Social school stressors and their influence on emotion regulation: A review on the potential mediating role of neurobiological indicators of stress.
Annabel Gilbert 12830984
University of Amsterdam 29.12.2020
Supervisor: Dr. Marieke Buil (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) Examiner: Prof. Agneta Fischer (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Abstract
Emotion regulation comprises a complex set of processes involved in shaping emotional experiences and can have far-reaching consequences on emotional, academic and behavioural functioning. Elementary schools can be considered a developmental context for children’s emotion regulation skills, yet, a research gap exists in investigating the influence of social school stressors on young children’s emotion regulation. The current work systematically reviewed literature from 2000-2020 to understand the extent to which social school stressors can influence children’s emotion regulation abilities, via neurobiological indicators of stress. Across 17 empirical studies, it was found that social school stressors affect children’s emotion regulation and may consequently illicit emotional and behavioural problems. Maladaptive cortisol and salivary alpha amylase levels were associated with peer victimization, and employing different emotion regulation strategies revealed specific stress profiles. The review concludes with critique on the studies as well as a series of suggestions for future researchers and school policy makers.
Keywords: emotion regulation; elementary school; stress; HPA axis; psychosocial functioning
Introduction
Effective emotion regulation plays an integral part in living a successful life. Having strong emotion regulation skills may, amongst many other aspects, enhance inter-personal relationships, improve decision-making and positively affect academic functioning (e.g. CASEL Guide, 2013; Côte, Gyurak & Levenson, 2010; Gross, 2015). These skills are critically shaped during childhood, specifically in interactions with others, such as during elementary school (Chatterjee Singh & Duraiappah, 2020). However, not only the environment shapes emotion regulation abilities. At the same time, neurobiological processes, which can be triggered by the children’s exposure to negative social experiences, are influenced by a myriad of external factors (e.g. stress) (Schlesier, Roden & Moschner, 2019). The development and processes of emotion regulation in adolescents and adults have already been studied extensively, however younger children have been given less attention. Further, studies exploring the role of neurobiological mediators linking stressors and emotion regulation are generally lacking. Therefore, to understand why negative social experiences in school can lead to maladaptive emotion regulation, a systematic review considering children in elementary school education is rendered necessary. Young children are exposed to various stressors in the classroom, which may modulate their stress system and in turn have negative consequences on their development of emotion regulation, neurocognition and academic outcomes. Since brains are highly plastic at that age, stress might have prominent consequences on their development (see Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011). This review will therefore focus on neurobiological indicators of stress as the mediating role between social classroom stressors and emotion dysregulation.
The findings of this review are structured into two main sections. In the first part of this review, the concept of emotional regulation and its importance for children’s social, emotional, behavioural and academic development will be explained, the importance of the elementary school period for emotion regulation development will be discussed, and the
influence of social experiences and related stressors on emotion regulation development in elementary school children are outlined. In the second section, current empirical evidence on the potential mediating role of neurobiological stress indicators, which possibly explain the link between social stress and emotion regulation in elementary school children, will be summarized.
What is emotion regulation?
Emotion regulation refers to “…shaping which emotions one has, when one has them, and how one experiences or expresses these emotions.” (Gross, 2014, p.6). Thus, it concerns how emotions are regulated, but not how they are generated. During emotion regulation, the experienced negative and positive emotions may be enhanced or inhibited, depending on the behavioural goal of a person (Thompson, 1994). For example, an angry student might choose not to hit a classmate in response to an argument, thereby regulating his or her anger to avoid further confrontation. Similarly, a child who is rejected by their peers might avoid any interaction with other students during lunch-break in order to not feel sad and humiliated. Gross’ Emotion regulation framework
Various frameworks for studying the regulation of emotions exist, however, this review builds upon the process model by Gross (2014) because regulation strategies conceptualized within his framework have also been studied in elementary school children. The process model considers a particular sequence of five steps in the action of regulating emotions: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change and response modulation. The first four processes are antecedent-focussed (i.e. these are implemented prior to the emotional response), while response modulation is the only response-focussed strategy (Bosse, Pontier & Treur, 2007).
These five steps are sequential at one instance but as emotion regulation is a repeating process, there is feedback from the emotional response to the first two processes of selecting
and modifying the situation. This enables one to adapt emotion regulation tactics to different situations, and to successfully learn from positive or negative consequences of prior emotional responses (Gross, 2014).
Mechanisms of emotion regulation
According to the neurodevelopmental social orientation model (Guyer & Jarcho, 2007), three nodes interact with each other to support neural processes involved in social behaviour. Specifically, the detection node, which is responsible for perceiving and categorizing properties of social stimuli; the affective node, which attributes valence and salience to the recognized social stimuli; and the cognitive-regulatory node, which is involved in complex features of social cognition such as suppressing certain responses, or modulating and sustaining behaviour directed towards a goal (Nelson, Leibenluft, McClure & Pine, 2005). Throughout development, changes in these networks as a result of maturation, may mediate improvement or decline in sociability, including peer relations (Guyer & Jarcho, 2007).
The development of emotion regulation during the elementary school years
Elementary schools are one of the earliest environments during which children independently start forming peer relations and interact with figures of authority other than their parents (i.e. teachers) (Sotardi, 2017). Since elementary school education is a worldwide context, children around the world are exposed to new situations during which emotion regulation plays a central role. Multiple factors shape the development of emotion regulation, and especially the period of early childhood is a critical time-window as brain plasticity is at its peak (Chatterjee Singh & Duraiappah, 2020).
