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1. Children's physiological reactivity in emotion contexts and prosocial behavior

   https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.1380  

   Coulombe, Brianne R. ; Rudd, Kristen L. ; Yates, Tuppett M. ( September 2019 , Brain and Behavior)

   Building on prior evidence that prosocial behavior is related to the regulation of personal distress in difficult situations, and given that physiological regulation is a central contributor to effective emotion regulation, this investigation evaluated whether and how children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during emotion challenges influenced later expressions of prosocial behavior.

   The current study utilized a diverse sample of school‐aged children (N = 169; 47.9% female; 47.3% Latinx) to evaluate relations between children's parasympathetic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) and sympathetic (i.e., pre‐ejection period; PEP) reactivity in response to each of three film‐elicited emotion challenges (i.e., sadness, happiness, and fear) at age 7 and both observed and parent‐reported prosocial behavior one year later.

   Children's parasympathetic reactivity to a film eliciting sadness evidenced a nonlinear relation with later prosocial sharing such that children who evidenced either RSA withdrawal or augmentation in response to the sad emotion challenge engaged in higher levels of prosocial behavior than children who evidenced relatively low or absent reactivity. Parasympathetic reactivity to films eliciting happiness or fear was not significantly related to later prosocial behavior. Likewise, children's sympathetic reactivity in response to the emotion challenges did not significantly predict later prosocial behavior.

   These findings provide preliminary support for a nonlinear association between children's parasympathetic emotion reactivity and later prosocial behavior, and suggest that children's ANS regulation in sad emotion contexts may be particularly important for understanding prosocial development.

    

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2. Linking autonomic physiology and emotion regulation in preschoolers: The role of reactivity and recovery

   https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21746  

   Kahle, Sarah ; Miller, Jonas G. ; Helm, Jonathan L. ; Hastings, Paul D. ( June 2018 , Developmental Psychobiology)

   Physiological recovery from negative emotions may be important for effective self‐regulation, but little is known about recovery processes in children. The current study investigated links between autonomic physiology, anger expressions, and emotion regulation in a sample of eighty‐three 3.5‐year‐olds. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia and pre‐ejection period were measured during an anger induction task as parasympathetic and sympathetic indices, respectively. We examined whether preschoolers’ anger expressions and emotion regulation behaviors were associated with individual differences in physiology. Autonomic changes were more strongly linked with emotion regulation than with expressed anger. Verbalized regulatory strategies were linked with greater sympathetic reactivity and also with greater recovery. In contrast, attention diversion was associated with blunted patterns of sympathetic reactivity followed by increased sympathetic arousal in the recovery phase. Disengaging from an emotional challenge may be linked with reduced physiological arousal in the short term, this behavior but also appears to have delayed consequences for physiological recovery.

    

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3. High-Frequency Heart Rate Variability and Emotion-Driven Impulse Control Difficulties During Adolescence: Examining Experienced and Expressed Negative Emotion as Moderators

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431620983453  

   Gonçalves, Stefanie F. ; Chaplin, Tara M. ; López, Roberto ; Regalario, Irene M. ; Niehaus, Claire E. ; McKnight, Patrick E. ; Stults-Kolehmainen, Matthew ; Sinha, Rajita ; Ansell, Emily B. ( January 2020 , The Journal of Early Adolescence)

   null (Ed.)

   Emotion-driven impulse control difficulties are associated with negative psychological outcomes. Extant research suggests that high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) may be indicative of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and potentially moderated by negative emotion. In the current study, 248 eleven- to 14-year-olds and their parent engaged in a negatively emotionally arousing conflict task at Time 1. Adolescents’ HF-HRV and negative emotional expression and experience were assessed before, during, and/or after the task. Adolescents reported on their levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties at Time 1 and one year later. Results revealed that higher levels of HF-HRV reactivity (i.e., higher HF-HRV augmentation) predicted higher levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties 1 year later among adolescents who experienced higher negative emotion. These findings suggest that negative emotional context should be considered when examining HF-HRV reactivity as a risk factor for emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and associated outcomes. 

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4. Information-based TMS to mid-lateral prefrontal cortex disrupts action goals during emotional processing

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48015-8  

   Lapate, R_C ; Heckner, M_K ; Phan, A_T ; Tambini, A. ; D’Esposito, M. ( May 2024 , Nature Communications)

   The ability to respond to emotional events in a context-sensitive and goal-oriented manner is essential for adaptive functioning. In models of behavioral and emotion regulation, the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is postulated to maintain goal-relevant representations that promote cognitive control, an idea rarely tested with causal inference. Here, we altered mid-LPFC function in healthy individuals using a putatively inhibitory brain stimulation protocol (continuous theta burst; cTBS), followed by fMRI scanning. Participants performed the Affective Go/No-Go task, which requires goal-oriented action during affective processing. We targeted mid-LPFC (vs. a Control site) based on the individualized location of action-goal representations observed during the task. cTBS to mid-LPFC reduced action-goal representations in mid-LPFC and impaired goal-oriented action, particularly during processing of negative emotional cues. During negative-cue processing, cTBS to mid-LPFC reduced functional coupling between mid-LPFC and nodes of the default mode network, including frontopolar cortex—a region thought to modulate LPFC control signals according to internal states. Collectively, these results indicate that mid-LPFC goal-relevant representations play a causal role in governing context-sensitive cognitive control during emotional processing.

    

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5. Early attachment to mothers and fathers: Contributions to Preschoolers' Emotional Regulation

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1692045  

   Fernandes, C. ; Fernandes, M. ; Santos, A. J. ; Antunes, M. ; Monteiro, L. ; Vaughn, B. E. ; Veríssimo, M. ( June 2021 , Frontiers in psychology)

   null (Ed.)

   Children acquire and develop emotional regulatory skills in the context of parent-child attachment relationships, nonetheless empirical studies have focused mainly on mother and less information is available regarding the role of both parent-child attachment relationships. Furthermore, despite its importance, there is no information regarding preschool years. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the potential influences of both mother-child and father-child attachments on preschooler’s later emotion regulation observed in the peer group. Fifty-three Portuguese nuclear families (mother, father and focal child) participated in the study; 47% of the children were boys and 53% were girls. Attachment Security was assessed at home using the Attachment Behavior Q-set when children were 3 years of age, and emotion regulation was observed in the preschool classrooms attended by the children at age 5, using the California child Q-sort to derive an Emotion Regulation Q-Scale. Results showed that the combined influence of both parent-child attachment security predicted better emotion regulation results, than did the specific contributions of each parent per se. Findings are consistent with integrative approaches that highlight the value of including both mother- and father-child attachment relationships, as well as their combined effect, when studying emotion regulation. 

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