Emotion Regulation Moderates the Prospective Association between ERN and Anxiety in Early Adolescence: An Age-Specific Moderation of Cognitive Reappraisal but not Expressive Suppression

The increasing prevalence of anxiety problems during adolescence underscores the importance of a better understanding of the development of anxiety. Existing literature has documented a prospective association between error responsivity - characterized by the ERP component of error-related negativity (ERN) - and anxiety in youths. However, it remains unclear to what extent the ERN-anxiety relationship may be moderated by emotion regulation, another attribute critical to the development of anxiety. We collected two waves of data from 115 healthy early adolescents (66 girls; Mean age/SD at T1 = 11.00/1.16 years), approximately one year apart. Participants completed an EEG Go/No-Go task and reported on their anxiety symptoms at T1 and T2; they also reported on their emotion regulation tendencies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal [CR] and expressive suppression [ES]) at T2. The ERN was quantified via a principal component analysis. We found a moderating effect of ES on the ERN-anxiety association. Specifically, a larger T1 ERN predicted greater T2 anxiety symptoms for youths with higher, but not lower, ES. Interestingly, the moderating effect of CR on the ERN-symptom association was conditioned on age. Among older youths (upper age tercile) only, the association between T1 ERN and T2 symptoms was significant for those with lower, but not higher, CR. These findings contribute novel evidence on the moderating effect of emotion regulation on the prospective ERN-anxiety relationship in early adolescence. Our results elucidate age-specific patterns in the moderating effect of CR. Future studies can leverage these findings to tailor emotion regulation interventions for youths of different ages.