Jennifer A Silvers
Biographic Data
| ID | 5449154 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jennifer A Silvers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jennifer A |
| FAMILY NAME | Silvers |
| SIGNATURE | SILVERS J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6615-5473 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Cognitive reappraisal modulates neural responses to aversive sensory stimulation in autistic youth
BACKGROUND: Sensory over-responsivity (SOR) is highly prevalent and impairing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). SOR has been associated with sensory-limbic hyperresponsivity and reduced prefrontal top-down regulation during sensory stimulation. There are few evidence-based treatments for SOR, but cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, has been shown to reduce negative feelings through activation of frontal brain regions. The curr…
Striving and thriving
BACKGROUND: Recent evidence suggests upward socioeconomic mobility ("striving") may result in worse physical health. It has been hypothesized that striving might result in greater stress and discrimination, but prior observational evidence of this has been mixed. METHODS: We analyzed data from The RISE UP study, a natural experimental study of 1270 low-income students in Los Angeles who were offered entrance to high-performing charter high school…
Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Internalizing Symptoms in Ethno-Racially Minoritized Youth
Racial/ethnic discrimination is associated with elevated internalizing symptoms. However, the psychological processes through which discrimination affects internalizing symptoms in ethno-racially minoritized youth are less understood. The current study examined the role of emotion dysregulation in the association between racial/ethnic discrimination and internalizing symptoms. Participants were 5,693 ethno-racially minoritized youth (M age at bas…
A data-driven typology of emotion regulation profiles
Typologies serve to organize knowledge and advance theory for many scientific disciplines, including more recently in the social and behavioral sciences. To date, however, no typology exists to categorize an individual's use of emotion regulation strategies. This is surprising given that emotion regulation skills are used daily and that deficits in this area are robustly linked with mental health symptoms. Here, we attempted to identify and valid…
Research Review
BACKGROUND: The interval between adolescence and adulthood, 'emerging adulthood' (EA), lays the foundation for lifelong health and well-being. To date, there exist little empirical data - particularly in the neurobiological domain - to establish markers of risk and resilience during the transition to adulthood. This gap in the literature is concerning given the numerous forms of psychiatric illness that emerge or worsen during this period. METHOD…
Therapeutic Dance for the Healing of Sexual Trauma
Therapeutic dance has been increasingly used as a treatment modality for sexual trauma, yet its evidence-based efficacy has not yet been catalogued. We therefore conducted a systematic review to summarize the existing evidence for therapeutic dance as an intervention for healing after sexual trauma. We searched 5 major databases to identify intervention studies on the use of therapeutic dance for individuals with histories of sexual trauma. Studi…
You changed my mind
As social creatures, our relationships with other people have tremendous downstream impacts on health and well-being. However, we still know surprisingly little about how our social interactions regulate how we think and feel through life's challenges. Getting help from other people to change how one thinks about emotional events-known as "social reappraisal"-can be more effective in downregulating negative affect than reappraising on one's own, …
Neuroscientific Approaches to the Study of Self and Social Emotion Regulation During Development
Emotion regulation is a critical skill that promotes physical and mental health across the life span. This chapter describes the neural networks that underlie emotion regulation, and explores how these networks develop during childhood and adolescence. We consider two forms of emotion regulation: self-regulation and social regulation. While developmental theories suggest that parents socially regulate their children’s emotions so as to scaffold b…
Adolescence as a pivotal period for emotion regulation development
Adolescence is a dynamic period for the development of emotion regulation. For many individuals, emotion regulation skills improve dramatically during adolescence; however, for some youth, adolescence marks the beginning or worsening of psychopathology characterized by difficulties with emotion regulation. In the present review, I describe evidence that caregiving experiences play an outsized role in shaping interindividual variability in emotion…
One size does not fit all
Although considerable research has demonstrated the importance of social relationships for well-being, limited work has assessed how people help regulate each other's emotions, a process called social emotion regulation. The present research utilized two experiments in 2020 ( N 1 = 50, N 2 = 268) where people shared and responded to personal experiences to examine: (a) the kinds of regulatory support people offered others; (b) how people felt rec…
Parent and Friend Relationship Quality and Links to Trajectories of Loneliness During the First Year of College
Beginning college involves changes that can increase one's vulnerability to loneliness and associated negative outcomes. Parent and friend relationships are potential protective factors against loneliness given their positive association with adjustment. The present longitudinal study, with data collection at baseline, 1 month, and 2 months later, assessed the comparative effects of self-reported parent and friend relationship quality on loneline…
