Common and distinct patterns of affective response in dimensions of anxiety and depression

The authors examined the time course of affective responding associated with different affective dimensions--anxious apprehension, anxious arousal, and anhedonic depression--using an emotion-modulated startle paradigm. Participants high on 1 of these 3 dimensions and nonsymptomatic control participants viewed a series of affective pictures with acoustic startle probes presented before, during, and after the stimuli. All groups exhibited startle potentiation during unpleasant pictures and in anticipation of both pleasant and unpleasant pictures. Compared with control participants, symptomatic participants exhibited sustained potentiation following the offset of unpleasant stimuli and a lack of blink attenuation during and following pleasant stimuli. Common and unique patterns of affective responses in the 3 types of mood symptoms are discussed.     

Not Just Right Experiences: Association with Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms and Sensory Over-Responsivity

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder describe “not just right experiences” as a constant uncomfortable feeling of imperfection toward sensory stimuli. This study examined the relation between “not just right experiences,” obsessive-compulsive disorder and sensory over-responsivity symptoms. Sixty college students participated in the in vivo “not just right experiences” assessment. This included four tasks for which participants rated pre-task discomfort, post-task discomfort, and urge to counteract auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli. “Not just right experiences” scores significantly correlated with obsessive-compulsive disorder scores. Tactile, auditory, and visual sensory over-responsivity scores were correlated with specific “not just right experiences” scores. Sensory over-responsivity is rarely addressed in obsessive-compulsive disorder while it contributes to symptomatology and participation.     

青少年依恋环境的情绪启动和注意恢复功能

以往研究发现自然环境能激发个体积极情绪,恢复集中注意。当个体对自然环境的依恋程度不同时,环境的情绪启动和注意恢复功能是否存在差异?研究以96名初一学生为被试考察地方依恋对环境的情绪和注意恢复作用是否产生影响。根据被试对某自然环境的依恋水平将其分为高依恋和低依恋组,并在被试参加情绪启动实验(实验1)和集中注意实验(实验2)时将其分为实验组和控制组以考察对环境依恋水平不同的被试观看该环境图片后情绪启动和注意恢复状况是否存在差异。实验1显示低依恋实验组对厌恶的反应时显著短于其他三组;实验2结果表明高依恋实验组被试在观看自然环境图片后在注意后测任务上的反应时显著短于低依恋实验组和控制组。     

Effects of social and affective content on exogenous attention as revealed by event-related potentials

The social content of affective stimuli has been proposed as having an influence on cognitive processing and behaviour. This research was aimed, therefore, at studying whether automatic exogenous attention demanded by affective pictures was related to their social value. We hypothesised that affective social pictures would capture attention to a greater extent than non-social affective stimuli. For this purpose, we recorded event-related potentials in a sample of 24 participants engaged in a digit categorisation task. Distracters were affective pictures varying in social content, in addition to affective valence and arousal, which appeared in the background during the task. Our data revealed that pictures depicting high social content captured greater automatic attention than other pictures, as reflected by the greater amplitude and shorter latency of anterior P2, and anterior and posterior N2 components of the ERPs. In addition, social content also provoked greater allocation of processing resources as manifested by P3 amplitude, likely related to the high arousal they elicited. These results extend data from previous research by showing the relevance of the social value of the affective stimuli on automatic attentional processing.     

Depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory-II among injecting drug users

This study conducts a confirmatory factor analysis of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) with a sample of 598 individuals who reported recent injecting drug use. Findings indicate that out of four models tested, the best model for this sample is a three-factor solution (somatic, affective, and cognitive) previously reported by Buckley, Parker, and Heggie. The findings that nearly 50% of participants provided BDI-II scores indicating significant depressive symptomatology reveals that these individuals are in need of treatment for their psychiatric symptoms as well as substance use. Somatic symptoms are endorsed more strongly than affective or cognitive symptoms of depression, suggesting a possible, but yet poorly defined, relationship between depressive symptomatology and drug use that centers on shared somatic symptomatology.     

The obsessive compulsive spectrum: a survey of 800 practitioners

The obsessive-compulsive (OC) spectrum is a group of related disorders that appear to share symptomatology, neurobiology, and treatment response with obsessive-compulsive disorder. To collect data on the appreciation of the OC spectrum concept among clinicians, 800 participants completed a questionnaire to help determine their understanding and appreciation of this concept, at a workshop on the OC spectrum.     