Importance of emotion regulation for social functioning and academic performance The ability to regulate emotions has far-reaching consequences on children’ social, behavioural and academic development. For example, good emotion regulation can serve as a protective factor in peer victimized children from developing internalizing problems (Cooley,
Blossom, Tampke & Fite, 2020) and promotes pro-social behaviour (Rydell, Thorell & Bohlin, 2007). In turn, pro-social behaviour has beneficial effects on academic outcomes (Zarella, Lonigro, Perrella, Caviglia & Laghi, 2016). Whereas ineffective emotion regulation in elementary school children is linked to an increased likelihood of being involved in peer victimization. Moreover poor emotion regulation skills are associated with the development of externalizing and internalizing behaviour (Garner & Waajid, 2018), and may (thereby) affect academic performance (eg. Van der Ende, Verhulst & Tiemeier, 2016; van Lier et al., 2012). Furthermore, according to Gross (2002), some strategies in the process of regulating emotions are more effective than others. For example, reappraisal, which is a cognitive change strategy in which a situation is re-evaluated, with the goal of down-regulating emotions (Bosse et al., 2007), is often associated with more positive affective, social and cognitive outcomes than when implementing the suppression strategy, during which the already experienced emotion is inhibited (Gross, 2002).
Social experiences shaping emotion regulation
In addition to emotion regulation being important for social functioning, social experiences are also critical for the development of emotion regulation skills. That is, the development of emotion regulation is shaped by environmental and neurobiological factors (Schlesier, Roden & Moschner, 2019). Hence, certain aspects in the environment may contribute to how successfully one regulates their emotions. In the context of school, students are exposed to various kinds of situations, interactions, and potentially stressors, that can influence their psychosocial development (Vogel & Schwabe, 2016; Glew, Fan, Katon, Rivara & Kernic, 2005). For example, teacher-student interactions, social rejection and peer relations can benefit or harm children’s development of emotion regulation skills (e.g. Serdiouk, Rodkin, Madill, Logis, & Gest, 2015; Morales & Guerra, 2006; Poulou, 2014).
Teacher-student interactions have the ability to positively affect the emotional school climate through factors such as showing support, sensitivity and understanding towards the students, and overall teaching effectiveness (Serdiouk et al., 2015). Teachers can be considered attachment and guidance figures for elementary school children. By providing a secure base through high levels of closeness and low levels of conflict in teacher-student interactions, this can contribute to the development of effective emotion regulation in children (Al-Yagon & Mikulencer, 2006).
Regarding positive peer-relationships and emotion regulation, research suggests that popularity and social competence can serve as a protective factor from developing negative emotions in stressful situations, through better emotional regulation and perhaps a higher threshold when reacting to frustration and anger (see Macklem, 2008).
Negative social school experiences influencing emotion regulation
Peer victimization (often interchangeably referred to as bullying) is defined as negative behaviour, which is intended to harm another individual, occurs repeatedly over time and is directed towards a student or group of peers (Olweus, 1993). An estimated 10-20% of school children will experience peer victimization throughout their lifetime (Solberg and Olweus, 2003). Elementary schools are a primary setting for peer victimization; the likelihood of such behaviour is found to decrease in higher school grades (Smith et al., 1999).
Bully-victim behaviour is based on a systematic power imbalance (Saarento, Garandeau & Salmivalli, 2015) between the perpetrator doing the harm, and the victim being on the receiving side of it. Bullying can be either carried out overtly/direct, such as physically and verbally attacking the victim, or relationally which refers to hurtful manipulative acts of social exclusion and rejection by peers (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995).
Next to overt and relational peer victimization, negative student-teacher relationships such as characterized by a lack of proximity (i.e. level of cooperation between students and teachers) also predict emotional and behavioural problems (Poulou, 2014).
These negative social experiences can result in maladaptive emotion regulation, specifically in increased aggressive and hostile behaviour as well as internalizing problems (Morales & Guerra, 2006). Outcomes of such chronic stressors on psychosocial functioning and academic performance may vary immensely, depending on the emotion regulation skills the child has developed (Garner & Waajid, 2018).
Potential neurobiological mediators between social stressors and emotion regulation Neurobiological indicators of stress may be a potential mediating factor linking stressful social experiences with ineffective emotion regulation. These indicators refer not only to the stress response system, but also to other neural factors. Together, such neurobiological mechanisms may in part explain why social classroom stressors often result in emotion dysregulation in school children.
Stress system
Stressful situations cause activation of the two principal stress response systems, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Acute stress can be beneficial and promote resilience, while chronic stressors such as peer victimization cause dysfunction of the ANS and HPA axis, which can ultimately result in maladaptive processes such as emotion dysregulation. During activation of the HPA axis, a cascade is instigated, triggering the release of the glucocorticoid stress hormone cortisol, which can lead to impairment of neural plasticity. During short-term stress, cortisol has anti-inflammatory properties, however chronic cortisol activation causes high inflammation (Muscatell & Eisenberger, 2015). Glucocorticoid receptors are found in high density in regions such as the PFC and the hippocampus (Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011).
The ANS is the body’s mechanisms to respond to threatful situations and thus is highly activated during stressful situations, while secreting secretary alpha amylase, also referred to as the biomarker of the ANS (McEwen & Gianaros, 2014). The ANS also controls heart rate variability (HRV), and an increased HRV is associated with more effective emotion regulation (Mather & Thayer, 2018).
