The present study investigated autonomic nervous system (ANS) patterning during experimentally manipulated emotion. Film clips previously shown to induce amusement, anger, contentment, disgust, fear, and sadness, in addition to a neutral control, were presented to 34 college-aged subjects while electrodermal activity, blood pressure and electrocardiogram (ECG) were recorded as was self-reported affect. Mean and mean successive difference of inter-beat interval were derived from the ECG. Pattern classification analysis revealed emotion-specific patterning for all emotion conditions except disgust. Discriminant function analysis was used to describe the location of discrete emotions within a dimensional affective state space, for both self-report and ANS activity. Findings suggest traditional dimensional emotion models accurately describe the state space for self-reported emotion, but may require modification in order to accurately describe the state space for ANS activity during discrete emotions. Proposed modifications are consistent with the adoption of a discrete-dimensional hybrid model as well as current trends in emotion theory. / Master of Science

Mental wellness is a critical component of healthy development and serves as a way to protect against stress and promote resilience against psychopathology. Emerging adulthood is an important time to foster mental wellness as individuals adjust to changing social roles, such as transitioning to college. Emotion regulation is a key mechanism for effective prevention because of its role in socio-emotional competence and its transdiagnostic significance for psychopathology. In this dissertation study, a brief, time and cost-effective emotion regulation training program for emerging adults (BERT) was developed and tested. Phase 1 focused on program development. Phase 2 utilized the brainwriting premortem method to refine program content. Undergraduate students (n = 12) attended four focus groups presenting initial program content. Four clinicians were also interviewed to determine program barriers. Qualitative analyses aggregated participant feedback to identify compliments, changes, and concerns about BERT in preparation for the pilot, and critical feedback was immediately implemented. In Phase 3, the 5-week program was pilot-tested in a college sample (N = 42) to evaluate Implementation (low attrition, high content engagement, favorable attitudes, low incidence of technical errors, costs), Reach (enrollment and completion demographics comparable to the population in which recruitment took place), and Efficacy (positive change in emotion regulation pre- to post-program). Twenty-seven participants completed at least 80% of program content. Chi-square analyses did not show any significant difference between participants who started the study and those who dropped out. Repeated measures ANOVAs exhibited significant improvements in emotion regulation, psychological distress, anxiety, stress, negative affectivity, and quality of life, suggesting promising initial efficacy. Development of BERT has high potential significance for promoting healthy development because the electronic delivery and brief nature of the program will reduce barriers to adoption and Implementation and the program development process that incorporates stakeholder feedback at multiple levels is expected to improve program Reach and Efficacy. The program development process, which incorporates stakeholder feedback at multiple levels, informs better implementation and dissemination. / Doctor of Philosophy / Mental wellness is important for healthy development and serves as a way to protect against stress and promote resilience against psychological distress. After the teenage years, emerging adulthood is an important time to foster mental wellness as individuals adjust to changing social roles, such as transitioning to college. Emotion regulation, or how one manages or responds to emotions, is important for protecting against negative psychological outcomes while fostering well-being. In this dissertation study, a brief, time and cost-effective emotion regulation training program for emerging adults (BERT) was developed and tested in three phases. Phase 1 focused on program development. Phase 2 utilized focus groups to get program feedback. Participant feedback identified compliments, changes, and concerns about BERT in preparation for the pilot, and critical feedback was immediately implemented. In Phase 3, the 5-week program was pilot-tested in a college sample. Twenty-seven participants completed at least 80% of program content. Significant improvements were found in in emotion regulation, psychological distress, anxiety, stress, negative emotions, and quality of life, suggesting promising initial efficacy. The program development process, which incorporates stakeholder feedback at multiple levels, informs better implementation and dissemination. Development of BERT has high potential significance for promoting healthy development because the electronic delivery and brief nature of the program will reduce barriers to adoption, implementation, and maintenance.

