Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Graduate School of Child Development and Education
My Best is Good Enough: How being
Self-Kind Affects our Body and Mind
Research Master Child Development and Education Research Master Thesis
Maud Hensums - 11120142
Supervised by: Prof. Dr. S.M. Bögels, & Dr. M.E. Wrzesien September 2017
Abstract
Low emotion regulation capacities can have an impact on youth’s everyday life and is a risk factor for developing psychopathology. One important aspect of emotion regulation (ER) is self-compassion (SC) and an effective component of SC is self-kindness (SK). In this study, it is investigated if a) SK ER strategy has an effect on the subjective and physiological state of children, and b) if that effect is moderated by age. Children (N = 112) either received the SK ER strategy or no explicit instructions before they experienced a challenging situation. Results indicate that the explicit instructions were not effective in improving the subjective state of children, but that they did improve the physiological state of children. This effect did not seem to differ for children of different ages. However, older children (12 - 14 years old) seemed less positive throughout the experiment than younger children (9 - 11 years old). Practical implications and future directions are discussed. SK could benefit the physiological state of children in the age of 9-14. However, the enhancement of SK and its implementation should be researched more in order for this ER strategy to also be beneficial for the subjective state of children.
Keywords: Emotion regulation, Self-compassion, Self-kindness, Explicit
Today’s society is a society in which children are confronted with pressure and with failure oftentimes. Now, more than ever, it is important for them to be resilient, and to learn how to handle their emotions and their emotional reactions. Therefore, emotion regulation might be one of the most important processes for children when encountering daily-life situations (Gross, 2015).
How Emotion Regulation Affects the Subjective and Physiological State
Emotion regulation is a dynamic process, which unfolds over time and is mainly
controlled by processes in our brain (Gross, 2015). When children regulate emotions, they try to activate a goal to influence the emotion trajectory (Gross, Sheppes, & Urry, 2011). This allows children to have the same input (e.g., seeing a spider), but to have different output reactions (e.g., yelling, staying calm, running). Emotion regulation is present in all
individuals, which allows everyone to increase, maintain or decrease negative and positive emotions (subjective state) (Gross, 2015). In this way, children can control their feelings and reactions after they have experienced situations, which would indicate that emotion regulation is an active process during experiences, but also after experiencing situations (Gross et al., 2011). However, because different neural circuits are involved, not every emotion is regulated in the same way. Children often try to regulate negative emotions in a way that they are experienced less, and they try to regulate positive emotions in a way that they are experienced more (Gross, Richards, & John, 2006). This can be a conscious but oftentimes also an
unconscious process (Gross, 2015). Thus, emotion regulation allows individuals to experience and process emotions during and after experienced situations, to regulate varying emotions in different ways, to do this in a conscious but also in an unconscious manner, and to regulate behavior that follows the experienced emotions.
Not only behavior and the subjective state (positive and negative feelings) is affected by emotion regulation, bodily reactions of children are also influenced by emotion regulation
(Williams et al., 2015). Cardiac functions, such as heart-rate (HR), are influenced by emotions and the way that these emotions are processed (Kemp et al., 2010). For example, HR tends to increase when negative emotions, or challenging situations are experienced (Kemp et al., 2010). Besides HR, heart-rate variability (HRV), which is the variation of time between successive heartbeats, is also associated with emotional processes (Kemp et al., 2010). For example, a low HRV of children is associated with the experience of more negative emotions, anxiety and depression (Kemp et al., 2010). In addition, children that are able to regulate their emotional responses in an appropriate way, are more likely to have a normal, high HRV (Melzig, Weike, Hamm, & Tayer, 2009). When the HRV is measured trough the root mean square of the successive differences (RMSSD), this normal HRV is reflected by a mean of 27, with a standard deviation of 12 (Camm et al., 1996). When children are experiencing feelings of stress, or having difficulties with regulating emotions adequately, this is reflected in a decreased HRV (Melzig et al., 2009; Williams et al., 2015). Thus, cardiac functions and emotion regulation processes are associated with each other, suggesting that when children experience more negative emotions, their HR is likely to increase and their HRV is likely to decrease (Kemp et al., 2010; Williams et al., 2015). Therefore, when children experience negative emotions, or have difficulties with regulating these emotions in an adequate way, it is likely that this is reflected in their bodily reactions.
Self-Kindness as an Adaptive Emotion Regulation Strategy
Part of the unfolding process of emotion regulation, is developing strategies
(cognitive, behavioral, and bodily) to cope with situations that you have encountered before (Gross, 2015). Children are likely to produce similar psychophysiological responses to diverse challenges, and to develop defense mechanisms to cope with negative emotions (Gross et al., 2011). One of these strategies to cope with negative emotions, or with
different components, which are (1) self-kindness as opposed to self-judgement. Children can be kind to their selves, or can criticise themselves in challenging situations; (2) common humanity as opposed to isolation. Children can have different perceptions of the world, and they place situations, failure and achievements into perspective (e.g., this is part of human life and everyone experiences this, or I am the only one to which this happens); (3) mindfulness as opposed to over-identification. Children can experience negative emotions in different ways (e.g., supress their feelings versus exaggerate their feelings), self-compassion suggests that negative emotions should be experienced in a self-kind, non-isolated, and balanced way (Neff, 2009). Previous research conducted on self-compassion suggests that children with higher self-compassion had less anxiety, less stress, and less negative affect (Bluth et al., 2016). They also had greater life satisfaction and more positive affect (Bluth et al., 2016). In addition, children who scored higher on self-criticism and lower on self-kindness, had higher depressive symptoms than children who did not score high on self-criticism (Ehret, Joormann, & Berking, 2014). Leary and colleagues (2007) also suggest that self-compassion can
influence how people react when they experience negative emotions, in a way that it enhances their self-esteem. Overall, self-compassion is an emotion regulation strategy, which consists of three important components, and which can alter the subjective state of children, and help children cope with negative emotions in a way that it is a protective factor against stress, anxiety, negative affect, and depressive symptoms.
