Longitudinal study of emotion processing and regulation: An electrocortical approach

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Individual differences in childhood emotion regulation predict important developmental outcomes, such as later academic performance, social competence, socioeconomic status, as well as physical and mental health. Emotion regulation relies on the development of executive function (EF) – the deliberate, top-down neurocognitive processes involved in emotion regulation. It is particularly related to “hot” aspects of EF, or the control processes that operate in emotionally significant situations. A first step in understanding how children regulate their emotions is to understand how they process them. Given the important outcomes of the development of emotion regulation, I propose to examine whether patterns of emotion processing in 6- to 14-year-old children are linked to emotion regulation. This age period is not only marked by important changes in emotion regulation, but also it has received relatively little attention for understanding how emotions develop and are processed in the brain.****** In a series of NSERC funded studies with infants and adults, we have found distinct patterns of frontal lobe, limbic, autonomic, and endocrine activity during the processing of fear, anger, and happiness in infants and adults, using behavioural, fMRI, electrocortical, autonomic, and endocrine measures (see Miskovic & Schmidt, 2012; Schmidt & Miskovic, 2014). We have found that the experience of positive emotions (e.g., happiness) is associated with greater relative left frontal brain activity, whereas the experience of negative affect (e.g., fear) is associated with greater relative right frontal brain activity. ****** The proposed research will extend my prior NSERC work with infants and young adults to examine the development of emotion processing in typically-developing school age children and adolescents. Here, we will recruit cross-sectional cohorts of typically developing children at ages 6, 10 and 14 years. The youngest cohort will be followed longitudinally at the same time points. We will address the following questions: (1) Are there distinct patterns of electrocortical activity, heart rate, and cortisol responses during the processing of positive and negative emotions in school age children and adolescents, and do these patterns change with age? (2) Are individual differences in electrocortical activity related to emotion regulation? (3) For the first time, what are the oscillatory dynamics (measured with electroencephalogram [EEG]) that are associated with emotion processing and regulation in school age children and adolescents? ****** Emotion processing and regulation problems in childhood are economically costly to all Canadians in terms of mental health costs, work loss, and delinquency - let alone the toll they take on families and children who are affected. This proposal has implications for understanding basic brain and behavioural mechanisms underlying emotion regulatory problems.