Perceived Strengths and Difficulties in Emotional Awareness and Accessing Emotion Regulation Strategies in Early Adolescents

Emotional awareness (EA) and access to emotion regulation strategies (ER) are often conceptualized as being on a single continuum, yet discrepancies in these associations are found across samples. We conducted a person-centered analysis to identify distinct profiles of adolescents’ perceived EA and ER. Secondary analyses were conducted to compare demographic variables, distress tolerance, and parent- and teacher-report emotional functioning across profiles. Participants (N = 414) completed two subscales of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and a behavioral measure of distress tolerance. A parent and teacher completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist. Adolescent mental health symptoms were measured, with responses dichotomized based on adolescent- and/or parent-report of clinically significant symptoms of any disorder. Exploratory two-step cluster analysis identified three clusters: Varied EA/Low ER, Low EA/High ER, and High EA/High ER. Gender differences emerged, with a greater proportion of girls in the Varied EA/Low ER cluster and boys in the Low EA/High ER cluster. The Varied EA/Low ER and Low EA/High ER clusters demonstrated greater mental health symptoms, and greater parent- and teacher-reported negativity/lability and problems with emotion regulation, than adolescents in the High EA/High ER cluster. The Low EA/High ER cluster tolerated less distress on the behavioral task than the Varied EA/Low ER or High EA/High ER clusters, which suggests problems with emotional awareness may contribute to inaccurate self-evaluation of one’s related emotional abilities. A person-centered approach was useful in identifying patterns of adolescent perceptions of strengths and difficulties in emotional development and their associations with other-report and performance on a behavioral task.