Anxiety disorders are prevalent worldwide and tend to run in families. Parents’ suppression of emotions affects the child’s emotional development and mental health through different pathways....Show moreAnxiety disorders are prevalent worldwide and tend to run in families. Parents’ suppression of emotions affects the child’s emotional development and mental health through different pathways. However, due to social desirability bias, parents and children may differ in their reports of parental emotional suppression. This study investigated which report of parental emotional suppression is a stronger predictor of a child’s anxiety. Additionally, the mother- child and father-child interactions seem to differ in effects on the child’s emotional development. Thus, it was explored whether mother-reported or father-reported suppression of emotions has a stronger link with the child’s anxiety symptoms. This study used a correlational cross-sectional design. In total, 187 child-parent dyads were included. Both children and parents had to fill out the online versions of the Affective Style Questionnaire regarding parental suppression and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotion Disorders. Data was analysed using Pearson’s correlations and by comparing the Fisher’s z effect scores. The correlations were non-significant for the parent-report of emotional suppression and the child’s anxiety and both for the fathers and mothers. However, there was a significant relationship between the child-report of parental emotional suppression and the child’s anxiety. These results unfold the complexity of this matter as children’s gender, age or clinical level of anxiety may explain the null findings. The correlational design was the primary limitation. Future research should further investigate the effects of children’s gender and culture in this relationship to gain a deeper understanding.Show less
Emotion regulation (ER) often happens in social contexts but research on interpersonal ER is still scare. This study aimed to investigate the impact of interpersonal ER strategies on emotional...Show moreEmotion regulation (ER) often happens in social contexts but research on interpersonal ER is still scare. This study aimed to investigate the impact of interpersonal ER strategies on emotional working memory (eWM) performance, particularly focusing on individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The study hypothesized that ER domains, specifically those addressing negative affect, adversely affect eWM performance and that the presence of BPD would moderate this relationship. This within-subject, experimental study involved 164 participants, with complete data from 89 individuals (68 females, mean age 25.30 ± 4.16 years). BPD was assessed by trained clinicians using the International Personality Disorder Examination. Participants completed the Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and an Emotional Working Memory Task (EWMT) featuring emotionally arousing stimuli as distractors. Linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictive and moderating effects of interpersonal ER strategies and BPD on eWM performance. The study found opposite effects of what was originally hypothesized: the Perspective Taking domain of ER significantly predicted eWM performance. This relationship was moderated by BPD: individuals with BPD and higher scores on the Perspective Taking scale experienced less distraction during the EWMT in the presence of emotional facial stimuli, while there was no significant difference for controls. Additionally, Enhancing Positive Affect negatively influenced eWM performance, suggesting that higher scores in this domain were associated with increased distraction by emotional stimuli. However, no significant effects were found for the Soothing and Social Modeling domains. The findings highlight the importance of not only considering intrapersonal but also interpersonal ER strategies in understanding and treating emotional dysregulation in BPD. Integrating computer-based eWM training programs and interpersonal ER strategies into therapeutic approaches may enhance cognitive control and emotional regulation in individuals with BPD.Show less
Background: This study on gut feelings investigates the correlation between microdiversity in the gut and cognitive reactivity in the brain with sex as a potential moderator. Research on potential...Show moreBackground: This study on gut feelings investigates the correlation between microdiversity in the gut and cognitive reactivity in the brain with sex as a potential moderator. Research on potential correlations and moderators is relevant to gain further insight into the networks involved in the gut-brain axis. The findings can influence treatment approaches in the field of clinical psychology to a greater focus on the gutbrain axis. Two hypotheses were examined: 1) a higher microdiversity in the gut is correlated with less emotion regulation difficulties, and 2) there are sex differences in the correlation between microdiversity and emotion regulation. Methods: This research was an observational between-subjects design with a total number of 75 participants. The primary outcome was the alpha score, assessed with the Shannon Index, which gives insight into individual microdiversity. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale was used to assess self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation to have insight into individual cognitive reactivity. Sex was conceptualised as the moderator variable. A correlational analysis for alpha scores and DERS scores was carried out, followed by a multiple regression analysis, which tested for a moderation with the variable sex. Results: There was no evidence for a negative correlation between high microdiversity and few emotion regulation difficulties. Sex did not have a significant moderation on this correlation either. Implications: Further research is needed on the gut-brain axis and sex differences in gut microdiversity and emotion regulation to adapt the treatment of stress-related disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or other anxiety-related disorders from a cognitive- to a more holistic approach.Show less