Chronic long-term stress can cause a maladaptive stress response, also referred to as allostatic load. One important factor contributing to allostatic load is the anticipation of a stressful situation, through increased levels of worry and anxiety. Social support can potentially minimize allostatic load in stressed individuals (McEwen & Gianaros, 2014). Thus, impaired ANS activation and dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, could potentially be predictors of poor emotional functioning following negative social experiences (e.g. Mc Ewen, 2007; von Klitzing et al., 2012).
Neural factors
Next to the principal stress response system, neural responses to social experiences affect emotion regulation. The brain is highly plastic at a young age, thus, adversity can shape neural development, and in turn affect emotion regulation abilities (Blair & Ursache, 2011). On a neural level, emotions are primarily regulated by a network of regions in the PFC and subcortical regions (Gross, 2014). The PFC shows increased vulnerability to early life stress due to its prolonged maturation phase. Activity in the PFC is also linked to pathways in the amygdala, which is highly reactive during early childhood (Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011), again indicating increased environmental sensitivity at that age. Disruption of this functional connectivity has been found to be related to early life stress (Park et al., 2018), which can impair various cognitive functions, such as a decline in memory, decreasing inhibitory control and emotion regulation (Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011).
Although within the last two decades much research has gone into emotion regulation and stress, elementary school children have not been given sufficient attention. Peer victimization can be a burden for children over many years and is therefore a crucial issue to address (Sourander, Helstela, Helenius & Piha, 2000). Finally, the neurobiological mechanisms of stress as predictors of ineffective emotion regulation have only recently been recognized (e.g. von Klitzing et al., 2012).
Therefore, this systematic review has the aim of adding to this research gap by integrating studies on emotion regulation specifically in children in elementary school, discussing negative consequences of emotion dysregulation, such as psychopathology, and examining the role of neurobiological indicators of stress as potential predictors for poor emotion regulation.
Research questions
Regarding the importance of emotion regulation for academic, social, emotional and behavioural functioning, as well as the impact social classroom stressors might have on emotion regulation abilities, the research questions in the first results section are as follows: RQ 1: To what extent do peer victimization, social rejection and teacher-student interactions affect emotion regulation?
RQ 2: What is the reported relationship between emotion regulation in response to social classroom stressors and psychopathology?
RQ 3: How is peer victimization and (maladaptive) emotion regulation associated with academic functioning?
The research questions in the second section address the impact social school stressors might have on brain functioning as well as on the two principal stress systems, and how neurobiological indicators of stress may predict poor emotion regulation.
RQ 4: How do social school stressors affect the two principal stress systems (HPA axis and ANS)?
RQ 5: Are neurobiological indicators of stress predictive of children’s emotion regulation abilities?
RQ 6: To what extent do social school stressors impact children’s brain functioning? Methods
A systematic search was conducted to select studies that investigated the interplay between social classroom stressors and emotion regulation, and further papers that examined the relationship between emotion (dys)regulation and the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of stress. In the following section the inclusion and exclusion criteria are defined, as well as the exact search procedure that was conducted for this systematic review.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
The literature search included papers from peer-reviewed journals and grey literature, published between 2000-2020. This timeline was pre-determined as the current research topic is rapidly growing, due to changes within the educational system and awareness of the importance of social-emotional functioning. Thus, more relevant and up-to-date studies were included. Studies reported in any other language than English were excluded. As mentioned above, elementary schools are a world-wide context, therefore included studies are not restricted to particular regions or cultures.
Studies that consisted of participants other than elementary school children were excluded. However, longitudinal follow-up studies on elementary school children were considered. Studies from around the world were included, thus, the compulsory school starting age varied between countries, as well as the length of education. Therefore, there was no specific age range determined prior to the systematic search. Rather, studies were included
provided that the sample consisted of children in elementary school education. This resulted in a sample consisting of primary participants from 6 to 13 years old.
Furthermore, studies in which a clinical population was studied, case-controlled studies, and studies with a low sample number (n<10), were excluded. Studies that implemented interventional programmes were not considered.
Search and selection procedure
The following databases were searched: PubMed and ERIC; additional grey literature was retrieved from Google Scholar. The Review of Educational Research (RER) was hand-searched for pre-existing reviews. To identify studies that assessed either the relationship between emotion regulation and social school stressors, academic achievements, or the underlying neural indicators, the search terms for the database search included all possible three-word combinations of the following keywords: (Field 1) Peer victimization; bullying; social exclusion; classroom stressor; social rejection; student-teacher interaction; AND (Field 2) elementary school; primary school; AND (Field 3) emotion regulation; neurobiology; HPA axis; stress; cortisol; memory; brain functioning; autonomic nervous system; psychopathology; academic achievement; academic functioning; social emotional learning; learning abilities.
The primary search yielded >200 articles, excluding duplicates. An initial selection of papers consisted of individually reading the papers’ titles and abstracts and comparing them with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. If any of the exclusion criteria applied to the initial selection, this paper was not considered for further review. If a paper made it past the initial selection, it was then fully examined, to determine if it adhered to all the inclusion criteria. Sample
After the initial >200 articles were screened, the final sample included 17 empirical studies, of which 13 are cross-sectional and 4 are longitudinal in nature (see Table 1). All empirical studies were published in peer-reviewed journals.