The meta-analysis of Muris and Petrocchi (2016) that was recently published, gave more insight in the effective components of self-compassion as they investigated which of the components seemed to be protective factors or factors that could increase vulnerability for the development of psychopathology. They investigated the components of Neff (2009) that were mentioned earlier on. Results indicate that all of the components seem to have an influence on the development of psychopathology for adults. However, the component that seemed to be
the most important protective factor for the development of psychopathology, is self-kindness (r = -.34) (Muris & Petrocchi, 2016). Because the meta-analysis of Muris and Petrocchi (2016) focusses on adults, and because self-compassion is a broad construct, the aim of this study is to investigate if self-kindness is an important component for children and adolescents as well. It is important to gain more insight in the effectiveness of the use of self-kindness of for children, and therefore, to gain more insight in emotion-regulation strategies that children could use.
The Influence of Age
The ability to regulate emotions and to develop emotion-regulation strategies is different for younger children than for older children (Gross, 2015). Mainly, because the development of regulation of emotion depends on the development of different neural circuits, and therefore, the developments in the brain are crucial for one’s ability to alter emotional in- and output (Gross, 2015). The prefrontal cortex plays an important role in this process since it (among other things) has an inhibitory function on the amygdala (Rohr et al., 2015). Inhibitory control refers to the process of controlling dominant responses that children might have experiencing a situation, and altering responses in a way that it is adequate and that it meets requirements in that specific situation (Serpell & Esposito, 2016). From the age of 12, the frontal and parietal lobe have a pick in their development. From this time on, children are less driven by their amygdala (e.g., fear), and they are more able to use inhibition as a function of emotion regulation (Giedd et al., 1999; Rohr et al., 2015). It is not the aim of this study to investigate these brain functions but it is important to take into account that the SK enhancement might be more beneficial for older children due to developments that they are experiencing. Thus, it is important to keep in mind that children’s abilities to regulate their emotions are highly influenced by the development of their brain. Indicating that children younger than 12 years old might have more difficulties with regulating negative emotions in a
challenging situation, and that children older than 12 years old might benefit more from the enhancement of an emotion regulation strategy, such as self-kindness, because they are more able to inhibit their emotions and reactions. Therefore, we should look at children above and under the age of 12 separately since they might regulate emotions in a different way, and the effect of SK enhancement might also be different between these groups.
The Current Study
The enhancement of self-kindness in children might be beneficial for their subjective and physiological state. However, enhancement of self-kindness has only been researched for adults, and only recently for adolescents, while research on the effect of enhancement on children is lacking. It is important to conduct research on the enhancement of the emotion regulation strategy self-kindness, because when children experience difficulties in regulating their emotions, they could experience more difficulties with social peer relationships and school adjustments (Calkins, 1994; Eisenberg et al., 2004; Keane & Calkins, 2004; Stifter & Braungart, 1995).They are also at risk for developing multiple forms of psychopathology, such as anxiety or depression (Mahmoud, Staten, Hall, & Lennie, 2012; Van Dam, Sheppard, Forsyth, & Earleywine, 2011). This is troublesome, because anxiety and depression are two of the most prevalent mental health disorders among children (Brown et al., 2008). Self-kindness can possibly serve as a protective factor for the development of psychopathology, and thus is an important construct to research further (Van Dam et al., 2011).
Therefore, it will be investigated in this study if (1) an explicit self-kindness emotion regulation strategy could increase the positive subjective state (positive affect), decrease the negative subjective state (negative affect), and increase the physiological state (HRV) of children experiencing a challenging situation, and (2) if that effect is moderated by the age of children. We (1) expect differences on subjective state: (A) children in the experimental group are expected to have higher positive affect, and lower negative affect, compared to children in
the control group directly after the challenging situation and several minutes after the challenging situation. (B) We expect a moderating effect of age on the emotion regulation abilities of children in the experimental group and in the control group, indicating that positive affect is higher in the older age group (12-14 years old), than in the younger age group (9-11 years old), and that negative affect is higher in the lower age group (9-11 years old), than in the higher age group (12-14 years old), directly after the challenging situation and several minutes after the challenging situation. The difference is expected to be higher in the experimental group, since we expect that there is already a difference in emotion
regulation abilities between the age groups, but that in the experimental group older children are also expected to benefit even more from the SK ER strategy than younger children. We (2) expect differences on physiological state: (A) children who are in the experimental group are expected to have higher heart-rate variability, compared to children in the control group directly after the challenging situation and several minutes after the challenging situation. (B) In both the experimental group as the control group, we expect that the decrease of heart-rate variability is higher in the lower age group (9-11 years old), than in the higher age group (12-14 years old) directly after the challenging situation and several minutes after the challenging situation. The difference is, again, expected to be higher in the experimental group since older children might benefit more from the SK ER enhancement because of higher emotion
regulation abilities.
