From Toddler to Early Adolescent Emotion Regulation Strategies

Children (10 to 15 years) will be invited to come to a 1.5 hour laboratory assessment with a parent (most likely, mothers). We will gather parent-reported and children's self-reported avoidant and engaged cognitive ER strategies, worded with third or first person, respectively. Short form versions will be used to reduce burden for children. The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents provides a 6 item reappraisal scale and a 4 item expressive suppression scale. The Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth - Short Form provides an 8-item measure of experiential avoidance. The extended version of the Children's Response Styles Questionnaire provides a 5 item scale of problem-solving (also, "reflection") and a 5 item scale of rumination (also, "brooding"). Mothers will complete the Children's Responses to Feelings Checklist, which asks about these ER strategies in response to specific emotions, to examine specificity to threat (uncertainty/fear). The investigators will also assess in-vivo use of cognitive ER strategies by using an ER strategy interview after children experience uncertainty via laboratory procedures. Children will watch a 2-minute clip from a live-action movie validated to elicit emotion in the domain of threat with school-aged children. The primary experimenter will interview the child about the cognitive ER strategies they used using open-ended questions with subsequent prompts to allow reports of multiple strategies. The primary experimenter will then ask closed-ended (yes/no) interview questions about each of the cognitive ER strategies of focus. Children will also complete two 5 minute tasks from the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery - Middle Childhood Version with established reliability and validity in the domain of threat. In the Storytelling task, the experimenter will instruct the child to stand and tell a story about the previous day in front of them and an unfamiliar research assistant (RA), enacting a series of standardized pauses and prompts until the child indicates they are finished. In the Mask episode, the child enters a room to see an adult RA wearing a mask with an exaggerated face. The RA completes a standardized script of statements and pauses, finally taking off the mask and engaging the child in a friendly manner. The primary experimenter will repeat the ER strategy interview for the tasks. Auxiliary ER-relevant outcomes may supplement the primary focus on cognitive ER strategies. Behavioral tasks (Storytelling, Mask) can be coded for behavioral ER strategies (distraction, self-soothing, bids to experimenter). The investigators possess the necessary equipment and software for recording and analysis of children's ECG and respiration to serve as physiological indicators of ER. As an additional indicator of family emotional environment, the child and mother will be prompted to converse about the activities in the lab.