Attention to Positive and Negative Social-Evaluative Words: Investigating the Effects of Social Anxiety,Trait Anxiety and Social Threat

The study investigated how attention to negative (threatening) and positive social-evaluative words is affected by social anxiety, trait anxiety and the expectation of social threat. High and low socially anxious individuals carried out a modified dot-probe task either while expecting to give a speech or under non-threatening conditions. High socially anxious individuals showed no significant attentional bias towards or away from social-evaluative words. This result significantly contrasted with an identical design that showed avoidance of emotional faces in high socially anxious participants drawn from the same population (Mansell et al ., 1999). Participants who expected to give a speech showed less attentional avoidance of negative and positive social-evaluative words. High trait anxiety was associated with selective attention to negative relative to positive social-evaluative words, consistent with earlier findings of attention to threat cues in high trait-anxious individuals. Implications for designing attention tasks and attentional bias across different dimensions of anxiety are discussed.     

Effect of affect on social cost bias in social anxiety disorder

Abstract

The cognitive model of social anxiety disorder (SAD) assumes that cognitive biases are important maintaining factors of the disorder. Research and theory have highlighted the impact of cognitive self-regulatory processes on affect, but have not sufficiently focused on the influence of affect on self-regulatory cognitions. The present study examined the influence of affect on cognitive self-regulatory mechanisms in SAD by focusing on one critical cognitive bias, estimated social cost. Individuals with SAD (N=48) and non-anxious controls (N=48) were randomly assigned to one of three experimental, affect induction conditions (negative, positive, or neutral) before giving a 10-minute impromptu, videotaped speech. As expected, the affect manipulation resulted in changes in estimated social cost. However, this effect was not specific to individuals with SAD. Participants in the positive affect condition in both groups had the highest social cost estimates post-speech challenge. These results suggest that social cost bias is dependent on the affective state in both individuals with SAD and controls.     

Gender differences in loss of psychological resources following experimentally-induced vicarious stress

Abstract

The present research focuses on gender differences in resource loss, perceived threat, and negative affective reactions induced by experimental manipulation of vicarious stress. Israeli students (54.7% women) were randomly allocated to one of two conditions: (1) Threat Condition (n=98), in which participants were exposed to a video film depicting terror attacks and (2) Control Condition (n=30), in which participants viewed a video film depicting a series of non-emotive news broadcasts. Participants also completed measures of mastery, optimism, and self-esteem. The data indicated that whereas under the Threat Condition women scored lower on psychological resources and higher on perceived threat than men, no significant gender differences were observed under the Control Condition. A path analysis revealed that gender was directly related to perceived threat and resource loss, which, in turn, were related to negative affect. In addition, a greater sense of mastery was related to lower resource loss. Overall, these experimental findings suggest that gender and mastery bear prominent effects on cognitive and emotional reactions to vicarious life threat.     

Development of Infant Positive Emotionality: The Contribution of Maternal Characteristics and Effects on Subsequent Parenting

The current study examined the influence of maternal characteristics on the development of infant smiling and laughter, a marker of early positive emotionality (PE) and how maternal characteristics and the development of infant PE contributed to subsequent maternal parenting. One hundred fifty‐nine mothers with 4‐month‐old infants participated. Maternal characteristics were assessed 4 months postpartum, infant smiling and laughter were assessed at 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 months postpartum, and maternal negative parenting was assessed 18 months postpartum. Latent growth modelling was used to test hypotheses regarding the influence of maternal characteristics on the development of infant smiling and laughter, and the contribution of infant smiling and laughter to later maternal parenting. Higher maternal effortful control and PE predicted more initial infant smiling and laughter, whereas more maternal parenting stress predicted lower slopes of infant smiling and laughter. More frequent/intense symptoms of maternal depression predicted higher scores on a measure of negative parenting, whereas higher maternal PE and better effortful control predicted lower negative parenting scores. After accounting for maternal characteristics, higher intercepts and slopes of infant smiling and laughter predicted fewer reports of negative parenting practices. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CHEMISTRY AND CONTAINING: THE ANALYST'S USE OF UNAVOIDABLE FAILURES

Certain patients overwhelm the analyst's capacity to contain both the patient and the analyst's own unbearable feelings. Though some such failures of containing may lead fairly quickly to self‐correction and others to clinical impasse, our focus is on an in‐between state in which the analyst's ability to tolerate his inevitable failures and gradually to (re)establish his containing capacities through difficult self‐analytic work can lead to significant change that might not otherwise be possible. The authors argue that this internal psychological work on the analyst's part, which may require considerable time, effort, and suffering, is an important aspect of “good enough” containing. The unique chemistry generated between patient and analyst plays an important role in both establishing and maintaining this kind of productive analytic process.     