Method Participants
This study was part of Science live, the innovative research programme of NEMO science Museum that enables scientists to carry out real, publishable, peer-reviewed research using NEMO visitors as volunteers. Children (N = 112) from the age of 9-14 years, and one of their parents participated in this study. Due to artifacts in the physiological data-collection
process, five cases were excluded in the primary analysis of the physiological state, and four cases were missing data on age (N = 103). The sample consists of both female and male participants (boys = 52.7 %), the age ranges from 9 to 14 years (Mage = 10.83, SD = 1.37). Parents of the children are mostly together (married = 88.2 %). In addition, most of the parents were born in the Netherlands (native = 94.5 %). Parents’ highest educational level ranges between secondary school and a PhD, but the largest part of the parents were educated on a HBO level or higher (HBO, WO-Bachelor, WO-Master, & PhD = 76.1 %).
These children were recruited during a visit at Nemo, and were native Dutch speakers (inclusion criteria). Children with a mental health disease could not participate in this study (exclusion criteria). A posteriori G*power analysis revealed that with an effect size of f = 0.25, an alpha of a = .05 and a sample size of 112, the power to detect true effects is
approximately 99 % (Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner, & Lang, 2009). The children were randomly assigned to a) an experimental group in which children received explicit SK ER strategy instruction or b) a control group in which children did not receive explicit SK ER strategy instruction before performing a challenging task.
Assessments
Subjective state. Subjective state is measured with positive and negative affect of
children. The Positive and Negative affect schedule (PANAS) measured positive and negative affect at a certain time point (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). In this study the validated shortened version of Ebesutani and colleagues (2012) was used, which measures five aspects of the scale positive affect (PA) (joyful, cheerful, happy, lively, proud) and five items of the scale negative affect (NA) (miserable, mad, afraid, scared, sad) on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = very slightly; 5 = extremely). Since there were 5 questions on the negative scale and 5
questions on the positive scale, 5 is the minimum score per child and 25 is the maximum score per child per phase. For the purpose of this study we adjusted the shortened version of
PANAS to children. To check whether the adjusted and translated items are clear and understandable, we performed pre-tests with four children.
The author reported Cronbach’s alphas of the shortened PA scale is .85, and of the shortened NA scale it is .82. In this study the shortened and adjusted version of the PANAS was used multiple times throughout the experiment (3 times, see procedure), to give insight in the reliability of the scales throughout the experiment, the Cronbach’s alphas of the scales were analyzed for all those measurements. Cronbach’s alphas at the first measurement (baseline) are .75 for the PA scale, and .48 for the NA scale. At the second measurement (negative mood induction), the Cronbach alpha was .81 for the PA scale and .78 for the NA scale. During the third measurement (recovery), the Cronbach alpha was .85 for the PA scale and .66 for the NA scale. Removing items did not benefit the Cronbach alphas of the NA scale at the first and third measurements. Therefore, results should be interpreted with these Cronbach alphas in mind.
Heart rate variability. ECG was measured using a custom made portable amplifier
(University of Amsterdam, 2014) with a 1GΩ input resistance and a bandwidth of 0.1Hz (6dB/oct) to 250Hz (24 dB/oct) containing a National Instruments NI-USB6210 A/D converter to digitize the analogue data at a rate of 1000 S/s. Vsrrp98 was used to record and analyse the data (Vsrrp98 v10.4, University of Amsterdam, 1998-2017). Vsrrp98 detects r-tops from the ECG recording and calculates heart rate and heart rate variability (RMSSD, the root mean square of successive differences in inter-beat-intervals) allowing a maximum difference of +/- 33% in successive IBI length for heart rate variability. First, the HRV scores per 30 seconds were derived. Then, mean scores per phase were derived to indicate the average HRV of children per phase.
Procedure
This thesis project is part of an overarching study with more outcome variables and a more complex design (Ethical committee number; 2016-CDE-7242), for the purpose of this study only the outcomes and conditions that are used in this study are described.
The children have visited NEMO, and the researchers recruited the children and their parents during their visit. If the children decided to participate, their parents (for children below 12 years old) and the children (for children above 12 years old) needed to sign a consent form in order to participate.
The experiment consisted of 4 phases, which are: 1 – Baseline (2 min), 2 - Priming-phase (3 min), 3 - Negative mood induction Priming-phase (2nd game 3 min), 4 – Recovery phase (2
min). For this study, only the measures in the baseline, the negative mood induction phase, and the recovery phase are used and described. Before the baseline measurement, heartrate monitors were applied and children filled in the questionnaire about their positive and negative state (short version of PANAS). During the baseline (1), children watched a neutral movie that has been validated as a good baseline task, and heart-rate was measured.