Background. Parenting plays an important role in the development of adolescent’s emotion regulation (ER). Parental psychological control (PC) is negatively and parental autonomy support (AS) is...Show moreBackground. Parenting plays an important role in the development of adolescent’s emotion regulation (ER). Parental psychological control (PC) is negatively and parental autonomy support (AS) is positively linked to adolescent ER. Impaired ER has been linked to internalizing- and externalizing problems. Parenting is usually examined trough observation or trough self-report methods, but these methods are not interchangeable. Research question. Is adolescent-perceived or observed parenting more important for ER in adolescents, while controlling for depression? Method. In this cross-sectional and multi-method study, 35 depressed and 80 control adolescents (11-17 years) reported on perceived parental PC and AS using the Parental Bonding Inventory and their own behavioral ER using the Children's Emotion Management Scale. Parental PC and AS was observed and scored on the Problem-solving Interaction task. A multiple regression analysis was used. Results. Depressed adolescents showed significantly lower adaptive ER. There were no significant results for adolescent-perceived and observed PC and AS in relation to ER. For the interaction effect of group status with autonomy support, parental support, and ER, no significant results were found. A trend effect was found for the moderating effect between depression and adolescent-perceived PC. Conclusions. Depressed adolescents showed significantly lower adaptive ER, demonstrating the need for ER focused interventions. For teens in middle adolescence, PC and AS parenting did not have a significant effect on their ER. Lastly, when depressed adolescents experienced their parents as more psychologically controlling, they had more difficulty with their ER, highlighting the potential benefit of cognitive behavioral therapy.Show less
Background: Despite a strong theoretical background suggesting that physical exercise reduces negative emotions, methodological shortcomings produced inconsistent evidence for this relationship....Show moreBackground: Despite a strong theoretical background suggesting that physical exercise reduces negative emotions, methodological shortcomings produced inconsistent evidence for this relationship. Studies indicate adaptive cognitive emotion regulation (ER) as a mediator in this relationship and suggest that trait emotional intelligence (EI) may moderate the relationship between exercise and adaptive cognitive ER. Aim: While improving methodological shortcomings, this experiment aimed to clarify and extend previous research investigating the exercise-negative emotions relationship. To allow for stronger causal conclusions, this study was the first to explore adaptive cognitive ER as a mechanism. As another theoretical extension, it examined whether trait emotional intelligence strengthens the relationship between exercise and adaptive cognitive ER. Method: 103 participants completed a measure of negative emotions and trait EI before recalling a negative personal event to induce negative emotions. After indicating their negative emotions again, they were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: An experimental condition in which participants exercised by cycling at a moderate intensity, an attentional control condition in which participants completed a puzzle and a no-attention control condition in which participants relaxed. While completing their respective task, participants were instructed to reflect on their negative personal event. After task completion, negative emotions and adaptive cognitive ER were assessed. Results: Contrary to expectations, a one-way ANCOVA showed that negative emotions were not lower after exercising compared to puzzling or relaxation. An exploratory analysis revealed that all participants, regardless of their condition, experienced less negative emotions from before to after exercise, puzzling or relaxing. However, PROCESS showed partial support for an indirect effect: Compared to participants who puzzled, those who exercised engaged in more adaptive cognitive ER and consequently experienced less negative emotions. Finally, trait EI did not strengthen the relationship between exercise and adaptive cognitive ER. Conclusion: Exercise reduces negative emotions as well as puzzling and relaxation. This effect may be due to mechanisms not assessed in this study. However, this study provides preliminary evidence that exercise indirectly lowers negative emotions via adaptive cognitive ER. Future studies are needed to clarify the potential of exercise to reduce negative emotions by employing larger and more diverse samples, such as clinical samples, as well as including other – theoretically sound – underlying mechanisms. Practically, this study suggests that different strategies effectively reduce negative emotions, regardless of how emotionally intelligent individuals are.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
closed access
Individuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT’s) have an increased risk for psychopathologies and behavioral problems. Cognitive factors during development could underly the development of...Show moreIndividuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT’s) have an increased risk for psychopathologies and behavioral problems. Cognitive factors during development could underly the development of psychopathologies. Adults with an extra X chromosome (Klinefelter) showed impaired emotional arousal and emotion regulation. However, not much is known about the manifestation of these impairments in children with SCT’s. Therefore, the current study focused on emotional arousal and emotion regulation strategies in children with SCT’s. It was also investigated if age moderated the differences in emotional arousal and emotion regulation strategies. One hundred-seven children with SCT’s and 102 nonclinical controls participated in this study. A frustration inducing task (locked-box task) was used to induce heightened emotional arousal, which was measured continuously using heart rate measures. The emotion regulation strategies were coded during the task as well. Results showed lower emotional arousability in the children with SCT’s as well as less frequent use of constructive and venting emotion regulation strategies. The difference in avoidance strategy use was moderated by age. As the current study found evidence for the manifestation of emotion regulation problems in the childhood of individuals with SCT’s, it could be that these impairments are part of the underlying mechanism of the development of psychopathologies as well as possible targets for intervention.Show less
