Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation and Associations With Disordered Eating During Preadolescence

Difficulties with emotion regulation have been documented in individuals with eating and internalizing disorders. However, there is limited research examining the cognitive processes underlying these difficulties. Using a dimensional approach, the current study examined the link between the behavioral and neural correlates of response inhibition, disordered eating, and internalizing symptoms in a community sample of preadolescents. A total of 50 children (M age = 10.9 years; 58% male) completed an emotion Go/No-Go task, while ERP components were recorded, as well as self-report measures of disordered eating and internalizing symptoms. In addition, children completed an emotion recognition task to establish whether there were fundamental differences in emotion recognition across high and low levels of disordered eating and internalizing symptoms. Increased disordered eating was associated with increased mean P3-NoGo amplitudes when inhibiting responses to happy facial expressions, as well as poorer recognition of happy faces. These associations were not found for internalizing symptoms. Our findings suggest an early disruption in response inhibition, specifically for happy emotional expressions, may be relevant to the development of disordered eating behaviors in preadolescence.