Theories and measurement of visual attentional processing in anxiety

Most theoretical models of anxiety disorders implicate maladaptive visuo-spatial attentional processing of threat-relevant information in the onset and maintenance of symptoms. We discuss the central mechanistic hypotheses in clinical science regarding problematic attentional processing of threat in anxiety, reconcile what appear to be contradictory predictions, and integrate those hypotheses to describe comprehensively the overt and covert mechanisms of attentional processing within discrete perceptual episodes. In so doing, we examine critically the prevailing theoretical assumptions and measurement models underlying the current investigations of attention and anxiety, and we advocate for increased precision in the translation of models from vision science to the examination of the mechanisms of attentional processing in anxiety. Finally, we discuss the implications of this approach for future translational research that examines the role of attention in anxiety and its treatment.     

The development of the experience and anticipation of regret

Although recent studies have established that children experience regret from around 6 years, we do not yet know when the ability to anticipate this emotion emerges, despite the importance of the anticipation of regret in decision-making. We examined whether children will anticipate they will feel regret if they were to find out in a box-choosing game that, had they made a different choice, they would have obtained a better prize. Experiment 1 replicated Guttentag and Ferrell's study in which children were asked what they hoped was in a non-chosen box. Even 8- to 9-year olds find this question difficult. However, when asked what might make them feel sadder, 7- to 8-year olds (but not younger children) predicted that finding the larger prize in the unchosen box would make them feel this way. In Experiments 2 and 3, children predicted how they would feel if the unchosen box contained either a larger or smaller prize, in order to examine anticipation of both regret and of relief. Although 6- to 7-year olds do experience regret when they find out they could have won a better prize, they do not correctly anticipate feeling this way. By around 8 years, the majority of children are able to anticipate both regret and relief.     

Mechanisms of visual threat detection in specific phobia

People with anxiety or stress-related disorders attend differently to threat-relevant compared with non-threat stimuli, yet the temporal mechanisms of differential allocation of attention are not well understood. We investigated two independent mechanisms of temporal processing of visual threat by comparing spider-phobic and non-fearful participants using a rapid serial visual presentation task. Consistent with prior literature, spider phobics, but not non-fearful controls, displayed threat-specific facilitated detection of spider stimuli relative to negative stimuli and neutral stimuli. Further, signal detection analyses revealed that facilitated threat detection in spider-phobic participants was driven by greater sensitivity to threat stimulus features and a trend towards a lower threshold for detecting spider stimuli. However, phobic participants did not display reliably slowed temporal disengagement from threat-relevant stimuli. These findings advance our understanding of threat feature processing that might contribute to the onset and maintenance of symptoms in specific phobia and disorders that involve visual threat information more generally.     

Infants’ ability to extract three-dimensional shape from coherent motion

Our capacity to perceive three-dimensional (3D) object structure from two-dimensional (2D) retinal input is fundamental to object perception. The present research examined infants’ ability to extract 3D form from structure-from-motion (SFM) displays using a familiarization/visual-paired-comparison paradigm. In SFM displays dots are projected onto the surfaces of a shape that rotates around a 3D axis and it is the coherent structure of the dots’ motion that gives rise to the percept of shape. Infants mean age 4.5 and 9 months were familiarized to a SFM display (e.g., cylinder); in test they were presented the familiar SFM display paired with a novel SFM display (e.g., cube). Infants in both age groups displayed a significant preference for the novel SFM test display. These results are consistent with those obtained previously using habituation paradigms and provide converging evidence for infants’ early emerging capacity to use coherent motion – in the absence of figural information – as a cue to depth structure. In addition, these results demonstrate that infants’ ability to extract 3D shape from coherent motion can be successfully assessed with a neuroimaging-friendly protocol, which was one of the goals of this study.     

Neuropsychological Functioning in Early Hydrocephalus: Review From a Developmental Perspective

Children with hydrocephalus have deficits in several neuropsychological domains. The most notable are motor, visuoperceptual, and visuomotor function. These deficits are multiply determined and depend on the etiology and severity of the hydrocephalus to a large extent. Corpus callosum abnormalities resulting from stretching of callosal fibers and other cortical white matter tracts are implicated as contributory to these deficits. Enlarged ventricles and associated compression of posterior cortical areas also correlate with cognitive impairment. Distinguishing which cognitive domain negatively impacts on the child’s functioning and which domains influence behavior in isolation or in combination has been the subject of numerous studies. Developmentally, we know little about the emergence of neuropsychological functioning in children with hydrocephalus. Study of the effects of hydrocephalus at different stages of development is useful to clinicians and researchers interested in the impact of diffuse neurophysiological damage on cognition in the developing brain. The medical and neuropsychological literature have begun to inform about these effects. The core deficits in hydrocephalus have yet to be explicated and a focus on investigations that answer these questions is required. This review summarizes the current knowledge about neurocognitive sequelae of hydrocephalus.     