Music is not only a source of entertainment but also a means to influence an individual’s mental and physical health. Music therapy is an umbrella term for interventions using the diverse aspects...Show moreMusic is not only a source of entertainment but also a means to influence an individual’s mental and physical health. Music therapy is an umbrella term for interventions using the diverse aspects of music that have been demonstrated to have beneficial effects on well-being. However, the large interindividual differences in how people interact with music are often overlooked. A screening instrument retrieving individualized music-related personal information would be useful for clinicians to tailor music therapy to the person seeking music-related health support. The first aim of this thesis is to develop and investigate the psychometric properties of the novel Musical Coping and Responsivity Scale: a questionnaire providing an individualized profile of a person’s musical background and behaviour to serve as an intervention guidance tool. The second aim is to investigate whether gender, as well as practical and theoretical musical knowledge, can predict a person’s tendency to use music for regulating emotions. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was first conducted on a 75-item questionnaire completed by 746 participants (377 males, mean age 66.1 years, SD = 7.9, range = 42- 93) out of which 28 items were retained. The shortened version was administered in combination with other music-related instruments (Gold-MSI, BMRQ, IIIS) to a second sample of 859 participants (425 males, mean age 63.5, SD = 9.8, range = 40-96). Four factors were retrieved from the EFA and interpreted as: Emotional usage of music, Musical skills, Musical responsiveness & Musical engagement. The same factor structure was confirmed by the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.93) and concurrent validity with other instruments were shown. For the second aim, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted, finding significant main effects of “Musical skills” (β = .146, p < .001) and gender (β = .131, p < .001) but no interaction. These results indicate that the MCRS is a reliable and valid tool to use for music therapy orientation. Additionally, both musical skills and gender are factors predicting the likelihood of using music to regulate emotions, making them important characteristics to consider when tailoring music interventions.Show less
Parental stress can have a negative impact on attentional bias in infants, which is an emotion processing construct. The present study investigated if parental stress is positively related to...Show moreParental stress can have a negative impact on attentional bias in infants, which is an emotion processing construct. The present study investigated if parental stress is positively related to attentional bias towards fearful over happy faces in infants aged 5 to 19 months. The sample consisted out of 220 infants (male: 48,2%, female: 51,2%) and their 229 primary caregivers (male: 32,3%, female: 67,7%). The research has a cross-sectional experimental design. Attentional bias was measured with an eye-tracker, which measured dwell times in infants when looking at happy and fearful faces. Parental stress was measured with the stress-scale of the DASS. The analyses suggested that parental stress was not positively related to attentional bias of their infants, whereas other studies found that parental stress was positively related to attentional bias. These differences in findings may be due to the fact that SES-variables were not taken into account in the present study. Besides, attentional bias differs across age groups, but also age was not taken into account. Therefore, attentional bias is a dynamic construct, which needs to be further examined with respect to variables that influence the link between parental stress and attentional bias.Show less
There are indications that children with autism have difficulties with emotion regulation. Therefore, the emotion regulation strategies of children with autism in comparison with typically...Show moreThere are indications that children with autism have difficulties with emotion regulation. Therefore, the emotion regulation strategies of children with autism in comparison with typically developing children were the target of this study. Because the development of emotion regulation skills is highly dependent on the influence of the mother, the empathy of the mother was also examined. The differences in emotion regulation strategies between children with autism and a non-clinical control group and the relationship with the empathy of the mother were tested in a laboratory session at Centre for Autism. The sample consisted of 53 mothers with their children, divided into a clinical group of children with autism (N = 19) and a non-clinical control group (N = 34). The age of the children varied between 41 and 81 months, with a mean of 56.91 months (SD = 11.27). To measure the emotion regulation strategies, the children were exposed to an anxiety-provoking situation: the Mechanical Toy Paradigm. The empathy of the mother was determined by the self-assessment questionnaire Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Children with autism showed significantly more avoidance and non-constructive emotion regulation strategies than children in the control group. No difference was found in the use of constructive emotion regulation strategies between children with autism and the control group. Mothers from the clinical group and control group did not differ in the degree of empathy. There was no significant correlation between empathy of the mother and emotion regulation strategies of the child. Conclusion: children with autism have difficulties with regulating their emotions and this was not related to empathy of the mother. There is a need for future research on the behave of improving emotion regulation strategies for children with autism. Interventions could include co-emotion regulation of the mother, because children with autism also seem to view their mother as a source of assistance.Show less
