The Experience of Intrusions Scale: a preliminary examination

Intrusive thoughts (i.e., unwelcome, distressing, involuntary thoughts) are prevalent in a variety of clinical conditions and are increasingly a focus of translational research. The goal of this study was to develop and preliminarily examine a brief self-report measure designed to assess clinically relevant aspects of the experience of intrusive thoughts related to a particular target. The Experience of Intrusions Scale (EIS) is a five-item measure that assesses the frequency, unpredictability, and unwantedness of intrusive thoughts, as well as the interference and distress caused by the intrusions, each on a five-point Likert-type scale. Five times over a four-] period, female undergraduates (N=160) completed the EIS in response to intrusive thoughts regarding a film clip depicting a sexual assault. On the first and last days, participants completed the EIS five minutes after watching the clip. In between film clip viewings, participants completed the EIS once per day. The EIS demonstrated good internal consistency, good to excellent test-retest reliability using both immediate post-stimulus and 24-hour time intervals, and convergent validity with two existing measures of intrusive phenomena: the White Bear Suppression Inventory (Wegner & Zanakos, 1994) and the Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Civilian Version (Weathers, Litz, Herman, Huska, & Keane, 1993).     

To err again is human: exploring a bidirectional relationship between pressure and performance failure feedback

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: While the potentially negative effects of pressure on skilled performance have been well studied in laboratory-based research, theoretically driven questions based on real-world performance data are lacking.

Design: We aimed to test the predictions of the newly developed Attentional Control Theory: Sport (ACTS), using archived play-by-play data from the past seven seasons of the National Football League (American Football).

Methods: An additive scoring system was developed to characterize the degree of pressure on 212,356 individual offensive plays and a Bayesian regression model was used to test the relationship between performance, pressure and preceding negative outcomes, as outlined in ACTS.

Results: There was found to be a clear increase in the incidence of failures on high pressure plays (odds ratio?=?1.20), and on plays immediately following a previous play failure (odds ratio?=?1.09). Additionally, a combined interactive effect of previous failure and pressure indicated that the feedback effect of negative outcomes was greater when pressure was already high (odds ratio?=?1.10), in line with the predictions of ACTS.

Conclusions: These findings reveal the importance of exploring momentary changes in pressure in real-world sport settings, and the role of failure feedback in influencing the pressure-performance relationship.     

The influence of quiet eye training and pressure on attention and visuo-motor control

The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of an intervention designed to train effective visual attentional control (quiet eye-training) for a far aiming skill, and determine whether such training protected against attentional disruptions associated with performing under pressure. Sixteen novice participants wore a mobile eye-tracker to assess their visual attentional control (quiet eye) during the completion of 520 basketball free throws carried out over 8 days. They first performed 40 pre-test free throws and were randomly allocated into a quiet eye (QE) training or Control group (technical instruction only). Participants then performed 360 free throws during a training period and a further 120 test free throws under conditions designed to manipulate the level of anxiety experienced. The QE trained group maintained more effective visual attentional control and performed significantly better in the pressure test compared to the Control group, providing support for the efficacy of attentional training for visuo-motor skills.     

Quiet Eye Training Improves Small Arms Maritime Marksmanship

Quiet eye training—teaching task-specific gaze control—has been consistently shown to optimize the acquisition of motor skills. The present study aimed to examine the potential benefits of a quiet eye training intervention in a simulated maritime marksmanship task that involved shooting fast approaching moving targets with a decommissioned general-purpose machine gun. Twenty participants were randomly assigned to a quiet eye trained (QET) or technical trained (TT) group and completed 2 baseline, 20 training, and 2 retention trials on the moving-target task. Compared to their TT counterparts, the QET group displayed more effective gaze control (longer quiet eye durations and greater target locking) and more accurate performance (smaller radial error of both the initial shot and average of all shots) at retention. These findings highlight the potential for quiet eye training to be used to support the training of marksmanship skills in military settings.     

Less is more? Effects of exhaustive vs. minimal emotion labelling on emotion regulation strategy planning

Previous research suggests that labelling emotions, or describing affective states using emotion words, facilitates emotion regulation. But how much labelling promotes emotion regulation? And which emotion regulation strategies does emotion labelling promote? Drawing on cognitive theories of emotion, we predicted that labelling emotions using fewer words would be less confusing and would facilitate forms of emotion regulation requiring more cognitively demanding processing of context. Participants (N?=?82) mentally immersed themselves in an emotional vignette, were randomly assigned to an exhaustive or minimal emotion labelling manipulation, and then completed an emotion regulation strategy planning task. Minimal (vs. exhaustive) emotion labelling promoted higher subjective emotional clarity. Furthermore, in terms of specific emotion regulation strategies, minimal emotion labelling prompted more plans for problem solving and marginally more plans for reappraisal, but did not affect plans for behavioural activation or social support seeking. We discuss implications for the cognitive mechanisms supporting the generation of emotion regulation strategies.     

Quiet Eye Training: Effects on Learning and Performance Under Pressure

The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of quiet eye (QE) training in optimizing the learning and performance under pressure of novices in a putting task. Fourteen participants performed 40 pre-test putts and were randomly allocated into a QE training or control group. They then performed 320 acquisition phase putts and a further 120 test putts in a retention-transfer (pressure)-retention design. The QE-trained group maintained more effective attentional control and performed significantly better in the pressure test compared to the control group. Furthermore, longer QE periods were associated with better performance across all test putts.     

A Multi-Method Investigation of Parental Responses to Youth Emotion: Prospective Effects on Emotion Dysregulation and Reactive Aggression in Daily Life

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Parental responses to negative emotion, one key component of emotion socialization, may function to increase (or decrease) reactive aggression...     

“R U Mad?”: Computerized text analysis of affect in social media relates to stress and substance use among ethnic minority emerging adult males

Objective: This study examined the interactive role of affectivity and stress in substance use severity among ethnic minority, emerging adult males, using linguistic indicators of affect obtained through social media.

Method: Participants were 119 emerging adult, ethnic minority males (ages 18–25) who provided access to their mobile phone text messaging and Facebook activity for 6-months. Computerized text analysis (LIWC2015) was used to obtain linguistic indices of positive and negative affect from texts and Facebook posts. The Perceived Stress Scale was used to measure stress, and items from the Drug Abuse Screening Test were used to measure substance use severity.

Results: Generalized estimating equations showed that higher negative affect in texts was associated with greater substance use severity. Stress moderated the relationship between positive affect expressed in Facebook posts and substance use such that higher positive affect in Facebook posts was associated with less substance use at higher stress and greater substance use at lower stress.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the complexities of interactions between stress and affectivity. Findings could inform development of substance use interventions for young males that employ social technologies.