-social positive emotion, but the difference only existed between early and late adolescents. The ability using distance to downregulate positive emotion increases with age, regardless of non-social or social positive emotion. Further, linear regression analysis showed that the ability using reinterpretation to downregulate positive emotion negatively predicted risk-taking behavior;(3) There was no age effect for the ability using cognitive reappraisal to upregulate positive emotion. Further, the ability using reinterpretation to upregulate positive emotion negatively predicted depressive symptoms in adolescence.(4) At the neural level, adult participants were unable to use reinterpretation to reduce amplitudes of LPP elicited by both non-social and social positive emotion stimuli. However, the cognitive control-related alpha and beta were significantly reduced when downregulating positive emotion. Interestingly, adolescents showed reduced LPP amplitude elicited by social positive emotion stimuli, not unsocial positive emotion stimuli when they use reinterpretation to downregulate their emotion, however, there were no significant activations for alpha and beta, suggesting that adolescents may use some other strategies to reduce LPP amplitude.(5) Adult participants were able to use distance to reduce the amplitude of LPP elicited by positive emotion stimuli, meanwhile, the cognitive control-related alpha were significantly activiated; Adolescent participants were unable to use distance to reduce the amplitude of LPP elicited by positive emotion stimuli, and the cognitive control-related alpha remained unchanged when downregulating positive emotion. These results suggest that the ability to exert top-down control over emotion responses is still developing in adolescence.(6) Adults participants were able to use reinterpretation strategies to enhance the amplitude of LPP elicited by social positive stimuli, not unsocial positive stimuli; while adolesncent participants were unable to use reinterpretation strategies to enhance the amplitude elicited by both unsocial and social positive emotion stimuli. Furthmore, there was no significant reduction for the cognitive control-related alpha and beta when upregulate positive emotion, suggesting that upregulating positive emotion involves different neural mechanisms from downregulating positive emotion.