Do generation and regulation of emotions interact? Examination of their relationships in young adults

Emotions can be generated in response to inherently emotional perceptual properties of a stimulus (‘bottom up’) and in response to cognitive interpretations of an event (‘top down’). Similarly, emotion regulation (ER) strategies may deploy bottom-up or top-down processes, however the specific nature of these processes remains unclear. In this study we sought to replicate and extend previous studies that have investigated the interaction between ER and emotion generation. Specifically, we examined the relationship between both methods of emotion generation and ER in a sample of 75 undergraduate students who completed self-report questionnaires and a behavioral task of ER. We attempted to extend previous research by testing whether the positive effect of cognitive reappraisal on top-down generated emotions was specific to reappraisal or true of multiple ER strategies. Overall there was a main effect of generation such that top-down generated emotion was better regulated by cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and appraisal strategies. We also found a main effect of ER such that cognitive reappraisal was perceived as the most successful ER strategy. We argue that ER is a state-dependent process that includes dynamic cycles between emotion generation and regulation processes. We further discuss expressive suppression as a top-down emotion regulation strategy in the context of our study despite debated literature.     

Do infants discriminate non-linguistic vocal expressions of positive emotions?

Adults are highly proficient in understanding emotional signals from both facial and vocal cues, including when communicating across cultural boundaries. However, the developmental origin of this ability is poorly understood, and in particular, little is known about the ontogeny of differentiation of signals with the same valence. The studies reported here employed a habituation paradigm to test whether preverbal infants discriminate between non-linguistic vocal expressions of relief and triumph. Infants as young as 6 months who had habituated to relief or triumph showed significant discrimination of relief and triumph tokens at test (i.e. greater recovery to the unhabituated stimulus type), when exposed to tokens from a single individual (Study 1). Infants habituated to expressions from multiple individuals showed less consistent discrimination in that consistent discrimination was only found when infants were habituated to relief tokens (Study 2). Further, infants tested with tokens from individuals from different cultures showed dishabituation only when habituated to relief tokens and only at 10–12 months (Study 3). These findings suggest that discrimination between positive emotional expressions develops early and is modulated by learning. Further, infants' categorical representations of emotional expressions, like those of speech sounds, are influenced by speaker-specific information.     

Trauma memories on trial: is cross-examination a safeguard against distorted analogue traumatic memories?

Trauma memories can feel more disorganised than more mundane memories. That may be problematic in legal contexts. Here we examined: (a) whether that disorganised feeling makes people more susceptible to suggestive questioning during direct examination; and (b) whether cross-examination is the safeguard it is purported to be: that is, we examined whether cross-examination can uncover and correct distorted trauma memories. We showed participants a film depicting a graphic car accident. For some participants, the film unfolded in a temporally disorganised way. We then interviewed participants immediately after the film regarding what they had seen: this ‘direct examination’ included free recall, cued recall and yes/no questions, some of which were misleading. Then, 48 hours later, a second interviewer cross-examined participants. Contrary to our predictions, neither manipulation of the film's temporal organisation, nor participants’ self-reported feelings of event disorganisation significantly affected their accuracy of the film during direct or cross-examination nor their recognition memory of the film. Instead, we found that regardless of whether participants’ memories were distorted by the direct examination, the suggestive nature of the cross-examination introduced sufficient doubt that participants were willing to change their answers. We conclude that traumatic memories are vulnerable to suggestive questioning and, unfortunately, cross-examination is not the legal system's fail-safe corrective influence.     

Healthcare at Your Fingertips: The Professional Ethics of Smartphone Health-Monitoring Applications

Health professionals are inundated by the surfeit of health apps while lacking guidance to help them critically evaluate whether a particular health-monitoring app is safe, likely to lead to clinical benefit, and not introduce additional liability. Our objective is not to argue for or against the use of mobile health-monitoring apps but to illuminate the associated ethical issues and provide recommendations to guide the ethical decision-making process for clinicians who are considering the use of a mobile health-monitoring app. To this end, the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists is used as a framework to situate recommendations.     

Pediatric Whole Exome Sequencing: an Assessment of Parents’ Perceived and Actual Understanding.

Whole exome sequencing (WES) is an integral tool in the diagnosis of genetic conditions in pediatric patients, but concerns have been expressed about the complexity of the information and the possibility for secondary findings that need to be conveyed to those deciding about WES. Currently, there is no validated tool to assess parental understanding of WES. We developed and implemented a survey to assess perceived and actual understanding of WES in parents who consented to clinical WES for their child between July 2013 and May 2015. Fifty-three eligible surveys were returned (57% response rate). Areas with both low perceived and actual understanding about WES included how genes are analyzed and lack of protection against life insurance discrimination. Parents also had low actual understanding for two questions related to secondary findings – reporting of secondary findings in a parent (if tested) and whether secondary findings can be related to traits such as height and hair color. Further work to develop a validated tool to assess understanding of WES would be beneficial as WES is integrated more frequently into clinical care.     

