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    Emotion dysregulation in nonsuicidal self-injury: Dissociations between global self-reports and real-time responses to emotional challenge
    (Elsevier B.V., 2024-10-01) Robinson K; Cornes JP; Karl JA; Wilson MS; Grimshaw GM
    INTRODUCTION: Prominent theories of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) propose that the behaviour is characterised by amplified emotional responses. However, little is known about how people who self-injure respond during emotional challenge. METHODS: We measured subjective and physiological responding (heart rate, heart rate variability, and electrodermal responding) among young adults with past-year NSSI (n = 51) and those with no lifetime NSSI (n = 50) during a resting baseline, a stress induction, and a post-stress resting phase. Participants reported the extent to which they spontaneously used cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression during the post-stress phase. Two weeks later, a subset of the sample (n = 42) reported how they remembered feeling during the laboratory session. RESULTS: Although the NSSI group reported considerably greater emotion dysregulation than Controls, both groups showed similar subjective and psychological reactivity to, and recovery from, emotional challenge. Both groups used reappraisal and suppression regulation strategies following acute stress to a similar extent, and later came to remember the emotional challenge in a similar manner. LIMITATIONS: Within the NSSI group, past-year self-injury tended to be infrequent and sporadic. Only 43.6% of the sample participated in the follow-up survey assessing memory of emotional challenge. CONCLUSIONS: Findings demonstrate that the role of emotion in NSSI is more complex than prominent theories can account for, raising substantial questions regarding the nature of emotion in NSSI. A more comprehensive understanding of the role of emotion in NSSI is needed to inform intervention strategies to better support people who self-injure.
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    The impact of school-based Aggression Replacement Training on emotion regulation and aggressive behaviour : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) Smith, Freya
    This research evaluates the effectiveness and implementation of Aggression Replacement Training (ART) with a group of New Zealand (NZ) students aged 13-15 years (n=18). Aggression is a significant problem in NZ schools and despite recent progress with school-wide and individually targeted interventions, there are few evaluations of interventions with these adolescents. Deficient emotion regulation is a major risk factor in youth aggression. Although emotion regulation skills are targeted by many aggression interventions, outcome measures less frequently assess these skills than other social information processing abilities. This thesis links research evidence of the role of emotion in aggression, to the techniques taught in ART, to support the hypothesis that ART improves emotion regulation and reduces aggression. Analyses of the change in mean group scores and individual-level analyses indicate improvements in ART participants’ emotion regulation, anger control and social skills over the course of intervention and follow-up. These analyses also indicate reductions in ART participants’ externalising, problem behaviours and cognitive distortions. These findings support the use of ART as effective in reducing the risk of aggressive behaviour, and as an alternative to exclusionary discipline, in NZ schools. ART appears to be culturally acceptable and may offer a less resource intensive intervention than individual intervention plans. Keywords: aggression, emotion regulation, adolescence, social information processing, aggression replacement training.
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    The evaluation of the Transformers programme : an emotion regulation programme for people who have an intellectual disability : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) McWilliams, Jenna Louise
    It is widely accepted that emotion regulation difficulties are common in people who have an intellectual disability. Not being able to manage their distressing emotions can lead to challenging behaviour such as verbal and physical violence and property destruction and can lead to injury, alienation, poor-self-esteem, and legal problems. Growing research suggests that people who have an intellectual disability have the ability to engage in and benefit from interventions that address their emotion regulation problems. The current thesis consists of four papers—a systematic literature review, programme description, a study regarding emotional identification, and a study about emotion regulation. The main aim of the research was to evaluate an emotion regulation programme known as Transformers that is being implemented at an intellectual disability service. Transformers is a group-based treatment programme that is run over a six-month period. Five participants with mild to moderate intellectual disability (aged 17-42 years) attended the Transformers programme and took part in the studies along with their caregivers. A single-case design was chosen to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme. Participants completed emotion recognition tasks and self-report measures of emotion regulation before, during, and after their involvement in the programme. Caregivers also rated the frequency of participants’ use of emotion regulation skills and incident reports provided insight into their ongoing behaviour. While the results showed that the Transformers programme was not effective in improving participants’ abilities to recognise emotion nonetheless participants did increase in their ability to use appropriate emotion regulation strategies and reduced the number of incidents of challenging behaviour. Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that the Transformers programme is a viable treatment option for people who have an intellectual disability who have difficulty managing their own emotions. While the findings are encouraging, it is recommended that further research be carried out using larger sample sizes and longer follow up periods to establish the effectiveness of the programme.