Both parents and close friends are central figures in adolescents' emotional and psychological adjustment. However, little is known about how close friends socialize adolescents' emotions or how friends' socialization messages compare to those from parents in adolescence. The present study will explore how parents and friends discuss negative emotions with adolescents in relation to adolescents' emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms. Participants were 30 parent-adolescent-friend triads from a community sample. Parent and friend emotion socialization was observed during two discourse tasks (one with the parent, one with the friend) regarding a past negative event. Adolescents also reported parent and friend emotion socialization responses. Adolescents' emotion regulation was measured via heart rate variability during a baseline task (i.e., watching an animal and nature video) and via a parent-report questionnaire. Lastly, adolescents reported their internalizing symptoms on a standard questionnaire. Correlations showed that the two methods for emotion socialization (observations, questionnaires) were largely not concordant, and the different measurements of emotion regulation were also not concordant. Repeated measures MANOVAs showed that parents and friends differed in their use of various emotion socialization responses, as parents were observed to be higher in emotion coaching and co-rumination. Adolescents reported that parents were higher in emotion coaching and emotion dismissing, and friends were higher in co-rumination. These differences were not moderated by adolescent sex. Contrary to hypotheses, adolescent emotion regulation was not correlated with adolescent internalizing symptoms and did not mediate the association of parents' and friends' socialization of negative emotions with adolescent internalizing symptoms. This study unites the parent and friend literatures on emotion socialization and indicates that parents and friends are distinct socialization agents during adolescence. This study also offers insight into methodological approaches for measuring emotion socialization and emotion regulation, particularly that emotion socialization measurements need to be sensitive to the structural differences of family relationships and friendships. Future directions include exploring a wider range of socialization agents and how they may interact to influence adolescent development, amongst other topics. / Ph. D. / Parents and friends are important influences during adolescence, especially with respect to emotional and psychological adjustment. The present study examined how parents and friends discuss upsetting events with adolescents, and how these discussions relate to adolescent emotion regulation and psychological adjustment. Parents and friends were observed for their use of emotion coaching, which is validating the emotion and offering guidance about the upsetting event; emotion dismissing, which is ignoring and discouraging the emotion; and co-rumination, which is rehashing the details and dwelling on negative emotion. Adolescents also reported on parents’ and friends’ responses through standard questionnaires. Emotion regulation was measured by adolescent heart rate variability and a parent-report questionnaire, and adolescents reported on their psychological adjustment. Findings indicate that the observations of parents and friends did not align with adolescent-report of how parents and friends respond to their emotions. Parent-report of adolescent emotion regulation did not align with adolescent heart rate variability. Parents were observed to provide more coaching and dismissing of adolescents’ negative emotions. Parents were observed to co-ruminate more than friends, though adolescents reported that friends co-ruminate more than parents. Moreover, parents’ and friends’ responses were unrelated to adolescent emotion regulation and psychological adjustment, for both observations and adolescent-report. These results indicate that parents and friends discuss negative emotions with adolescents in distinct ways, and that different measurements of these behaviors offer unique perspectives. Future research should examine how these discussions influence adolescent development and how these relationships may interact in their influence on adolescents.

