Effects of daily events on mood states in major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by high negative affect (NA) and low positive affect (PA), but little is known about emotional reactivity in daily life. The authors used experience sampling methodology to investigate changes in NA and PA following minor daily events in MDD compared with healthy participants. Contrary to expectation, MDD participants did not report more frequent negative events, although they did report fewer positive events. Multilevel regression showed that both NA and PA responses to negative events were blunted in the MDD group, whereas responses to positive events were enhanced. NA responses to negative events persisted longer in MDD participants. Depressed participants with a positive family history or longer current episodes showed relatively greater NA responses to negative events.     

Ambulatory emotional reactivity to negative daily life events predicts remission from major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is often associated with altered emotional reactivity. However, the functional significance of altered emotional reactivity in MDD is uncertain. This study was the first to examine the predictive relationship between intensely sampled ambulatory emotional reactivity and the clinical course of MDD. Forty-six outpatients who met criteria for MDD underwent six days of experience sampling of their ambulatory reactivity to everyday negative and positive life events. After experience sampling, all outpatients received pharmacotherapy with supportive psychotherapy and were followed clinically for 18 months. At one month, less emotional reactivity to negative and positive daily events predicted higher depressive symptom severity. Importantly, patients who exhibited less negative emotional reactivity to daily negative life events were less likely to recover from MDD over the 18 month follow-up. Relationships between ambulatory emotional reactivity and MDD course were not accounted for by the duration or the severity of initial MDD symptoms. Diminished ambulatory emotional reactivity appears to be functionally significant in depression. Intensive sampling of ambulatory emotions may have utility for predicting the clinical course of MDD.     

Diurnal mood variation in major depressive disorder

Depression disturbs mood, but a clear picture of diurnal mood rhythms in depression has yet to emerge. This study examined variations in positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), two dimensions of mood that generate diurnal patterns among healthy individuals. Repeated measurements of NA and PA in daily life were obtained over 6 days from 47 depressed outpatients and 39 healthy individuals using the Experience Sampling Method. Relative to healthy individuals, depressed individuals exhibited increasing PA levels during the day with a later acrophase. In contrast, depressed persons' NA exhibited a more pronounced diurnal rhythm and was more variable from moment to moment than healthy individuals'. Ambulatory mood measurements in depression suggest distinct diurnal disturbances of positive and negative affect.     

Mood reactivity to daily negative events in early adolescence: relationship to risk for psychopathology

Emotional responses to negative daily experiences in young adolescents may provide important clues to the development of psychopathology, but research is lacking. This study assessed momentary mood reactivity to daily events as a function of risk profile in a school sample, ages 11-14. High-risk (HR, n=25) and low-risk (LR, n=106) subgroups completed frequent self-reports of mood and events for 5 days. HR adolescents reported more negative events involving family and peers. Multilevel modeling results showed that negative events, especially if stressful, were associated with increased negative and decreased positive affects, with heightened responses in HR adolescents. HR adolescents with greater stress over the last 3 months showed additional increases in depressed mood following negative events. Altered reactivity to and dysfunctional appraisals of daily events may link adolescent risk profiles to later mental health problems.     

Reaching with alien limbs: visual exposure to prosthetic hands in a mirror biases proprioception without accompanying illusions of ownership

In five experiments, we investigated the effects of visual exposure to a real hand, arubber hand, or a wooden block on reaching movements made with the unseen left hand behind a parasagittal mirror. Participants reached from one of four starting positions, corresponding to four levels of conflict between the proprioceptively and visually specified positions of the reaching hand. Reaching movements were affected most by exposure to the real hand, intermediately by the rubber hand, and least of all by the wooden block When the posture and/or movement of the visible hand was incompatible with that of the reaching hand, the effect on reaching was reduced. A "rubber hand illusion" questionnaire revealed that illusions of ownership of the rubber hand were not strongly correlated with reaching performance. This research suggests that proprioception is recalibrated following visual exposure to prosthetic hands and that this recalibration is independent of the rubber hand illusion.     

Loglinear Rasch model tests

Existing statistical tests for the fit of the Rasch model have been criticized, because they are only sensitive to specific violations of its assumptions. Contingency table methods using loglinear models have been used to test various psychometric models. In this paper, the assumptions of the Rasch model are discussed and the Rasch model is reformulated as a quasi-independence model. The model is a quasi-loglinear model for the incomplete subgroup × score × item 1 × item 2 × ... × itemk contingency table. Using ordinary contingency table methods the Rasch model can be tested generally or against less restrictive quasi-loglinear models to investigate specific violations of its assumptions.     

Changes in affect interrelations as a function of stressful events

This paper examines the proposition that stress shrinks affective space, increasing the inverse correlation between positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). The experience sampling method was used to record the levels of PA and NA and stress reported by white-collar employees 10 times a day for 5 days. These data were subjected to hierarchical linear modelling to determine whether the relationship between affective states becomes increasingly inverse as a function of stress, as predicted by Zautra, Potter, and Reich (1997). Caution was taken to address measurement issues that have been raised in recent debates over the independence of PA and NA, and a contingency analysis was also used to supplement the linear modelling approach. Both types of analyses revealed evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the degree to which PA and NA are inversely related varies with the level of stress.