Systematic review of the psychometric properties of transphobia scales

Introduction: Prejudice and discrimination against transgender individuals (i.e., transphobia) is pervasive and has been shown to have pernicious effects on the physical (e.g., substance abuse and other self-harm behaviors) and psychological (e.g., depression and suicidal ideation) well-being of those targeted.

Aims: To date, a review of the psychometric properties of scales assessing transphobia has not been conducted; this gap compromises researchers' ability to make informed measurement decisions.

Methods: In the current study, 61 articles that contained 83 scales were identified, and their adherence to best practices in psychometric testing was evaluated.

Results: Most of the transphobia scales included in the current review did not provide sufficient information about item generation and refinement, scale dimensionality, scale score reliability, or validity. Each scale was entered into a table and was ranked on the basis of its total score. A score of 1 was issued for each psychometric feature that adhered to best practice guidelines, with total scores ranging from 0 to 5 (i.e., higher scores denote greater psychometric soundness).

Discussion: Properties of the reviewed scales are summarized and recommendations are made for future transphobia scale development and validation. The measures that emerged as possessing the highest scores and, subsequently, the greatest utility are identified.     

Views on Abortion: A Comparison of Female Genetic Counselors and Women from the General Population

While literature characterizing individual genetic counselors’ abortion attitudes is sparse, the National Society of Genetic Counselors takes a clear stance for reproductive autonomy. To determine genetic counselors’ views, this study compared (1) genetic counselors’ abortion attitudes to those of women from the general population and (2) genetic counselors’ professional abortion attitudes to their personal abortion attitudes. Genetic counselors were invited to complete an online survey. Response rate was 44.3% (709/1,601). Compared to women from the general population, female genetic counselors were significantly more likely to agree abortion should be an option in all cases (p < .001). Controlling for other possible confounders, regression analyses revealed that being a genetic counselor, religious service attendance and age were significantly predictive of abortion attitudes. Although the vast majority of genetic counselors agree that abortion should be available, they are significantly less likely to personally consider abortion under all circumstances presented (p < .001), and the percentage of genetic counselors who would consider terminating in the case of a severe birth defect is similar to studies of other women.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT OF MULTIPLY CONTROLLED INAPPROPRIATE MEALTIME BEHAVIOR

Functional analyses identified children whose inappropriate mealtime behavior was maintained by escape and adult attention. Function‐based extinction procedures were tested individually and in combination. Attention extinction alone did not result in decreases in inappropriate mealtime behavior or a significant increase in acceptance. By contrast, escape extinction alone resulted in a decrease in inappropriate mealtime behavior and an increase in acceptance. However, inappropriate mealtime behavior did not decrease to clinically acceptable levels. A combined extinction technique (i.e., escape and attention extinction) resulted in a decrease in inappropriate mealtime behavior to clinically acceptable levels and high and stable acceptance.     

Predicting Treatment and Follow-up Attrition in Parent–Child Interaction Therapy

Predictors of attrition from individual parent–child interaction therapy were examined for 99 families of preschoolers with disruptive behavior disorders. Seventy-one percent of treatment dropouts were identified by lower SES, more maternal negative talk, and less maternal total praise at pretreatment. Following PCIT, families were randomly assigned to an Assessment-Only or Maintenance Treatment condition. Higher maternal distress predicted 63% of dropouts in the Assessment-Only condition. Lower maternal intellectual functioning predicted 83% of dropouts from Maintenance Treatment. Findings highlight a continuing need for evidence-based retention strategies at various phases of engagement in PCIT. This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (RO1 MH60632). We thank the members of the UF Child Study Laboratory for their contributions to this study.     

Temporal dynamics of awareness for facial identity revealed with ERP

In this study, we investigated the scalp recorded event-related potential (ERP) responses related to visual awareness. A backward masking procedure was performed while high-density EEG recordings were carried out. Subjects were asked to detect a familiar face, presented at durations that varied parametrically between 16 and 266 ms. ERPs were computed and awareness was assessed using a sensitivity measure from signal detection theory (d'). Modifications in the electrical scalp topographies were found to reflect visual awareness of the stimulus. In particular, an early map topography was found to emerge progressively around 230 ms, showing a pattern of increase similar to the measure of visual awareness. This was followed by an increase in duration of a second, P300-like map. Source localisation for the early awareness-related topography revealed the activation of a distributed network of brain areas including frontal and temporo-occipital regions. Our results suggest that conscious experience emerges in parallel with the activation of a specific neural network that occurs in a time window beginning from about 200 ms.