Motivational effects of success or failure feedback on the perception of affective pictures

A study of perception of affective pictures from the International Affective Photo System, using the Self Assessment Manikin scale, was conducted. It was hypothesized that participants' affective ratings could be moderated by a subjective experience of success or failure. Analysis, based on a sample of 36 university students, showed an approach tendency for women when they were exposed to positive pictures in the success condition. This approach tendency was associated with relatively shorter processing times and high affective ratings. Men showed relatively shorter processing times and high affective ratings when exposed to negative pictures. For memory-related measures, the highest scores were observed in the success condition for exposure to pleasant pictures. The results are discussed in terms of affective-related self-regulatory tendencies moderated by sex.     

Affective ratings and startle modulation in people with nonclinical depression

This study tested predictions based on the emotion context insensitivity (ECI) hypothesis of Rottenberg, Gross, and Gotlib (2005) that a nonclinical sample of people with depressive symptoms would show reduced responses to both positive and negative stimuli relative to people without depression and would show an enhanced response to novelty. Seventy individuals completed diagnostic questionnaires, made ratings of 21 affectively valenced pictures, and then viewed the same 21 pictures and 21 novel pictures while startle blink responses were recorded from electromyographic activity of the orbicularis oculi. People with scores on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961) indicative of depression demonstrated a lack of affective startle modulation compared to the nondepression group. For all participants, the startle response was larger for novel pictures than for previously viewed pictures, but scores on the BDI were not related to response to novelty. Taken together, the results suggest that nonclinical depression is associated with a lack of affective modulation of startle, as has been shown for clinical depression.     

高低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪注意偏向的差异

摘 要 本研究采用返回抑制范式,以诱发厌恶、恐惧和中性情绪的图片为线索,考察高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪刺激注意偏向的差异及其发生机制。结果表明：（1）被试对诱发厌恶和恐惧的图片均产生了注意偏向且注意偏向是由注意解除困难所引起;（2）被试对诱发厌恶图片的注意偏向程度显著大于对诱发恐惧图片的注意偏向程度;（3）高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对诱发厌恶和恐惧图片的注意偏向程度之间的组间差异均不显著。     

Distinguishing youths at risk for anxiety disorders from self‐reported BIS sensitivity and its psychophysiological concomitants

The aim of the study was to explore the psychophysiological concomitants of self‐reported behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity in adolescents (12 to 17 years old) supposed to be at risk for anxiety disorders. Twenty participants with high scores in self‐reported BIS sensitivity (at‐risk group) were matched in age and sex to 20 participants scoring in the normal range in BIS sensitivity (control group). Negative affect, negative emotion regulation style, and anxiety symptomatology were assessed by means of self‐reported measures. Cardiac and electrodermal response signals were recorded during baseline, paced breathing, exposure to an attentional task with response cost and fear‐relevant slides conditions. The at‐risk group exhibited higher scores on measures of negative affect, negative emotion regulation style, and anxiety symptomatology than their control counterparts. After controlling for negative styles of emotion regulation, groups did not differ in skin conductance reactivity during the attentional task with response cost, but participants at risk exhibited more nonspecific skin conductance responses than the control group during baseline recording. Regarding the cardiac concomitants, participants at risk presented lower vagal tone at resting conditions as compared to participants in the control group. Additionally, at‐risk participants exhibited lower flexibility across experimental conditions in heart rate and cardiac sample entropy measures than participants in the control group. These findings add knowledge on psychophysiological concomitants of BIS sensitivity and are discussed in light of associations between temperament and development of anxiety disorders in youth. They show how psychophysiological patterns observed in resting conditions could be useful endophenotypes to reliably detect individuals at risk before the disorder onset.     

Modification of the startle reflex in a community sample: do one or two dimensions of psychopathy underlie emotional processing?