(c on ti nu e d ) T A B L E 1 O v e rv ie w of st udy c harac te ri st ic s
(c on ti nu e d ) T A B L E 1 ( c on ti n u e d )
Not e. CE M S =Chi ldr en’s e m ot iona l m an age m ent s ca le s; S M FQ =S hort m ood and fe el ings que st ionn ai re ; P RO M IS =P at ie nt ’s Re port ed O ut com e m ea sure m ent inform at ion sys te m ; W K CE =W is co ns in know le dge and conc ept s exa m ina tion; CD I=Chi ldre n’s de pre ss ion inv ent ory ; H BQ =H ea lt h a nd be ha v iour que st ionn ai re; BP I=B er ke le y puppe t i nt ervi ew ; O CH S =O nt ari o c h il d he a lt h st udy; Q T I=Q ue st ionna ir e on t e ac he r int era ct ion ; M E S S Y =Ma ts on eva lua ti on of soc ia l ski ll s in you ngs te rs ; CG S =C la ss room goa ls st ru ct ure s; S D Q =St re ngt h a nd di ff ic ul ti es que st ionna ir e; P BI=P are nt al bondi ng inve nt ory ;F Q Q =F ri ends hi p qu al it y que st ionn ai re ; S A T =S chol as ti c a ss es sm ent t es t. T A B L E 1 (c on ti n u e d )
Results
Subsequently to conducting a systematic literature search according to the above-noted criteria, the sample in this review amounted to 17. The results section will outline the findings from these studies in two main sections, with several sub-sections.
Social classroom stressors and emotion regulation
In this section the influence of social school stressors on children’s emotion regulation will be outlined, the association between maladaptive emotion regulation and psychopathology will be explained, and lastly, the link between emotion dysregulation and academic functioning will be summarized.
To what extent do peer victimization, social rejection and teacher-student interactions affect emotion regulation?
Five studies that assessed variations in the impact of different social stressors, were included in this systematic review.
In the first study, O’Brennan and colleagues (2009) investigated various social-emotional problems that are associated with bullying, through a large-scale cross-sectional study. Moreover, the researchers examined variations in emotional problems depending on the role the child plays within the bullying situation. That is, whether the child takes on the role of the bully, bully-victim, or victim. Their findings support the notion that bully-victims are at highest risk for showing strikingly aggressive and impulsive behaviour compared to the other two subgroups. However, across all three subgroups, indicators of poor emotion regulation skills such as aggressive and impulsive behaviour, were reported.
In the second study the effect of peer victimization in a South Korean elementary school was assessed (Schwartz, Farver, Chang & Lee-Shin, 2002). The authors focussed specifically on the impact peer victimization has on the victims. Peer-victimized children showed submissive-withdrawal behaviour, and interestingly also increased overt (i.e. physical, verbal
insults) and relational (i.e. spreading rumours, rejection) aggressive behaviour, all of which imply ineffective emotion regulation (see Gross, 2002).
In the third study, next to investigating the effects of direct bullying, Wolke and colleagues (2000) also considered the impact relational bullying, such as social exclusion, may have on children involved in it. Wolke et al., (2000) found evidence that the risk for developing behaviour problems was lower for bullies in relational bullying compared to direct aggressors. Interestingly, prosocial behaviour was overall the lowest for the relational bullies, compared to all other subgroups (i.e. direct bully, bully-victim, victim; relational bully, bully-victim, victim). This is relevant for emotion regulation, as it indicates that relational bullies poorly manage their emotions, because strong emotion regulation skills are linked with prosocial behaviour (see Gross, 2014). The authors (Wolke et al., 2000) attribute these results to the Theory of Mind (ToM), which characterizes the importance of secure attachment during early development and how attachment difficulties with parents and caregivers from a young age may result in maladaptive emotion regulation (Thompson, 1994), as seen in relational bullies with low pro-social behaviour (Wolke et al., 2000).
In the fourth study by Poulou (2014) the role of teacher-student interactions in relation to children’s emotional functioning was assessed, by employing a cross-sectional design. Findings obtained from the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) revealed that teacher-student relationships lacking in proximity (i.e. level of cooperation between teacher and student), increased the risk for children developing social and emotional problems. However, within this context, ineffective social and emotion regulation skills, such as inappropriate assertiveness of the child, were the most robust predictors for behavioural problems. Hence, there is an interactive effect between poor teacher-student interactions and ineffective emotion regulation.
The fifth study (Park, 2006) also investigated teacher-student interactions. The author found evidence for interactive effects between aggressive victims and teacher education and experience. Specifically, higher years of teaching experience and a higher level of teachers’ education are predictive for first-year aggressive victims (i.e. children scoring high on aggressor and victims scales) to develop internalizing and externalizing problems, when being involved in peer victimization in their third-year. This study shows several strengths as it is longitudinal in nature, and considered multi-informant reports of children, parents and teachers, making their findings more robust.
Taken together, the findings demonstrate that social school stressors can lead to various emotional and behavioural problems. However, emotion regulation skills per se have only been assessed in the study by Poulou (2014), which found that children involved in poor teacher-student relations, showed ineffective emotion regulation. The other studies focussed on emotional consequences such as aggression in response to the stressors, which are suggestive of poor emotion regulation, however, this has not directly been investigated.
What is the reported relationship between emotion regulation in response to social classroom stressors and psychopathology?
Peer victimization and its relation to emotion dysregulation and (thereby) resulting psychopathology, was investigated in two studies.