The third phase was the negative mood induction phase (3), in which children played the game: Rush hour. Children first received instruction on how to play the game and got the opportunity to practice. Next, they were informed that they were recorded and that an expert was going to evaluate how they performed, and then they played the game. The objective of this game was to induce a negative mood, which was induced because the game was
unsolvable, so the children had to deal with failure. Prior to the game, children in the explicit enhancement group received additional instructions on how they could be kind to their selves: “Please note that this game will be more challenging than the last one. Because of this you might experience some negative emotions such as frustration, anger or sadness. Whatever happens please try to be kind and friendly to yourself in the same way as a good friend would
treat you, in a supportive, and encouraging way. Remember that the task is difficult so you might not perform as you would like to. Try to remember that you are doing your best”. The control group did not receive additional instructions on the complexity of the second puzzle and on how to deal with negative emotions. After the third phase, children filled in a
questionnaire to indicate their negative and positive state again (short version of PANAS). At last, there was a recovery phase (4) in which they watched a short video (approximately 2 minutes) for final recovery before they filled in the questionnaire to indicate their positive and negative state (short version of PANAS).
During the experiment, parents were filling in questionnaires about their child in a different room. After the experiment, all children and parents were debriefed, and received an explanation about self-kindness. Prior to the experiments at NEMO, there was a pretest day at the Admiraal de Ruyterschool in Amsterdam with 4 children. The objective of this pretest was to see if young children would understand the instructions, and if they were able to complete the experiment. Pretest revealed that young children (7-8 years old) could not participate in the experiment since they did not understand several questions and they had difficulties with writing on the computer. Therefore, the age group that was included in the experiment was adjusted to the ages 9 till 14 years old.
Data Analyses
The results per dependent outcome are evaluated by repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), with separate runs for the PANAS scales of negative and positive affect indicating the subjective state, and physiological state (heart-rate variability) as dependent variables. Intervention group and control group are used as between-subject factors, and the three measurements for each dependent variable as levels of within-subject factors in a repeated measurement design. The main effect of within-subject factors (phase) and the interaction effect between phase and condition will be evaluated to see if there are differences
between children in the different phases, and to see if children differ in the different conditions, per phase. In addition, between subject factors are evaluated, to see if there are differences between children in the different conditions overall. The main effect of age will also be evaluated, to see if there are differences between children in the different age groups overall.
For the moderating effect of age, analyses are conducted using dummy codes (0 =
9-11, 1 = 12-14). This variable is included in all the separate runs (e.g., negative affect, positive
affect, physiological state) in the repeated measures ANOVA, interaction effects between age and group are evaluated to see if the effect of the SK enhancement differs for younger
children than for older children. An a =.05 criterion will be used for significance.
Results Descriptive Statistics
Informative descriptive statistics are shown in table 1, including statistics on subjective (negative scale (N-PANAS) and positive scale (P-PANAS) of PANAS) and physiological state (HRV) at baseline.
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics of negative subscale of PANAS (N-PANAS), positive subscale of PANAS (P-PANAS), and heart-rate variability (HRV) of different groups (condition and age) at baseline Group Age N N-PANAS P-PANAS HRV M SD M SD N M SD Explicit 9-10-11 37 5.89 1.22 16.78 3.82 36 50.43 29.26 12-13-14 14 5.50 0.76 15.07 4.32 11 66.32 36.41 Control 9-10-11 41 6.44 1.76 16.17 3.98 40 48.44 28.72 12-13-14 17 5.29 0.69 17.00 3.97 16 54.99 24.91 Overall 109 5.96 1.39 16.49 3.98 103 52.43 29.07
Preliminary Analyses
Preliminary analyses revealed that there were significant differences between children of different ages on the negative subscale of the PANAS, F(1,107) = 7.495, p = .007,
indicating that older children (12-14) scored significantly higher on the negative subscale of the PANAS at baseline than younger children (9-11) (see table 1). Therefore, all
measurements at baseline were included as a covariate instead of baseline being included as a within factor, to control for individual differences. The data was assessed to check if it
violated assumptions that are important for conducting repeated measures ANOVA. The dependent variables (negative and positive scale of the PANAS, and HRV) are measured at the continuous level, and the independent variables (condition and age) consist of at least two categorical groups (e.g., explicit, control/ younger age, older age). In addition, no true outliers were detected, and Q-Q plots indicated that the dependent variables seem normally
distributed. Only the negative subscale of the PANAS seems less normal distributed than the other dependent variables, but the repeated measures ANOVA is quite robust against this violation. Sphericity is assumed due to the fact that there are only two within-measures. Therefore, no evidence was found to suspect violations of the assumptions.
Primary Analyses Subjective state.
Negative subjective state. The first one way repeated measures ANOVA was
conducted on the N-PANAS, indicating the negative subjective state of the children. Higher scores on the N-PANAS indicated a higher negative subjective state. Hypotheses tests are shown in table 2, the covariate (baseline) is evaluated at = 5.954.
First, the within subject effects (effects over time) were analyzed. The analysis indicated that there was no significant main effect of time, indicating that there were no significant differences between children during negative mood induction (M = 6.57, SD =
0.23) and the recovery phase (M= 5.55, SD = .12) in the N-PANAS. The interaction of time and condition was not significant, indicating that (1) there was no significant difference between the experimental group (M = 6.72, SD = .33) and the control group (M = 6.42, SD = .30) during the negative mood induction, and (2) that there was no significant difference between the experimental group (M = 5.38, SD = .18) and the control group (M = 5.72, SD = .17) during the recovery phase.