Emergence of Concrete Operational Concepts

In Piagetian and neo-Piagetian literature, there have been conflicting results of experiments made to predict the order in which the concrete operational concepts of Class Inclusion, Transitive Inference, and Conservation emerge in a child. The present study determined the order in which these concepts emerged among 94 male and 84 female Canadian children between the ages of 5 and 7 (N = 178). Overall results indicated that Class Inclusion emerged first, followed by Transitive Inference, and then Conservation. This was the pattern for 6-year-olds, whereas 5- and 7-year-olds performed Class Inclusion and Transitive Inference at the same level of efficiency. Thus, it is apparent that Class Inclusion is generally the easiest concept to be attained, and Conservation is the most difficult. This study also indicates that the order of emergence varies and depends on the background and previous experience of the subjects.     

The Experimental Delimitation of Neural Structures Essential for Learning: The Attempt to Condition Striped Muscle Responses with Faradization of the Sigmoid Gyri

In looking at motivation as a multifactored trait rather than as a singular trait, a larger portion of the variance in academic achievement is explained. Sixty college students were administered five motivation instruments, each having two components. When the total instruments were used, they explained 23% of the variance, but when they were broken into their component parts, they explained 36%; thus, a schema for approaching motivation as a multifactor trait is presented.     

情绪对注意范围的影响: 动机程度的调节作用

在匹配了情绪刺激的效价和唤醒度后,检验了情绪的动机程度对注意范围的影响。研究采用Navon字母任务,通过被试对整体字母和局部字母的反应考察了注意范围的变化。结果显示,被试在中性状态下出现整体加工偏向;在低动机程度的正性和负性情绪下偏向加强,注意范围扩大;在高动机程度的正性和负性情绪下偏向减弱,注意范围缩小。因此,在同一效价内动机程度的不同仍会影响注意加工,高动机程度窄化注意范围,低动机程度反之。     

Resilience as the ability to bounce back from stress: A neglected personal resource?

The purpose of this study was to examine resilience, as the ability to bounce back from stress, in predicting health-related measures when controlling for other positive characteristics and resources. We assessed resilience, optimism, social support, mood clarity, spirituality, purpose in life, and health-related measures in two large undergraduate samples. In Study 1, resilience was related to both health-related measures (less negative affect and more positive affect) when controlling for demographics and other positive characteristics. In Study 2, resilience was related to all four health-related measures (less negative affect, more positive affect, less physical symptoms, and less perceived stress) when controlling for the other variables. None of the other positive characteristics were related to more than three of the six possible health-related measures when controlling for the other variables. Resilience, as the ability to bounce back, may be an important personal resource to examine in future studies and target in interventions.     

Mindfulness and positive affect: Cross-sectional,prospective intervention,and real-time relations

This study tested trait- and state-mindfulness and trait- and state-positive affect (PA) relations within a cross-sectional study (Study 1; N?=?174, 76% women, Mean (SD)_age?=?24 (2.7) years) and a randomized controlled 4-session mindfulness intervention study (Study 2; N?=?51, 65.4% women, Mean (SD)_age?=?25 (4.3) years). Study 1 : levels of trait-mindfulness and trait-like PA were related, as theorized, only among participants with meditation experience. Study 2 : Study 2 is a secondary analysis of a mindfulness intervention study [Tanay, Lotan, & Bernstein (2012). Salutary proximal processes and distal mood and anxiety vulnerability outcomes of mindfulness training: A Pilot preventive intervention. Behavior Therapy, 43, 492–505]. Unexpectedly, reduced levels of trait-like PA were observed pre- to post-intervention across conditions. No significant between-group mean differences were observed post-intervention. However, as expected, change in trait-mindfulness from pre- to post-intervention predicted change in trait-like PA among the intervention but not control condition. Second, levels of state-mindfulness during mindfulness meditation were positively related to levels of state-PA. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings for mindfulness and PA are discussed.