Peer facilitation of emotion regulation in adolescence

Development will (try to) find its way: a qualitative study of Chilean adolescent mental health during and after lockdown

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a well-evidenced impact on adolescents, who are especially sensitive to pandemic disruptions given the critical role of socialization in their development. In Chile too, evidence shows increases in mental health complaints among adolescents over the lockdown period. Our study aimed at exploring the experiences of Chilean adolescents regarding their mental health during the lockdown and school closure (March 2020-December 2021), and during the return to on-site education (2022) as informed by adolescents and school staff, with a focus on family, school, and social sources of risk and support for adolescents' wellbeing during these periods.

METHODS

Using a qualitative approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 adolescents and 16 staff members from schools in an urban area of Chile.

RESULTS

Through thematic analysis, we generated five themes: [1] Adolescents in a mental health crisis, comprising a range of distressing experiences and mental health problems. This crisis was fueled by alterations in the functioning of adolescents' systems: [2] Broken support systems (peers and school); [3] The school agenda must go on, reflecting schools' strict compliance with the educational curriculum; and [4] Blurred boundaries between home and school life and within the family. Finally [5], Development will (try to) find its way describes how most participants experienced a bouncing back to wellbeing in the course of the school year upon return, and how some developmental milestones took place despite the abnormal conditions, providing evidence for resilience amid pandemic adversity.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings give insight into how the exchanges between the adolescent and the social systems they are embedded in were interfered. The results help us understand the challenges for mental health during and after the pandemic, and highlight adolescents' capacity to thrive as normality was restored. The results also underscore the importance of upholding stability across adolescents' systems and routines, in order to mitigate impacts on wellbeing amid abnormal circumstances. The findings are relevant for development-informed initiatives in policy design in the aftermath of the pandemic and in future crisis management responses.

Risk and resilience profiles and their transition pathways in the ABCD Study

The transition from childhood to adolescence presents elevated risks for the onset of psychopathology in youth. Given the multilayered nature of development, the present study leverages the longitudinal, population-based Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to derive ecologically informed risk/resilience profiles based on multilevel influences (e.g., neighborhood and family socioeconomic resources, parenting, school characteristics) and their transition pathways and examine their associations with psychopathology. Latent profile analysis characterized risk/resilience profiles at each time point (i.e., baseline, Year-1, Year-2); latent transition analysis estimated the most likely transition pathway for each individual. Analysis of covariance was used to examine associations between profile membership at baseline (i.e., ages 9-11) and psychopathology, both concurrently and at Year-2 follow-up. Further, we examined the associations between profile transition pathways and Year-2 psychopathology. Four distinct profiles emerged across time - High-SES High-Protective, High-SES Low-Protective, Low-SES High-Family-Risk, and Low-SES High-Protective. Despite reasonably high stability, significant transition over time among profiles was detected. Profile membership at baseline significantly correlated with concurrent psychopathology and predicted psychopathology 2 years later. Additionally, profile transition pathways significantly predicted Year-2 psychopathology, exemplifying equifinality and multifinality. Characterizing and tracing shifts in ecologically informed risk/resilience influences, our findings have the potential to inform more precise intervention efforts in youth.

Should Adolescents Listen to Their Hearts? A Closer Look at the Associations Between Interoception, Emotional Awareness and Emotion Regulation in Adolescents

The aim of the current study was to replicate findings from prior work among adults showing that individuals with better interoceptive skills have more emotional awareness, and show better emotion regulation abilities, in a sample of adolescents and by relying on instructions that reduce the contamination of known confound variables. A total of 102 Belgian adolescents (Mage = 14.10 years, SDage = .63; 50 males) completed self-report questionnaires of emotional processes (FEEL-KJ and DERS) and the modified heartbeat counting task. From this task, interoceptive accuracy, interoceptive sensibility (confidence ratings), and interoceptive awareness scores (within-person correlations) were derived per participant. Results revealed no associations between the three dimensions of interoception and adolescents' levels of emotional awareness, adaptive, and maladaptive emotion regulation. The lack of associations which contrast some prior work with adults may be due to developmental differences. However, these might also support the low validity of the heartbeat counting task, or could be attributed to the measurement of the emotion measures (i.e., self-report). Future studies should, nevertheless, also test whether these non-significant results can be explained by the developmental differences in adolescents. Longitudinal research is needed to capture interoceptive changes during adolescence, as well as to replicate the current findings using rigorous multimethod approaches that increase the validity of interoception measurement.

