The present study evaluated direct and indirect associations between aerobic fitness, executive control, and emotion regulation among a sample of children aged 8-12 years. To evaluate these associations, the study employed a cross-sectional design and full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) structural equation modeling. Although the hypothesized factor analytic model failed to converge, an alternative exploratory model allowed for the evaluation of associations between primary study variables. Results supported a moderate direct association between childhood aerobic fitness and executive control, a strong direct negative association between executive control and emotion regulation, and a moderate indirect association between aerobic fitness and emotion regulation through executive control. These findings provide preliminary evidence that executive control functions as a mediator between aerobic fitness and emotion regulation and may help explain the means by which aerobic exercise exerts its influence on emotional wellbeing among preadolescent children.

Despite becoming a greater public health concern, the suicide rate among adolescents has not decreased significantly in recent years (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). In fact, suicide is the second leading cause of death for individuals between 12-18 years (CDC, 2015). Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), the deliberate destruction of one’s own body tissue without suicidal intent and for reasons not socially sanctioned (Nock, 2009), has been identified as a robust predictor of suicide, above and beyond other risk factors such as depression and hopelessness (Asarnow et al., 2011; Guan, Fox, & Prinstein, 2012). Therefore, understanding risk factors for NSSI is an important area of research not only for prevention of NSSI, but also suicide. Recently, an association between poor sleep and suicide ideation in adolescents has been highlighted (Franic, Kralj, Marcinko, Knez, & Kardum, 2014; Park, Yoo, & Kim, 2013). However, very little attention, both globally and within the United States, has been given to understanding the impact sleep may have on NSSI. Given the strong role that emotion regulation has been identified as having in both poor sleep and NSSI separately, it is important to look at the interaction of these two factors in the prediction of NSSI. Data were collected from 154 adolescents in high school. Results indicated that poor sleep was a significant predictor of both NSSI engagement and self-reported suicide ideation. Additionally, emotion regulation successfully moderated the relationship between poor sleep quality and suicide ideation severity. Results support that sleep is an important risk factor for NSSI engagement and suicide ideation and that emotion regulation may play an important role in strengthening the relationship for between sleep and suicide ideation only. These findings suggest that clinicians should be aware of and work with their clients on both emotion regulation and sleep quality to reduce risk of NSSI engagement and suicide ideation.

<p>Religious faith has been identified as a protective factor against negative psychological outcomes and is associated with a range of positive mental and physical health outcomes. While religion is thought to confer psychological benefits to believers in part by enhancing emotion regulation abilities and providing faith-based regulatory methods such as religious coping, these associations have not been examined empirically. This may be due to a lack of measures that are appropriate for use in repeated measures contexts, which are needed for accurate assessment of dynamic constructs such as emotions and regulation. This study employed generalizability theory in a sample (N = 146) collected in daily dairy format over 21 days to determine the reliability of commonly used measures of religiosity and religious coping at the daily level. Once reliability was established, varying time scales were used in a multilevel modeling framework to examine the associations among intrinsic religiosity, religious coping, positive and negative affect, and difficulties in emotion regulation. Positive religious coping (PRC) measured at baseline, same day, and a 1-day lag was associated with higher levels of daily positive affect, though PRC was also associated with negative affect when measured on the same day. Negative religious coping (NRC) measured at baseline predicted lower levels of daily positive affect and was associated with higher levels of negative affect when measured on the same day and a 1-day lag. NRC was also associated with higher levels of difficulties in emotion regulation at all measurement periods, though PRC and intrinsic religiosity were not significantly associated with emotion regulation difficulties. While not associated with daily positive or negative affect, intrinsic religiosity was found to enhance the effect of positive affect inertia. These results did not support the conceptualization that religiosity broadly promotes adaptive emotion regulation, but rather that intrinsic religiosity may increase positive affect by amplifying the effects of positive affect inertia. Additional work is needed with increased measurement occasions to fully understand the temporal associations among these constructs.</p>

