Divergences among three higher-order self-report psychopathology factors in normal-range personality and emotional late positive potential reactivity

Personality is related to psychopathology and its higher-order structures, but there is little research regarding neurobiological associations of higher-order psychopathology factors. This study examined the factor structure of a wide range of psychopathology and its associations with both personality and emotional reactivity revealed through the late positive potential (LPP) in a sample of 275 undergraduates. A three-factor structure of psychopathology emerged comprising Internalizing (INT), Externalizing (EXT), and Aberrant Experiences (ABX). EXT predicted aggressive disconstraint, whereas both INT and ABX predicted Alienation and Stress Reaction. INT uniquely predicted low Well-Being, and ABX predicted a rigid absorption combined with interpersonal detachment. ABX correlated with reduced parietal emotional LPP reactivity, whereas INT correlated with stronger frontal LPP reactivity to emotional versus neutral pictures.     

Motor activity and spatial proximity: Relationships to infant emotions and maternal postpartum depression

The ability to express emotions is a protective factor for infant development. Despite the multimodal nature of emotion expression, research has mainly focused on facial expressions of emotions. The present study examined motor activity and spatial proximity in relation to positive and negative infant facial expressions and maternal postpartum depression during face-to-face interactions at four months. Video cameras and a motion capture system recorded mother-infant interactions. Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted to analyze the effect of micro-coded infant positive and negative facial affect and maternal depression diagnosis on automatically extracted measures of motor activity and spatial proximity, including speed of mothers’ arm movements (nondepressed = 32; PPD = 16), and infants’ arm movements (nondepressed = 29; PPD = 17), and head distance (nondepressed = 45; PPD = 27). Results showed that the speed of infants’ arm movements and head distance were greater during negative compared to positive infant affect. Further, the results demonstrated that the speed of PPD mothers’ arm movements was slower than the speed of nondepressed mothers’ arm movements. In the discussion, it is suggested that increased speed of infant arm movements during negative affect functions to elicit faster caregiving responses, and that increased head distance during negative infant affect functions to decrease the intensity of the interaction. Finally, the slower speed of arm movements in PPD mothers suggests psychomotor retardation, which is proposed to limit these mothers’ abilities to engage their infants during the interaction.     

Maternal positive responses to a distressed infant simulator predict subsequent negative affect in infants

Existing evidence indicates that maternal responses to infant distress, specifically more sensitive and less inconsistent/rejecting responses, are associated with lower infant negative affect (NA). However, due to ethical and methodological constraints, most existing studies do not employ methods that guarantee each mother will be observed responding to infant distress. To address such limitations, in the current study, a distressed infant simulator (SIM), programmed to be inconsolable, was employed to ensure that mothers (N = 150; 4 months postpartum) were observed responding to infant distress. Subsequently, maternal report of infant NA and an early aspect of regulatory capacity, sootheability, were collected at eight-months postpartum, and observational assessments of infant fear and frustration, fine-grained aspects of NA, were collected at 12-months of age. After controlling for infant sex, the proportion of time mothers spent using soothing touch during the SIM task was related to less overall maternal reported NA and sadness at eight-months postpartum. Similarly, greater use of touch was associated with less fear reactivity, and greater maternal use of vocalizations was related to lower infant frustration, at 12-months postpartum. Specific maternal soothing behaviors were not related to infant soothability at 8 months postpartum. Total time spent interacting with the SIM was not related to infant temperament, suggesting that type of soothing, not quantity of interactions with distressed infants, is important for reducing infant NA. The implications of these findings and important future directions are discussed.     

Facial emotion recognition during pregnancy: Examining the effects of facial age and affect

It is vital that new mothers quickly and accurately recognize their child’s facial expressions. There is evidence that during pregnancy women develop enhanced processing of facial features associated with infancy and distress, as these cues signal vulnerability and are therefore biologically salient. In this study, 51 pregnant women at 17–36 weeks gestation watched neutral infant and adult faces gradually morph into either happy or sad expressions. We measured the speed and accuracy with which participants were able to recognize facial affect (happy vs. sad) across facial ages (infant vs. adult). Participants were faster and more accurate at recognizing happy versus sad faces and adult versus infant faces. We discuss how prior exposure to a certain face type may explain faster recognition. We also consider these results in the context of evidence indicating positive affect is recognized more quickly, but associated with slower attention and detection.     