Recent research on psychopathy has begun to explore two dimensions that possibly underlie psychopathy–one related more to emotional and interpersonal traits, and another related more to antisocial behaviors. A community sample of adults was assessed for psychopathy using Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Eyeblinks elicited by startle probes were recorded while participants viewed pictures of emotionally-laden stimuli. Consistent with previous research, participants scoring high on PCL-R Factor 2 (“antisocial”) showed no affective modification of startle if they also scored high on PCL-R Factor 1 (“emotional detachment”). When the factor scores were analyzed together as continuous variables in a regression analysis, however, affective modification of startle was negatively related to Factor 1 but positively related to Factor 2. The results thus provide further support for a two-factor model of psychopathy.     

A conceptual replication and extension of the Affective Simon Effect

An experiment was conducted to examine the sensitivity of the affective Simon paradigm to the affective connotation of pictures. In a recent experiment carried out by De Houwer and colleagues (De Houwer, Crombez, Baeyens, & Hermans, 2001, experiment 3), participants were asked to respond using the words POSITIVE or NEGATIVE depending on whether a picture depicted a man-made or natural object. Responses to pictures were faster when the valence of the picture matched the required response. The current study replicated this effect when 16 participants were asked to respond using the words NICE and NASTY depending on whether positive or negative pictures were humans or animals. Furthermore, the Affective Simon Effect was found, but reduced in magnitude, when a further 16 participants were asked to respond using the affective nouns COMEDY or CANCER to the same affective pictures.     

高强迫症状个体对图片刺激的注意偏向

以往强迫症注意偏向研究呈现出不一致的结果。为探索研究结果的不一致性是否由于被试取样和刺激选择所导致,当前研究改用非临床强迫症状个体作为研究对象,采用图片作为刺激来引发被试的反应和脑电波的变化。研究采用2(高强迫症状组、低强迫症状组)×3(中性图片、一般威胁图片和强迫相关图片)的混合实验设计,因变量为反应时和相关的脑电成分,结果显示:高强迫症状组较低强迫症状组对强迫相关图片表现出了更大幅度的P2波幅的变化。从而可以推断出,高强迫症状个体对强迫相关图片表现出了明显的注意偏向,其成分为注意脱困,主要发生在早期自动化加工阶段。     

Affective Priming Effects in the Left and Right Cerebral Hemispheres in Patients With Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and control subjects were tested in an affective priming paradigm associated with an affective discrimination task. Two pictures, one affectively positive or affectively negative and the other neutral, were presented simultaneously in the right and in the left visual fields; the participants had to decide which of the two pictures was the most affectively positive or negative. The target pictures were preceded by a prime picture that was either affectively positive, affectively negative, or neutral. The principal result was the observation, in AD patients as well as in control subjects, of negative affective priming effects for targets presented in the right hemisphere, and of positive affective priming effects for targets presented in the left hemisphere. The presence of affective priming effects suggests that AD patients have no particular deficit in the automatic activation of emotional information; the fact that priming effects were also observed for targets presented in the left hemisphere showed that AD patients probably have no left hemisphere deficit in the automatic activation of emotional information. However, in AD patients, affective priming effects were significant with negative targets but not with positive targets, which could suggest that AD patients processed positive targets in a more semantic way than negative targets.     

Alexithymia and experimentally induced emotion recognition in people with somatizations

This study is part of an investigation aimed at assessing the cognitive-emotional process of emotional recognition in somatizing patients. The specific objective was to verify whether there were differences in the self-assessment of emotional reaction among patients with somatization and non-clinical controls. To obtain the self-assessment of their emotional reaction in the affective dimensions of valence and activation in clinical and control participants, we resorted to a procedure that minimizes the use of verbal skills and comprehension. Participants were 119 people, 47 patients and 72 non-clinical participants. The prevalence of alexithymia in the clinical group was 42.55%, whereas in non-clinical controls, it was 30.55%. Results showed the existence of a deficit in the clinical group's self-assessment of activation in response to the corresponding images with high levels of the affective dimension of activation and high valence images, associated with the clinical condition but not with alexithymia. Alexithymia has a modulatory effect on the clinical participants' and controls' evaluation of the valence of the unpleasant images or of low valence pictures.     

