Early Childhood Externalising Behaviour Problems: Child, Parenting, and Family-related Predictors Over Time

This study examined the dynamic relationships between child, parenting, and family-related predictor variables and early childhood externalising behaviour problems. A community sample of 395 Australian children was followed longitudinally, and assessed at 4 and 6 years with the Child Behavior Checklist, Teacher Report Form, and standard measures of parenting, temperament, and familial adversity. Variables based on the average scores across the two assessments and the change in scores between assessments were utilised as predictors of parent-reported and teacher-reported externalising behaviour problems at age 6. It was hypothesised that both higher average scores and more detrimental changes in scores, would independently predict externalising problems at age 6. Multivariable analyses found that the presence of parent-reported child externalising problems in six-year-olds were predicted by: (i) the presence of parent-reported child externalising problems at age 4, (ii) higher average “teacher-reported child externalising behaviour,” “inflexible temperament,” “non-persistent temperament,” and “over-reactive parenting,” and (iii) an increased “inflexible temperament” score between age 4 and age 6. The presence of teacher-reported child externalising problems at age 6 was predicted by higher average “parent-reported child externalising behaviour,” and “over-reactive parenting.” The results provide further evidence of the adverse impact of continuing high levels of temperament difficulties and over-reactive parenting on externalising behaviour in early childhood. However, contrary to expectations, the contribution of including the dynamic change scores was limited.     

Automatic mimicry reactions as related to differences in emotional empathy

The hypotheses of this investigation were derived by conceiving of automatic mimicking as a component of emotional empathy. Differences between subjects high and low in emotional empathy were investigated. The parameters compared were facial mimicry reactions, as represented by electromyographic (EMG) activity when subjects were exposed to pictures of angry or happy faces, and the degree of correspondence between subjects' facial EMG reactions and their self-reported feelings. The comparisons were made at different stimulus exposure times in order to elicit reactions at different levels of information processing. The high-empathy subjects were found to have a higher degree of mimicking behavior than the low-empathy subjects, a difference that emerged at short exposure times (17-40 ms) that represented automatic reactions. The low-empathy subjects tended already at short exposure times (17-40 ms) to show inverse zygomaticus muscle reactions, namely "smiling" when exposed to an angry face. The high-empathy group was characterized by a significantly higher correspondence between facial expressions and self-reported feelings. No differences were found between the high- and low-empathy subjects in their verbally reported feelings when presented a happy or an angry face. Thus, the differences between the groups in emotional empathy appeared to be related to differences in automatic somatic reactions to facial stimuli rather than to differences in their conscious interpretation of the emotional situation.     

Patients with generalized social phobia direct their attention away from faces

The experiment tested whether patients with social phobia direct their attention to or away from faces with a range of emotional expressions. A modified dot probe paradigm (J. Abnorm. Psychol. 95 (1986) 15) measured whether participants attended more to faces or to household objects. Twenty patients with social phobia were faster in identifying the probe when it occurred in the location of the household objects, regardless of whether the facial expressions were positive, neutral, or negative. In contrast, controls did not exhibit an attentional preference. The results are in line with recent theories of social phobia that emphasize the role of reduced processing of external social cues in maintaining social anxiety.     

Stress Induced Oral Behaviors and Facial Pain

Facial pain is frequently associated with environmental stress and emotional distress. One hypothetical mechanism by which stress is translated into pain is through stress induced motor function (e.g., teeth clenching, grinding, nail biting). Existent data partially supports these stress-hyperactivity models although they have also come under theoretical and empirical attack. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between oral behaviors and pain in an analog sample of facial pain sufferers and student controls. Subjects engaged in a controlled clenching task and reported on subjective facial pain intensity and unpleasantness at 5 specified times over the subsequent 48 hours. A one-way ANCOVA indicated group differences in self reported oral habits (p < .05) with the facial pain group reporting great frequency of oral habits. Two repeated measures ANCOVAs (i.e., pain intensity and pain unpleasantness), controlling for baseline pain ratings, indicated a between groups effect with facial pain sufferers experiencing significantly greater pain over the 48 hours postexperiment (p < .05). This study supports a hyperactivity model of facial pain and provides clues about relevant factors in facial pain development.     