Computational and motivational mechanisms of human social decision making involving close others
Performance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency
Cognitive reappraisal is among the most effective and well-studied emotion regulation strategies humans have at their disposal. Here, in 250 healthy adults across 2 preregistered studies, we examined whether reappraisal capacity (the ability to reappraise) and tendency (the propensity to reappraise) differentially relate to perceived stress. We also investigated whether cognitive flexibility, a skill thought to support reappraisal, accounted for …
Spatial and temporal cortical variability track with age and affective experience during emotion regulation in youth
Variability is a fundamental feature of human brain activity that is particularly pronounced during development. However, developmental neuroimaging research has only recently begun to move beyond characterizing brain function exclusively in terms of magnitude of neural activation to incorporate estimates of variability. No prior neuroimaging study has done so in the domain of emotion regulation. We investigated how age and affective experiences …
Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation
This paper reviews and synthesizes functional imaging research that over the past decade has begun to offer new insights into the brain mechanisms underlying emotion regulation. Toward that end, the first section of the paper outlines a model of the processes and neural systems involved in emotion generation and regulation. The second section surveys recent research supporting and elaborating the model, focusing primarily on studies of the most c…
Age-related differences in emotional reactivity, regulation, and rejection sensitivity in adolescence
Although adolescents' emotional lives are thought to be more turbulent than those of adults, it is unknown whether this difference is attributable to developmental changes in emotional reactivity or emotion regulation. Study 1 addressed this question by presenting healthy individuals aged 10-23 with negative and neutral pictures and asking them to respond naturally or use cognitive reappraisal to down-regulate their responses on a trial-by-trial …
Moral elevation can induce nursing
There is little extant research on the psychological or physiological response to witnessing good deeds. The authors call the emotional reaction to virtue "moral elevation" and the authors examined its effects on mother-infant dyads. Breastfeeding women who watched a morally elevating video were more likely to nurse their infants and were marginally more likely to hug them, compared to women who watched an equally enjoyable comedy video. Both of …
Computational and motivational mechanisms of human social decision making involving close others
Spatial and temporal cortical variability track with age and affective experience during emotion regulation in youth
Variability is a fundamental feature of human brain activity that is particularly pronounced during development. However, developmental neuroimaging research has only recently begun to move beyond characterizing brain function exclusively in terms of magnitude of neural activation to incorporate estimates of variability. No prior neuroimaging study has done so in the domain of emotion regulation. We investigated how age and affective experiences …
Moral elevation can induce nursing
There is little extant research on the psychological or physiological response to witnessing good deeds. The authors call the emotional reaction to virtue "moral elevation" and the authors examined its effects on mother-infant dyads. Breastfeeding women who watched a morally elevating video were more likely to nurse their infants and were marginally more likely to hug them, compared to women who watched an equally enjoyable comedy video. Both of …
Functional imaging studies of emotion regulation
This paper reviews and synthesizes functional imaging research that over the past decade has begun to offer new insights into the brain mechanisms underlying emotion regulation. Toward that end, the first section of the paper outlines a model of the processes and neural systems involved in emotion generation and regulation. The second section surveys recent research supporting and elaborating the model, focusing primarily on studies of the most c…
Age-related differences in emotional reactivity, regulation, and rejection sensitivity in adolescence
Although adolescents' emotional lives are thought to be more turbulent than those of adults, it is unknown whether this difference is attributable to developmental changes in emotional reactivity or emotion regulation. Study 1 addressed this question by presenting healthy individuals aged 10-23 with negative and neutral pictures and asking them to respond naturally or use cognitive reappraisal to down-regulate their responses on a trial-by-trial …
Spatial and temporal cortical variability track with age and affective experience during emotion regulation in youth
Variability is a fundamental feature of human brain activity that is particularly pronounced during development. However, developmental neuroimaging research has only recently begun to move beyond characterizing brain function exclusively in terms of magnitude of neural activation to incorporate estimates of variability. No prior neuroimaging study has done so in the domain of emotion regulation. We investigated how age and affective experiences …
Performance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency
Cognitive reappraisal is among the most effective and well-studied emotion regulation strategies humans have at their disposal. Here, in 250 healthy adults across 2 preregistered studies, we examined whether reappraisal capacity (the ability to reappraise) and tendency (the propensity to reappraise) differentially relate to perceived stress. We also investigated whether cognitive flexibility, a skill thought to support reappraisal, accounted for …
