Previous research showed that children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) tend to experience high levels of anxiety and anger. Some of the deficits that children with ASD experience are due their difficulty expressing and understanding their own and others' emotions. Thus, the purpose of this pilot study was to assess the feasibility and efficacy of an intervention to teach young children with high functioning autism (HFASD) to recognize their emotions and use emotion regulation strategies to self-soothe. We implemented a group therapy that emphasized children's understanding and knowledge of emotions and coping strategies related to anger and anxiety. Eleven 5-7 year-old children were randomly assigned to either an experimental or delayed-treatment control group. The Emotion Regulation Checklist, Behavior Monitoring Sheet, What Makes My Child Angry/Anxious Questionnaires, and anger- and anxiety-related emotions vignettes were used to measure children's emotion regulation abilities. Finally, maternal confidence of their own and their child's ability to regulate their emotions were measured by the Self-Confidence Rating Scale. Children in the experimental group demonstrated more knowledge of emotion regulation strategies, had fewer negative emotional responses, and showed lower frequency and intensity ratings of anger and anxiety related episodes after treatment. All mothers reported higher levels of confidence in their own and their child's ability to deal with anger and anxiety related emotions after treatment. These findings suggest that teaching young children with HFASD about emotion regulation strategies to manage anger and anxiety emotional states may increase their knowledge about emotion regulation strategies, and improve their emotion regulation abilities. Training mothers about emotion regulation strategies may increase maternal confidence in their own and their child's ability to deal with emotions related to anger and anxiety. Limitations and implications of this study will be discussed. / Master of Science

This study examines associations of emotion language with emotion understanding and emotion regulation during the preschool years. There is evidence that the way parents talk about emotions with their children promotes children's emotion understanding and regulation (e.g. Bird and Reese, 2006; Laible, 2011). However, there has been little attention paid to associations of these outcomes with children's emotion language. In this study, I examined associations of children's emotion language on their emotion understanding and emotion regulation, and tested whether parents' emotion language was indirectly associated with these outcomes through children's emotion language. One hundred fifty-six 3- to 5-year-old children participated with their primary caregiver. Parent-child dyads engaged in an emotion-laden conversation to measure parent and child emotion language. Children also engaged in the locked box task (Cole et al., 2009; Goldsmith et al., 1993) to measure emotion regulation and completed the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (Nowicki and Duke, 1994) to measure emotion understanding. Results differed for younger preschoolers (36 - 53 months) compared with older preschoolers (54 - 69 months) in regard to emotion regulation. For younger preschoolers, path analyses indicated an indirect effect in which parent emotion talk was associated with less attention shifting during the locked box task. There was also a direct effect in which children's greater use of emotion labels was positively associated with emotion understanding. Results may reflect the rapid emotional development occurring during the preschool years and suggest the importance of early emotion socialization. / Ph. D.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of developmental disabilities characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication and by difficulties in emotion recognition and regulation. There is currently no cure for autism but psychosocial interventions and medical treatments exist. However, very few of them have been trialed on young children and others pose limitations. Strengthening young children's capacity to manage their emotions is important for academic success. Thus it becomes important to design and test the feasibility of an appropriate methodology that can teach emotion regulation to young children (age 3-6 years) with ASD. This thesis addresses the problem by proposing a novel framework that integrates physiology with Cognitive Behavior Theory to enable emotion regulation in the target population by exposing them to real-time stressful situations. The framework uses a feedback loop that measures the participant's physiology, estimates the level of stress being experienced and provides an audio feedback. The feasibility of the individual building blocks of the framework was tested by conducting pilot studies on nine typically developing children (age 3-6 years). The attention capturing capacity of different audio representations was tested, and a stress profile generating system was designed and developed to map the measured physiology of the participant on to a relative stress level. 33 out of 43 instances of audio representations proved to be successful in capturing the participants' attention and the stress profiles were found to be capable of distinguishing between stressed and relaxed state of the participants with an average accuracy of 83%. / Master of Science

