Relationships between emotion regulation strategies and executive functions in adolescence: Exploring the effects of discrete emotions and age.

INTRODUCTION: Emotion regulation (ER) develops during adolescence and contributes to psychosocial adjustment. Individual differences in the development of ER strategies may be related to cognitive processes responsible for managing goal-directed behaviors, namely executive functions (EFs). This study examined (1) examined how difficulties in specific EFs (i.e., inhibition, flexibility and working memory) predict the use of ER strategies (i.e., reappraisal, distraction, expressive suppression, rumination, support-seeking) in an emotion-specific approach and (2) investigated these links across three different age groups (corresponding to early, middle and late adolescence), considering the nonlinear evolution of the relationships between EF and ER strategies during adolescence. METHODS: The sample was composed of 1076 adolescents aged from 12 to 19 years old who completed questionnaires on EF difficulties (i.e., inhibition, flexibility, and working memory) and ER strategies (i.e., distraction, reappraisal, expressive suppression, social support-seeking, and rumination). RESULTS: Results showed various complex relationships between EFs and ER. Flexibility issues were related to rumination at all ages, while inhibition and flexibility difficulties were negatively linked to reappraisal in mid- to late adolescence. Many relationships were emotion- and age-dependent. CONCLUSIONS: These findings support the link between cognitive and emotional regulatory processes. Its complex evolution during adolescence opens a new avenue for future research.

The Contextualized Emotion Regulation Survey for Adolescents (CERSA): How does emotion regulation vary according to context?

Recent models of emotion regulation (ER) highlight the need to construct tools that assess ER in different contexts. This paper describes the development and validation of the Contextualized Emotion Regulation Survey for Adolescents (CERSA). This questionnaire assesses ER strategies and abilities in three situations that elicit specific emotions (i.e. sadness, fear and anger). Data were collected from a sample of 840 adolescents who completed the CERSA (M age = 14.75; SD age = 1.61) and another of 314 adolescents who completed the CERSA, the CERQ and the SLWS (M age = 13.63; SD age = 0.85). Results confirmed the expected structure in all situations as well as construct and external validity. Furthermore, correlations between latent factors and gender differences in ER strategies and abilities were often situation dependant. Mean levels of ER strategies and abilities varied according to the situation. These results provide empirical support for ER flexibility and polyregulation in adolescence.

Contextual adaptation of cognitive flexibility in kindergartners and fourth graders.

This study investigated the development of children's ability to find the optimal balance between flexibility and stability as a function of the frequency of required task switches. This question was addressed in two situations contrasting the dynamics of engagement of reconfiguration processes (reactive vs. proactive). A cued task-switching paradigm was presented to kindergartners and fourth graders, who are known to differ in their preferential mode of control engagement. Flexibility adaptation was examined through the modulation of switching costs by switch proportion, the so-called list-wide switch proportion (LWSP) effect. When the situation forced the use of reactive control (Experiment 1: simultaneous presentation of the cue and the stimulus), we found the LWSP effect with a greater magnitude in kindergartners than in fourth graders. In the situation inducing proactive control (Experiment 2: task cue presented before and until the stimulus), flexibility adaptation was obtained when error rates were considered but not response times. By demonstrating that even young children are capable of flexibility adaptation to contextual demands, these findings support the hypothesis that implicitly triggered adaptation of control may develop as early as the end of the preschool years despite the immaturity of cognitive control during this period.

Better Destination Memory in Females.

Destination memory refers to the ability to remember to whom one has sent information. The current study investigated gender differences in destination memory. Female and male participants were asked to tell proverbs to pictures depicting faces of female and male celebrities. Participants were later asked to decide to whom each proverb had been previously told. Results showed better destination memory (regardless of the destination's gender) in female participants than in male participants, a performance that was significantly correlated with verbal episodic memory. However, no own-gender bias was observed, as both female and male participants demonstrated similar memory for female and male destinations. Taken together, our findings suggest a relationship between females' superiority in destination memory and their better verbal episodic memory. The absence of an own-gender bias in destination memory is interpreted an evolutionary need to maintain social contacts with all genders.

Age-related changes in the temporal dynamics of executive control: a study in 5- and 6-year-old children.

