Emotional interaction in a group of preterm infants at 3 and 6 months of corrected age

Twenty preterm infants (birthweight<1500 g) and 20 healthy fullterm infants were compared with respect to emotional interaction with their mothers in a face‐to‐face situation at 3 months of age and in a feeding situation at 6 months of age (ages corrected for preterm birth). The assessed outcome was analysed with respect to infant variables (group, gender, gestational age, birthweight and neonatal risk factors) and maternal variables (age, education and parity). The outcomes at 3 and 6 months of age were also compared with findings of Griffiths’ testing at 10 months of age. At 3 months of age, the findings reveal no significant difference between the two groups with respect to emotional interaction. Maternal variables are more important for this interaction than are infant variables. The mother's level of formal education has a significant impact in both groups. In the group of fullterm infants, significantly lower scores for interaction are obtained by first‐time mothers in comparison with multi‐parae mothers. At 6 months of age, the difference between fullterm and preterm infants is significant. The preterm infants and their mothers now relate to one another more poorly than is the case for the fullterm dyads. These findings suggest that the difficulties encountered by the preterm infant emerge with time. Emotional interaction at this age and the results of Griffiths’ testing 4 months later are significantly correlated. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Incivility at work,upset at home? Testing the cross‐level moderation effect of emotional dysregulation among female nurses from primary health care

Workplace incivility is a growing problem in nursing. However, most studies that explore this psychosocial risk and its consequences do so considering a single level and a between‐person perspective. The aims of the study were to explore whether the effects of experiencing incivility during work‐time could explain the daily levels of well‐being of nurses at home; and to analyze if that relationship could be moderated by their levels of emotional dysregulation as a trait. This is a multilevel study with diary methodology. The study was carried out in 18 primary health‐care centers belonging to Madrid and the Basque Country, in Spain. Ninety‐four nurses completed a general questionnaire and 54 of them a diary booklet over five consecutive working days in two different moments, immediately after work and at bedtime. The results showed that nurses’ emotional dysregulation moderated the relationship between daily workplace incivility and daily fatigue, and positive affect at night at home. However, there were no direct effects of daily incivility on these outcome variables. In conclusion, the presence of difficulties in emotional regulation among nurses can increase the negative effects of daily workplace incivility on their health and well‐being.     

Basic needs and complexes: similarities between feeling‐toned complexes,emotional schema and affective states

The aim of this paper is to examine feeling‐toned complexes from a developmental psychological perspective. From this perspective feeling‐toned complexes emerge when basic needs are not met. A very similar theory is put forward by Jeffery Young in his Schema Therapy (Young, Klosko, & Weishaar 2005). His basic needs concept, developed on the basis of empirical research, covers four basic needs which are: attachment, autonomy, and self‐worth, as well as play and spontaneity. My proposition is to deal with this conceptual view from a Jungian perspective insofar as we can integrate the four basic needs, however adding a fifth: the basic need for meaning in the theory of feeling‐toned complexes. Emotional schemas and feeling‐toned complexes are then comparable patterns. The strengths and weaknesses of Analytic Psychology compared to Jeffrey Young's schema therapy are further discussed. The foundation of the feeling‐toned complexes on unmet basic needs lends itself to including a further reference, namely Jaak Panksepp’s neuroscientific findings. Panksepp formulates seven basic affective systems which I discuss first, then I focus on what could be gained from the basic needs concept and finally I turn to the feeling‐complex in an attempt to integrate neuroscientific findings into complex theory.     

Does the Good Behavior Game evoke negative peer pressure? Analyses in primary and secondary classrooms

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a classroom management system that employs an interdependent group contingency, whereby students work as a team to win the game. Although previous anecdotal data have suggested that this arrangement may promote prosocial behavior, teachers may have concerns about its fairness and potential to evoke negative peer interactions (especially toward students who break the rules). We evaluated disruptive behaviors and social interactions during the GBG in a secondary classroom for students with emotional and behavioral disorders, as well as in a primary classroom for students with mild developmental disabilities. Results indicate that the GBG reduced disruptive behaviors; further, negative peer interactions decreased and positive interactions increased when the game was being played. Social validity results indicate that the majority of students thought the interdependent group contingency was fair.     

