Randomized controlled trial of expressive writing for psychological and physical health: the moderating role of emotional expressivity

The current study assessed main effects and moderators (including emotional expressiveness, emotional processing, and ambivalence over emotional expression) of the effects of expressive writing in a sample of healthy adults. Young adult participants (N=116) were randomly assigned to write for 20 minutes on four occasions about deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their most stressful/traumatic event in the past five years (expressive writing) or about a control topic (control). Dependent variables were indicators of anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms. No significant effects of writing condition were evident on anxiety, depressive symptoms, or physical symptoms. Emotional expressiveness emerged as a significant moderator of anxiety outcomes, however. Within the expressive writing group, participants high in expressiveness evidenced a significant reduction in anxiety at three-month follow-up, and participants low in expressiveness showed a significant increase in anxiety. Expressiveness did not predict change in anxiety in the control group. These findings on anxiety are consistent with the matching hypothesis, which suggests that matching a person's naturally elected coping approach with an assigned intervention is beneficial. These findings also suggest that expressive writing about a stressful event may be contraindicated for individuals who do not typically express emotions.     

Associations between prenatal substance exposure,prenatal violence victimization,unintended pregnancy,and trauma exposure in childhood in a clinical setting

Given the importance of early prevention and intervention strategies for children exposed to trauma, detection of early risk factors for exposure to traumatic events in childhood is critical. The present study examined associations between three known prenatal risk factors that characterize environmental instability in utero—prenatal substance exposure, prenatal violence victimization, and unintended pregnancy—and child exposure to interparental violence and other adverse experiences in a sample of 198 mother–child dyads (M child age = 44.48 months) referred to a hospital clinic for treatment following exposure to trauma. Prenatal substance and violence exposure were associated with child trauma exposure, and prenatal violence victimization was also associated with maternal severity ratings of traumatic exposures. Unintended pregnancy was not associated with child trauma exposure or severity. These findings expand our understanding of prenatal risk factors for trauma exposure in childhood and, specifically, highlight prenatal substance exposure and violence victimization as risk factors for subsequent exposure to trauma in early childhood. Results suggest that prenatal prevention and intervention programs should target reducing maternal substance use and in-utero exposure to violence.     

Boo! The consciousness problem in emotion

ABSTRACT

This paper will examine the conscious aspects of emotion (i.e. emotional experience), arguably the defining features of emotion. I will argue that emotion IS emotional experience and, consequently, that emotion researchers rarely study emotion itself. I will suggest a research agenda for examining the conscious aspects of emotion and end with a consideration of appraisal theory and how it can be made more relevant to the study of emotion by treating appraisals as components of a pre-reflective perceptual process rather than as causal antecedents of a cognitive process that can be self-reported on.     

Mapping Word to World in ASL: Evidence from a Human Simulation Paradigm

Across languages, children map words to meaning with great efficiency, despite a seemingly unconstrained space of potential mappings. The literature on how children do this is primarily limited to spoken language. This leaves a gap in our understanding of sign language acquisition, because several of the hypothesized mechanisms that children use are visual (e.g., visual attention to the referent), and sign languages are perceived in the visual modality. Here, we used the Human Simulation Paradigm in American Sign Language (ASL) to determine potential cues to word learning. Sign-naïve adult participants viewed video clips of parent–child interactions in ASL, and at a designated point, had to guess what ASL sign the parent produced. Across two studies, we demonstrate that referential clarity in ASL interactions is characterized by access to information about word class and referent presence (for verbs), similarly to spoken language. Unlike spoken language, iconicity is a cue to word meaning in ASL, although this is not always a fruitful cue. We also present evidence that verbs are highlighted well in the input, relative to spoken English. The results shed light on both similarities and differences in the information that learners may have access to in acquiring signed versus spoken languages.