Objective:Children treated for brain tumors often experience social and emotional difficulties, including challenges with emotion regulation; our goal was to investigate the attention-related component processes of emotion regulation, using a novel eye-tracking measure, and to evaluate its relations with emotional functioning and white matter (WM) organization.Method:Fifty-four children participated in this study; 36 children treated for posterior fossa tumors, and 18 typically developing children. Participants completed two versions of an emotion regulation eye-tracking task, designed to differentiate between implicit (i.e., automatic) and explicit (i.e., voluntary) subprocesses. The Emotional Control scale from the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function was used to evaluate emotional control in daily life, and WM organization was assessed with diffusion tensor imaging.Results:We found that emotional faces captured attention across all groups (F(1,51) = 32.18, p < .001, η2p = .39). However, unlike typically developing children, patients were unable to override the attentional capture of emotional faces when instructed to (emotional face-by-group interaction: F(2,51) = 5.58, p = .006, η2p = .18). Across all children, our eye-tracking measure of emotion regulation was modestly associated with the parent-report emotional control score (r = .29, p = .045), and in patients it was associated with WM microstructure in the body and splenium of the corpus callosum (all t > 3.03, all p < .05).Conclusions:Our findings suggest that an attention-related component process of emotion regulation is disrupted in children treated for brain tumors, and that it may relate to their emotional difficulties and WM organization. This work provides a foundation for future theoretical and mechanistic investigations of emotional difficulties in brain tumor survivors.

中文翻译：

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眼球运动和白质与接受脑肿瘤治疗的儿童的情绪控制有关

目的：接受脑肿瘤治疗的儿童经常会遇到社交和情感方面的困难，包括情绪调节方面的挑战；我们的目标是使用一种新颖的眼动追踪测量方法研究情绪调节的注意力相关组成过程，并评估其与情绪功能和白质 (WM) 组织的关系。方法：54 名儿童参与了这项研究。36 名儿童因后颅窝肿瘤接受治疗，18 名儿童正常发育。参与者完成了两个版本的情绪调节眼动追踪任务，旨在区分隐式（即自动）和显式（即自愿）子过程。执行功能行为评定量表中的情绪控制量表用于评估日常生活中的情绪控制，F(1,51)= 32.18,p< .001,η2p= .39)。然而，与正常发育的儿童不同，患者在接受指示时无法忽视对情绪面孔的注意力捕捉（情绪面孔逐组互动：F(2,51)= 5.58,p= .006,η2p= .18)。在所有儿童中，我们对情绪调节的眼动追踪测量与父母报告的情绪控制分数适度相关（r= .29,p= .045），在患者中，它与身体和胼胝体压部的 WM 微结构相关（所有吨> 3.03，全部p< .05). 结论：我们的研究结果表明，在接受脑肿瘤治疗的儿童中，与注意力相关的情绪调节过程被破坏，这可能与他们的情绪困难和 WM 组织有关。这项工作为未来对脑肿瘤幸存者情绪困难的理论和机制研究提供了基础。