Computational and motivational mechanisms of human social decision making involving close others
Neuroscientific Approaches to the Study of Self and Social Emotion Regulation During Development
Emotion regulation is a critical skill that promotes physical and mental health across the life span. This chapter describes the neural networks that underlie emotion regulation, and explores how these networks develop during childhood and adolescence. We consider two forms of emotion regulation: self-regulation and social regulation. While developmental theories suggest that parents socially regulate their children’s emotions so as to scaffold b…
Adolescence as a pivotal period for emotion regulation development
Adolescence is a dynamic period for the development of emotion regulation. For many individuals, emotion regulation skills improve dramatically during adolescence; however, for some youth, adolescence marks the beginning or worsening of psychopathology characterized by difficulties with emotion regulation. In the present review, I describe evidence that caregiving experiences play an outsized role in shaping interindividual variability in emotion…
One size does not fit all
Although considerable research has demonstrated the importance of social relationships for well-being, limited work has assessed how people help regulate each other's emotions, a process called social emotion regulation. The present research utilized two experiments in 2020 ( N 1 = 50, N 2 = 268) where people shared and responded to personal experiences to examine: (a) the kinds of regulatory support people offered others; (b) how people felt rec…
Parent and Friend Relationship Quality and Links to Trajectories of Loneliness During the First Year of College
Beginning college involves changes that can increase one's vulnerability to loneliness and associated negative outcomes. Parent and friend relationships are potential protective factors against loneliness given their positive association with adjustment. The present longitudinal study, with data collection at baseline, 1 month, and 2 months later, assessed the comparative effects of self-reported parent and friend relationship quality on loneline…
Research Review
BACKGROUND: The interval between adolescence and adulthood, 'emerging adulthood' (EA), lays the foundation for lifelong health and well-being. To date, there exist little empirical data - particularly in the neurobiological domain - to establish markers of risk and resilience during the transition to adulthood. This gap in the literature is concerning given the numerous forms of psychiatric illness that emerge or worsen during this period. METHOD…
Therapeutic Dance for the Healing of Sexual Trauma
Therapeutic dance has been increasingly used as a treatment modality for sexual trauma, yet its evidence-based efficacy has not yet been catalogued. We therefore conducted a systematic review to summarize the existing evidence for therapeutic dance as an intervention for healing after sexual trauma. We searched 5 major databases to identify intervention studies on the use of therapeutic dance for individuals with histories of sexual trauma. Studi…
You changed my mind
As social creatures, our relationships with other people have tremendous downstream impacts on health and well-being. However, we still know surprisingly little about how our social interactions regulate how we think and feel through life's challenges. Getting help from other people to change how one thinks about emotional events-known as "social reappraisal"-can be more effective in downregulating negative affect than reappraising on one's own, …
A data-driven typology of emotion regulation profiles
Typologies serve to organize knowledge and advance theory for many scientific disciplines, including more recently in the social and behavioral sciences. To date, however, no typology exists to categorize an individual's use of emotion regulation strategies. This is surprising given that emotion regulation skills are used daily and that deficits in this area are robustly linked with mental health symptoms. Here, we attempted to identify and valid…
Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Internalizing Symptoms in Ethno-Racially Minoritized Youth
Racial/ethnic discrimination is associated with elevated internalizing symptoms. However, the psychological processes through which discrimination affects internalizing symptoms in ethno-racially minoritized youth are less understood. The current study examined the role of emotion dysregulation in the association between racial/ethnic discrimination and internalizing symptoms. Participants were 5,693 ethno-racially minoritized youth (M age at bas…
Cognitive reappraisal modulates neural responses to aversive sensory stimulation in autistic youth
BACKGROUND: Sensory over-responsivity (SOR) is highly prevalent and impairing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). SOR has been associated with sensory-limbic hyperresponsivity and reduced prefrontal top-down regulation during sensory stimulation. There are few evidence-based treatments for SOR, but cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, has been shown to reduce negative feelings through activation of frontal brain regions. The curr…
Striving and thriving
BACKGROUND: Recent evidence suggests upward socioeconomic mobility ("striving") may result in worse physical health. It has been hypothesized that striving might result in greater stress and discrimination, but prior observational evidence of this has been mixed. METHODS: We analyzed data from The RISE UP study, a natural experimental study of 1270 low-income students in Los Angeles who were offered entrance to high-performing charter high school…
Psychology (12 works) · Developmental psychology (11 works) · Cognition (9 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Cognitive reappraisal (7 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Expressive Suppression (5 works) · Mental Health Research Topics (5 works)