In the first study, Cooley and colleagues (2020) longitudinally tested the relationship between emotion regulation and internalizing problems across a 1-year period, by obtaining child and teacher reports. The authors disclosed that effective emotion regulation in children at timepoint 1, served as a protective factor against developing internalizing symptoms of depression and anxiety at timepoint 2. This effect was especially prominent in children regulating emotions of worry and sadness in response to peer victimization. However, peer victimized children that did not effectively regulate their emotions, showed heightened levels
of depression and anxiety. Thus, good emotion regulation skills can attenuate internalizing symptoms and protect against the emotional stress of peer victimization.
In the second study, Troop-Gordon and colleagues (2019) argued that peer beliefs, which result from experiences with peers and are fundamental aspects in forming subsequent friendships and can lead to emotional maladjustments (Ladd & Troop-Gordon, 2003), are in fact the mediating factor between peer victimization and internalizing symptoms. Specifically, negative peer beliefs in peer-victimized children promote the emergence of symptoms of anxiety and depression, when compared to peer-victimized children with positive peer beliefs. The authors suggest that peer beliefs might underly emotion regulation development and thus, can be protective or harmful when involved in peer victimization.
These two studies (Cooley et al., 2020; Troop-Gordon et al., 2019) are slightly contradictory in what the mediating factor between peer experiences and psychopathology is. Although both studies were longitudinal in nature and quite recently conducted, Cooley et al., (2020) suggest that the effectiveness of emotion regulation mediates the relationship between peer victimization and psychopathology, while Troop-Gordon et al., (2019) argue that negative peer beliefs may underlie depressive or aggressive emotional coping and responses, which subsequently can lead to psychopathology. Overall, the results found in both studies clearly imply that peer victimization, via poor emotion regulation or peer beliefs, contributes to psychopathology.
How is peer victimization and (maladaptive) emotion regulation associated with academic functioning?
The above-noted resulting psychopathology can subsequently affect academic functioning, which is one of the factors that will be discussed in this section. Three studies investigated how social school stressors relate to academic success, and further two studies directly assessed how emotion regulation is linked to academic functioning.
In the first study (Beran, Hughes & Lupart, 2008), the relationship between social stress such as bullying and academic functioning was examined. The authors found significant correlations between bullying and academic achievements, in which academic achievements were measured by reading, mathematics and writing achievements, as reported by the students’ teachers. Moreover, the authors (2008) showed that scoring low on the measures of school enjoyment and conscientiousness, was further negatively correlated with academic achievements, which indicates that bullying may change the victims overall perception and attitude towards school, causing the child to neglect school work. Although the sample is based on longitudinal survey data, results cannot be considered causal and no longitudinal comparisons can be drawn, as not all of the obtained measures were measured across cycles. Contrary to the findings by Beran et al., (2008), the second study (Woods and Wolke, 2004) revealed no significant differences in children’s academic success in relation to direct bullying behaviour. It should be noted that the samples’ age between the two studies (Beran et al., 2008; Woods and Wolke, 2004) differed considerably. Woods and Wolke (2004) specifically examined the differences in relational versus direct bullying regarding academic functioning. Academic achievement was measured by students’ scores on the National Curriculum Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in the UK, which measures a wide range of academic skills. Interestingly, the only significant correlation between academic achievements and bullying behaviour was found in relational bullies. That is, children scoring above average on the SATs in year 2 were significantly more likely to be a relational bully in year 4. Vice versa, the authors’ findings also revealed that victims of relational bullying were three times more likely to underachieve on the SATs and thus, perform worse academically compared to neutrals (i.e. children not involved in bullying behaviour), victims of direct bullying, or relational and direct bullies themselves.
In the third study, longitudinal research (Liu et al., 2018) assessed the nature and direction of pathways linking peer victimization, psychopathology, and academic achievements. Liu et al., (2018) proposed a developmental cascade approach in investigating this multi-factorial issue in a sample of Chinese elementary school children (n=945). The temporal sequence of peer victimization, depression and academic functioning was measured across three time points within three years (grades 4-6). Academic success was measured by the achieved grades in the subjects Chinese, mathematics and English. Findings revealed high stability across all years, with peer victimization being positively correlated with depression and negatively correlated with academic achievements, and depression also being negatively correlated with academic achievements. Direct and reciprocal pathways were observed across all measures (i.e. peer victimization, depression, academic achievements), which highlights the importance of understanding the complexity of this issue. The findings are in favour of the developmental cascade approach, hence, being exposed to difficulties in one of the domains (e.g. peer victimization) can initiate problems in other domains (e.g. depression, academic failure). The fact that academic achievement was found to reciprocally relate peer victimization and depression, was a novel observation.
In the fourth study, the role of emotion regulation for learning achievements was examined cross-sectionally, by Davis and Levine (2013). Learning abilities were assessed by conducting a memory performance test. After watching a sad film, children were asked to employ a specific strategy in order to regulate their illicited (sad) emotions, based on the subgroup they were initially placed in. These were reappraisal of emotion, reappraisal of importance, rumination and a control group. Next, children viewed an educational film and were then tested on their memory recall. The authors found that children using the reappraisal strategy most successfully attenuated the feeling of sadness compared to the rumination and
control groups. Moreover, reappraisal strategies increased the memory for details, but not for central features regarding the educational film.
In the fifth study, researchers (Kwon, Hanrahan & Kupzyk, 2017) investigated the relationship between emotion regulation and academic functioning. Academic performance was measured by scores on reading and maths tests. Children with good emotion regulation, as reported by their teachers rating on the students’ effectiveness of regulating happiness, sadness and anger, performed better academically on both of the domains (i.e. reading and maths).