Effects of incidental positive emotion and cognitive reappraisal on affective responses to negative stimuli

Previous studies have identified two powerful ways to regulate emotional responses to a stressor: experiencing incidental positive emotions and using cognitive reappraisal to reframe the stressor. Several cognitive and motivational theories of positive emotion support the formulation that incidental positive emotions may facilitate cognitive reappraisal. To test the separate and interacting effects of positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal, we first adapted an established picture-based reappraisal paradigm by interspersing blocks of positive emotion inducing and neutral pictures. Across two pre-registered studies (Studies 1, 2), reappraisal effectively decreased self-reported negative emotions and increased self-reported positive emotions; however, experiencing incidental positive emotions did not facilitate reappraisal success. In another preregistered study (Study 3), we employed a more powerful positive emotion induction via virtual reality (VR), used a social stress anticipation task, and instructed participants to reappraise the anticipated stressor positively. Although there was a robust effect of the positive emotion induction (relative to the neutral induction) on feeling more positive emotions throughout stress anticipation, the results again indicated that incidental positive emotions did not facilitate cognitive reappraisal. We propose that incidental positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal may constitute separate pathways of influence when regulating one's responses to negative events.     

Emotions associated with different textures during touch

Haptics plays an important role in emotion perception. However, most studies of the affective aspects of haptics have investigated emotional valence rather than emotional categories. In the present study, we explored the associations of different textures with six basic emotions: fear, anger, happiness, disgust, sadness and surprise. Participants touched twenty-one different textures and evaluated them using six emotional scales. Additionally, we explored whether individual differences in participants’ levels of alexithymia are related to the intensity of emotions associated with touching the textures. Alexithymia is a trait related to difficulties in identifying, describing and communicating emotions to others. The findings show that people associated touching different textures with distinct emotions. Textures associated with each of the basic emotions were identified. The study also revealed that a higher alexithymia level corresponds to a higher intensity of associations between textures and the emotions of disgust, anger and sadness.     

A general theoretical framework for the design of artificial emotion systems in Autonomous Agents

Autonomous Agents (AAs) capable of exhibiting emotional behaviors have contributed to the development of natural human-machine interactions in several application domains. In order to provide AAs with emotional mechanisms, their underlying architecture must implement an Artificial Emotion System (AES), a computational model that imitates specific facets of human emotions. Although several AES have been reported in related literature, their design is generally supported on several emotion theories, leading researchers to model and integrate isolated emotion components and mechanisms into the architectures of AES. This theoretical foundation of AES contributes to ambiguities in the analysis and comparison of their underlying architectures, which demands the definition of standards, design guidelines, and integrative frameworks. In this paper, we present a psychologically inspired theoretical framework designed to serve as a platform for the unification of AES' components, the comparison of AES, and the design and implementation of AES in AAs. We analyze common emotion-related requirements of AES, emotion components involved in the design of this type of computational model, and emotion theories that drive the design of most AES. The validation of this framework demonstrates its compatibility with current AES and its feasibility as a model for unifying multiple emotional theories.     

Predictors of improvement in an open-trial multisite evaluation of emotion regulation group therapy

Emotion regulation group therapy (ERGT) is a novel treatment specifically targeting deliberate non-suicidal self-harm (DSH) in individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Identifying robust predictors of positive response to ERGT could aid clinicians in treatment selection; however, to date, only one such study has been conducted. Thus, we aimed to replicate previously identified predictors of treatment response to ERGT by investigating demographic, clinical, and diagnostic predictors in 95 women with BPD or subclinical BPD who had participated in an open-trial evaluation of ERGT. Outcomes evaluated were frequency of DSH and emotion dysregulation. Assessments were conducted at pretreatment, post-treatment, and 6-month follow-up. Multilevel mixed linear models and multilevel negative binomial generalized estimated equations were used to identify significant interactions between the predictors and outcomes.

We found that greater pretreatment DSH frequency was associated with greater improvements in DSH during treatment (b = 0.998, SE = 0.00, p = 0.03) and follow-up (b = 0.997, SE = 0.00, p < 0.01) and that greater BPD severity was associated with greater improvements in DSH during treatment (b = 0.84, SE = 0.06, p = 0.02) and in emotion dysregulation at follow-up (b = ?3.05, SE = 1.47, p = 0.04). Co-occurring disorders were associated with poorer treatment response during follow-up. Results were generally consistent with a previous study of the predictors of response to ERGT. The findings provide further support for the utility of this treatment across a range of BPD patients, including patients with severe DSH and BPD.     

Contributions of emotion understanding to narrative comprehension in children and adults

This study examined to what extent children and adults differ in how they process negative emotions during reading, and how they rate their own and protagonists’ emotional states. Results show that both children’s and adults’ processing of target sentences was facilitated when they described negative emotions. Processing of spill-over sentences was facilitated for adults but inhibited for children, suggesting children needed additional time to process protagonists’ emotional states and integrate them into coherent mental representations. Children and adults were similar in their valence and arousal ratings as they rated protagonists’ emotional states as more negative and more intense than their own emotional states. However, they differed in that children rated their own emotional states as relatively neutral, whereas adults’ ratings of their own emotional states more closely matched the negative emotional states of the protagonists. This suggests a possible difference between children and adults in the mechanism underlying emotional inferencing.