Tracy A. Dennis, Ph.D.
Hunter College of The City University of New  York
Melville M. Malone, B.A., and
Vanderbilt University
Chao-Cheng  Chen, M.A.
Hunter College of The City University of New York

Emotion regulation is a critical component of healthy development, yet few  studies examine neural
correlates of emotion regulation in childhood. In the  present study, we assessed whether children's
neurophysiological responses to  salient and socially significant emotional distracters - emotional
faces -  were related to broader emotion regulation capacities. Emotion regulation was  measured as
attention performance following emotional distracters and as  maternal report of child emotional
dysregulation. Electroencephalography was  recorded while participants (15 children aged 5-9)
performed an attention  task. Scalp-recorded event related potentials (ERPs) were time-locked  to
emotional distracters (fearful, sad, and neutral faces) and reflected a  range of rapid attentional and
face processing operations (P1, N1, N170, and  Nc). P1 latencies were faster whereas N1 amplitudes
were reduced to fearful  compared to sad faces. Larger P1 and Nc amplitudes to fearful and sad  faces
were correlated with more effective emotion regulation. Results are  discussed in terms of mechanisms
in emotion regulation and the use of ERPs to  detect early risk for psychopathology and inform
intervention efforts.