This study uses the father-child activation theory, which identifies the father-child relationship as a source for self-regulation learning. Father-child play behaviors during toddlerhood were examined for their contribution to self-regulation skills, specifically emotion regulation and aggression. This study examined father-child play behaviors of emotion amplification, intrusiveness, positive regard, and child emotion regulation seeking in the National Early Head Start (EHS) Evaluation. Fathers who used more emotion amplification at 24 months were less intrusive, showed more positive regard, and had children who sought more emotion regulation at 24 months than fathers who used less emotion amplification. Fathers who were more intrusive during play had children who were less likely to seek emotion regulation with them than fathers of children who were less intrusive. Correlational results indicate gender differences in fathers’ intrusiveness. Children who sought emotion regulation demonstrated greater emotion regulation at 24 and 36 months than children who sought less emotion regulation during play. Furthermore, children with fathers who showed more emotion amplification and positive regard demonstrated better emotion regulation at 36 months. The regression models predicting child emotion regulation at 24 and 36 months accounted for 21% and 22% of the variance, respectively. However, only paternal positive regard and child emotion regulation-seeking during play were significant predictors at 24 months and no pathways were significant in the 36-month model. Regression models predicting child aggression were not significant. Results suggest that father-child play may be an important context for child emotion regulation development in young children.

Emergency Medical Service (EMS) professionals are consistently exposed to a variety of traumatic events on the job, such as cases that involve the death or injury of a patient, being physically threatened, or encountering a mass casualty incident. Not surprisingly, research has found that such traumatic exposure has major implications, as it has been related to a plethora of negative strain outcomes such as posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms and burnout. However, at this point, research has not empirically examined the mechanisms by which these traumatic events lead to strain. Therefore, this study aims to further investigate these mechanisms by incorporating the role that emotion regulation (i.e., expressive suppression) plays in this process. Further, this study investigates various moderators in this process, including one individual difference factor (i.e., implicit theories about emotion expression) and two contextual factors (i.e., social support and organizational constraints). To test the links in the aforementioned process, a weekly diary study was conducted online with 200 current EMS professionals. Specifically, participants completed a baseline survey (Time 0) that measured trait-level variables and demographics. Then, participants completed 10 weekly diary studies that included measures of exposure to traumatic events, negative affective reactions, expressive suppression, and strain outcomes. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test the study hypotheses. Results of this study show that within person, traumatic event exposure was related to strain. Further, although traumatic event exposure was not consistently related to expressive suppression, the positive link between expressive suppression and strain was consistent. Additionally, organizational constraints were found to serve as a moderator in the relationship between expressive suppression and strain, such that higher organizational constraints exacerbate this relationship. Overall, these results provide a better understanding of the process that links traumatic event exposure to strain in the EMS profession. This research has implications for organizations, as it examines various factors that may be addressed in order to ensure that EMS professionals are better equipped to deal with these unfortunate exposures. Ultimately, the results of this study will hopefully prove helpful in devising interventions to enhance the wellbeing of EMS professionals in the wake of exposure to traumatic events.

<p>People  have  different  strategies  to  regulate  and  control  their  own emotions.  For  short-term  emotion  regulation  of  visual  stimuli, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment are of relevance. The present  study  used  self-ratings  and  eye-tracking  data  to  replicate previous  findings  that  eye  movements  are  effective  in  emotion regulation.  25  participants  (6  males)  watched  positive  and  negative pictures in an attend condition and a decrease emotion condition. They rated  their  emotional  experience  and  their  eye  movements  were followed  with  an  eye-tracker.  Ratings  showed  that  they  perceived pictures as less emotional in the decrease condition as compared to the attend condition both for positive and negative pictures. This decrease in  ratings  of  emotional  response  was  larger  for  positive  than  for negative  pictures.  Eye-tracking  data  showed  no  significant  effect  of emotion  regulation condition. Further  research  is proposed  to  include self-ratings  in  studies  of  physiological  changes  due  to  emotion regulation,  to  differentiate  between  strategies  of  emotion  regulation potentially used by participants.</p>

There is much evidence that people are inaccurate in predicting the impact of future situations on their emotions. At the same time, affective forecasts have important implications for behavior, decision-making, and current mood, and may play an important role in the maintenance of emotional disorders. This study investigated two factors that influence affective forecasting: (1) Whether affective forecasting is associated with depressive symptoms and (2) Whether strategies people use to regulate their current affect influence their predictions of future emotional responses. Participants ruminated or reappraised in response to a sad mood and completed a measure of depressive symptoms (BDI). Results indicated that severity of depression symptoms was related to forecasts of greater sadness and anger to positive scenarios, as well as negative appraisals of future negative events. As expected, both BDI score and habitual use of emotion regulation strategies were correlated with participants' predictions about use and effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies in response to future scenarios. Results reinforced the usefulness of examining future-oriented cognitive processes in depression, providing insight into the role of hopelessness in the disorder. This study also shed light on the relationship between depression and predictions about the use and effectiveness of various emotion regulation strategies.

