1a. Based on the background materials, differentiate between emotional regulation versus cognitive reappraisal in coping with stress
1b. Explore at least 2 everyday real-life situations where cognitive reappraisal would be an effective method of coping with stress. Please provide examples
<<< Please respond to other student: regulation and cognitive reappraisal. Say someone cuts you off in traffic, causing you to have to brake quickly but no one gets hurt and you continue on your way with very little delay. Immediately you might feel angry or irritated and want to yell at the person who cut you off. With emotional regulation, you’d pause, recognize that your response was triggered from fear and adrenaline, and that it is pointless to yell as the incident has passed and the driver cannot hear you. You return to focusing on the drive ahead, making sure you have plenty of space between you and the person in front of you. With cognitive reappraisal, you take that burst of adrenaline as an “atta girl” for having reacted quickly and keeping everyone safe around you. You appreciate that your body and mind kept you out of harm’s way. Another example that I use with my students is test anxiety. Several students are at risk of failing courses. Understandably, this can provoke anxiety heading into the next exam. Emotional regulation would call for the student to recognize their anxiety, engage in deep breathing exercises to try and calm themselves, and focus on one question at a time, letting go of the questions they are unclear on, reasoning through to narrow it down, and moving on to the next question. Cognitive reappraisal is taking that anxiety one feels heading into a test and reframing it as “being pumped” for the opportunity to show what they know. Telling themselves, “I am prepared, I know this, now I get to prove it.” In short, emotional regulation involves recognizing and modulating emotion and the behavior sparked by emotion (Yale University, 2016), whereas cognitive reappraisal is reframing the emotions to something that will fuel positive action (Outsmarting Human Minds, 2020). References Outsmarting Human Minds. (2020, January 20). Make stress work for you: Cognitive reappraisal [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7brn201284 (4:08) Yale University (2016) Helping Toddlers Regulate Emotions [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H14NNUYwVc (4:53) <<< Please respond to questions 2a and 2b: 2a. Based on the background materials, elaborate on how cognitive reappraisal can be trained to teenagers to help cope with stress. 2b. Explore on at least 3 challenges of being able to train cognitive reappraisal to teenagers <<< Please respond to other student: Adolescence is a critical developmental period during which successful regulation of intense negative emotions is necessary to decrease the risk of developing psychopathology (Shapero et al, 2019). Cognitive reappraisal is one element of adolescent cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive reappraisal training in adolescents has been shown to moderate the relationship between adverse life experience and psychological distress (Shapero et al, 2019) and decrease fear (Shore et al, 2017). These results were achieved by teaching brief retraining exercises to adolescents. One such activity involved providing a negative stimulus, but helping the adolescent exposed to the stimulus assign a positive interpretation of what they were seeing (Shore et al, 2017). Although results seem promising that training adolescents in cognitive reappraisal can reduce psychological distress, there are difficulties in being able to perform such training effectively. The prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in both the generation and regulation of emotion (Dixon et al, 2017). In adolescents, the prefrontal cortex is structurally immature (Shore et al, 2017). Because of alterations in signaling that relate to the reward system which motivates behavior and the developing prefrontal cortex which regulates impulse control, adolescents are more likely to be involved with high-risk behaviors and have heightened response to emotionally loaded situations (Alderman, 2019). Adolescents also face unique psychosocial challenges. They are challenged with increasing independence and establishing identity (Alderman, 2019). The structure of the adolescent brain combined with the psychosocial factors make emotional regulation difficult compared to other age groups. References Alderman, E. (2019). Unique Needs of the Adolescent. Pediatrics. 144(6). https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/144/6/e20193150/37985/Unique-Needs-of-the-Adolescent Dixon, M. L., Thiruchselvam, R., Todd, R., & Christoff, K. (2017). Emotion and the prefrontal cortex: An integrative review. Psychological bulletin, 143(10), 1033–1081. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000096 Shapero, B., Stange, J., McArthur, A., Abramson, L., and Alloy, L. (2019). Cognitive reappraisal attenuates the association between depressive symptoms and emotional response to stress during adolescence. Cognition and Emotion. 33(3), 524-535. Shore, T., Cohen Kadosh, K., Lommen, M., Cooper, M., & Lau, J. Y. (2017). Investigating the effectiveness of brief cognitive reappraisal training to reduce fear in adolescents. Cognition and Emotion, 31(4), 806-815. Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56099d58e4b0e9a8dd53d921/t/57d185c
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