Comparing the efficacy of two frustration inducing tasks in the assessment of adolescent emotion regulation

In adolescence, adequate emotion regulation skills help to promote resilience and prevent the development of mental health problems. To fully understand these emotion regulation mechanisms, empirically validated tools are needed to be able to effectively induce and assess frustration among adolescents in experimental settings. However, the differences between the already existing frustration eliciting tools and their use with different adolescent age groups are not well understood. The present study thus set out to test the efficacy of two non-verbal, frustration inducing tasks in adolescence, also evaluating potential age differences and relating them to the use of emotion regulation strategies. Two computerized distress tolerance tasks were employed, including the Behavioural Indicator of Resiliency to Distress (BIRD; Lejuez et al., 2006), requiring children to free a bird from its cage, and the Mirror Tracing Persistence Task (MPTP; Strong et al., 2003), originally designed for adults and consisting of retracing a star as if seen in a mirror. Their efficacy in inducing frustration was compared in a sample of 72 adolescents, split into two different age groups (11-13; 14-16). Adolescents’ emotion responses were assessed on a subjective level via self-report of their positive and negative affect before and after the task (PANAS-C; Laurent et al., 1999), physiologically via continuous heart rate monitoring using a Polar H7 chest strap and behaviourally by assessing adolescents’ persistence on the last level. Additionally, self-report questionnaires allowed to assess adolescents’ habitual use of reappraisal and suppression (ERQ-CA; Gullone & Taffe, 2012) as well as their use during the tasks (ERQ-state, Egloff et al., 2006). Due to their previous use with different populations, differences between the two tasks in terms of their effectiveness in inducing frustration in an adolescent sample were expected. Furthermore, age differences were hypothesized to impact the use of emotion regulation strategies and lead to higher emotion responses in the younger group. Task and age differences were analysed with analyses of variance and revealed higher heart rates (F(4,59)=5.061, p<.001, ηp2=.255) for the BIRD task as well as a tendency towards a shorter persistence on this task (F(1,68)=3.920, p=.052, ηp2= .055). No task differences were found regarding adolescents’ subjective emotional responding (F<1, n.s.), with both tasks being psychologically distressing (F(1,68)= 22.484, p<.001, ηp2=.248). As for age differences, although the younger adolescents reported a higher habitual use of suppression in general (t(70)= 2.072, p< .05, d=.489), no age differences were found in terms of the strategies they used on both tasks (all Fs<1,n.s.), nor in regards to emotional responding (all Fs