Emotional stimuli facilitate time perception in children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The aim of this study was to compare the effect of different emotional stimuli (neutral, positive, and negative) on time perception in children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and normal children in dual‐task form. Five hundred and ninety‐nine students from primary schools were randomly selected. The Conner's Teacher Rating Scale (CTRS) questionnaire was completed by teachers. A total of 100 children with a score above the cut‐off point for the CTRS were further assessed using the Child Symptom Inventory‐4 (CSI‐4). A total of 34 children with ADHD and 31 controls completed an emotional time discrimination task in two blocks of 1000 and 2000 ms duration. Children were asked to compare three image groups: neutral with neutral, neutral with positive, and neutral with negative images. Children with ADHD had significantly better performance in the emotional time discrimination task across all conditions when compared with controls: On average, discrimination thresholds were approximately 35 ms shorter for the children with ADHD. Our results indicate that children with ADHD have higher sensitivity to time relative to controls in a situation in which they must distribute resources between temporal and emotional processing. On the basis of the interference effect and the working memory capacity hypothesis, this dividing of attention causes a decrease of time accuracy in normal children.     

Individual differences in emotional expression discrimination are associated with emotion label production in toddlers

It is possible that the visual discrimination of emotion categories and emotion word vocabulary develop via common emotion-specific processes. In contrast, it is possible that they develop with vocabulary development more generally. This study contrasts these two possibilities. Twenty-three 26-month-olds participated in a visual perceptual discrimination task involving emotional facial expressions. After familiarization to a 100% happy face, toddlers were tested for their visual preference for a novel sad face in a side-by-side presentation paired with the familiar happy face. Parental report was used to quantify production of emotion words and vocabulary generally. Visual preference for the novel emotion (sad) in the discrimination task correlated with emotion word vocabulary size but not with overall vocabulary size.     

Perceiving arousal and valence in facial expressions: Differences between children and adults

Arousal and valence have long been studied as the two primary dimensions for the perception of emotional stimuli such as facial expressions. Prior correlational studies that tested emotion perception along these dimensions found broad similarities between adults and children. However, few studies looked for direct differences between children and adults in these dimensions beyond correlation. We tested 9-year-old children and adults on rating positive and negative facial stimuli based on emotional arousal and valence. Despite high significant correlations between children’s and adults’ ratings, our findings also showed significant differences between children and adults in terms of rating values: Children rated all expressions as significantly more positive than adults in valence. Children also rated positive emotions as more arousing than adults. Our results show that although perception of facial emotions along arousal and valence follows similar patterns in children and adults, some differences in ratings persist, and vary by emotion type.     

From children’s expressive control to emotion regulation: Looking back,looking ahead

Abstract

In 1984, Carolyn Saarni published an important cross-sectional study on the development of children’s expressive control. That paper, as with much of her early work, presaged interest in the development of emotion regulation and of the efforts to understand emotion regulation both in typical and at risk children. In this paper, we look back on Dr. Saarni’s work on expressive control and studies that used her creative disappointment task. We discuss conclusions from that work and how this germinal work on expressive control contributed to the study of the broader concept of emotion regulation. We look ahead to the next steps that carry this line of research forward contributing to the development of emotional competence and mental health.     

Adults’ self-reported attachment influences their savoring ability

Positive affect is important for well-being, yet little is known about individual differences in the ability to up-regulate (savor) positive emotions. In a sample of 120 adults (ages 18–94; 62.5% female), this study extends correlational work by examining how attachment relates to self-reported savoring and to an experimentally-induced behavioral savoring task where participants were randomly assigned to reflect on a positive event (or complete a control task). Avoidance was related to lower trait savoring, and the effects of attachment on experimentally-induced savoring differed by the type of event participants savored. Avoidance was related to poorer affective outcomes after savoring interpersonal events but was unrelated to affective outcomes for non-interpersonal events. Anxiety was related to better outcomes after savoring non-interpersonal events but was unrelated to savoring interpersonal events. Overall, effects suggest that more insecurely attached adults may not savor as often, and may have difficulty savoring interpersonal events but not non-interpersonal events.     