Second, the between subject effects (differences between groups) were analyzed. The analysis indicated that there was no significant difference between children in the explicit enhancement group (M = 6.05, SD = .23) and children in the control group (M = 6.07, SD = .21) on their N-PANAS overall. When looking at age, there was no significant main effect of age on the N-PANAS, indicating that children in the higher age group (M = 6.17, SD =.27) did not score significantly different on N-PANAS than children in the younger age group (M = 5.95, SD = .17) overall. The interaction of condition and age was also not significant, indicating that (1) the effect of explicit enhancement on the scores of N-PANAS is not different for children in the younger age group (M = 6.09, SD = .24), than for children in the older age group (M = 6.0, SD = .39), overall, and (2) that the effect of control group is not different for children in the younger age group (M = 5.81, SD = .23), than for children in the older age group (M = 6.33, SD = .36).
Positive subjective state. The second one way repeated measures ANOVA was
conducted on the P-PANAS, indicating the positive subjective state of the children. Higher scores on the positive subscale indicated a higher positive subjective state. Hypotheses tests are shown in table 2, the covariate (baseline) is evaluated at = 16.367.
First, the within subject effects (effects over time) were analyzed. The analysis indicated that there were no significant differences between children during negative mood induction (M = 15.94, SD = .31) and the recovery phase (M= 15.93, SD = .30) in the
P-PANAS. The interaction of time and condition was not significant, indicating that (1) there was no significant difference between the experimental group (M =15.71, SD = .46) and the control group (M = 16.16, SD = .42) during the negative mood induction, and (2) that there was no significant difference between the experimental group (M = 15.99, SD = .45) and the control group (M = 15.87, SD = .41) during the recovery phase in the P-PANAS.
Second, the between subject effects (differences between groups) were analyzed. The analysis indicated that there was no significant difference between children in the explicit enhancement group (M = 15.85, SD = .41) and children in the control group (M = 16.02, SD = .37) on their PANAS overall. However, there was a significant main effect of age on the P-PANAS, indicating that children in the higher age group (M = 14.96, SD = .47) scored
significantly lower on the P-PANAS than children in the younger age group (M = 16.90, SD = .29), overall. Cohen’s effect size value suggested that this was a large effect. The interaction of condition and age was not significant, indicating that (1) the effect of explicit enhancement on the P-PANAS is not different for children in the younger age group (M = 16.85, SD = .43), than for children in the older age group (M = 14.84, SD = .70), after the negative mood
induction phase and after the recovery phase, and (2) that the effect of control group is not different for children in the younger age group (M = 16.95, SD = .41), than for children in the older age group (M = 15.08, SD = .63).
Physiological state. One-way repeated measures ANOVA was also conducted on
physiological data to assess the effect of condition and age on the physiological state of children during the experiment. Higher scores indicate a higher heart rate variability (HRV) average per phase. Hypotheses tests are shown in table 2, the covariate (baseline) is evaluated at = 52.063.
First, the within subject effects (effects over time) were analyzed. The analysis indicated that there were no significant differences between children during negative mood
induction (M = 43.70, SD = 1.61) and the recovery phase (M= 49.55, SD = 1.57) in HRV. The interaction of time and condition was not significant, indicating that (1) there was no
significant difference between the experimental group (M =46.76, SD = 2.45) and the control group (M = 40.64, SD = 2.09) during the negative mood induction, and (2) that there was no significant difference between the experimental group (M = 52.05, SD = 2.39) and the control group (M = 47.05, SD = 2.04) during the recovery phase in HRV.
Second, the between subject effects (differences between groups) were analyzed. The analysis indicated that there was a significant difference in HRV between children in the explicit enhancement group and children in the control group overall (see figure 1), indicating that children in the experimental group had a higher HRV (M = 49.40, SD = 2.13) than
children in the control group (M = 43.85, SD = 1.82 ). Cohen’s effect size value suggested that this was a large effect. In addition, there was no significant main effect of age on the HRV of children, indicating that children in the higher age group (M = 45.53, SD = 2.43) did not have significantly different HRV’s compared to children in the younger age group (M = 47.71, SD = 1.41), after the negative mood induction phase and after the recovery phase. The interaction of condition and age was not significant, indicating that (1) the effect of explicit enhancement on the HRV is not different for children in the younger age group (M = 48.38,
SD = 2.05), than for children in the older age group (M = 50.43, SD = 3.74), after the negative
mood induction phase and after the recovery phase, and (2) that the effect of control group is not different for children in the younger age group (M = 47.05, SD = 1.95), than for children in the older age group (M = 40.64, SD = 3.07).
Figure 1. Mean-scores of heart-rate variability of children in the explicit SK enhancement
group and control group at time point 1 (negative mood induction phase) and time point 2 (recovery phase). Baseline is included as a covariate and is evaluated at = 52.0626.
