Opgroeien: een regenboog aan emoties en gevoelens Medieert sociale angst de relatie tussen maladaptieve emotieregulatie en problemen met leeftijdsgenoten bij kinderen en adolescenten?

Abstract

The ability to regulate emotions in social situations and relationships is important for the psychosocial functioning of children and a healthy lifelong development. Children with maladaptive emotion regulation skills experience more often peer problems and tend to report more social anxiety. In addition, children who exhibit more social anxiety are more likely to experience peer problems. This cross-sectional study (N = 168) examined whether social anxiety (SCARED-NL) mediates the relationship between maladaptive emotion regulation (DERS-16) and peer problems (SDQ), and whether this mediation-model is moderated by gender (n girls = 106) and/or age (M = 14.3 years). The data was collected by administering an online survey to children aged 8 to 18 years. To investigate the relationships, a mediation model with double moderation was used. The positive and significant relationship between maladaptive emotion regulation and peer problems was indeed mediated by social anxiety symptoms, however no support for the moderators age and gender were found. A possible explanation for not finding the moderating effects in the current study could be the sample size and distribution. The insights from this research are relevant for clinical practice, such as indicated preventions for learning adaptive emotion regulation strategies. However, further research needs to be conducted with a larger, more homogeneous sample size for gender and age to see whether there are indeed no age or gender effects.