Applying Emotion Regulation Strategies in Complex Tasks

Students often experience negative emotions, such as anxiety and frustration, when engaging in complex tasks, which may influence both their learning experiences and task performance. Although emotion regulation (ER) strategies have been shown to have positive effects on student learning, evidence regarding their effects in complex task situations remains underexplored. This study investigated students’ use of ER strategies to support complex tasks and how their task performance and emotional experiences changed after applying these strategies. The participants were 24 ninth-grade students, who were learning English as a foreign language. They received instruction on applying three types of ER strategies (emotion-focused, task-focused, and regulation-focused) to support their cloze tasks. Results show that among the three types of ER strategies, students most frequently used task-focused strategies, followed by regulation-focused strategies, while emotion-focused strategies were used the least. Low-achieving students improved their task performance, whereas higher-achieving students did not show this change. Students’ positive emotions increased and their negative emotions decreased after applying ER strategies. Many students reported that they still experienced negative emotions (such as anxiety and frustration) even when they applied ER strategies, mainly due to the challenging nature of tasks and the time pressure; these negative emotions distracted their attention and affected their performance. Implications of the findings are discussed.