Table 2
This table displays hypothesis Test of N-PANAS (negative subjective state), P-PANAS (positive subjective state) and heart-rate variability (HRV) (physiological state). Analysis were performed using repeated measures ANOVA with 1 within factor (time) with two levels (negative mood induction and recovery) and 2 between factors: condition (control or explicit enhancement of self-kindness), and age (9-11 years old or 12-14 years old). Baseline
measurements were used as covariates.
Outcome Hypothesis Test F df1 df2 p d
N-PANAS Time Condition Age Time × Condition Condition × Age 2.045 0.003 0.461 2.724 0.987 1 1 1 1 1 104 104 104 104 104 .156 .958 .499 .102 .323 P-PANAS HRV Time Condition Age Time × Condition Condition × Age 2.183 0.093 12.262 1.160 0.018 1 1 1 1 1 104 104 104 104 104 .143 .761 .001** .284 .894 4.95 Time Condition Age Time × Condition Condition × Age 1.248 3.935 0.594 0.139 2.289 1 1 1 1 1 98 98 98 98 98 .267 .050* .443 .710 .133 2.81 39,00 41,00 43,00 45,00 47,00 49,00 51,00 53,00 0 1 2 M ean -s co res o f H ear t r at e va ria bility Phases Explicit Control
Discussion Subjective State and Physiological State
In this study it was investigated if the explicit enhancement of a self-kindness (SK) emotion regulation strategy could increase positive affect, decrease negative affect, and increase the heart-rate variability (HRV) of children who experience a challenging situation. In accordance to the hypothesis on physiological state, there was an effect of the explicit enhancement on the HRV of children, indicating that when children received an instruction on how to apply SK, they had a higher HRV after the negative mood induction and after
recovery, than children who did not receive these explicit instructions. However, in contrast to the hypothesis on subjective state, results indicate that the explicit enhancement of SK did not increase positive affect or decrease negative affect of children, after the negative mood
induction or after recovery.
Results regarding the improvement of HRV in the experimental group are in line with previous findings of Kemp and colleagues (2010), who suggest that HRV is associated with emotional processes. Children who can adequately regulate their emotions are likely to have a higher HRV compared to children who have difficulties with regulating their emotions
(Melzig et al., 2009). The current study contributes to the previous findings and suggests that the use of a SK emotion regulation strategy could help children to control their bodily
reactions (HRV) during and after challenging situations.
Results of the current study regarding the subjective state of children (positive and negative affect) are not in line with previous findings (Bluth et al., 2016; Ehret et al., 2014; Leary et al., 2007; Muris & Petrocchi, 2016). The current study aimed to replicate these findings that suggest that adolescents and adults with higher levels of self-kindness had higher positive affect, and less negative affect, but then for children. However, children who
mood induction and after recovery. That the positive effects of self-kindness on subjective emotions are present for adults and adolescents, but not for children, requires an explanation. It is for example possible that the enhancement was less effective due to the way that self-kindness was enhanced in this study.
One possible limitation of our SK enhancement might be that the timing of the SK emotion regulation enhancement (before the negative mood induction) did not turn out to be as effective as expected. The emotion regulation process consists of several steps. When regulating emotions children first choose if they want to experience a situation or not based on the emotions they expect to experience, then, when they have chosen to experience a situation, they try to modify these situations, next their attention will be directed at specific aspects of those situations, and after that they will alter their appraisals, and finally, they will alter their physiological, experiential, and behavioral responses (Gross, 2015). With our SK emotion regulation enhancement, we aimed at changing the feelings and bodily reactions of children by changing the appraisal to failure of children, which is one of the last steps of emotion regulation. Appraisal reflects to the process in which children evaluate their goals and their accomplishments, it is the process in which children give meaning to their
experienced situation and emotions (Gross et al., 2011). Therefore, appraisal could be more of influence when children have experienced a situation, and have experienced emotions
already, because that is when they will try to place the events into perspective. For this reason, one might argue that it could be more beneficial to enhance the emotion regulation strategies that are aimed at changing the appraisals of children, after the situation is
experienced instead of before. This different timing of the enhancement has also been used in research of Davis and Levine (2012), in which results showed promising effects on appraisal. Therefore, timing of instruction might be very important in the effectiveness of enhancing
emotion regulation strategies, and it could be more beneficial to enhance emotion regulation strategies after experienced situations.
Incongruence between Physiological and Subjective State
It is remarkable that the enhancement of SK seems to affect the physiological state (HRV), but does not seem to affect the subjective state of children after the negative mood induction and after the recovery. However, it is in line with findings of Yuan, Ding, Liu, and Yang (2014) who suggest that emotion regulation strategies (e.g., unconscious reappraisal) can affect the emotion related physiological state (e.g., heart-rate, heart-rate variability), without affecting the subjective emotions. This indicates that HRV could be affected when children are taught to be more self-kind, but that it is not necessary that the self-reported positive and negative affect improve as well. One possible explanation for the improvement in HRV regardless of an improvement on the subjective emotions is that SK, which is a part of various third wave emotion regulation strategies such as mindfulness, might affect the implicit reactions (e.g., automatic reactions to emotional situations) more or sooner than it affects the explicit reactions (e.g., self-reported emotions). This is in line with findings of Remmers, Topolinksi and Koole (2016) who suggest that the trait mindfulness is associated with lower levels of implicit negative mood, but that this is not congruent with the explicit reactions of female adults. These females reacted in a healthier way in their implicit reactions, but they did not report this effect themselves in their self-reports (explicit reactions).
