ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1, we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2, we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions on (...) how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological pro... (shrink)

Several versions of the dot probe detection task are frequently used to assess maladaptive attentional processes associated with a broad range of psychopathology and health behavior, including eating behavior and weight. However, there are serious concerns about the reliability of the indices derived from the paradigm as measurement of attentional bias toward or away from salient stimuli. The present paper gives an overview of different attentional bias indices used in psychopathology research and scrutinizes three types of indices calculated from a (...) pictorial version of the dot probe task to assess food-related attentional biases in children and youngsters with and without obesity. Correlational analyses reveal that dynamic scores are dependent on general response speed. Reliability estimates are low for the traditional and probability indices. The higher reliability for the dynamic indices is at least partially explained by general response speed. No significant group differences between youth with and without obesity are found, and correlations with weight are also non-significant. Taken together, results cast doubt on the applicability of this specific task for both experimental and individual differences research on food-related attentional biases in youth. However, researchers are encouraged to make and test adaptations to the procedure or computational algorithm in an effort to increase psychometric quality of the task and to report psychometric characteristics of their version of the task for their specific sample. (shrink)

Children’s readiness for school is often threatened by the occurrence of both externalizing and internalizing problems. Previous research has shown that Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports is particularly effective for fostering children’s behavioral skills and reducing externalizing problems. However, whether PBIS can enhance children’s emotional skills and reduce internalizing problems is less clear. Therefore, TIME-IN was developed, which extends PBIS by also including emotional support systems. It was tested whether TIME-IN was effective for improving emotion regulation and reducing depressive symptoms. (...) Furthermore, it was tentatively explored whether TIME-IN is accompanied by more than natural fluctuations in both children’s externalizing and internalizing problems. The effectiveness of TIME-IN was evaluated in a non-randomized study, in which an intervention group was compared with a matched control group. Both research questions were addressed in a sample consisting of 81 children between 8 and 12 years of age with special educational needs. Questionnaires for teachers, children, and their parents were administered at the beginning and the end of the school year using multi-informant assessment. Only indicative evidence was found for the hypothesis that TIME-IN improved children’s emotion regulation. Practical implications, strengths, and limitations were discussed.Clinical Trial Registration: This work was retrospectively registered at International Standard Registered Clinical/soCial sTudy Number registry ISRCTN54456609. Registered 28 March 2017. (shrink)