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Adopting a temporally distant perspective on stressors, also known as using a temporal distancing emotion regulation strategy, can alleviate distress. Young adults' ability to adopt a temporal distancing strategy has previously been measured using an experimental temporal distancing task (Ahmed, Somerville, & Sebastian, 2018). In the current study, we evaluate the psychometric properties of this task in younger (N = 345, aged 10-11) and older (N = 99, aged 18-21) adolescents and explore developmental differences in the ability to use temporal distancing to alleviate distress. Participants listened to scenarios and rated negative affect when adopting a distant-future perspective, a near-future perspective, or when reacting naturally. We evaluated the test-retest reliability of the measure in older adolescents and its construct validity in both younger and older adolescents by assessing correlations with self-report measures of emotion regulation strategy use. Our findings broadly replicated those of Ahmed et al. (2018): Adopting distant- and near-future perspectives produced significantly lower self-reported distress relative to reacting naturally, with the distant-future strategy producing the least distress. Older adolescents alleviated their distress more effectively than younger adolescents and reported projecting further into the future. Regulation success scores on the temporal distancing task showed adequate test-retest reliability. However, these scores did not correlate with self-reported habitual use of temporal distancing or reappraisal strategies generally. These findings suggest that the ability to use a temporal distancing strategy for emotion regulation improves during adolescence, but that ability may not be related to habitual use of this strategy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Interoception, namely the perception of the body's internal states, has increasingly been the focus of psychiatric research, due to its hypothesised role in mental health disturbances. Nevertheless, existing tasks of interoception are often long, burdensome and require specialised equipment to be carried out, thus limiting the possibility of conducting studies in vulnerable populations. We report on the development and proof of concept testing of a novel interoceptive task, namely the CARdiac Elevation Detection (CARED) task. Participants’ heart rate is recorded by a wearable device connected to a mobile application. Notifications are sent to participants’ mobile based on an algorithm optimised to send at least 6 notifications per day at different heart rate values throughout the day, over a period of at least 4 weeks. Participants are asked to state whether their heart rate is higher than usual, rate how confident they are in their answer and provide a brief description of the activity they were involved in when the notification occurred. Data from 30 participants revealed that approximately ⅓ of the sample was classified as being interoceptive (in line with previous findings) and that participants presented overall good insight into their interoceptive abilities. Given its ease of administration and accessibility, the CARED task has the potential to be a significant asset for psychiatric and developmental research.