Although prior research suggests that ER development typically exhibits a positive growth trajectory across adolescence as prefrontal brain regions continue to mature, individual differences in the rate of development have yet to be fully elucidated. The present study illustrates developmental processes in which family context (i.e., socioeconomic status, parent perceived stress, and family emotional climate) influences developmental trajectories of emotion regulation using both growth curve and latent change score analyses. The sample included 167 adolescents (53% males) who were first recruited at age 13 or 14 years and assessed annually four times. Our results support the mediating role of family emotional climate in the association between socioeconomic status and changes in emotion regulation, but not parent perceived stress. Our findings emphasize the constraints placed on ER development as a result of low SES and highlight the need for intervention efforts at proximal levels, such as the family emotional climate, for adolescents who face such distal risk factors. / M.S. / Given continued brain development across the period of adolescence and maturation in specific brain regions related to emotion regulation (the ability to change the experience or expression of an emotion), we expected that emotion regulation abilities would also continue to develop during this period. We were also interested in understanding what family contextual factors may be influencing how emotion regulation develops. For example, we expected that family economic and social position (including education level, income, aid, and satisfaction with finances), parent stress, and the family emotional climate (the degree of both positive and negative emotionality expressed within the family unit through parenting practices and the quality of the parent child relationship) would affect how emotion regulation unfolds in adolescents. That is, we predicted that families demonstrating a higher socioeconomic status, less parental stress, and better parenting practices would create safe and supportive contexts to learn and practice emotion regulation skills, resulting in adolescents with more adaptive emotion regulation abilities. We tested our hypotheses using longitudinal analyses from 167 adolescent participants and their parents. Our results demonstrate that parent stress is not directly related to emotion regulation development, but that socioeconomic status is related to emotion regulation development through family emotional climate. Such results suggest that for adolescents who may be at risk for developing poor emotion regulation abilities, their family can be taught skills related to improving parenting and the quality of the relationship between parent and adolescent in order to lessen the possibility of that outcome.

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation (IER) in adulthood has been the area of attention in a growing number of studies over the last decade. Despite the normality of emotion regulation in social situations, focus has mainly been on pathology. Motivated by the lack of salutogenic perspectives, this cross-sectional study aims to shed light on associations between IER strategies and Quality of Life (QOL). Also, to explore age-related aspects, a developmental angle was taken. A non-clinical sample (N=73) residing in Sweden was recruited and responded to the self-assessments Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ) and WHOQOL-BREF. The respondents were divided into two age groups, younger (NY=35) and older (NO=38) adults. Furthermore, participants were divided into groups based on whether or not they were temporarily experiencing special circumstances affecting life quality. Multiple bivariate correlation analysis was performed on IER factors and QOL domains for the whole group and also for the two group conditions. All IER strategies represented in IERQ were positively associated with all domains of QOL in all conditions, although only some of them were significant correlations. The results indicated that Soothing and Social Modeling can be effective IER strategies in terms of psychological well-being. In the age condition, this was only valid for the younger adults. In addition, the findings supported Soothing as an effective strategy for those experiencing special circumstances. Hence, different correlational patterns emerged related to the specific conditions examined, giving support for context-dependency of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation.

Prokrastinering är ett utbrett fenomen över hela världen som innebär att frivilligt skjuta upp eller inte fullfölja uppgifter trots vetskapen om de negativa konsekvenserna till följd av det. Det kan ses som en irrationell försening av vissa åtaganden, ofta för att undvika negativa känslor, eller som ett tecken på bristande självreglering när man konfronteras med utmanande eller obekväma uppgifter. Forskning visar att prokrastinering är kopplad till depression, ångest, ökad stress och sämre akademiska prestationer. Det verkar dessutom som att antalet personer som uppvisar uppskjutarbeteende och graden av prokrastinering ökar. Denna studie ämnade att utforskaeventuella samband och förhållanden mellan självskattad prokrastinering, skam och känsloreglering. Den undersökte även om dessa förhållanden modereras av ålder. Studien genomfördes för att öka förståelsen kring prokrastinering och dess negativa effekter. Genom att identifiera mekanismer bakom prokrastinering kan interventioner anpassas för att minska beteendet och öka välbefinnandet. En enkät distribuerades till allmän befolkning där 200 individer svarade, varav 37 män och 163 kvinnor. Medelåldern för samtliga deltagare var 39,21, SD = 11,06. Resultaten visade att skam, känsloregleringssvårigheter och prokrastinering är signifikant korrelerade. Högre nivåer av skam och känsloregleringssvårigheter är associerade med ökad tendens till prokrastinering. Även om ålder inte visade sig vara en signifikant moderator visademedelvärden hur skam och känsloregleringssvårigheter samt prokrastinering minskar med ålder. / Procrastination is a global phenomenon, involves the voluntary delay or non-completion of tasks despite awareness of the negative consequences. Often percieved as an irrational postponement of certain commitments to avoid negative emotions, or as a sign of deficient selfregulation when confronted with challenging or uncomfortable tasks. Research indicates that procrastination is linked to depression, anxiety, increased stress, and poor academic performance. Moreover, it appears that the number of individuals exhibiting procrastinatory behavior and the degree of procrastination are on the rise. This study aimed to explore potential associations and relationships between self-reported procrastination, shame, and emotion regulation. The research also investigated whether these relationships were moderated by age. The study was conducted to enhance understanding of procrastination and its negative effects. By identifying mechanisms behind procrastination, interventions can be tailored to reduce the behavior and increase wellbeing. A survey was distributed to the general population, with 200 individuals responding of which 37 identified as men and 163 as women. The mean age of all participants was 39.21, SD = 11.06. The results showed that shame, difficulties in emotion regulation, and procrastination are significantly correlated. Higher levels of shame and emotion regulation difficulties are associated with an increased tendency to procrastinate. Although age did not prove to be a significant moderator, mean values demonstrated how shame, emotion regulation difficulties, and procrastination decrease with age.

