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Updated: Feb 24, 2026

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
Emotion regulation in adolescents: An ERP study
Alex Desatnik1, Tarik Bel-Bahar2, Tobias Nolte3
1Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London & The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, London, United Kingdom.
This study shows that expressive suppression, a form of emotion regulation, impacts the late positive potential (LPP) in adolescents. The neural correlates of emotion regulation become more effective with age in this group.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Emotion regulation strategies mitigate negative emotional experiences.
- Late Positive Potential (LPP), a type of event-related potential (ERP), reflects emotional modulation in adults.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate neural correlates of expressive suppression in adolescents.
- Determine if LPP is modulated by expressive suppression in adolescents.
- Examine age-related changes in LPP modulation during emotion regulation.
Main Methods:
- Recorded ERPs from 53 healthy adolescents (ages 12-17).
- Utilized an emotion regulation task involving expressive suppression.
Main Results:
- Expressive suppression modulated the LPP in adolescents, with variations across time windows and recording sites.
- LPP during expressive suppression decreased with increasing age.
Conclusions:
- LPP is a viable neural measure for studying adolescent emotion regulation.
- Expressive suppression's neural indicators suggest increased effectiveness with age in adolescents.
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