Enhancing Emotion Regulation and Brain Connectivity in Adolescent Girls Through Parental Emotion Socialization: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

ObjectiveParental emotion socialization is theorized to influence adolescent emotion regulation. However, the causal nature of this relation and the underlying neural mechanism have not been investigated.MethodAn emotion-focused parenting intervention targeting emotion socialization was used to experimentally manipulate parental emotion socialization and investigate its effect on emotion regulation and emotion regulation–related neural functional connectivity in early adolescent girls with elevated internalizing symptoms. This study recruited 70 adolescent girls 10 to 12 years old with elevated internalizing symptoms and their mothers. Mothers were randomized to the intervention group (n = 3..