To summarize this section, these studies indicate the significance of peer victimization for academic functioning, especially the detrimental effects bullying behaviour might have on children’s intellectual abilities. Moreover, studies showed that effective emotion regulation, by adopting specific strategies such as reappraisal, might contribute to better learning abilities and academic achievements. However, studies investigating the role of emotion regulation as a mediating factor between peer victimization and academic outcomes, are lacking in current research.
Neurobiological indicators of stress, emotion (dys)regulation and brain functioning The second part of the results section will outline studies on the underlying neurobiological indicators of stress, and how these relate to emotion regulation and brain functioning.
How do social school stressors affect the two principal stress systems (HPA axis and ANS)? This systematic review included three studies examining the influence of social stressors on the ANS and HPA axis, and further, which role these neurophysiological markers of stress play in emotional behaviour.
In the first study, Rudolph and colleagues (2010) investigated potential underlying biological differences of peer victimization behaviour, since some children respond aggressively to peer victimization, while others try to simply avoid their perpetrators. The
authors conducted a pre-post comparison neurophysiological experiment, during which elementary school-aged children participated in a peer-oriented social challenge task, in a laboratory setting. Pre- and post-task salivary alpha amylase (sAA) and cortisol levels, which are the salivary markers of the SNS and of the HPA axis, respectively, were obtained. Indeed, Rudolph et al., (2010) found biological differences between aggressive victims compared to neutral victims. High levels of pre-task cortisol and sAA were measured in aggressive children, in anticipation of the social challenge task. However, interestingly, high levels of cortisol and sAA also served as a protective factor against aggressive behaviour in low-level peer victimized children. Children that are frequent targets of peer victimization and thus, are regularly exposed to stress, have an overreactive stress response system, as indicated by the high levels of anticipatory cortisol and sAA. Thereby, their ANS is in a chronic “fight-or-flight” response mode, which might explain their ineffective emotion regulation and being more prone to frustration and aggressive behaviour in response to (social) threat. Task-related cortisol reactivity was not shown to be a mediating factor of peer victimization and ineffective emotional response (i.e. frustration or aggression). The authors attribute this finding to the fact that children might have already felt more threatened during the anticipatory phase of the social interaction in the task, rather than the actual interaction experienced during the social challenge. However, in girls, task-related sAA reactivity in fact mediated the link between peer victimization and frustration. Moreover, increased sAA reactivity to social stress in the task, was significantly correlated with aggressive behaviour, but only in high-level victims. Again, this shows that heightened sAA reactivity can serve as a protective factors in low-level victims, but illicit aggressive and frustrative behaviour in high-level victims. Possibly due to the chronic stress these children are more likely to resort to aggression.
In the second study by Oberle & Schonert-Reichl (2016), the link between teacher’s health, particularly of their burnout levels, and student’s biological stress system, was assessed.
According to the stress-contagion theory (Wethington, 2000), it would be evident that a stressful experience such as a teacher’s burnout can further impact the students’ stress response. As an indicator of stress, cortisol levels of children were measured at multiple times throughout the day. Burnout of teachers was established through two core indicators of burnout, that is, depersonalization and emotional exhaustion, obtained with the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The authors revealed that higher burnout levels in teachers were significantly predictive of higher morning cortisol levels in students. The particular classroom the lesson took place in could predict the students’ morning cortisol levels. Hence, classrooms with high-level burnout teachers had more students with higher morning cortisol levels. Since this study employed a cross-sectional design, the direction of causality and the exact factors influencing the children’s stress profile, cannot be inferred.
In the third study (Behnsen, Buil, Koot, Huizink & van Lier, 2018), elementary school children’s peer acceptance in relation to their cortisol levels was assessed. Classmates nominated peers according to how accepted/liked they were in the classroom, and cortisol levels of the children were obtained at four time-points in their homes. The findings suggest that children with low peer acceptance have a flattened decrease of cortisol across one day, an increased overall output of cortisol and higher levels of cortisol after awakening. Further, a heightened decline in the cortisol slope was associated with increased emotional problems. Overall, this is indicative of an overactive HPA system.
Although the studies varied in their methodology and research questions, it can be concluded that social school stressors such as peer victimization, social acceptance and teacher-student relations heavily influence the children’s neurobiological stress system, as found in variations in stress hormone levels (i.e. sAA and cortisol). Interestingly, during short-term stress, elevated sAA was found to serve as a protective factor from ineffective emotional coping.
Are neurobiological indicators of stress predictive of children’s emotion regulation abilities? As mentioned in this systematic review, neurobiological indicators of stress are suggested to be predictive of emotion regulation. There is a lack of studies investigating this specific relationship in elementary school children, therefore only one study is included.
This study by de Veld, Riksen-Walraven & de Weerth (2012) assessed this link by measuring cortisol and sAA levels in response to a psychosocial stress task. Specifically, the researchers investigated to what extent the children would adopt two particular strategies of emotion regulation during the task, and how these would relate to the biological markers of stress. The strategies that were investigated are part of Gross’ proposed process model (2014); reappraisal, a form of cognitive change, and suppression, an emotional response strategy. Findings demonstrate that employing the suppression strategy was associated with lower cortisol reactivity levels in girls only, and further associated with lower sAA levels in boys and girls. However, no correlation between the use of the reappraisal strategy and physiological stress levels was found. Thus, according to this study, suppression appears to be a more effective emotion regulation strategy in elementary school children, than reappraisal, as indicated by lower stress levels.
