Neural systems supporting cognitive reappraisal in young children: An fMRI study

Early in development, when emotion regulation strategy use is immature, children rely on caregivers and other social support figures to situate and guide emotional representations and experiences. Using adult scaffolding, young children appear able to implement even complex regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal. However, the neurocognitive substrates employed to accomplish this are currently unknown. The present study examined neural systems underlying scaffolded cognitive reappraisal using a fMRI task in a community sample of N = 148 children ( M age = 6.45 years, SD = 0.92; 52.03% male; 51.4% non-White). In the task, children heard brief scaffolding prompts delivered by either a primary caregiver or an unfamiliar adult (i.e., ‘stranger’) prior to sets of three trials. Each trial in a set consisted of a story describing or reappraising a subsequently presented image, followed by a self-reported affect rating. Images were either negative or neutral. When viewing negative images following scaffolded reappraisal relative to negative descriptive stories, children self-reported fewer negative affective responses. During this contrast, children also preferentially recruited dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus regions, replicating activation patterns observed in older samples during cognitive reappraisal tasks. These results represent one of the first studies of the neural correlates of cognitive reappraisal in early childhood. They reveal that scaffolded reappraisal in early childhood may function similarly to self-generated cognitive reappraisal studied extensively in late childhood and adolescence, extending our current understanding of emotion regulation development.