# Socially‐Based Emotion Dysregulation Among Hearing‐Impaired Adolescents: An Event‐Related Potential Study

## TL;DR

Hearing-impaired adolescents struggle to regulate socially-based emotions due to differences in brain activity related to attention and emotional processing.

## Contribution

This study identifies neural mechanisms linking hearing impairment to emotion dysregulation in adolescents using ERP data.

## Key findings

- Normal-hearing adolescents showed reduced negative affect when using emotion regulation strategies, unlike hearing-impaired adolescents.
- ERP data revealed reduced LPP and P3 amplitudes in normal-hearing adolescents during expressive suppression, which was less pronounced in hearing-impaired adolescents.
- Hearing impairment is associated with deficits in attention allocation and emotional processing, contributing to emotion dysregulation.

## Abstract

Hearing impairment adversely affects the development and maturation of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is a region critical for social emotion regulation. The present study aimed to examine how hearing impairment influences socially‐based emotion regulation in adolescents or its underlying neural mechanisms.

To address this gap, the present study recorded event‐related potentials (ERP) while participants viewed images depicting social exclusion or used emotion regulation strategies to down‐regulate their emotional responses.

Behavioral results indicated that normal‐hearing adolescents reported a significant reduction in negative affect when employing regulation strategies, an effect not observed in hearing‐impaired adolescents. ERP data indicated that compared to passive viewing, expressive suppression elicited reduced amplitudes in the central‐parietal LPP and P3 components among normal‐hearing adolescents. This modulation was attenuated in those with hearing impairment.

These results suggest that deficits in both attention allocation and elaborative emotional processing may underlie the impaired down‐regulation of socially triggered negative emotions in adolescents with hearing loss.

This graphical abstract illustrates the study “Neural Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Dysregulation in Hearing‐Impaired Adolescents”. We compared hearing‐impaired adolescents and normal‐hearing adolescents using an emotion regulation task while recording EEG. The results indicate that hearing impairment leads to deficits in attention allocation and elaborative emotional processing, ultimately contributing to emotion dysregulation.