混合情绪能促进心理健康吗？

摘 要 积极和消极情绪的同时体验,即混合情绪,是生活中常见的情绪状态。健康应对的共激活模型、情绪动态模型和积极比模型一致认为混合情绪与心理健康之间呈现非线性的关系,适当的混合情绪有利于个体在困境中全面加工和整合信息,寻求意义,获得控制感,进而实现健康应对和心理症状改善,获得幸福感。未来研究应关注对非线性关系的精确描述;低压力或非压力情境下混合情绪的意义;进一步研究混合情绪促进心理健康的内部机制和影响因素。     

Multiple sclerosis,emotion perception and social functioning

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) can experience problems in interpreting others’ emotions from faces or voices. However, to date little is known about whether difficulties in emotion perception in MS are related to broader aspects of social functioning. Also, there are few studies reporting the effect of MS on more ecologically valid assessments of emotion perception using multimodal videos. The current study looks at (1) the effect of MS on perceiving emotions from faces, voices and multimodal videos; (2) the possible role of slowed processing and executive dysfunction in emotion perception problems in MS and (3) the relationship between emotion perception and broader social functioning in MS. 53 people with MS and 31 healthy controls completed tasks of emotion perception and cognition, and assessed their levels of social support and social participation. Participants with MS performed worse than demographically matched controls on all measures of emotion perception. Emotion perception performance was related to cognitive measures in those with MS. Also, significant associations were found between emotion perception difficulties in MS and poorer social function. In particular, people with MS who had poorer emotion perception also reported lower levels of social support from their friends, and regression analysis showed that this prediction was maintained even when disease severity and cognitive function were taken into account. These results show that problems with emotion perception in MS extend to more realistic tasks and may predict key aspects of social functioning.     

Understanding the role of configural processing in face emotion recognition in Parkinson’s disease

This investigation examined whether impairment in configural processing could explain deficits in face emotion recognition in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Stimuli from the Radboud Faces Database were used to compare recognition of four negative emotion expressions by older adults with PD (n = 16) and matched controls (n = 17). Participants were tasked with categorizing emotional expressions from upright and inverted whole faces and facial composites; it is difficult to derive configural information from these two types of stimuli so featural processing should play a larger than usual role in accurate recognition of emotional expressions. We found that the PD group were impaired relative to controls in recognizing anger, disgust and fearful expressions in upright faces. Then, consistent with a configural processing deficit, participants with PD showed no composite effect when attempting to identify facial expressions of anger, disgust and fear. A face inversion effect, however, was observed in the performance of all participants in both the whole faces and facial composites tasks. These findings can be explained in terms of a configural processing deficit if it is assumed that the disruption caused by facial composites was specific to configural processing, whereas inversion reduced performance by making it difficult to derive both featural and configural information from faces.     

Emotional face recognition in autism and in cerebral visual impairments: In search for specificity

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in the social domain, but also by hyper- and hypo-reactivity. Atypical visual behaviours and processing have often been observed. Nevertheless, several similar signs are also identified in other clinical conditions including cerebral visual impairments (CVI). In the present study, we investigated emotional face categorization in groups of children with ASD and CVI by comparing each group to typically developing individuals (TD) in two tasks. Stimuli were either non-filtered or filtered by low- and high-spatial frequencies (LSF and HSF). All participants completed the autism spectrum quotient score (AQ) and a complete neurovisual evaluation. The results show that while both clinical groups presented difficulties in the emotional face recognition tasks and atypical processing of filtered stimuli, they did not differ from one another. Additionally, autistic traits were observed in the CVI group and symmetrically, some visual disturbances were present in the ASD group as measured via the AQ score and a neurovisual evaluation, respectively. The present study suggests the relevance of comparing ASD to CVI by showing that emotional face categorization difficulties should not be solely considered as autism-specific but merit investigation for potential dysfunction of the visual processing neural network. These results are of interest in both clinical and research perspectives, indicating that systematic visual examination is warranted for individuals with ASD.     

Emotion Beliefs,Emotion Regulation,and Emotional Experiences in Daily Life

One potential factor that could influence how individuals with at least moderate symptoms of depression cope with upsetting events in their daily lives is the beliefs that these individuals hold about whether emotions are malleable or fixed. The current study adopted an experience sampling approach to examine how the beliefs about emotion’s malleability related to daily positive and negative affect and daily emotion regulation efforts among individuals with at least moderate symptoms of depression (N = 84). Results demonstrated that individuals having at least moderate symptoms of depression who held more malleable beliefs about emotions reported decreased negative affect both overall during the day and specifically in response to daily upsetting events. Additionally, these individuals who held more malleable beliefs about their emotions also reported more daily use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate their emotions in response to upsetting daily events. Results from the current study extend previous work examining the relationship between emotion malleability beliefs, emotional experiences, and emotion regulation to examine these relationships in people who are moderately depressed as they navigate the emotional landscape of their daily lives.     