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This diploma thesis aims to introduce the topic of emotion stimulation and emotion regulation in pre-school age from the perspective of adults and to look for institutional possibilities of development and support of emotional development of pre-schoolers. The text consists of two main parts: theoretical and empirical. In the theoretical part, the main terms of the thesis (emotion stimulation and emotion regulation) are introduced and presented in the context of pre-school age. In this context, the focus is on the two main areas of a pre-schooler's life: family and, primarily, kindergarten. This part of the thesis is concluded by a summary of the importance of the optimal stimulation and support of the emotion regulation skills in pre-schoolers. The empirical part has a qualitative character. It explores how selected kindergarten teachers (n=5) stimulate and regulate emotional expression of their pupils. The empirical survey uses thematic analysis of semi-structured interview and video recording. The results of the analysis are discussed in the final chapter. Keywords: emotion stimulation, emotion regulation, pre-school age, kindergarten, emotion regulation strategies

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is increasingly understood as representing a public health concern and a behavioral marker of emotional and psychological distress among young people. NSSI is prevalent during the period of young adulthood, including among emerging adults pursuing a university education, yet the vulnerability factors associated with NSSI in this population merit more in-depth and contextualized investigation. The current dissertation's overarching objective was to better understand the risk context surrounding university students' engagement in NSSI. Using a sample of 2,579 students (75.2% female; Mage=18.97; SDage=1.54), Study 1 first explored the roles of parental (mother and father pressure) and intrapersonal (emotion dysregulation, academic coping, perfectionism subtypes) risk factors in university students’ likelihood and frequency of engagement in NSSI in the past year. An integrated latent structural equation model revealed that higher levels of perceived mother and father pressure were associated with a greater likelihood of past-year NSSI engagement in the university student sample. Among intrapersonal risk factors, only emotion dysregulation was found to be associated with higher NSSI likelihood and frequency. Building upon these results, Study 2 sought to narrow in further on understanding the emotion regulation profiles of university students with a past-year history of NSSI. Using a person-centered statistical approach, university students who reported having engaged in NSSI within the past year (n = 479; 83.8% female; Mage = 18.77; SDage = 1.43) were classified into latent profiles based on their self-perceived difficulties in regulating both positive and negative emotions. Independent samples of students who had a past history of NSSI but had not self-injured within the previous year (n = 439; 82.9% females; Mage = 19.03, SDage = 1.62) and who had no history of NSSI (n = 1551; 69.9% females; Mage = 19.02, SDage = 1.55) were included as comparison groups. Latent cluster analyses uncovered three emotion regulation profiles within the NSSI sample - the Average Difficulties (47.4%), Dysregulated (33.0%), and Low Difficulties (19.6%) profiles - each of which differed meaningfully from both comparison samples on mean levels of emotion regulation difficulties. Students across the three profiles also differed in their self-reported experiences with parents, particularly with fathers (perceived pressure, antipathy, unresolved attachment, psychological control), and in the extent to which they felt alienated from parents. Lastly, students across profiles differed in the frequency, methods, functions, and addictive properties of their NSSI. Taken together, findings from the current dissertation expanded our awareness of vulnerability factors for NSSI that have historically been understudied (e.g., parental pressure, father-child relationships, dysregulated positive emotions), while also bringing into focus the notion that even well-established NSSI risk factors (emotion regulation difficulties) can manifest quite heterogeneously amongst university students with a history of self-injurious behavior.

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