Childhood Social Withdrawal,Interpersonal Impairment,and Young Adult Depression: A Mediational Model

Building on interpersonal theories of depression, the current study sought to explore whether early childhood social withdrawal serves as a risk factor for depressive symptoms and diagnoses in young adulthood. The researchers hypothesized that social impairment at age 15 would mediate the association between social withdrawal at age 5 and depression by age 20. This mediational model was tested in a community sample of 702 Australian youth followed from mother’s pregnancy to youth age 20. Structural equation modeling analyses found support for a model in which childhood social withdrawal predicted adolescent social impairment, which, in turn, predicted depression in young adulthood. Additionally, gender was found to moderate the relationship between adolescent social impairment and depression in early adulthood, with females exhibiting a stronger association between social functioning and depression at the symptom and diagnostic level. This study illuminates one potential pathway from early developing social difficulties to later depressive symptoms and disorders.     

Evaluating the Evidence for the General Factor of Personality across Multiple Inventories

A general factor of personality (GFP) has been proposed as the apex of a personality trait hierarchy that explains covariance among the lower-order factors measured by various personality inventories. In this study we evaluated the GFP hypothesis across several personality inventories, unlike most previous research in which the GFP has been derived from individual instruments in isolation. Exploratory analyses did not produce substantial evidence for the existence of a single cross-instrument higher-order factor of factors and efforts to specify a range of GFP-inspired models in a confirmatory framework led to significant estimation difficulties and poor fit to the data. Overall these results fail to support a common GFP that is positioned at the top of a personality trait hierarchy.     

Reappraising the situation and its impact on aggressive behavior

Much work has focused on how reappraisal is related to emotions, but not behaviors. Two experiments advanced aggression theory by (a) testing how cognitive and attributional forms of reappraisal are related to aggressive affect and behavior, (b) testing variables that theoretically mediate the relation between attributional reappraisal and aggressive behavior, (c) testing the moderating influences of cognitive and attributional reappraisal on aggressive behavior, and (d) developing and testing an intervention aimed at reducing vengeance through reappraisal training. Study 1 used an essay writing task in a 3 (feedback: provocation, no feedback, praise) × 2 (mitigating information: present, absent) experimental design. Provoked participants who did not receive mitigating information were significantly more aggressive than provoked participants who received mitigating information. State vengeance was a significant mediator. Study 2 examined an experimental intervention on vengeance over a 16-week semester. Intervention participants who had the largest increase in reappraisal displayed the greatest decrease in vengeance. Overall, these findings suggest that reappraisal reduces vengeance and aggressive behavior.     

Implicit negative evaluations about ex-partner predicts break-up adjustment: the brighter side of dark cognitions

Using a subliminal priming lexical decision task, the present research investigated whether individuals who show negative implicit evaluations of an ex-partner immediately after a break-up show superior post-break-up emotional adjustment. As expected, individuals whose reaction times indicated negative implicit evaluations of their ex-partner showed reduced depressive affect immediately after the break-up. Individuals who did not initiate their break-up demonstrated less negative implicit evaluations of their ex-partners as well as more depressive affect. Finally, increased negative implicit evaluations of ex-partners over a one-month period were associated with corresponding improvements in adjustment. The findings demonstrate a critical role for implicit evaluations in post-break-up adjustment.     

A discrete emotions approach to positive emotion disturbance in depression

Converging findings suggest that depressed individuals exhibit disturbances in positive emotion. No study, however, has ascertained which specific positive emotions are implicated in depression. We report two studies that compare how depressive symptoms relate to distinct positive emotions at both trait and state levels of assessment. In Study 1 (N=185), we examined associations between depressive symptoms and three trait positive emotions (pride, happy, amusement). Study 2 compared experiential and autonomic reactivity to pride, happy, and amusement film stimuli between depressive (n=24; DS) and non-depressive (n=31; NDS) symptom groups. Results indicate that symptoms of depression were most strongly associated with decreased trait pride and decreased positive emotion experience to pride-eliciting films. Discussion focuses on the implications these findings have for understanding emotion deficits in depression as well as for the general study of positive emotion.     

Exposure to severe urban air pollution influences cognitive outcomes, brain volume and systemic inflammation in clinically healthy children

Exposure to severe air pollution produces neuroinflammation and structural brain alterations in children. We tested whether patterns of brain growth, cognitive deficits and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) are associated with exposures to severe air pollution. Baseline and 1 year follow-up measurements of global and regional brain MRI volumes, cognitive abilities (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, WISC-R), and serum inflammatory mediators were collected in 20 Mexico City (MC) children (10 with white matter hyperintensities, WMH⁺, and 10 without, WMH⁻) and 10 matched controls (CTL) from a low polluted city. There were significant differences in white matter volumes between CTL and MC children - both WMH⁺ and WMH⁻ - in right parietal and bilateral temporal areas. Both WMH⁻ and WMH⁺ MC children showed progressive deficits, compared to CTL children, on the WISC-R Vocabulary and Digit Span subtests. The cognitive deficits in highly exposed children match the localization of the volumetric differences detected over the 1 year follow-up, since the deficits observed are consistent with impairment of parietal and temporal lobe functions. Regardless of the presence of prefrontal WMH, Mexico City children performed more poorly across a variety of cognitive tests, compared to CTL children, thus WMH⁺ is likely only partially identifying underlying white matter pathology. Together these findings reveal that exposure to air pollution may perturb the trajectory of cerebral development and result in cognitive deficits during childhood.     

African American Women’s Limited Knowledge and Experiences with Genetic Counseling for Hereditary Breast Cancer

Genetic counseling and testing for hereditary breast cancer have the potential benefit of early detection and early interventions in African American women. However, African American women have low use of these services compared to White women. We conducted two focus groups with African American women diagnosed with breast cancer (affected group, n?=?13) and women with at least one first-degree relative with breast/ovarian cancer (unaffected group, n?=?8). A content analysis approach was employed to analyze interview data. Breast cancer survivors had more knowledge about genetic counseling and testing than participants who were unaffected with cancer. However, knowledge about genetic counseling was limited in both groups. Barriers to pursuing genetic counseling and testing included poor understanding of the genetic counseling and testing process, fear of carrying the mutation, concerns about discrimination, and cost. Motivators to participate in genetic counseling and testing included desire to help family members, insurance coverage, and potential of benefiting the larger African American community. Education efforts are needed to increase genetic counseling and testing awareness in the African American community.     

Big secrets do not necessarily cause hills to appear steeper

Slepian, Masicampo, Toosi, and Ambady (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 619–624, 2012, Study 1) found that individuals recalling and writing about a big, meaningful secret judged a pictured hill as steeper than did those who recalled and wrote about a small, inconsequential secret (with estimates unrelated to physical effort unaffected). From an embodied cognition perspective, this result was interpreted as suggesting that important secrets weigh people down. Answering to mounting calls for the crucial need of independent direct replications of published findings to ensure the self-correcting nature of our science, we sought to corroborate Slepian et al.’s finding in two extremely high-powered, preregistered studies that were very faithful to all procedural and methodological details of the original study (i.e., same cover story, study title, manipulation, measures, item order, scale anchors, task instructions, sampling frame, population, and statistical analyses). In both samples, we were unsuccessful in replicating the target finding. Although Slepian et al. reported three other studies supporting the secret burdensomeness phenomenon, we advise that these three other findings need to be independently corroborated before the general phenomenon informs theory or health interventions.