Attending to affect: appraisal strategies modulate the electrocortical response to arousing pictures

Arousing (unpleasant and pleasant) pictures elicit increased neurophysiological measures of perceptual processing. In particular, the electrocortical late positive potential (LPP) is enhanced for arousing, compared with neutral, pictures. To determine whether the magnitude of the LPP is sensitive to the way stimuli are appraised, 16 participants viewed both pleasant and unpleasant pictures and categorized them along an affective or nonaffective dimension. Results indicate that the LPP was reduced for both pleasant and unpleasant pictures when participants made nonaffective, compared with affective, judgments. These results are consistent with previous studies that have used functional neuroimaging to investigate the role of appraisal on emotional processing. The results are further discussed in terms of the utility of using the LPP to study emotion regulation.     

Selective attention in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Recent information-processing studies have suggested that a selective attention deficit may be involved in the symptomatology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this study, individuals diagnosed with OCD were distinguished from those with panic disorder and from control participants by their relatively poorer performance on a series of psychometric tasks of selective attention. These results are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis of a diminished ability of people with OCD to selectively ignore competing external (sensory) and internal (cognitive) stimuli, especially intrusive thoughts.     

Differential response patterns to disgust-related pictures

ABSTRACT

In the present study, attentional bias was investigated as a potential predisposing mechanism for the contamination-related subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OC disorder). Fifty healthy participants with varying degrees of subclinical C-OC symptoms performed a visual search task to measure differential attentional biases elicited by neutral, disgust-, and fear-specific pictorial material. Participants had to find a target picture within five neutral distractor pictures randomly presented on different locations in an array. The task was to decide whether the array contained an unpleasant target picture or not. In randomly-selected emotional trials, participants were further asked about the content of the picture and the confidence of their answer. The results show that the reaction times significantly differed between the emotional and neutral pictures. Participants were significantly more confident in answering questions referring to fear compared to disgust pictures. This effect was marginally amplified in participants with higher C-OC symptoms. We discuss the results within the framework of the cost and benefit hypothesis, which postulates that disgust evolutionarily elicits stronger uncertainty compared to fear, owing to the ambiguous nature of the stimuli. Increased uncertainty might be an important but underestimated factor for pathological disgust experience, such as in obsessive-compulsive disorder.     

Automatic avoidance tendencies in individuals with contamination-related obsessive-compulsive symptoms

We used an approach-avoidance task (AAT) to examine response to threatening stimuli in 20 individuals high in contamination-related obsessive-compulsive symptoms (HCs) and 21 individuals low in contamination-related obsessive-compulsive symptoms (LCs). Participants were instructed to respond to contamination-related and neutral pictures by pulling a joystick towards themselves or by pushing it away from themselves. Moving the joystick changed the size of the image to simulate approaching or distancing oneself from the object. Consistent with our hypothesis, the HC group was significantly slower in pulling contamination-related pictures than in pulling neutral pictures, whereas in the LC group there was no difference between speed of pulling contamination-related pictures and neutral pictures. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find support for faster pushing away of contamination-related pictures than neutral pictures by the HC group. Moreover, the degree of avoidance of contamination-related stimuli when pulling - but not when pushing - was significantly correlated with self-reported contamination-related obsessive-compulsive symptoms. These results suggest a biased behavioral response for threatening objects in individuals high in contamination fears only when inhibiting the prepotent response to avoid threatening stimuli and not when performing a practiced avoidance response. Thus, our results validate the use of the AAT as a measure of inhibited and uninhibited automatic avoidance reactions to emotional information in individuals with contamination-related obsessive-compulsive symptoms.     

Guided self-help versus pure self-help for perfectionism: a randomised controlled trial

Perfectionism is known to be a risk factor for the development and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive (OC) and depressive symptoms. The purpose of the present study was to test the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioural self-help therapy for perfectionism, and to examine the effect of such treatment on OC and depressive symptomatology. The study compares the effectiveness of guided self-help (GSH, n=24) with pure self-help (PSH, n=25) therapy. Both GSH and PSH were found to be effective in reducing perfectionism, and also in reducing OC and depressive symptomatology. Overall, participants in the GSH condition experienced greater symptom improvement than participants in the PSH condition, and treatment gains for both groups were largely maintained at 3-month follow-up. Twenty percent of PSH participants experienced clinically significant increases in depressive symptoms over the treatment and follow-up period (compared to 0% in the GSH condition), suggesting that PSH may be a less suitable strategy than GSH in treating this population. Overall, the findings suggest that self-help for perfectionism is effective in reducing OC and depressive symptomatology in non-clinical individuals, with GSH being superior to PSH.