Liu Wen, Liu Fang, Chen Liang, Jiang Zhongqing, Shang Junchen
College of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.
School of Marxism, University of Science and Technology Liaoning, Anshan, China.
Front Psychol. 2019 Feb 11;10:147. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00147. eCollection 2019.
Emotion regulation is a critical mechanism in the socio-emotional development of children. Previous studies revealed that children use cognitive reappraisal to downregulate negative emotions. Moreover, the amplitude of late positive potential (LPP) shows a more obvious reduction following neutral interpretations than following negative interpretations. However, whether children can use cognitive reappraisal to regulate positive emotions remains unclear. In the present study, 46 8- to 12-year-old children were asked to reappraise the meaning of pleasant pictures. Electroencephalography (EEG) data were collected during the task. As predicted, LPP amplitudes increased more following reappraisal condition than following pleasant condition. The analysis of spatial-temporal shifting patterns showed that the effect occurred in the earlier window for the posterior region. As time progressed, this effect evidenced a trend from posterior region to the central and anterior regions, especially for the younger children. Furthermore, the greater brain activations occurred in left hemisphere when children upregulated positive emotions which partially supported previous research suggesting that increasing positive emotion engaged primarily left-lateralized prefrontal regions. Taken together, the findings suggest that children can use cognitive reappraisal to upregulate positive emotions.
情绪调节是儿童社会情感发展中的一种关键机制。先前的研究表明，儿童会使用认知重评来下调负面情绪。此外，相较于负面解读，中性解读后晚期正电位（LPP）的波幅显示出更明显的降低。然而，儿童是否能够使用认知重评来调节积极情绪仍不明确。在本研究中，46名8至12岁的儿童被要求对愉悦图片的含义进行重评。在任务过程中收集脑电图（EEG）数据。正如预期的那样，与愉悦条件相比，重评条件下LPP波幅增加得更多。对时空转移模式的分析表明，这种效应出现在后区的较早时间窗口。随着时间的推移，这种效应呈现出从后区到中区和前区的趋势，尤其是对于年幼的儿童。此外，当儿童上调积极情绪时，左半球出现了更大的脑激活，这部分支持了先前的研究，即增加积极情绪主要涉及左侧前额叶区域。综上所述，研究结果表明儿童能够使用认知重评来上调积极情绪。
