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Updated: Jan 9, 2026
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Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
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Enhancing Emotion Regulation and Brain Connectivity in Adolescent Girls Through Parental Emotion Socialization: A
Junxuan Zhao1, Elena Pozzi1, Sylvia C Lin2
1Orygen, Parkville, Australia; Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia.
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
|November 29, 2025
Summary
Parental emotion socialization interventions improve adolescent emotion regulation and brain connectivity in girls with internalizing symptoms. This study provides causal evidence for enhanced emotion regulation capacity through emotion-focused parenting.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Clinical Psychology
Background:
- Parental emotion socialization is theorized to impact adolescent emotion regulation.
- The causal link and neural mechanisms remain under-investigated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To experimentally investigate the causal effect of emotion-focused parenting intervention on adolescent emotion regulation.
- To explore the neural mechanisms, specifically functional brain connectivity, underlying this relationship.
Main Methods:
- Emotion-focused parenting intervention (Tuning in to Teens) delivered to mothers of early adolescent girls with internalizing symptoms.
- Randomized controlled trial comparing intervention (n=35) to waitlist control (n=35).
- Assessed emotion regulation via self/mother reports and neural functional connectivity using fMRI pre- and post-intervention.
Main Results:
- Adolescents in the intervention group showed enhanced insula-supplementary motor area and insula-precuneus functional connectivity.
- Improved mother-reported adolescent emotion regulation was observed in the intervention group compared to controls.
- Sixty mother-adolescent dyads completed the study.
Conclusions:
- Parental emotion socialization interventions causally enhance emotion regulation in at-risk adolescent girls.
- Findings support the role of specific neural pathways in mediating the effects of parenting on emotion regulation.
- This intervention offers a promising approach for internalizing disorders in adolescents.
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