Changes in Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression During Transition to Early Adolescence and Their Links...

Frequency of emotion regulation strategy use undergoes changes during early adolescence. Executive functions are often proposed as foundational for successful emotion regulation, yet longitudinal links between executive functioning and the development of emotion regulation strategies remain underexplored.

The present study included 1532 children from ages 9 to 15 (M_{age_baseline} = 11.03, SD = 1.15, 49.3% male) and 1157 mothers from Croatia. Children reported on their use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, while mothers provided reports of executive functioning difficulties across three-waves over 2 years. Children were divided into four age cohorts. Cohort-sequential latent growth models were used to estimate developmental trajectories of emotion regulation strategies. Additionally, random-intercept cross-lagged panel model was used to explore both within- and between-person associations between emotion regulation strategies and executive functioning difficulties.

Self-reported use of cognitive reappraisal showed a linear decline across all cohorts at similar rates, though a single common trajectory was not fully supported due to intercept differences. Expressive suppression showed more complex results, but it seems to have increased between approximately 11 and 14 years, though this pattern was not consistent across all cohorts and common trajectory also was not supported due to intercept differences. Executive function difficulties did not consistently predict changes in either strategy across cohorts. In the three oldest cohorts, reappraisal was unrelated to EF difficulties, while suppression showed a complex pattern: trait-level suppression was positively associated with shifting, working memory, and inhibition difficulties, and within-level suppression and working memory were bidirectionally negatively linked.

The use of emotion regulation strategies changes in early adolescence, with reappraisal declining and suppression varying by age, and executive function difficulties showing a complex, strategy-specific relationship.