Children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) can have heterogeneous presentations due to varying combinations of the eight criterion A symptoms. Researchers have identified a subtype of ODD for children with primarily angry/irritable mood symptoms and who are at risk for developing mood and anxiety disorders. Despite the prevalence of anger and mood issues in children with ODD, established treatments for disruptive behavior disorders typically focus primarily on teaching caregivers more effective parenting strategies to address oppositional and defiant behaviors, rather than directly targeting children's difficulties with emotions. To address the dearth of emotion-focused treatments for ODD, a novel emotion regulation intervention was developed based on a framework offered by Southam-Gerow (2013). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the initial feasibility of this intervention and to explore its efficacy for reducing ODD and associated emotion regulation problems in middle childhood. Following a non-concurrent multiple baseline design, children ages 8-12 were assessed with semi-structured diagnostic interviews to determine study eligibility, and subsequently enrolled in a 13-week intervention with their caregivers. Treatment feasibility was supported by participant satisfaction ratings as well as treatment fidelity results. Treatment protocol adherence in terms of delivery by the therapist was high, but caregiver symptom reporting was less consistent. Nevertheless, multiple metrics support the efficacy of the intervention in reducing symptoms of ODD as well as some efficacy in improving child emotion regulation abilities. Overall, results support further research into emotion regulation-focused intervention for ODD. / PHD / Children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) can appear quite different due to varying combinations of the eight primary ODD symptoms. Researchers have identified a subtype of ODD for children with predominately angry/irritable mood symptoms and who are at risk for developing mood and anxiety disorders. Despite the prevalence of anger and mood issues in children with ODD, established treatments for disruptive behavior disorders typically focus primarily on teaching caregivers more effective parenting strategies to address oppositional and defiant behaviors, rather than directly targeting children’s difficulties with emotions. To address the dearth of emotion-focused treatments for ODD, a novel emotion regulation intervention was developed based on a framework offered by Southam-Gerow (2013). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the initial feasibility of this intervention and to explore its efficacy for reducing ODD and associated emotion regulation problems in middle childhood. Children ages 8-12 were assessed to determine study eligibility, and subsequently enrolled in a baseline phase of 2, 3, or 4 weeks followed by a 13-week intervention with their caregivers. Treatment feasibility and acceptability was supported by the results. Treatment protocol adherence in terms of delivery by the therapist was high, but caregiver symptom reporting was less consistent. Nevertheless, multiple metrics support the efficacy of the intervention in reducing symptoms of ODD as well as some evidence for improvement in child emotion regulation abilities. Overall, results support further research into emotion regulation-focused intervention for ODD.

Research on the autonomic specificity of emotion has spanned several decades. Even though considerable evidence exists for supporting autonomic specificity for discrete emotion states (Kreibig, 2010), there is still an active debate, and conflicting explanations, for these findings (Quigley and Barrett, 2014). There have been several studies employing multivariate pattern classification analytic techniques and calls for those types of studies are still prevalent (Kragel and LaBar, 2014). Although many studies have explored the autonomic specificity of emotions, few have explored what effects the induction methods, themselves, have had in inducing the autonomic change. Autonomic specificity of induction methods might be a meaningful, and confounding, phenomenon in this literature. Based on this unknown variable, the current experiment was designed to see if methods for emotion elicitation could be meaningfully captured by these same pattern classification techniques. This was accomplished using three separate emotion-elicitation methods to elicit five separate emotions. A sample of 64 college-aged students watched film clips, read imagery scripts, and recalled personal memories for five discrete emotions. Using discriminant analysis, the evidence from the current study lent less support for autonomic specificity of emotion than past experiments, and lends some support for providing future exploration into autonomic change that is related to methods for induction. Potential confounds and task fatigue effects are discussed. / Ph. D.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a medical diagnosis that is conceptualized as existing on a continuum between normal cognitive aging and dementia. While a growing body of research has established the impact of this condition on family members' emotional well-being, as well as the quality of family relationships, the reciprocal impact of family dynamics and the family environment on illness course has received much less attention. Expressed emotion (EE) is a measure of the family emotional climate that has been established as being highly predictive of relapse and symptom exacerbation for a variety of mental health disorders. The recent integration of attribution theory with EE has offered new insights into the underlying attitudes and beliefs that give rise to it. This mixed methods study applied the attribution model of EE to test the validity of EE in predicting the illness course of MCI, and to identify family members' attributions regarding MCI-related behaviors and symptoms that underlie their EE status. The study sample included 57 family dyads consisting of a person with MCI and a family member providing primary care or assistance. The results of the ANCOVA did not support the hypothesis that EE status would predict changes in the non-cognitive features of MCI over time. However, methods of thematic analysis revealed four major themes, or care partner attributional stances: (a) non-blaming, (b) blaming, (c) variable, and (d) no identified. The analysis also revealed three subthemes, or attributional styles, within the variable stance: (a) ambivalent, (b) mixed, and (c) complex. These attributional stances and styles intersected with family EE status in notable ways and form the basis for future research in this area, as well as clinical interventions with these families that promote adaptation to the illness. / Ph. D.