Het huidige onderzoek maakte deel uit van ‘Een Goed Begin’, een longitudinaal onderzoek van Universiteit Leiden. In dit onderzoek is aan de hand van het Still-Face Paradigma onderzocht of baby’s...Show moreHet huidige onderzoek maakte deel uit van ‘Een Goed Begin’, een longitudinaal onderzoek van Universiteit Leiden. In dit onderzoek is aan de hand van het Still-Face Paradigma onderzocht of baby’s van 6 maanden oud over reactieve (‘positieve affectie’, ‘negatieve affectie’) en zelfregulerende vaardigheden (‘gaze’, ‘zelf-kalmerend gedrag’, ‘reiken/wurmen’) beschikken. Daarnaast is er onderzocht of baby’s van sensitieve moeders een betere zelfregulatie hebben dan baby’s van matig sensitieve moeders. Ook is de invloed van emotieregulatie van de moeder op de zelfregulatie van de baby onderzocht. 151 moeders die hun eerste baby verwachtten deden mee aan het onderzoek. Tijdens de zwangerschap is de DERS afgenomen. De drie opeenvolgende fasen van het SFP zijn opgenomen op camera waarna reactiviteit/zelfregulatie van de baby en sensitiviteit van de moeder door getrainde codeurs gecodeerd is. Uit de resultaten bleken baby’ s van 6 maanden tussen de verschillende episodes van het SFP significante verschillen te vertonen voor bijna alle componenten van reactiviteit/zelfregulatie. Alleen ‘zelf-kalmerend gedrag’ bleek niet significant. Het ‘still-face effect’, recovery effect’ en ‘carry-over effect’ waren aanwezig. Baby’s van sensitieve moeders tonen significant minder ‘positieve affectie’ en ‘gaze’ in de still-face’ episode. Emotieregulatie van de moeder bleek geen significante invloed te hebben op de reactiviteit/zelfregulatie van de baby. Het huidige onderzoek geeft aan dat baby’s van 6 maanden al zelfregulerende vaardigheden hebben. Er zal echter meer onderzoek moeten komen naar welke factoren van invloed zijn, en of de zelfregulatie effectief is.Show less
Objective: The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that emotion regulation is a mediator of the relation between language skills and social competence, in elementary school children aged...Show moreObjective: The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that emotion regulation is a mediator of the relation between language skills and social competence, in elementary school children aged four to eight years. If this hypothesis is true, it is not unlikely that young children with both language problems and social problems would benefit from interventions targeting emotion regulation. Methods: Children from the Dutch study “Talentenkracht”, were rated on emotion regulation and social skills, by both teachers and parents. Emotion regulation was tested by the corresponding subscale of the BRIEF (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function). Social skills were tested by the SSRS (Social Skills Rating System). The CELF-4NL (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals) was used for measuring expressive and receptive language skills. To determine whether a mediation effect was present, necessary regression analyses and Sobel tests were performed for all combinations between rater (parents or teachers) and type of language skills (receptive or expressive). Results: Out of 154 included children (mean age 6.1±1.24 years), 151 had sufficient data for performing one or more regression analyses. On both teachers’ and parents’ ratings, receptive language skills were a predictor of social competence, but expressive language skills were not. Only when parents’ ratings were used, this relationship between receptive language skills and social competence, was mediated by emotion regulation (p < .05). Conclusion: In children aged four to eight years, emotion regulation is a full mediator in the relationship between receptive language skills and social competence. Future research should address whether children with both receptive language problems and social problems can benefit from interventions targeting emotion regulation. Since the mediation effect was only found in parents’ ratings, future researchers in this area should consider including both teachers’ and parents’ ratings.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
open access
2019-07-19T00:00:00Z
Problems with emotion regulation in childhood are related to negative child outcomes later in life, such as behavior problems. Because parents play an essential role by assisting their infant to...Show moreProblems with emotion regulation in childhood are related to negative child outcomes later in life, such as behavior problems. Because parents play an essential role by assisting their infant to develop the ability to regulate their emotions, the purpose of this study was to gain deeper understanding of the relation between maternal behavior and infants’ behavioral and physiological emotional reactivity and emotion regulation. 66 mother-infant dyads participated in two stress paradigms: the still-face paradigm was conducted at 6 months of age and the child was exposed to the robot paradigm at 12 months of age. During the stress paradigms infants’ behavioral reactivity, self-soothing behavior, heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were examined. Maternal sensitivity and maternal intrusiveness were observed during a free play task at the 6-month appointment. Overall, the infants showed behavioral and physiological arousal and regulation during stress. Although no effect of maternal intrusiveness was found, the 6-month-old infants of mothers judged as more sensitive showed more emotional reactivity, indicated by a greater increase in negative affect and heart rate than infants of less sensitive mothers. These infants also showed more physiological regulation, indicated by a greater decrease in RSA during stress than infants of less sensitive mothers. The stability of emotional reactivity and emotion regulation between 6 and 12 months was low: only the difference in RSA from stress to recovery was modestly stable. It is concluded that maternal behavior has an effect on the development of infants’ emotional reactivity and emotion regulation Future studies should further investigate the environmental characteristics influencing the development of emotion regulation in children using longitudinal designs.Show less
