Age-related differences in the extent to which affective flexibility predicts reappraisal ability

Affective flexibility is a crucial emotional skill that can be conceptualized as an ability to appraise complex emotional stimuli in more than one way. Here, we investigated affective flexibility as variability in interpretations of ambiguously valenced facial expressions (i.e., the ability to see both positive and negative interpretations). This skill is important for emotion regulation ability in that individuals that are capable of generating multiple interpretations of a given emotional stimulus are likely to have higher reappraisal affordances. We investigated the relationship between affective flexibility and reappraisal ability in children, adolescents, and young adults. Participants aged 6-35 years (n=132) completed our flexibility task, as well as a standard cognitive reappraisal task, in which participants downregulated negative feelings in response to emotional scenes. Results indicated that age, flexibility, and their interaction were significant predictors of reappraisal success. Younger participants had worse reappraisal performance overall, but the interaction indicated that children ages 6-14 years old uniquely showed a positive relationship in which greater affective flexibility was associated with better reappraisal. Our measure of flexibility, therefore, captures meaningful variance related to the development of emotion regulation abilities and may reflect differences in the allocation of affective and cognitive resources more broadly.