To what extent do social school stressors impact children’s brain functioning?
The relationship between social school stressors, emotion regulation and brain functioning is also largely understudied in elementary school children. Thus, one study assessing social rejection and neural activation patterns was included.
In this study, Asscheman and colleagues (2020) investigated elementary school boys’ neural response to the Cyberball paradigm, which is a social exclusion task. The sample was based on school boys which were classified as high or low peer-preferred by their classmates, over a prolonged time (three years). During early social exclusion phases of the Cyberball paradigm, boys with a low peer preference showed heightened neural activity in the lateral
prefrontal cortex, compared to high peer-preferred subjects. This suggests that children that are exposed to prolonged periods of stress, such as social rejection in the classroom, are more sensitive to negative peer experiences. Further, negative events might shape neural processes in the frontal cortex, causing socially excluded children to have negative peer beliefs even later in life. Nevertheless, the direction of effects cannot be implied, as this study is cross-sectional in nature, and therefore, low peer-preferred boys might have already shown different neural activation patterns prior to negative social experiences.
Discussion Summary
Based on various criteria, this systematic review included 17 articles with the purpose of integrating studies surrounding the topic of emotion regulation, social school stressors and their underlying neurobiology, and academic functioning. This review indicates that a research gap in this field in elementary school children exists, especially studies investigating the relation of neurobiological indicators of stress to emotion regulation are quite scarce. Overall, a detailed review of these studies demonstrates that children are hugely affected by their school environment, which becomes apparent through children’s variation in emotion regulation strategies, academic outcome, indicators of stress and behavioural problems, depending on whether they experienced social stress at school.
Firstly, the type of stressors experienced by the child in the classroom can influence the outcome on various levels. This has been shown when comparing studies on teacher-student interactions, peer victimization or social exclusion. It must be noted that emotion regulation skills were only directly examined in one study (Poulou, 2014), while the others focussed on emotional outcomes. Hence, to better understand the influence of social school stressors on emotion regulation, further studies are warranted. The studies by Schwartz et al., (2002) and O’Brennan et al., (2009) revealed contradictory findings. Perhaps one of the reason as to why
Schwartz et al., (2002) found that aggressive children were at higher risk of being the target of peer victimization, while O’Brennan et al., (2009) saw more aggressive behaviour in bullies and bully-victims, could be explained by the fact that the earlier study did not differentiate between victims and bully-victims. Hence, the profile of aggressive behaviour may be more frequently found in children that take on the role as both the bully and the victim. Additionally, as the study is cross-sectional in nature, the direction of the causation cannot be inferred. Children with submissive and aggressive tendencies may be more likely to be bullied, or this behaviour may in fact be the result of bullying.
Secondly, peer victimization and academic achievements as well as emotion regulation and academic functioning influence each other, however, studies examining the interaction between all three factors are yet to be conducted. Reappraisal, a specific emotion regulation strategy, was found to promote learning abilities (Davis & Levine, 2013) and children who more effectively regulated their emotions performed better academically (Kwon et al., 2017). It would be interesting to investigate the effect of other emotion regulation strategies, and to manipulate these variables to be able to draw causal conclusions. Some dispute remains on whether bullying and academic functioning are bidirectionally related and have further cascading effects (e.g. Liu et al., 2018) or, whether there is no correlation between direct bullying and academic achievements (e.g. Woods & Wolke, 2004). Liu et al., (2018) argue that the unique cascading effects could potentially be exclusive to the Chinese culture, as failure in school has wide-reaching social implementations such as harming the family’s reputation and financial status. Hence, children may suffer more from poor academic achievements in a Chinese culture, opposed to a Western culture. Further, the social pressure of succeeding at school, could account for the negative correlation found between academic achievement and peer victimization. Moreover, the finding that relational bullies had above-average academic achievements as reflected by their SAT scores (Woods & Wolke, 2004), goes in line with a
hypothesis by Sutton, Smith and Swettenham (1999), which suggests that relational bullying in fact involves intelligence and a high capacity of social skills. Therefore, this might explain that relational bullies hold the social and emotional competencies to carry out this form of peer victimization.
Thirdly, regarding research on the neural factors and neurobiological stress system, it became evident that indicators of stress are correlated with emotion regulation to a certain extent. Long-term social stress was found to increase cortisol and sAA levels across the three studies (Rudolph et al., 2010; Oberle & Schonert-Reichl, 2016; Behnsen et al., 2018), which indicates overactivity of the ANS and HPA systems. Prolonged social rejection was correlated with changes in neural activation patterns (Asscheman et al., 2020), which demonstrates the brain’s plasticity. Further, although neurobiological indicators of stress can potentially be predictive of emotion regulation as shown by de Veld et al., (2012), their findings are contradictory to previous research by Kim & Hamann (2012), who argue that employing the reappraisal strategy is associated with decreased SNS activity. Perhaps, this could be explained by the subjects’ age (9-11 years) in the study by de Veld et al., (2012). At this age, the reappraisal strategy may possibly not affect the stress system in the same way. The sample in the research conducted by Kim & Hamann (2012) consisted of 20-year olds. In adults, suppression can have negative outcomes and in fact increase the SNS activity (Gross, 1998), however, reappraisal is effective in down-regulating the physiological stress response (Kim & Hamann, 2012). Children may not yet have developed the cognitive capacity to effectively make use of the reappraisal strategy.
