Neurobiological Correlates of Language Deficits and Emotion Dysregulation in Children with Severe Temper Outbursts
Abstract
The goal of this study was to investigate the relationships among foundational language abilities, social uses of language, emotion regulation, and functional connectivity of language networks in young children (ages 5-9 years old) exhibiting a range of emotion dysregulation. Previous literature suggests that expressive language skills are critical for emotion regulation as they provide a socially appropriate means for communicating needs, regulating actions, and providing an understanding of one’s emotional environment and that these skills may be associated with developmental changes within language networks. Thus, the current study predicted that deficits in emotion regulation ability would be associated with basic and social language deficits and that these deficits would be associated with alterations in functional connectivity in the language networks. Results of the current study indicate that dimensional communication deficits in both basic and social language are related to difficulties in emotion regulation, however, these were not found within the study groups. Further, only deficits in social communication ability were related to neurobiological alterations in Broca’s area in children with STO compared to children with ADHD. This suggests that children with STO are not unique in their social communication difficulties and that social communication accounts for greater differences in neurobiological abnormalities in Broca’s area networks than does emotion regulation.
Subject Area
Clinical psychology
Recommended Citation
DeSerisy, Mariah Lillian, "Neurobiological Correlates of Language Deficits and Emotion Dysregulation in Children with Severe Temper Outbursts" (2017). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI10605292.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI10605292