Emotion regulation and mood brightening in daily life vary with depressive symptom levels

Naturalistic studies of emotional reactivity in depression have repeatedly found larger decreases in negative affect (NA) among depressed individuals in response to daily positive events. This so-called mood-brightening (MB) effect represents a theoretical and empirical oddity. The current study is a secondary analysis investigating whether the MB effect is moderated by spontaneous use of emotion regulation strategies, which have been implicated in the maintenance and modulation of NA in prior work. Participants (N?=?95) representing a large spectrum of depressive symptom severity reported their experiences of NA and the occurrence of positive events in daily life over the course of seven days using the experience sampling method. Our findings replicate and build upon those of prior studies relating to the MB effect in the following ways: (1) we observed the MB effect for specific negative emotions of sadness, anger, anxiety; and (2) we found evidence that the MB effect is moderated by spontaneous use of rumination, distraction, and expressive suppression, which have been shown to enhance or dampen NA. The role of emotion regulation strategies in daily emotional reactivity to pleasant events is discussed.     

Case–contrast study about parent–infant interaction in a Brazilian sample of siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders

Siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present greater susceptibility to developmental problems, in comparison with siblings of typically developing children. The greater prevalence of mental health disorders among parents of children with ASD increases younger siblings’ vulnerability to emotional problems. The aim of this study is to compare the interaction between carers and babies aged 2 to 26 months (M = 11.7, SD = 6.9) who are siblings of children with ASD (ASD dyads) with the interaction of dyads of siblings of typically developing children (TD dyads). The protocol of Clinical Indicators of Risk for Child Development and the Coding Interactive Behaviour measures were used to evaluate interaction. ASD dyads presented higher scores of constriction in their interaction, P = .024, with babies presenting higher scores of withdrawal behavior, P = .003, and carers presenting higher scores of depressive mood, P = .008, when compared to TD dyads. The ASD dyads have interactive impairments more frequently than do the TD dyads.     

Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences of Investing Self‐Worth in the Ingroup’s Image

This article proposes a new theoretical framework for the reviewed state‐of‐the‐art research on collective narcissism—the belief that the ingroup’s exceptionality is not sufficiently appreciated by others. Collective narcissism is motivated by the investment of an undermined sense of self‐esteem into the belief in the ingroup’s entitlement to privilege. Collective narcissism lies in the heart of populist rhetoric. The belief in ingroup’s exceptionality compensates the undermined sense of self‐worth, leaving collective narcissists hypervigilant to signs of threat to the ingroup’s position. People endorsing the collective narcissistic belief are prone to biased perceptions of intergroup situations and to conspiratorial thinking. They retaliate to imagined provocations against the ingroup but sometimes overlook real threats. They are prejudiced and hostile. Deficits in emotional regulation, hostile attribution bias, and vindictiveness lie behind the robust link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility. Interventions that support the regulation of negative emotions, such as experiencing self‐transcendent emotions, decrease the link between collective narcissism and intergroup hostility and offer further insights into the nature of collective narcissism.     

Manipulations of distractor frequency do not mitigate emotion-induced blindness

Emotional distractors can impair perception of subsequently presented targets, a phenomenon called emotion-induced blindness. Do emotional distractors lose their power to disrupt perception when appearing with increased frequency, perhaps due to desensitisation or enhanced recruitment of proactive control? Non-emotional tasks, such as the Stroop, have revealed that high frequency distractors or conflict lead to reduced interference, and distractor frequency appears to modulate attentional capture by emotional distractors in spatial attention tasks. But emotion-induced blindness is thought to reflect perceptual competition between targets and emotional distractors, and it is unclear whether high frequency emotional stimuli cause less disruption at this relatively early stage of processing. In four experiments, participants searched streams of images for a rotated target image. A negative or neutral distractor appeared before the target, and their relative frequency was manipulated. Across all experiments, the frequency of emotional distractors did not modulate emotion-induced blindness even when participants were explicitly informed that they would appear often or seldom. Thus, increased distractor frequency does not appear to mitigate the priority allotted to emotional distractors during perceptual competition.