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Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
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Negative mood induction in children: An examination across mood, physiological, and cognitive variables
Sarah E Garcia1, Erin C Tully1, Arden Cooper1
1Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|March 30, 2024
Summary
Experimental mood inductions effectively shift children's emotions, influencing self-reports, physiological responses, and emotion recognition. These procedures are valid for studying emotional processes, even in non-responders.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Affective Science
- Child Emotion Research
Background:
- Mood induction procedures are common in child emotion studies, but their efficacy is under-researched.
- Existing studies rely on self-reported changes, overlooking physiological and cognitive markers.
- Children's limited self-reporting abilities necessitate validation of mood induction effects on objective measures.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effectiveness of experimental mood induction procedures in children.
- To examine if mood inductions alter physiological reactivity and emotion recognition accuracy.
- To compare responders and non-responders regarding mood-induced changes in objective measures.
Main Methods:
- 80 children (7-12 years) underwent a mood induction (sad film clip).
- Electrocardiogram (ECG) recorded high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) for physiological reactivity.
- Children completed a facial emotion recognition task before and after the mood induction.
Main Results:
- Overall, children reported increased sadness, showed increased HF-HRV, and improved emotion recognition accuracy post-induction.
- 25% of children did not self-report increased sadness (non-responders).
- Responders and non-responders showed similar changes in physiological reactivity and emotion recognition accuracy.
Conclusions:
- Mood induction procedures are efficacious in altering children's self-reported affect, physiological responses, and social-cognitive processes.
- These procedures are valuable research tools for studying emotional mechanisms in children, including non-responders.
- Objective measures confirm mood induction effectiveness beyond self-report, supporting their use in developmental research.
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