Remmers and colleagues (2016) suggest that this congruence between implicit and explicit affect might be something that develops when people are more experienced in using mindfulness techniques. Only then would they be able to recognize their non-judgmental attitude towards themselves. One might argue that when the transfer from implicit feelings to explicit feelings is difficult for adults, that this might also be the case for children who are less capable of recognizing their emotions than adults (Giedd et al., 1999; Rohr et al., 2015). This
would indicate that the short enhancement of the current study might benefit children only in their implicit reactions (automatic reactions such as HRV) because children are not
experienced enough to transfer this to their explicit reactions (self-reported positive and negative affect). It might be more effective to provide children with multiple self-kindness enhancements over a longer period, because then they might be more able to transfer their implicit reactions (e.g., HRV) to their explicit reactions (e.g., subjective emotions).
The Influence of Age
In addition, it was investigated if younger children (9 – 11 years old) differed in their emotional affects from the older children (12-14 years old) throughout the experiment, and if the effect of the explicit SK enhancement is different for younger children (9 - 11 years old) than for older children (12 - 14 years old). Results indicate that there were differences
between children of different ages on positive affect, however, not in line with our hypothesis, they indicated that older children were less positive after the negative mood induction and the recovery, than younger children. In addition, in contrast to our hypothesis, the effect of explicit SK enhancement, on subjective and physiological state, is not different for younger children than for older children, both in the experimental group as in the control group.
As mentioned in our hypothesis, we did expect that older children (12-14 years old) would regulate their emotions in a different way than younger children (9-11 years old). However, we expected that older children would be more able to inhibit dominant responses and be more able to reflect on the situation, regardless if they were in the experimental group or if they were in the control group. In contrast to this hypothesis, we found that the older children (12-14) seemed to score lower on their positive affect than the younger children (9-11) after the negative mood induction and after the recovery time. This result is in line with findings of Bluth and Blanton (2015), who suggest that older adolescents (13-14 years old) have a lower emotional well-being, which is associated with lower positive affect, than
younger adolescents (11-12 years old). The present study might be adding to these results, indicating that levels of positive affect and well-being decrease over age. Additional results of Bluth and Blanton (2015) suggest that the increase in negative mood might be due to feelings of isolation (feeling disconnected from others, such as peers). These feelings of isolation might be higher in adolescence, compared to late-childhood, because the adolescence is a period in which many individual, but also microsystem level changes (e.g., school transitions, shifts in family, and peer relationships) take place (Bluth, Campo, Futch, & Gaylord, 2017).
Results of this study regarding the moderating effect of age on the effectiveness on the enhancement of the SK ER strategy are also not in line with the hypothesis. The hypothesis was based on the theory that inhibitory control might be an important ER function that enables children to benefit more from the SK ER strategy, and that this inhibitory control might have a pick in development around age 12 (Giedd et al., 1999; Rohr et al., 2015). Based on these theories it was expected that age (younger than 12 years or 12 years or older) would moderate the effect of the SK enhancement. However, results indicate that this effect was the same for all children in this study (9 - 14 years old). Therefore, results suggest that children in the age of 9 - 11 are just as (un)able to use SK as children in the age of 12 - 14.
However, this finding could possibly be influenced by the individual differences in terms of brain development in the two age-groups. Important markers in the brain
development of children indicate when they will have picks in the development of certain executive functions (Blakemore, 2014; Giedd et al., 1999; Huizinga, Dolan, & Van der Molen, 2006; Rohr et al., 2015). However, these markers are solely indicators of when these functions develop, there are children who experience these developments earlier or later than the presumed markers (Blakemore, 2014). Therefore, it is possible that children who were in the younger age group (9-11 years old) already experienced developments in their inhibitory control, while children in the older age group (12-14 years old) did not start developing these
specific functions yet. The ability to regulate emotions and to use the SK ER strategy might be more equal as expected in both groups because of these individual differences in brain development.
Limitations and Strengths
The results of the present study partially substantiated the hypotheses, but there were also hypotheses that were not confirmed. In this study, several limitations might have been of influence. First of all, the subjective state was measured with self-reports, which is less objective and therefore possibly less reliable, than the physiological measures. The children might be influenced by several factors that could have influenced the answers that the children gave on the self-measures. For example, children could have given social desirable answers, which is not uncommon in individualistic cultures such as the Netherlands (Fang, Prybutok, & Wen, 2016). It might have been beneficial to include observational measures to indicate the subjective emotions of these children in a more objective manner. Adding to this limitation, the questionnaire (PANAS) was not optimal as well. On the negative subscale of the PANAS, the reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was not high at the first and last measurement. This could be of influence on the reliability of the measurements of the negative subjective state, and therefore, this should be taken into account when interpreting the results. Since there were no significant effects on the negative subjective state of children, this could be due to the reliability of the scale at the different time points. The scale that we used should be re-evaluated before using it again. Another limitation of this study, is that the sample consists of quit highly educated parents, with only 24 parents who were educated at a VMBO level or lower, 50 parents who were educated on the HBO level, and 36 parents who received an education at the university or higher (PhD). Therefore, more than half of the parents (HBO or higher = 76.1 %) received a quit high education. This may be of influence on the
with parents who were not educated at a HBO level or higher. Another limitation that might have been of influence, is that the instructions of SK were short and only provided through written instructions, this might have affected the effectiveness of the enhancement. In addition, there were far less children in the older age group (12 - 14) than in the younger age group (9 - 11), which could have been of influence on the analysis on the moderating effect of age, since the groups were not equal.