Interdisciplinarity
After conducting this review it becomes evident that an interdisciplinary approach and team of researchers is central in tackling this complex topic. Teachers, next to the students themselves, are at the forefront of anything happening in the school context, therefore their
health (e.g. Oberle & Schonert-Reichl, 2016) and contribution to studies is essential. Furthermore, school psychologists can help prevent symptoms of psychopathology from occurring in children due to understanding the stress the child experiences. Next to these, clinicians are needed if a child in fact shows symptoms of psychopathology. Educational neuroscientists are crucial in conducting studies in school children and also understanding underlying neural mechanisms. Moreover, policy makers can change the skeleton of educational system and implement social-emotional programmes into the classroom context, as the studies have shown that this is imperative in providing an environment for growth and development of the child, which can have a long-term and large-scale impact (Chatterjee Singh & Duraiappah, 2020).
However, interdisciplinary research also contributes to the variation in jargon seen in papers, thus, coming together and converging the findings from various fields is essential in fully understanding the relationship between emotion regulation, school stressors and their underlying neurobiological factors. To be able to do so, more uniformly used methodologies must exist, although testing different measures to find the most suitable one, is also necessary. Limitations
It must be noted that there are a number of substantial limitations in the study of emotion regulation and school stressors, such as variations in definitions and experimental methodology, as well as the lack of studies from which causality can be inferred.
A difficulty in studying this topic is that, for example, in studies which obtained neuroimaging measures, the collection of such data takes place in laboratories rather than the real-life school setting. Bullied children might feel safer in a laboratory environment compared to the classroom context, during which their perpetrators might harm them, and this could be reflected in studies and change their neural activation patterns or stress response.
Another limitation in the methodology of various studies is that self-reports are the primary obtained measure. Self-reports are often very subjective and not a necessarily truthful representation. By using a multi-informant approach, as seen in a few of the studies (e.g. Wolke et al., 2000; Schwartz et al., 2002), researchers try to overcome this issue. Regarding methodological weaknesses, most of the studies in this field are cross-sectional in nature, and therefore, findings cannot be interpreted as causal, hence, more studies employing longitudinal designs are needed. Plus, in studies during which salivary samples were collected (e.g. Oberle & Schonert-Reichl, 2016; Rudolph et al., 2010), multiple measures should be obtained, as cortisol levels fluctuate largely throughout the day and are impacted by various other factors. It is also crucial that future research clearly distinguishes between the roles of children involved in bullying behaviour, as acknowledging the existence of bully-victims, since dissimilarities in findings (e.g. O’Brennan et al., 2009; Schwartz et al., 2002) could be due to a variety in jargon and not measuring the presence of bully-victims. Conceptualization of terms seems to generally be an issue in emotion regulation and peer victimization, as emotion regulation has been defined and measured in various ways, as well as the subgroups underlying bullying behaviour (i.e. direct versus relational victimization) and the bullies (i.e. bully, bully-victim, victim).
A limitation of this review itself, is that children in the included studies ranged from 6-13 as the elementary starting age and length of education varies between countries. However, during early childhood there are large differences in, for example, emotion regulation strategies in 6-year olds versus 13- year olds.
Future directions and implications for practice
To obtain more objective measures, new tools have been developed such as portable neuroimaging devices to obtain neural activity in a more natural setting, that is, the classroom. For example, portable EEG gadgets have been used in classroom setting and thereby allowed
for measuring neural activity of social interactions between peers in a natural environment (Emerging Field Group, 2020).
Interventional programmes on emotional learning should be implemented into elementary school setting. Social-emotional learning is crucial within the educational environment and can be defined as a set of competencies that can be learned to, for instance, regulate emotions, acquire pro-social behaviour and cope well with stressful or difficult situations (Chatterjee Singh & Duraiappah, 2020; Weissberg, Durlak, Domitrovich & Gullotta, 2015). Studies (e.g. Chatterjee Singh & Duraiappah, 2020; Greenberg, 2010) have shown that implementing social-emotional learning interventions into the school context and thereby creating a positive school climate helps in the development of social skills and emotional coping, while also improving academic achievements. Ultimately, implementing such programmes early on, is suggested to have a large-scale positive effect in decreasing the number of individuals that develop psychopathology, that drop-out, become pregnant in their teens or commit a crime (e.g. Chatterjee Singh & Duraiappah, 2020; Mobius & Rosenblat, 2014; Farrington, 2015; Greenberg, 2010)
The body of literature in this field is evolving rapidly, as well as educational practices employing social emotional learning in school. Social stressors are unlikely to disappear, however, bullying for example is moving towards web-based victimization strategies also referred to as cyberbullying, which can be equally as potent (Waasdorp & Bradshaw, 2015). Hence, the need for understanding the processes and interactions underlying such behaviour and factors persists, to enable researchers and policy makers to intervene successfully and promote a positive school climate. Emotion regulation can be learned, thus, while the brain is still highly malleable as during early childhood, acquiring a set of social and emotional skills to promote positive outcomes effective coping strategies and a healthy neurobiological stress response, is critical.
Conclusion
To conclude, the relationship between social classroom stressors, emotion regulation and neurobiological indicators of stress is a highly complex topic, and to understand the processes underlying the multi-directionality and potential mediating factors, more studies are needed. Since this review has shown the importance of effective emotion regulation especially in elementary school children, due to their brain being highly sensitive and plastic to environmental influences, teaching students social and emotional skills in school could lay their foundation for living a successful life.
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