The Developmental Characteristics And Inter-Brain Synchrony Of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Strategies Among Adolescent Friends

Paying attention to adolescents' emotional regulation makes significant contribution to social stability,family harmony and individual physical and mental health development.However,in previous studies,most researchers focused on the discussion of individual emotional regulation strategies and abilities,relatively ignoring interpersonal emotional regulation.Amount of evidences suggested that,comparing to intrapersonal emotion regulation,interpersonal emotional regulation strategies could optimize cognitive processing ability,relieve partner's pain and improve interpersonal relationship quality more effectively.Therefore,it is important to exploring the effect of emotional regulation strategies on improving adolescent emotional health from the perspective of interpersonal emotion regulation.Based on the perspective of developmental situations,adolescent best friends play an important role in the process of interpersonal emotional regulation.However,few studies have systematically revealed the role of the adapative strategies adopted by friends in the process of interpersonal emotional regulation among adolescents and the possible reasons behind it.Therefore,based on the "communication model of interpersonal emotional regulation",the current study try to constructing the "content"-"effect"-"mechanism" of adolescent interpersonal emotional regulation strategies,to reveal the developmental characteristics of adolescent interpersonal emotional regulation strategies among friends and the brain-brain mechanism of their effects.This study is divided into three studies and five sub-studies totally.Study 1conducted interview method to explore the characteristic of interpersonal emotional regulation tendency and the content of interpersonal emotion regulation strategies from early adolescents(N =15)and late adolescents(N =16),which answered the question "what".The results showed that late adolescents chose more subjects to regulate their emotions compared to early adolescents(study 1?1).Participants' strategies(including value evaluation,social comparison,empathy,cognitive change and event intervention)were more frequently used in interpersonal emotional regulation of late adolescents(1?2).In study 2,questionnaire method(early adolescent N =834,late adolescent N=630)and observation method(early adolescent N =42,late adolescent N =56)were used to explore the influence of orientation and strategy in the process of interpersonal emotional regulation of early and late adolescents,answer the question "impacts".The results showed that the higher the tendency of interpersonal emotion regulation,the more significant the negative effect of predicting depressive symptoms and loneliness,and age played a moderating role(study 2?1).In the group of late adolescents,the negative frequency of avoidance strategy significantly predicted the negative emotions.The ratio of duration of avoidance strategies(duration/total duration)significantly negatively predicted post-measured negative emotions in both early and late adolescents(study 2?2).Study 3 combined behavioral observation method and f NIRS hyper-scanning technology to explore the brain-brain mechanism of the influence of cognitive reappraisal as a strategy on interpersonal emotional regulation among adolescent friends,which could answer the "why" question.The present study(N =198)compared brain-brain synchronization and age differences in the use of cognitive reappraisal strategies by good friend pairs and stranger pairs in early and late adolescents.The results showed that:(1)the level of inter-brain synchronization was higher in the late adolescent best friend group than in the early adolescent best friend group when using cognitive reappraisal strategy;(2)In the group of early adolescents,emotional experiencers who reported using cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate emotion had higher level of inter-brain synchronization than those who did not report using cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate emotion;(3)There was no significant difference between the duration of cognitive reappraisal strategy use and inter-brain synchronization between early adolescents and late adolescents.In this study,we investigated the developmental characteristics of interpersonal emotional regulation strategies among adolescent friends and the brain-brain mechanism of their effects by using a formal system of multi-qualitative and multimethod(interview method,questionnaire method,observation method,and infrared scanning method).The results of this study not only expand and enrich the theoretical content of "interpersonal emotional regulation communication model" from an empirical perspective,but also provide intervention perspectives and suggestions for the study of adolescents' emotional problems induced by stressful situations(especially the current unstable epidemic caused by COVID-19 and Omicron virus).