Processing emotional facial expressions: The role of anxiety and awareness

In this paper, the role of self-reported anxiety and degree of conscious awareness as determinants of the selective processing of affective facial expressions is investigated. In two experiments, an attentional bias toward fearful facial expressions was observed, although this bias was apparent only for those reporting high levels of trait anxiety and only when the emotional face was presented in the left visual field. This pattern was especially strong when the participants were unaware of the presence of the facial stimuli. In Experiment 3, a patient with right-hemisphere brain damage and visual extinction was presented with photographs of faces and fruits on unilateral and bilateral trials. On bilateral trials, it was found that faces produced less extinction than did fruits. Moreover, faces portraying a fearful or a happy expression tended to produce less extinction than did neutral expressions. This suggests that emotional facial expressions may be less dependent on attention to achieve awareness. The implications of these results for understanding the relations between attention, emotion, and anxiety are discussed.     

Self-control skills and negative emotional state: a focus on hostility

The self-control theory of psychopathology has contributed to the understanding and treatment of unipolar depression. This paper explores the relationship between self-control skills as measured by the Frequency of Self-reinforcement Questionnaire and other negative emotional states, with a focus on hostility. In Study 1, scores on the Brief Symptom Inventory were inversely related to self-control skills among a sample of 53 college students, suggesting potential generalizability of the theory. In Study 2, self-control skills were inversely related to hostility, anger, and aggression among a sample of 68 college students. The role of self-control skills in the regulation of hostility deserves further investigation.     

Attentional Bias for Threat: Evidence for Delayed Disengagement from Emotional Faces

The present paper reports three new experiments suggesting that the valence of a face cue can influence attentional effects in a cueing paradigm. Moreover, heightened trait anxiety resulted in increased attentional dwell-time on emotional facial stimuli, relative to neutral faces. Experiment 1 presented a cueing task, in which the cue was either an "angry", "happy", or "neutral" facial expression. Targets could appear either in the same location as the face (valid trials) or in a different location to the face (invalid trials). Participants did not show significant variations across the different cue types (angry, happy, neutral) in responding to a target on valid trials. However, the valence of the face did affect response times on invalid trials. Specifically, participants took longer to respond to a target when the face cue was "angry" or "happy" relative to neutral. In Experiment 2, the cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was increased and an overall inhibition of return (IOR) effect was found (i.e., slower responses on valid trials). However, the "angry" face cue eliminated the IOR effect for both high and low trait anxious groups. In Experiment 3, threat-related and jumbled facial stimuli reduced the magnitude of IOR for high, but not for low, trait-anxious participants.These results suggest that: (i) attentional bias in anxiety may reflect a difficulty in disengaging from threat-related and emotional stimuli, and (ii) threat-related and ambiguous cues can influence the magnitude of the IOR effect.     

Within-person changes in the structure of emotion: the role of cultural identification and language

This study explored the within-person dynamic organization of emotion in East-Asian Canadian bicultural individuals as they function in two cultural worlds. Using a diary design, we examined under what conditions their emotional structure resembles that of Westerners or that of East Asians. As predicted, when these bicultural individuals identified with a Western culture or had recently spoken a non-Asian language, their positive and negative affect were inversely associated. When they identified with an Asian culture or interacted in an Asian language, this inverse association disappeared. This study shows that as bicultural individuals identify and communicate with members of one or the other cultural group, they may adopt a culturally congruent phenomenology, including a distinct affective pattern.     

A preliminary investigation of the relationship between emotion regulation difficulties and posttraumatic stress symptoms

This study examined the relationship between posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms and particular aspects of emotion regulation difficulties among trauma-exposed individuals. Participants were an ethnically diverse sample of 108 undergraduates from an urban university. PTS symptom severity was found to be associated with lack of emotional acceptance, difficulty engaging in goal-directed behavior when upset, impulse-control difficulties, limited access to effective emotion regulation strategies, and lack of emotional clarity. Further, overall difficulties in emotion regulation were associated with PTS symptom severity, controlling for negative affect. Finally, individuals exhibiting PTS symptoms indicative of a PTSD diagnosis reported greater difficulties with emotion regulation than those reporting PTS symptoms at a subthreshold level. The implications of these findings for research and treatment are discussed.     

Cultural differences in young children's vulnerability to injuries: a risk and protection perspective.

Interview data from 100 lower income Hispanic and 50 White mothers from a nutritional service clinic extended prior research on cultural differences in the risk for unintentional pediatric injuries. Group differences were expected in reported injury incidence and in the prevalence and impact of contributing factors. As predicted, White mothers reported more injuries for a young child, and among Hispanic mothers, English language preference and use were associated with more reported injuries. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that risky behaviors, mother's judgment about child compliance, and stressful life events were better predictors of injuries than housing quality, but among Hispanics, the impact of certain factors (e.g. child temperament) was qualified by mother's acculturation level. Stress and child temperament explained injury differences between more- and less-acculturated Hispanic families but only partially accounted for differences between White mothers and less-acculturated Hispanics. Pediatric injury risk and protective factors seemed to operate in concert with cultural processes.