Pregnancy complications and neuropsychological outcomes: A review

Pregnancy complications elevate risk of associated adverse medical, socioenvironmental, and behavioral outcomes in children. These are likely to have a substantial impact on neuropsychological functioning and mental health across the child’s lifespan. Thus, an understanding of the complex relationships between pregnancy complications and neuropsychological outcomes is critical for both practitioners and researchers. This review summarizes prevalent pregnancy complications and the associated psychological and neuropsychological findings, highlighting methodological challenges that have restricted investigations of these outcomes and identifying opportune areas for future study.     

The process of forming a mobile media habit: results of a longitudinal study in a real-world setting

ABSTRACT

Media habits are central constructs in audience research. Yet, little is known about the formation of (media) habits. Based on theoretical elaboration and the results of a longitudinal study on the formation of a mobile media application habit—specifically the smartphone application of the Union of European Football Associations for the European soccer championship 2016—in a real-world setting, this article develops a comprehensive framework of media habit formation. The framework focuses on the core process of habit formation: Habits form with (regular) repetition of a behavior in a specific context that is perceived as rewarding. Yet, the findings of the study show that regularity in behavior performance and stable external circumstances are less crucial for the formation of a mobile media habit. Instead, gateway behaviors are proposed as relevant context features for the formation of mobile media habits.     

Relationship Formation and Early Risk Exposure: Diverging Associations with Romantic Self-Concept and Attachment

Early risk exposure reportedly influences romantic relationship formation via an increase in sexualized reproductive strategies and attachment insecurity. Because these are risk adaptations that predict differing interactions in romantic relationships and are complexly related to gender, two studies focused on these features in relation to relationship formation in emerging adulthood. Beyond confirming that self-reported early risk exposure was associated with a more sexualized romantic self-concept, greater numbers of relationships, and greater attachment insecurity, “Study 1” confirmed a hypothesized four-way interaction between gender, early risk, romantic self-concept, and attachment style. “Study 2” clarified the interaction through a regression model predicting a sexualized romantic self-concept differently for men and women. A structural equation model including all the study variables confirmed the hypothesis that pathways for men primarily predicted unrestricted sexuality (i.e., numbers of casual relationships), whereas the pathways for women included direct effects from risk and indicators of committed relationships.     

Effects of Data Noise on Statistical Judgement

People made forecasts from graphically presented time series. Series were sinusoids overlaid by a zero or positive linear trend and a zero, low, moderate, or high level of noise. Forecasting performance was affected by both these variables. However, it did not correlate with ability to identify the trend and correlated significantly with ability to detect the sinusoidal pattern only when series were noise-free. A second experiment showed that the effect of data noise was not influenced by the number of forecasts that people made from a series. These findings are consistent with the view that data noise does not affect the way that forecasts are made but that it impairs them for two reasons. First, it renders the anchor-and-adjust heuristics underlying them less effective. Second, it causes people to add more noise to their judgements in their attempts to make them representative of the data.     

Word recognition across orthographies: Another look at the interaction between context and degradation

Abstract

The performance of English and Spanish subjects was examined in two experiments using a lexical decision task in which the effects of semantic priming and stimulus degradation were systematically varied. The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis predicts that priming and degradation will interact in the orthographically “deep” language (English) but not in the “shallow” one (Spanish). In the first experiment, the two factors were found to interact in a similar way in both English and Spanish groups. In the second experiment, in which only Spanish subjects participated, the interaction was again present but only in those subjects who showed an overall facilitation effect on primed words. The results are consistent with the use of the so-called “direct” route in Spanish and are at variance with other previous findings which have suggested that reading in shallow orthographies occurs via the “indirect” phonological route. There was also evidence that nonword rejection times were slower in Spanish subjects and that the performance of the two groups was affected differently by the different types of neutral baseline primes (asterisks or unrelated words). Possible interpretations of these performance variations are briefly discussed.