The dynamics of success and failure: how post-behaviour evaluations relate to subsequent exercise intentions and behaviour

Objective: Exercise behaviour change involves multiple experiences with success and failure. The Model of Action Phases (MAP) offers a dynamic account of how success and failure influence both immediate evaluations and future decisions and actions. However, predictions from the MAP have not been formally tested.

Design: A longitudinal daily diary study was used to examine how post-behaviour evaluations of exercise success and failure influence subsequent exercise intentions and behaviour. Participants (N = 104) set exercise goals, and then kept a daily online exercise diary for four weeks.

Main outcome measures: Participants self-reported exercise behaviour, affective response to exercise, self-evaluations after success or failure at following through on intentions to exercise, and intentions to exercise in the next week.

Results: Multilevel modelling revealed significant within- and between-participant relationships among post-behaviour evaluations, intentions and subsequent behaviour. Findings supported MAP-derived predictions about how success and failure at exercise are associated with feelings about exercise and the self, and inform subsequent exercise intentions and behaviour.

Conclusion: Positive post-behaviour evaluations of success or failure may stabilise positive intentions and aid maintenance of exercise behaviour. Implications of these MAP-based findings for intervention design are discussed.     

Divided attention enhances the recognition of emotional stimuli: evidence from the attentional boost effect

The present study examined predictions of the early-phase-elevated-attention hypothesis of the attentional boost effect (ABE), which suggests that transient increases in attention at encoding, as instantiated in the ABE paradigm, should enhance the recognition of neutral and positive items (whose encoding is mostly based on controlled processes), while having small or null effects on the recognition of negative items (whose encoding is primarily based on automatic processes). Participants were presented a sequence of negative, neutral and positive stimuli (pictures in Experiment 1, words in Experiment 2) associated to target (red) squares, distractor (green) squares or no squares (baseline condition). They were told to attend to the pictures/words and simultaneously press the spacebar of the computer when a red square appeared. In a later recognition task, stimuli associated to target squares were recognised better than stimuli associated to distractor squares, replicating the standard ABE. More importantly, we also found that: (a) the memory enhancement following target detection occurred with all types of stimuli (neutral, negative and positive) and (b) the advantage of negative stimuli over neutral stimuli was intact in the DA condition. These findings suggest that the encoding of negative stimuli depends on both controlled (attention-dependent) and automatic (attention-independent) processes.     

Positive emotional attention bias in young children with symptoms of ADHD

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often experience emotional dysregulation. Dysregulation can arise from heightened attention to emotional stimuli. Emotional attention biases are associated with a number of adverse socioemotional outcomes including reward sensitivity and externalizing behaviors. As reward sensitivity and externalizing behaviors are common in children with ADHD, the aim of the current study was to determine whether emotional attention biases are evident in young children with clinically significant ADHD symptoms. To test this, children with (n = 18) and without (n = 15) symptoms of ADHD were tested on a Dot Probe task. Provided recent evidence that emotional attention biases are attenuated by sleep, the task was performed before and after overnight sleep. Children with ADHD symptoms displayed positive, but not negative, attention biases at both time points, whereas typically developing children did not preferentially attend toward or away from positive or negative stimuli. Sleep did not alter attention biases in either group. Collectively, these results indicate that children with ADHD symptoms have stable, positive attention biases.     

情绪刺激对前瞻记忆的影响

使用情绪图片作为背景任务刺激,通过两个实验来考察积极情绪和消极情绪对时间性和事件性前瞻记忆的影响。结果发现,对于背景任务的反应时,在时间性前瞻记忆和事件性前瞻记忆中,情绪的主效应都显著。而对于前瞻任务的正确率,在两种前瞻记忆中,情绪的主效应都不显著。将两个实验的数据合并分析发现,对于前瞻任务的正确率,任务类型的主效应显著,即时间性前瞻记忆的成绩显著高于事件性前瞻记忆; 而情绪的主效应不显著。结果表明,背景任务中不同的情绪刺激会对个体完成背景任务的速度产生影响,而对前瞻记忆任务的执行不会产生影响。