Inhibiting retrieval of trauma cues in adults reporting histories of childhood sexual abuse

Are people who report having forgotten their childhood sexual abuse (CSA) characterised by superior ability to inhibit retrieval of disturbing material? To test this hypothesis, we asked adults reporting either repressed, recovered, or continuous memories of CSA or no history of CSA to participate in a directed forgetting experiment (list method). They rated the emotionality of two consecutive lists of trauma‐related and positive words. After the first list, the experimenter instructed participants to forget these words, and to continue rating the remaining words. A surprise recall task revealed robust directed forgetting and valence effects: All groups recalled more words from the second list than from the first list, and recalled more trauma words than positive ones. Participants reporting either repressed or recovered memories of CSA did not exhibit superior forgetting of trauma versus positive words relative to the other two groups. Finally, a subsidiary analysis revealed that participants exhibiting a “repressor” coping style (low self‐reported anxiety plus high defensiveness) did not exhibit superior directed forgetting of trauma words.     

The origins of social emotions and self-regulation in toddlerhood: New evidence

In recent years, there has been increased attention to the development of “moral,” “social”, or “self-conscious” emotions, such as embarrassment, shame, and pride, in 2- and 3-year olds. In the present study, 17-month-olds' behaviours in several contexts were observed; and observations of behaviours of their parents were obtained. Results indicated that toddlers did react appropriately to the situations, and their behaviours in the semi-naturalistic situations cohered as three factors: a guilt factor, an embarrassment factor, and an anxiety/inhibition factor. Embarrassed behaviour included a smile accompanied by indications of embarrassment (gaze aversion, lip press, lip bite, and/or body touching/self-adaptors). Moreover, parental behaviours systematically predicted children's behaviour patterns, but self-recognition was unrelated to most behaviours. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Concepts dissolve artificial boundaries in the study of emotion and cognition,uniting body,brain, and mind

ABSTRACT

Theories of emotion have often maintained artificial boundaries: for instance, that cognition and emotion are separable, and that an emotion concept is separable from the emotional events that comprise its category (e.g. “fear” is distinct from instances of fear). Over the past several years, research has dissolved these artificial boundaries, suggesting instead that conceptual construction is a domain-general process—a process by which the brain makes meaning of the world. The brain constructs emotion concepts, but also cognitions and perceptions, all in the service of guiding action. In this view, concepts are multimodal constructions, dynamically prepared from a set of highly variable instances. This approach obviates old questions (e.g. how does cognition regulate emotion?) but generates new ones (e.g. how does a brain learn emotion concepts?). In this paper, we review this constructionist, predictive coding account of emotion, considering its implications for health and well-being, culture and development.