People  have  different  strategies  to  regulate  and  control  their  own emotions.  For  short-term  emotion  regulation  of  visual  stimuli, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment are of relevance. The present  study  used  self-ratings  and  eye-tracking  data  to  replicate previous  findings  that  eye  movements  are  effective  in  emotion regulation.  25  participants  (6  males)  watched  positive  and  negative pictures in an attend condition and a decrease emotion condition. They rated  their  emotional  experience  and  their  eye  movements  were followed  with  an  eye-tracker.  Ratings  showed  that  they  perceived pictures as less emotional in the decrease condition as compared to the attend condition both for positive and negative pictures. This decrease in  ratings  of  emotional  response  was  larger  for  positive  than  for negative  pictures.  Eye-tracking  data  showed  no  significant  effect  of emotion  regulation condition. Further  research  is proposed  to  include self-ratings  in  studies  of  physiological  changes  due  to  emotion regulation,  to  differentiate  between  strategies  of  emotion  regulation potentially used by participants.

Research on the socialization of emotion has examined the role of parents’ behavioural responses to children’s negative emotions in the development of a number of psychosocial outcomes for children. Parents’ unsupportive socialization practices have predicted poorer social and emotional functioning both in childhood and later in adulthood. The current study aimed to broaden existing knowledge of the nature and impact of parent emotion socialization practices on emotion regulation. This was done through an exploration of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioural aspects of mothers’ responses to their children’s anger and sadness; by examining the impact of factors such as child gender and age as well as contextual factors on mothers’ responses; and by examining the impact of socialization practices on the development of emotion regulation. An online community sample of 114 mothers of 6- to 10-year-old children read a series of hypothetical situations in which they were asked to imagine their child responding with either anger or sadness. Mothers reported on their emotional responses, their acceptance of their child’s reaction, their causal attributions, and their socialization responses. Mothers also completed measures that assessed perceived social support, recent stressful life events, and the emotion regulation abilities of their child. Mothers were generally positive and supportive in their responses. Mothers were more likely to endorse negative responses to anger than sadness Responses did not differ according to the gender or age of the child. There was general consistency in the tendency to react positively or negatively. High levels of stressful life events predicted anger and punishment responses to child anger. Minimization of sadness was predicted by lower educational status. No other contextual factors were significant. As expected, minimization of sadness and anger both emerged as significant predictors of poorer emotion regulation in children; problem-focused responses predicted better emotion regulation for anger not sadness; unexpectedly emotion-focused responses to anger predicted poorer emotion regulation. Results are discussed in relation to the existing literature on the socialization of emotion and child outcomes. Limitations of this study and future directions for the research are discussed.

Research on the socialization of emotion has examined the role of parents’ behavioural responses to children’s negative emotions in the development of a number of psychosocial outcomes for children. Parents’ unsupportive socialization practices have predicted poorer social and emotional functioning both in childhood and later in adulthood. The current study aimed to broaden existing knowledge of the nature and impact of parent emotion socialization practices on emotion regulation. This was done through an exploration of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioural aspects of mothers’ responses to their children’s anger and sadness; by examining the impact of factors such as child gender and age as well as contextual factors on mothers’ responses; and by examining the impact of socialization practices on the development of emotion regulation. An online community sample of 114 mothers of 6- to 10-year-old children read a series of hypothetical situations in which they were asked to imagine their child responding with either anger or sadness. Mothers reported on their emotional responses, their acceptance of their child’s reaction, their causal attributions, and their socialization responses. Mothers also completed measures that assessed perceived social support, recent stressful life events, and the emotion regulation abilities of their child. Mothers were generally positive and supportive in their responses. Mothers were more likely to endorse negative responses to anger than sadness Responses did not differ according to the gender or age of the child. There was general consistency in the tendency to react positively or negatively. High levels of stressful life events predicted anger and punishment responses to child anger. Minimization of sadness was predicted by lower educational status. No other contextual factors were significant. As expected, minimization of sadness and anger both emerged as significant predictors of poorer emotion regulation in children; problem-focused responses predicted better emotion regulation for anger not sadness; unexpectedly emotion-focused responses to anger predicted poorer emotion regulation. Results are discussed in relation to the existing literature on the socialization of emotion and child outcomes. Limitations of this study and future directions for the research are discussed.