Based on the Dual Mechanisms of Control theory (Braver et al., 2007), this study conducted in 5- and 6-year-olds, tested for a possible shift between two modes of control, proactive vs. reactive, which differ in the way goal information is retrieved and maintained in working memory. To this end, we developed a children-adapted version of the AX-Continuous-Performance Task (AX-CPT). Twenty-nine 5-year-olds and 28-6-year-olds performed the task in both low and high working-memory load conditions (corresponding, respectively, to a short and a long cue-probe delay). Analyses suggested that a qualitative change in the mode of control occurs within the 5-year-old group. However, quantitative, more graded changes were also observed both within the 5-year-olds, and between 5 and 6 years of age. These graded changes demonstrated an increasing efficiency in proactive control with age. The increase in working memory load did not impact the type of dynamics of control, but had a detrimental effect on sensitivity to cue information. These findings highlight that the development of the temporal dynamics of control can be characterized by a shift from reactive to proactive control together with a more protracted and gradual improvement in the efficiency of proactive control. Moreover, the question of whether the observed shift in the mode of control is task dependant is debated.

Cognitive control and language across the life span: does labeling improve reactive control?

How does cognitive control change with age, and what are the processes underlying these changes? This question has been extensively studied using versions of the task-switching paradigm, which allow participants to actively prepare for the upcoming task (Kray, Eber, & Karbach, 2008). Little is known, however, about age-related changes in this ability across the life span when there is no opportunity to anticipate task goals. We examined the effect of 2 kinds of verbal self-instruction-labeling either the task goal or the relevant feature of the stimulus-on 2 components of cognitive control, goal setting and switching, in children, young adults, and older adults. All participants performed single-task blocks and mixed-task blocks (involving unpredictable switching between 2 tasks) in silent and labeling conditions. Participants categorized bidimensional stimuli either by picture or by color, depending on their spatial position in a 2-cell vertical grid. Response times revealed an inverted U shape in performance with age. These age differences were more pronounced for goal setting than for switching, thus generalizing results obtained in situations taping proactive control to this new context forcing reactive control. Further, differential age-related effects of verbalization were also obtained. Verbalizations were detrimental for young adults, beneficial for older adults, and had mixed effects in children. These differences are interpreted in terms of qualitative developmental changes in reactive goal-setting strategies.

Can older adults enhance task-switching performance by verbal self-instructions? The influence of working-memory load and early learning.

In this study we examined (a) whether verbal self-instructions can enhance task-switching performance in younger and older adults, and (b) whether verbal self-instruction benefits on task switching are smaller when memory demands on keeping track of the task sequence are reduced by spatial task cueing. Task-switching ability was measured as the difference in performance between single-task and mixed-task blocks (termed mixing costs), in which participants switched between two tasks A and B. One group of participants performed the switching tasks with spatial task cues, indicating which of the two tasks has to be performed, thereby reducing demands on the endogenous control of serial task order (low task-sequencing load). The other group switched between tasks without external task cues (high task-sequencing load). To investigate the influence of verbal self-instructions on task switching, participants either named aloud the next task during task preparation (task-naming condition) or they did not verbalize (control condition). Results indicated that age differences in verbalization benefits on mixing costs depend on early learning whereby benefits were generally larger when subjects had some prior practice in task switching alone, and that verbalization benefits did not differ between the two task-sequencing load conditions. These findings suggest that task naming is a suitable cognitive intervention for enhancing the control of task switching in younger and older adults, even if memory load is reduced, and that for the efficient application of this strategy it first has to be coordinated with task switching, which is easier when task switching is already practiced.

What visual information do children and adults consider while switching between tasks? Eye-tracking investigation of cognitive flexibility development.

This study investigated the visual information that children and adults consider while switching or maintaining object-matching rules. Eye movements of 5- and 6-year-old children and adults were collected with two versions of the Advanced Dimensional Change Card Sort, which requires switching between shape- and color-matching rules. In addition to a traditional integrated version with bidimensional objects (e.g., a blue bear), participants were tested on a dissociated version with pairs of unidimensional objects as stimuli (e.g., a noncolored bear beside a blue patch) so that fixations on the relevant and irrelevant dimensions of the stimuli could be distinguished. The fixation times were differentially distributed depending on whether children had to switch or maintain matching rules. Trial type differences in fixation times were primarily observed for the cues and the relevant and irrelevant dimensions of the stimuli, whereas responses options were seldom fixated even by the youngest children. In addition, the shape modality of the stimulus was more fixated than the color modality whether or not shape was relevant. Finally, the fixation patterns were modulated by age. These results suggest that switch costs are more related to selection of the relevant dimension on the stimulus than to response selection and point to age-related differences in strategies underlying flexible behavior.