However, a strength of this study is that the rest of the design was balanced. Children were equally distributed among conditions, and approximately the same amount of females as males were included in this study. Another strength of this study is that children received instructions via computers, which indicated that children in the same conditions received exactly the same instructions, and instruction-effects were not likely to occur. And lastly, a great strength of this study is that children were measured on subjective and physiological state at baseline. Therefore, it was possible to take individual differences into account and to include baseline as a control-variable.
Implications of the Current Study
Results of this study contribute to current knowledge about the use of a SK ER strategy, and offer a broader implication to the practical and theoretical field. SK can be used by children in a clinical but also in a non-clinical sample, because it is a strategy that can be easily thought to children. However, it should probably be enhanced otherwise (e.g., longer, after the experienced situation, multiple times over a longer period) than just by telling them to be kind before they experience a challenging situation, for the subjective state (the negative and positive emotions) to benefit from the strategy.
With this in mind, we should note that our study underlines the need and effect of providing children with guidelines to regulate their emotions in a positive way. We can use this knowledge to emphasize the need to make children more resilient in today’s society.
Therefore, we could try to think of SK in a broader sense. We can enhance SK in a simple way, and thus, we can try to implement SK more in education, upbringing, but also in other contexts like sports, or music lessons. We could enhance SK in the way that we instruct children when they have to do a task, or when they did a task, and in the way that we give feedback to them. Because children often have difficulties with recognizing and interpreting emotions we could teach children that some tasks and situations are challenging, and that they could feel some negative feelings, but that that is normal and allowed. To provide solutions to deal with these emotions we could hand them guidelines to deal with these negative feelings (e.g., be kind to yourself, treat yourself as you would treat a friend, remember that you did your best), and consequently they might even alter their attributions to failure (e.g.,
sometimes I fail, and I might feel sad about that, but it is OK it happens to everyone and I tried my best). These simple alterations do not require much training, money or time: we could all try to do this more often to make children more resilient.
This is important because today’s society asks a lot of children and adolescents. Even in our study we noticed that older children (12 – 14 years old) feel less positive than younger children (9 – 11 years old), and this could eventually be of influence on their well-being (Bluth & Blanton, 2015). This is troublesome because we don’t want children growing up losing their happiness. Especially, because the adolescence is a period in which children develop depressive symptoms more often (Bluth et al., 2016). For this, and other reasons, it remains important to realize that SK could benefit children, so far mainly in their
physiological state, but that this enhancement and its implementation (e.g., timing, duration, content, appeal) should be researched more in order for this ER strategy to be as beneficial as it could be for the subjective state of children as well.
Future Directions
As mentioned, results of this study offer new insight in important research subjects and measurements requirements. First of all, future research could focus on the importance of timing of enhancement of emotion regulation strategies. It could be of influence on the effectiveness of the enhancement if the enhancement is provided before the experienced situation or after the experienced situation. Research could also focus more on how long an instruction of SK should be in order to be more successful, and on how these instructions should be handed. It could for example be, that these instructions should be given more often in order for children to be able to transfer the effect on the implicit reactions (HRV) to their explicit reactions (self-reported emotions). In addition, future research should also try to include enhancements that fit with the needs of children (e.g., content and appeal). Recent findings of Calvo and colleagues (2017) provide us with implications on what the content of an enhancement could be: children long for opportunities to represent and reflect their internal states (e.g., ideas, feelings, thoughts). In addition, they long for solutions to remove feelings that they wish not to feel, which could be strategies to deal with their emotions (such as SK). Calvo and colleagues (2017) also suggest that the best way to reach children is through apps, games or by wearable accessories or gadgets. Their results emphasize that when we try to reach children, we should provide them with a tool that can coexist with them. Therefore, we want to provide them with helpful daily-life guidelines in a way that is appealing to them. These suggestions might be taken into account when trying to enhance SK in future studies.
In addition, it seems interesting to learn more about the link between physiological state and emotion regulation strategies, without the mediating role of subjective state. Future studies could focus on this possible relation and underlying mechanisms: is it possible to improve the physiological state of children by the enhancement of healthy emotion regulation strategies, regardless of an improvement in subjective state? As mentioned, it could be that
implicit and explicit reactions are underlying processes and that the transfer from implicit reactions to explicit reactions takes time and practice.
Lastly, it seems important to include neurological measures to measure the presence and activity of executive functions in children, when talking about the influence of executive functions. Children could then be divided in groups that reflect on their neurological skills, and the development of their executive functions. With this distinction, more accurate statements could be made about the influence of brain development on the ability to use the SK ER strategy.
Hopefully, with these suggestions in mind, future research will offer new and better guidelines to provide children with a healthy way to regulate their emotions in challenging times. These guidelines would not only be helpful, but also necessary tools to cope with the challenges of today’s society.
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