The Moderating Effect Of Gender In The Relationship Between Emotional Regulation And Executive Function

Emotion regulation(ER)plays an important role in people's daily life,such as successful communication and adaption to our living environment.The same as executive functions(EFs),both of them are of great significance on mental-physical health and social functions.However,it is necessary to verify what is the essential factor which influences the relationship between ER and EFs.The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether gender could be a crucial role in the correlation between ER and EFs,and to further explore the underlying mechanism from this prospective.In study 1,we selected college students as subjects.The experimental tasks included Emotion Regulation Questionnaire,the negative mood rating task of the picture,2-back task,Go/No-go task,Stroop task and including switch task.We collected the frequency of use of emotional regulation strategies,cognitive reappraisal ability,updating ability,response inhibition ability,interference inhibition ability and attention switching ability of men and women.The results showed that the frequency of using expression inhibition strategy was significantly higher in men than in women,while there was no significant gender difference in the frequency of cognitive reappraisal.There was a significant correlation between cognitive reappraisal ability and updating ability in the female group,but not in the male group.Updating ability has a predictive effect on cognitive reappraisal ability;Further analysis shows that gender plays a regulating effect in the relationship between updating and cognitive reappraisal.In study 2,college students are still selected as research objects.The subjects whose scores met the requirements were selected through the questionnaire and updating task,and the subjects were divided into two groups according to updating task performance.While the subjects completed the experimental task,their ERP was recorded.We analyzed these data to explore the specific regulating effect of gender in the relationship between updating ability and cognitive reappraisal.The relationship between updating ability and cognitive reappraisal was further analyzed.The results showed that there was no significant difference in LPP amplitude in each time window under the condition of natural viewing neutral pictures and natural viewing negative pictures.This indicates that the subjects' emotional arousal is similar from gender and updating ability perspective.Under the condition of cognitive reappraisal of negative pictures,in three consecutive time Windows,the LPP amplitude of the female high-updating ability group was significantly larger than that of the low-updating ability group,and the difference between the male two groups was not significant.This indicates that gender plays a regulating effect in the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and updating ability.This regulating effect shows that the updating ability's predictive effect on cognitive reappraisal only exists in women.Therefore,this study shows that the updating ability has a predictive effect on the ability of cognitive reappraisal.Negative emotional stimulation can induce larger LPP amplitude,and the use of cognitive reappraisal strategy can effectively reduce LPP amplitude.Gender plays a regulatory role in the relationship between cognitive reappraisal ability and updating ability.The higher the women's updating ability,the more cognitive resources they can mobilize when using cognitive reappraisal to regulate emotions,and the stronger their attention control and cognitive processing ability.