Neural correlates of reactive and effortful control in young children

情绪调节可以定义为对注意力、思想和行动冲动的控制，以及对情绪状态本身的调节，并且被认为与额叶皮质区域有关。人格风格和社会功能的个体差异，以及许多形式的精神病理学，都与情绪调节的差异有关。在3到7岁之间，孩子们在情绪调节能力方面达到了许多里程碑，但伴随行为改变的神经变化仍然不为人所知。本研究的目的是使用脑成像方法来捕捉在发育过程中出现的情绪调节的大脑模式的个体差异。更具体地说，我们希望研究与反应性控制和努力控制相关的大脑模式。反应性控制包括自动注意偏差和与自动接近或退出倾向相关的控制过程。努力控制包括广泛的更自愿的情绪调节策略。我们假设，气质和自我控制行为测量的差异可能预测或被大脑活动模式预测。为了研究这一过程，我们将在儿童参与一个简单的注意力任务时向他们展示情绪激动的面孔。数据将在三个时间点收集：刚开始的初级幼儿园（3 1/ 4 -4岁），在高级幼儿园（5岁），在一年级结束时（6 1/2-7岁）。父母填写的人格问卷和与反应性和努力性控制相关的行为的实验室测量将与皮质激活的模式同时进行和随时间进行比较。因此，我们希望在一个关键的发育时间窗口内，对个人情绪调节风格和大脑发育之间的联系有一些了解。这种理解对于基本的心理学知识很重要，但它也可以帮助心理学家学习如何在行为问题变得根深蒂固之前识别与之相关的神经模式。

Emotion regulation can be defined as the control of attention, thought, and action impulses as well as regulation of emotional states themselves, and is thought to engage regions of the frontal cortex. Individual differences in personality style and in social functioning, as well as many forms of psychopathology, are associated with differences in emotion regulation. Between the ages of 3 and 7 years, children reach many milestones in the capacity for emotion regulation, but neural changes that accompany behavioural change are still not known. The goal of this study is to use a brain imaging method to capture individual differences in brain patterns subserving emotion regulation as they emerge in development. More specifically we wish to look at brain patterns associated with reactive and effortful control. Reactive control includes automatic attentional biases and control processes that are associated with automatic tendencies to approach or withdraw. Effortful control involves a wide range of more voluntary strategies of emotion regulation. We hypothesize that differences in behavioural measures of temperament and self-control may predict or be predicted by patterns of brain activity. To study this process, we will present emotional faces to children while they are involved in a simple attentional task. Data will be collected at three time points: Just prior to beginning junior kindergarten (3 1/2-4 years), during senior kindergarten (5 years), and at the end of Grade 1 (6 1/2-7 years). Personality questionnaires filled out by parents and laboratory measures of behaviours associated with reactive and effortful control will be compared with patterns of cortical activation, both concurrently and over time. We thus hope to gain some understanding of the link between individual styles of emotion regulation and brain development over a key developmental time window. This understanding will be important for basic psychological knowledge, but it may also help psychologists learn how to identify neural patterns associated with behaviour problems before they become too entrenched.