Given recent attention to emotion regulation as a potentially unifying function of diverse symptom presentations, there is a need for comprehensive measures that adequately assess difficulties in emotion regulation among adults. This paper (a) proposes an integrative conceptualization of emotion regulation as involving not just the modulation of emotional arousal, but also the awareness, understanding, and acceptance of emotions, and the ability to act in desired ways regardless of emotional state; and (b) begins to explore the factor structure and psychometric properties of a new measure, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Two samples of undergraduate students completed questionnaire packets. Preliminary findings suggest that the DERS has high internal consistency, good test–retest reliability, and adequate construct and predictive validity.

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Multidimensional Assessment of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: Development, Factor Structure, and Initial Validation of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale

https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=psych_facpub

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Model, processes and outcomes

Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.

http://depts.washington.edu/uwcssc/sites/default/files//hw00/d40/uwcssc/sites/default/files/Acceptance%20and%20Action%20Questionnaire%20(AAQ-II)_0.pdf

Preliminary psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II: a revised measure of psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance.

The authors review research showing that when recalling autobiographical events, many emotionally disturbed patients summarize categories of events rather than retrieving a single episode. The mechanisms underlying such overgeneral memory are examined, with a focus on M. A. Conway and C. W. Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) hierarchical search model of personal event retrieval. An elaboration of this model is proposed to account for overgeneral memory, focusing on how memory search can be affected by (a) capture and rumination processes, when mnemonic information used in retrieval activates ruminative thinking; (b) functional avoidance, when episodic material threatens to cause affective disturbance; and (c) impairment in executive capacity and control that limits an individual's ability to remain focused on retrieval in the face of distraction.

/pdf/autobiographical-memory-specificity-and-emotional-disorder-3pi7ldfm01.pdf

Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder.

The present study describes the development of a short, general measure of experiential avoidance, based on a specific theoretical approach to this process. A theoretically driven iterative exploratory analysis using structural equation modeling on data from a clinical sample yielded a single factor comprising 9 items. A fully confirmatory factor analysis upheld this same 9-item factor in an independent clinical sample. The operational characteristics of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ) were then examined in 8 additional samples. All totaled, over 2,400 participants were studied. As expected, higher levels of experiential avoidance were associated with higher levels of general psychopathology, depression, anxiety, a variety of specific fears, trauma, and a lower quality of life. The AAQ related to more specific measures of avoidant coping and to self-deceptive positivity, but the relation to psychopathology could not be fully accounted for by these alternative measures. The data provide some initial support for the model of experiential avoidance based on Relational Frame Theory that is incorporated into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and provides researchers with a preliminary measure for use in population-based studies on experiential avoidance.

Dosheen Toarmino

Papers

Measuring experiential avoidance: A preliminary test of a working model