The autonomic specificity of emotion is intrinsic for many major theories of emotion. One of the goals of this study was to validate a standardized set of music clips to be used in studies of emotion and affect. This was accomplished using self-reported affective responses to 40 music pieces, noise, and silence clips in a sample of 71 college-aged individuals. Following the music selection phase of the study; the validated music clips as well as film clips previously shown to induce a wide array of emotional responses were presented to 50 college-aged subjects while a montage of autonomic variables were measured. Evidence for autonomic discrimination of emotion was found via pattern classification analysis replicating findings from previous research. It was theorized that groups of individuals could be identified based upon individual response specificity using cluster analytic techniques. Single cluster solutions for all emotion conditions indicated that stimulus response stereotypy of emotions was more powerful than individual patterns. Results from pattern classification analysis and cluster analysis support the concept of autonomic specificity of emotion. / Master of Science / [Appendix B: Beck Depression Inventory, p. 61-64, was removed Oct. 4, 2011 GMc]

The transmission of emotion regulation from parent to adolescent as well as the relationship between adolescent emotion regulation and substance use is not clearly understood in extant psychological literature. The present study hypothesizes that parents transmit their emotion regulation skills to their adolescents via the mediator of parenting behaviors and that adolescents who are better emotion regulators are less likely to use substances. In the present study, cross-sectional and longitudinal structural equation modeling analyses were utilized to determine the relationship among these variables. In the cross-sectional analyses (n = 219), the sample was 55% male and were between the ages of 12 to 18 years (M = 15.12). In the longitudinal analyses (n = 129), the sample was 42% male and were between the ages of 13 to 21 years (M = 17.13). In both the cross-sectional and longitudinal models, adolescents with high negative parenting had higher levels of lability/negativity, whereas adolescents with high positive parenting had better emotion regulation skills and lower levels of substance use. In addition, in the longitudinal analyses, higher levels of suppression in parents were negatively related to adolescent emotion regulation. The findings of the present study highlight that parents transmit emotion regulation skills to their adolescents and that parenting behaviors may be a key point of intervention for promoting adolescent emotion regulation and demoting adolescent substance use. / Ph. D.

Ego-resiliency (ER) is a trait that describes the ability to cope with stress, while effortful control (EC) is an individual difference related to the ability to optimally inhibit negative emotion through attentional mechanisms. ER has been linked to flexible cardiovascular responding without accounting for autonomic nervous system origins of physiological responses. Similarly, EC tends to be associated with increased cardiac vagal control. However, differences in the autonomic characteristics of these constructs remain unclear. In the current study, it was hypothesized that compared to low-scorers, individuals who score high on ER and EC will each have greater vagal control and less sympathetic control over interbeat intervals (IBI) changes during laboratory stressors. Subjects engaged in a mental arithmetic, speech preparation, and verbal fluency task to elicit cardiovascular activation along a continuum of threat. Electrocardiography and impedance cardiography were collected before, during, and after these tasks to assess changes in autonomic functioning. Results from multiple regression analyses indicated that high levels of EC predicted increased vagal control over IBI recovery and less sympathetic reactivity of IBI reactivity. Contrary to predictions, ER showed an opposite pattern of autonomic regulation across stressors. / Master of Science

Little is known about the complex processes leading to prosocial behavior. However, theories suggests that empathy, empathic responding, and emotion regulation abilities, may all contribute to the presence or absence of prosocial behavior. While theoretical papers demonstrate relationships between these constructs, researchers to date have only focused on small aspects of this complex relationship (e.g., the relationship between sympathy and emotion regulation, the relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior). This study proposed a complex model whereby empathy was both directly related to prosocial behavior and indirectly related to prosocial behavior via sympathy or personal distress. Furthermore, this study proposed an emotion regulation framework for understanding the relation between empathy and prosocial behavior, suggesting that one's emotion regulation abilities would cause a differential presentation of empathic responses, leading to a potential increase or decrease in prosocial behavior. An adult sample was recruited. Analyses were completed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results indicate that hypothesized model adequately fit the data. All hypothesized associations between variables were significant. However, contrary to the hypothesis, emotion regulation ability did not alter the associations between study constructs. Strengths, limitations, and implications will be discussed. / Master of Science