Speech anxiety and rapid emotional reactions to angry and happy facial expressions

The aim was to explore whether people high as opposed to low in speech anxiety react with a more pronounced differential facial response when exposed to angry and happy facial stimuli. High and low fear participants were selected based on their scores on a fear of public speaking questionnaire. All participants were exposed to pictures of angry and happy faces while facial electromyographic (EMG) activity from the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major muscle regions was recorded. Skin conductance responses (SCR), heart rate (HR) and ratings were also collected. Participants high as opposed to low in speech anxiety displayed a larger differential corrugator responding, indicating a larger negative emotional reaction, between angry and happy faces. They also reacted with a larger differential zygomatic responding, indicating a larger positive emotional reaction, between happy and angry faces. Consistent with the facial reaction patterns, the high fear group rated angry faces as more unpleasant and as expressing more disgust, and further rated happy faces as more pleasant. There were no differences in SCR or HR responding between high and low speech anxiety groups. The present results support the hypothesis that people high in speech anxiety are disposed to show an exaggerated sensitivity and facial responsiveness to social stimuli.     

Achieving what cannot be done: coping with the time constants in a dynamic decision task by doing something else

This study examines how people handle the time constants in dynamic decision tasks, using a microworld called NEWFIRE which simulates forest fire fighting. The results showed that the participants did not adapt to the time constants, as shown by the fact that they did not discriminate between fires requiring different number of fire fighting units when varying the number of fire fighting units was a means of compensating for the time constants. If they were allowed to move units before the fire started their performance improved, suggesting that they could compensate for their problems with the time constants by restructuring the task in such a way that they did not need to consider them. It is suggested that such restructuring may well be how people handle dynamic tasks also in other circumstances, and that more effort should be put into studying what people actually do in dynamic tasks, rather than into only assessing whether or not they perform optimally.     

Incremental Validity of Cognitions in a Clinical Case Formulation: An Intraindividual Test in a Case Example

Incremental validity, the ability of a measure to predict or explain variance over and above other measures, is an important psychometric characteristic of standardized measures, but has received little attention idiographically. Idiographic assessment may be an important part of developing a clinical case formulation, guiding treatment by developing an individualized understanding of the variables that trigger and maintain distress. This study examined whether the idiosyncratic cognitive schema hypothesized by a clinician in a cognitive case formulation explained distress incrementally over that of situational triggers. Using daily ratings of situational triggers, idiosyncratic cognitions, and distress, the incremental validity of cognitions in predicting each of six distress measures was tested in a case example using dynamic time series regression. The incremental variance explained by cognitions varied across the distress measures, suggesting that, in this case example, targeting thoughts and beliefs for treatment may be important for only certain types of distress.

Recognition and evaluation of emotional prosody in individuals with generalized social phobia: a pilot study

Studies using facial emotional expressions as stimuli partially support the assumption of biased processing of social signals in social phobia. This pilot study explored for the first time whether individuals with social phobia display a processing bias towards emotional prosody. Fifteen individuals with generalized social phobia and fifteen healthy controls (HC) matched for gender, age, and education completed a recognition test consisting of meaningless utterances spoken in a neutral, angry, sad, fearful, disgusted or happy tone of voice. Participants also evaluated the stimuli with regard to valence and arousal. While these ratings did not differ significantly between groups, analysis of the recognition test revealed enhanced identification of sad and fearful voices and decreased identification of happy voices in individuals with social phobia compared with HC. The two groups did not differ in their processing of neutral, disgust, and anger prosody.     

The development of expert face processing: are infants sensitive to normal differences in second-order relational information?

Sensitivity to second-order relational information (i.e., spatial relations among features such as the distance between eyes) is a vital part of achieving expertise with face processing. Prior research is unclear on whether infants are sensitive to second-order differences seen in typical human populations. In the current experiments, we examined whether infants are sensitive to changes in the space between the eyes and between the nose and the mouth that are within the normal range of variability in Caucasian female faces. In Experiment 1, 7-month-olds detected these changes in second-order relational information. Experiment 2 extended this finding to 5-month-olds and also found that infants detect second-order relations in upright faces but not in inverted faces, thereby exhibiting an inversion effect that has been considered to be a hallmark of second-order relational processing during adulthood. These results suggest that infants as young as 5 months are sensitive to second-order relational changes that are within the normal range of human variability. They also indicate that at least rudimentary aspects of face processing expertise are available early in life.     

Multiple Cues in Social Perception: The Time Course of Processing Race and Facial Expression

The purpose of the present study was to examine the time course of race and expression processing to determine how these cues influence early perceptual as well as explicit categorization judgments. Despite their importance in social perception, little research has examined how social category information and emotional expression are processed over time. Moreover, although models of face processing suggest that the two cues should be processed independently, this has rarely been directly examined. Event-related brain potentials were recorded as participants made race and emotion categorization judgments of Black and White men posing either happy, angry, or neutral expressions. Our findings support that processing of race and emotion cues occur independently and in parallel, relatively early in processing.