The impact of emotional expressions on children’s trust judgments

Research on the development of selective trust has shown that young children do not indiscriminately trust all potential informants. They are likely to seek and endorse information from individuals who have proven competent or benign in the past. However, research on trust among adults raises the possibility that children might also be influenced by the emotions expressed by potential informants. In particular, they might trust individuals expressing more positive emotion. Indeed, young children’s trust in particular informants based on their past behaviour might be undermined by their currently expressed emotions. To examine this possibility, we tested the selective trust of fifty 4- and 5-year-olds in two steps. We first confirmed that children are likely to invest more trust in individuals expressing more positive emotion. We then showed that even if children have already formed an impression of two potential informants based on their behavioural record, their choices about whose claims to trust are markedly influenced by the degree of positive emotion currently expressed by the two informants. By implication, the facial emotions expressed by potential informants can undermine young children’s selective trust based on the behavioural record of those informants.     

拖延的认知神经机制与基因:行为-脑-基因的多角度研究

拖延是一种普遍存在,具有跨时间和跨情景稳定性的问题行为,严重的拖延甚至会危害到人们的工作、学习及身心健康。鉴于目前对于拖延的认知神经机制仍不清楚,研究模态较为单一,本研究拟从行为-脑-基因的系统研究思路出发,以多模态MRI(Task、Resting、VBM和DTI)为主要技术手段,将HTR2B基因多态性作为突破口,系统考察拖延的认知机制、神经基础和遗传基础,并试图制定拖延的应对与干预方案。研究分为4个部分:(1)从行为上,结合预期恐惧范式和跨期选择范式探索其拖延决策的机制;(2)在神经层面上,采用MRI多模态技术系统考察拖延行为的神经基础;(3)在基因层面上,采用分子遗传学方法,将HTR2B设定为靶基因以深入研究拖延的遗传基础,并考察脑结构和脑功能在基因与行为间的中介作用;(4)最后从行为干预与脑的可塑性的角度,设计拖延的干预方法来改善拖延行为并验证拖延的神经机制。     

Cognitive fusion and emotion differentiation: does getting entangled with our thoughts dysregulate the generation,experience and regulation of emotion?

We tested whether cognitive fusion impairs emotion differentiation and thereby mediates relations between cognitive fusion and depression and panic symptoms among 55 adults (M_age?=?26.8 (3.9), 50.9% women). Using visual stimuli, we elicited multiple emotion states and measured (a) emotional intensity – the subjective emotion intensity of elicited emotions (i.e. Specific Emotion Intensity – SEI), as well as (b) emotional differentiation – the degree of co-activation of multiple negative emotions when a specific emotion was elicited (i.e. Multiple Emotion Co-Activation – MECA). First, as hypothesised, we found that cognitive fusion predicted lower levels of emotion differentiation (MECA). In contrast, as hypothesised, these effects were significantly greater than the (null) effects of cognitive fusion on emotion intensity (SEI). Second, as predicted, MECA, but not SEI, predicted depression and panic symptoms. Finally, we found that MECA mediated the effects of cognitive fusion on depression and panic symptoms. The present findings contribute novel, preliminary empirical insight into associations between cognitive fusion, impaired emotion differentiation and mental ill-health.     

Predictors of Child Maltreatment Potential in a National Sample of Mothers of Young Children

Although previous studies have furthered our broad ability to predict child maltreatment potential, young children remain at the highest risk for experiencing maltreatment. Thus, several variables of relevance for this population were examined. A national community sample of 158 mothers with young children between ages 1.5 and 5 years rated their young children’s temperament as well as their own temperament, emotion regulation, stress, coping, and child maltreatment potential. Young children’s mood quality as well as mothers’ mood quality, flexibility/rigidity, emotion dysregulation, parenting stress, cumulated severity of stress, and emotion-focused coping added unique incremental variance to the prediction of child maltreatment potential, accounting for 67% of the variance overall. Further, mothers’ emotion dysregulation mediated the relationship between mothers’ flexibility/rigidity and child maltreatment potential. Consequently, emotion regulation skills represent an important point of intervention for mothers of young children who are at increased risk for child maltreatment due to difficult temperament characteristics.     

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.     

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.     

用整合的观点看情绪

该文主要根据James R．Averill(1997)等人的观点,从整合的角度探讨了情绪问题,阐述了情绪分析的框架。此框架由6个情绪变量组成,分五个水平。在阐述了这五个水平及其关系之后,又从下向上论述了处于不同情绪组织水平上的成份反应、情绪状态、情绪症侯群和气质特征。     

积极情绪的概念、功能与意义

积极情绪是指个体由于体内外刺激、事件满足个体需要而产生的伴有愉悦感受的情绪。积极情绪能够激活一般的行动倾向,对于认知具有启动和扩展效应,能够建设个体的资源,撤销消极情绪产生的激活水平,能够促进组织绩效。积极情绪是心理健康的重要组成部分,同时对身体健康具有促进作用。积极情绪对于个体的适应具有广泛的功能与意义     

情绪调节目标的分类与优化

摘要：情绪调节目标决定人们是否调节情绪以及怎样调节情绪。基于情绪调节服务功能的类型差异,可分离出以下类型的调节目标：增加积极体验可满足享乐性需要,社会事务需使用情绪的工具效用,复杂体验的融合可优化自我成长,而情绪体验的文化精致可促进自我与世界的融合。这些目标既可能相互一致,也存在多种冲突,对幸福体验产生综合影响。拓展积极情绪最大化的暂时性适应角色,理解内隐层面的心理因素和文化价值正当性对调节目标的制约,是未来研究的方向。     

正立和倒立的威胁性身体表情的识别

为探索身体表情的加工时程以及加工方式是否为构形加工,采用ERP技术考察对正立和倒立的威胁性身体表情（恐惧和愤怒）的识别。行为结果发现倒置效应存在。ERP结果发现：早期阶段已有对威胁性情绪（P1）和倒置效应（N1）的加工;中期阶段主要存在对倒置效应的加工（N170）;晚期阶段,威胁性情绪在正立条件上得到更多的加工（P3和LPP）。结果表明,威胁性身体表情加工有独特的时间进程,加工方式以构形加工为主。