Expressive Suppression Downregulates Negative Emotion for Children: An ERP Study

Event related potentials (ERPs), specifically the late positive potential (LPP), are known to be sensitive to expressive suppression (ES) in adolescents and adults. Although previous studies examined the neural characteristics of ES, few used a sample of children. This is the first study to explore the neural correlates of ES in children. We tested and provided neurological evidence of the characteristics of ES in children. ERPs of 30 healthy children (10 - 12 years old) performing an ES task were recorded. We found that decreased LPPs were evoked for expressive suppression condition (ESC) compared to negative view condition (NV) in all time windows. Middle and late windows did not show different LPPs between ESC and neutral view condition (NEV). These findings demonstrate that ES might effectively downregulate negative emotional experience for children. The nature and utility of ES as a specific form of emotion regulation in children are discussed.