The danger of conflating level-specific effects of control variables when primary interest lies in level-2 effects

In the multilevel modelling literature, methodologists widely acknowledge that a level-1 variable can have distinct within-cluster and between-cluster effects, and that failing to disaggregate these can yield a slope estimate that is an uninterpretable, conflated blend of the two. Methodologists have stated, however, that including conflated slopes of level-1 variables in a model is not problematic if substantive interest lies only in effects of level-2 predictors. Researchers commonly follow this advice and use methods that do not disaggregate effects of level-1 control variables (e.g., grand mean centering) when examining effects of level-2 predictors. The primary purpose of this paper is to show that this is a dangerous practice. When level-specific effects of level-1 variables differ, failing to disaggregate them can severely bias estimation of level-2 predictor slopes. We show mathematically why this is the case and highlight factors that can exacerbate such bias. We corroborate these findings with simulations and present an empirical example, showing how such distortions can severely alter substantive conclusions. We ultimately recommend that simply including the cluster mean of the level-1 variable as a control will alleviate the problem.     

父母婚姻质量与儿童内化问题:父母情绪表达的中介作用与儿童迷走神经活动的调节作用

基于家庭系统理论与个体-环境交互理论,研究考察了父母情绪表达在父母婚姻质量与儿童内化问题关系中的中介作用,以及儿童迷走神经活动的调节作用。研究选取155名6~7岁小学儿童为被试,运用便携式生理多道记录仪采集儿童静息与任务状态下的心电（ECG）与呼吸率,换算出基线RSA与RSA反应作为迷走神经活动的指标,采用母亲报告的《婚姻质量问卷》、《家庭情绪表达问卷》和《儿童行为量表》测评父母婚姻质量、父母情绪表达及儿童内化问题。结果发现：（1）父母婚姻质量负向预测小学儿童内化问题;（2）父母消极、积极情绪表达在父母婚姻质量与小学儿童内化问题关系中起中介作用;（3）小学儿童迷走神经张力（基线RSA）调节父母消极情绪表达与儿童内化问题关系。研究结果表明父母婚姻质量不仅直接影响儿童内化问题,同时会通过父母情绪表达间接地影响儿童内化问题。另外,较高迷走神经张力能够缓冲父母消极情绪表达对儿童内化问题的影响。     

语言熟练度对Stroop效应的影响——不平衡双语者的任务态fMRI研究

目的:探讨语言熟练度对Stroop效应的影响及其背后的脑机制。材料与方法:17位被试参与本研究。被试母语为汉语,第二语言为英语。在被试完成中英文的stroop色字的任务过程中对被试进行fMRI扫描。结果:在色字相一致的条件下,中文任务与英文任务相比,双侧背侧枕叶及右侧背外侧前额叶有更强的激活; 反向比较,双侧腹侧枕叶有更强的激活。在色字不一致的条件下,中文任务与英文任务相比,双侧背外侧前额叶、右侧枕下回有更强的激活; 反向比较,并无显著激活的脑区。此外,中文Stroop效应引起左侧额下回显著的激活。英文Stroop效应中,左侧额下回无显著激活。结论:结合前人研究,我们得出,语言熟练度影响了对注意控制有重要作用的背外侧前额叶以及与反应抑制有关的左侧额下回在Stroop任务中的参与程度,进而影响了Stroop任务的表现     

Cerebral blood flow in 5‐ to 8‐month‐olds: Regional tissue maturity is associated with infant affect

Infancy is marked by rapid neural and emotional development. The relation between brain function and emotion in infancy, however, is not well understood. Methods for measuring brain function predominantly rely on the BOLD signal; however, interpretation of the BOLD signal in infancy is challenging because the neuronal‐hemodynamic relation is immature. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) provides a context for the infant BOLD signal and can yield insight into the developmental maturity of brain regions that may support affective behaviors. This study aims to elucidate the relations among rCBF, age, and emotion in infancy. One hundred and seven mothers reported their infants' (infant age M ± SD = 6.14 ± 0.51 months) temperament. A subsample of infants completed MRI scans, 38 of whom produced usable perfusion MRI during natural sleep to quantify rCBF. Mother‐infant dyads completed the repeated Still‐Face Paradigm, from which infant affect reactivity and recovery to stress were quantified. We tested associations of infant age at scan, temperament factor scores, and observed affect reactivity and recovery with voxel‐wise rCBF. Infant age was positively associated with CBF in nearly all voxels, with peaks located in sensory cortices and the ventral prefrontal cortex, supporting the formulation that rCBF is an indicator of tissue maturity. Temperamental Negative Affect and recovery of positive affect following a stressor were positively associated with rCBF in several cortical and subcortical limbic regions, including the orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. This finding yields insight into the nature of affective neurodevelopment during infancy. Specifically, infants with relatively increased prefrontal cortex maturity may evidence a disposition toward greater negative affect and negative reactivity in their daily lives yet show better recovery of positive affect following a social stressor.