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    Children's Emotion Regulation Inventory (ChERI) : measure development, item domains and summary profiles : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) Callear, Angela Dawn
    Skilful emotion regulation in childhood plays a vital role in a raft of developmental accomplishments, including social competence, academic success and mental well-being. However, researchers and clinicians currently have no unified framework for examining children’s emotion regulation and few straightforward yet detailed assessment measures. Here, a series of studies was undertaken which identified a collection of observable children’s emotion regulation strategies, then organised and grouped the strategies into cohesive domains and profiles. First, a goal-directed model of emotion regulation was outlined. Next, current research measures, clinical measures and focus group data were used to construct a 103-item inventory of behavioural emotion regulation strategies. Multidimensional scaling was then used to calculate and display inter-item relationships after they had been objectively sorted by lay-people and experts. This step also enabled item refinement and inventory reduction. One hundred and fifty one parents of 6-12 year old children then ranked the resulting 85-item Children’s Emotion Regulation Inventory (ChERI) in relation to their child using a three-phase Q-sort procedure. Multidimensional scaling, factor analysis and cluster analyses were applied to the responses. Nine fundamental domains of children’s emotion regulation were found, interpreted as Outward Engagement, Inward or Somatic Focus, Disengagement, Disruptive, Impulsive/Labile, Social Connectedness/Compliance, Generating Closeness/Intimacy, Establishing Order and Generating Disorder. Individual scores across these nine domains were clustered to generate five summary Profiles of children’s emotion regulation. Results are compared and contrasted with current literature and discussed in terms of potential usefulness of the ChERI for research or clinical applications.
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    Children's emotion regulation in unfair situations : using regulatory focus theory : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Yan, Elizabeth Mary
    Children‟s strategies for emotion regulation in different unfair situations were investigated using principles from Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT) (Higgins, Shah, & Friedman, 1997). RFT explains how our orientations (promotion or prevention) towards self-regulatory goals can affect our selection of different strategies used for self-regulation (approach or avoidance). The thesis contains three studies that investigated children‟s emotional responses to different unfair situations and their strategies for regulating emotion. The four goal outcomes: no gains, gains, losses and no losses, formed the different unfair situations in this research. Novel vignettes describing different unfair situations were used in two interview studies, conducted with 162 children aged between 8 and 12 years. The vignettes elicited different intensities of happiness between the outcomes. Losses were judged most unfair, with expected happiness also lowest in this condition. By contrast, unfair gains were perceived fairer, with happiness highest in this condition. In the main vignette study, more approach strategies were reported than avoidance strategies overall and no differences were found between the outcomes. Seeking teacher support was the most frequently reported strategy for prevention-oriented outcomes (losses and no losses). Strategies for prolonging or maintaining positive emotion were frequently reported in the gain situation, and seeking another opportunity was frequently reported in the no gain situation. In a third experimental study involving an actual behavioural task, 52 children participated in a computer game that unfairly delivered erroneous scores. Under these conditions the children reported no gains were most unfair and happiness was lowest. Unlike the vignette studies, differences in avoidance and approach strategies were observed, with approach strategies more frequently reported in the gain, no loss and loss outcomes, and avoidance strategies were more frequently reported in the no gain outcome. Despite the limitations associated with vi using a novel approach, the overall findings suggested children were more inclined to report approach strategies for regulation; however, some children have a preference for avoidance strategies in unfair situations. RFT was a useful framework for explaining children‟s emotion regulation in unfair situations. The findings of this research have implications on emotion regulation development in children, particularly for children who use avoidance strategies to cope with unfair events.