I can feel my heartbeat: The relationship between interoceptive abilities and emotional states during stress and recovery in healthy adolescents

The goal of the current study was to investigate the differential effects of three interoception dimensions on psychophysiological stress responses (reactivity and recovery) in adolescents. A total of 102 adolescents (Mage = 14.10 years, SDage = 0.63; 50 males) completed the heartbeat counting task with adapted instructions to assess interoceptive accuracy, sensibility, and awareness. During a follow-up session, participants underwent a standardized stressful task, throughout which measures of negative affect and respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) were collected. Results from multilevel models indicated that adolescents with higher interoceptive accuracy reported less pronounced increases in negative affect during stress induction, and subsequently experienced a less steep decrease in negative affect during recovery, compared to those with lower accuracy. Regarding RSA, adolescents with higher interoceptive accuracy exhibited greater decreases in RSA from baseline to stress, while those with higher interoceptive awareness maintained higher RSA levels throughout the experiment. In contrast, individuals with higher interoceptive sensibility exhibited lower levels of RSA during the experiment. These findings add to the limited literature on interoception in adolescents by illuminating its role in emotional experiences, stress responses, and recovery processes. Our study suggests that examining distinct dimensions of interoception, along with physiological measures during stress and recovery, is crucial for understanding its beneficial or adverse effects in adolescence. The complexity and potential significance of interoceptive dimensions extend beyond their correlations with traditional self-report measures, warranting further investigation to clarify their implications and underlying mechanisms.

Transgenerational transmission of psychopathology: when are adaptive emotion regulation strategies protective in children?

BACKGROUND

Children of parents with a mental illness (COPMI) have multiple psychological and developmental risks, including an increased lifetime risk of developing a mental illness themselves. Emotion regulation (ER) has been identified as a potential underlying mechanism of the transgenerational transmission of mental disorders. This study compares ER strategies in parents with and without a mental illness and their children. Further, it aims to examine the relationship between parents and children's psychopathology with a focus on the role of parental and child ER.

METHODS

Participants were 96 COPMI (77% female) and 99 children of parents without mental illness (COPWMI, 83% female) aged 4-16 years and their parents. Psychopathology and ER strategies of parents and children were assessed with a series of questionnaires.

RESULTS

Both COPMI and their parents showed significantly more psychopathology and more maladaptive and adaptive ER strategies in comparison with COPWMI and their parents. Parent and child adaptive ER strategies mediated the relationship between the psychopathology of parents and children only when child maladaptive ER strategies were low.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings further our understanding of the processes by which parental psychopathology affects child outcomes. Our findings highlight the importance of implementing preventive programs that specifically target the reduction of maladaptive ER in children to interrupt the transgenerational transmission of psychopathological symptoms.

Experience-dependent neurodevelopment of self-regulation in adolescence

Adolescence is a period of rapid biobehavioral change, characterized in part by increased neural maturation and sensitivity to one's environment. In this review, we aim to demonstrate that self-regulation skills are tuned by adolescents' social, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts. We discuss adjacent literatures that demonstrate the importance of experience-dependent learning for adolescent development: environmental contextual influences and training paradigms that aim to improve regulation skills. We first highlight changes in prominent limbic and cortical regions-like the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex-as well as structural and functional connectivity between these areas that are associated with adolescents' regulation skills. Next, we consider how puberty, the hallmark developmental milestone in adolescence, helps instantiate these biobehavioral adaptations. We then survey the existing literature demonstrating the ways in which cultural, socioeconomic, and interpersonal contexts drive behavioral and neural adaptation for self-regulation. Finally, we highlight promising results from regulation training paradigms that suggest training may be especially efficacious for adolescent samples. In our conclusion, we highlight some exciting frontiers in human self-regulation research as well as recommendations for improving the methodological implementation of developmental neuroimaging studies and training paradigms.