Using facial muscular movements to understand young children's emotion regulation and concurrent neural activation

Individual differences in young children's frustration responses set the stage for myriad developmental outcomes and represent an area of intense empirical interest. Emotion regulation is hypothesized to comprise the interplay of complex behaviors, such as facial expressions, and activation of concurrent underlying neural systems. At present, however, the literature has mostly examined children's observed emotion regulation behaviors and assumed underlying brain activation through separate investigations, resulting in theoretical gaps in our understanding of how children regulate emotion in vivo. Our goal was to elucidate links between young children's emotion regulation‐related neural activation, facial muscular movements, and parent‐rated temperamental emotion regulation. Sixty‐five children (age 3–7) completed a frustration‐inducing computer task while lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) activation and concurrent facial expressions were recorded. Negative facial expressions with eye constriction were inversely associated with both parent‐rated temperamental emotion regulation and concurrent LPFC activation. Moreover, we found evidence that positive expressions with eye constriction during frustration may be associated with stronger LPFC activation. Results suggest a correspondence between facial expressions and LPFC activation that may explicate how children regulate emotion in real time.     

Effects of a Peer Engagement Program on Socially Withdrawn Children with a History of Maltreatment

Children with a history of child maltreatment often have limited social interactions with other children and adults. This study examined the effects of a Peer Engagement Program, consisting of peer mentoring and social skills training with positive reinforcement, in three children with low levels of oral and social interaction. A multiple baseline, single-subject research design was used to test whether introduction of the intervention was associated with increased, directly observed oral interaction and engagement in social activities with peers and adults. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Social Skills Rating Scale (SSRS) were administered before and after intervention. All children showed increased levels of oral and social interaction and improved scores on the SSRS and the CBCL.     

Use of Self-Report Measures of Anxiety and Depression in Outpatients with Schizophrenia: Reliability and Validity

The psychometrics of many self-report measures of anxiety and depression have been established for patients with anxiety disorders, but little is known about use of these measures in patients with psychotic disorders. This study examined psychometrics of commonly used self-report measures. Self-report measures and interviewer ratings were collected on 33 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia disorders. A sample of 46 patients with anxiety disorders completed the same self-report measures. Internal consistency was high for the self-report measures in both samples. Test-retest reliability was moderate to high. Scores on self-report measures were correlated with interviewer ratings and with scores on other self-report measures of similar constructs, supporting the convergent validity of the measures. Reliable and valid information about anxiety and depression can be obtained through administering the self-report measures to outpatients diagnosed with psychotic disorders. There was more overlap among measures than was expected, possibly because of poor discriminant validity. One explanation of this may be that anxiety constructs overlap more in patients with schizophrenia or related disorders than in non-psychotic populations.     

How to blow the Whistle and still have a career afterwards

Filing charges of scientific misconduct can be a risky and dangerous endeavor. This article presents rules of conduct to follow when considering whether to report perceived misconduct, and a set of step-by-step procedures for responsible whistleblowing that describe how to do so once the decision to report misconduct has been made. This advice is framed within the university setting, and may not apply fully in industrial settings. Ms. Gunsalus, an attorney, has been responsible for a wide range of compliance issues and academic policy matters at her university including responding to allegations of scientific misconduct. She served on the United States Commission on Research Integrity and spent six years on the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, four of them as chair. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium entitled “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: What the Scientific Community Can Do About Whistleblowing” held during the Annual Meeting of the AAAS, Seattle, Washington, 15 February, 1997.     

Emotion Regulation Strategies in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Panic Disorder

Emotion regulation (ER) has been incorporated into many models of psychopathology, but it has not been examined directly in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for panic disorder with agoraphobia (PD/A). In this study, a preliminary model of ER in CBT for PD/A is proposed based on existing theories, and several propositions of the model are tested. We hypothesized that increases in cognitive reappraisal would precede decreases in biased cognitions, decreases in expressive suppression would follow decreases in biased cognitions, and a reduction in symptom severity would follow decreases in expressive suppression. Twenty-nine patients who received CBT for PD/A completed weekly self-report measures of symptom severity, anxiety sensitivity, reappraisal and expressive suppression. In addition, patients were compared to a matched normal sample. Cross-lagged analyses partially supported the hypotheses. Reappraisal did not change until late stages of therapy and was generally not associated with treatment outcome. Suppression decreased significantly and exhibited a reciprocal relationship with biased cognitions. Symptom reduction followed decreases in suppression as hypothesized. However, patients did not differ in ER from matched controls at either pre- or posttreatment. Results suggest the important distinction between reappraisal and appraisal, and stress the role of session-by-session decreases in suppression as a predictor of symptom reduction.     

Treating Scrupulosity in Religious Individuals Using Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Scrupulosity, the obsessional fear of thinking or behaving immorally or against one's religious beliefs, is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that has been relatively understudied to date. Treating religious patients with scrupulosity raises a number of unique clinical challenges for many clinicians. For example, how does one distinguish normal beliefs from pathological scrupulosity? How does one adapt exposures to a religious patient whose fears are related to sinning? How far should one go in exposures in such cases? How and when does one include clergy in treatment? We address these issues and report a case example of the successful treatment of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman using the treatment principles that we recommend for religious individuals with scrupulosity.     

Interpretation biases in social anxiety: response generation, response selection, and self-appraisals

Cognitive theories propose that the resolution of ambiguity is related to the maintenance of social anxiety. A sentence completion task was used to examine how individuals high (n=26) and low (n=23) in social anxiety resolve ambiguous social sentences. Individuals were asked to generate as many responses as came to mind for each sentence, and then to endorse the response that best completes the sentence. Total responses, first responses, and endorsed responses were examined separately. Results indicated that high anxious individuals had more negative and anxious responses and fewer positive and neutral responses than low anxious individuals on all sentence completion measures. In contrast, a self-report measure of interpretation bias indicated that more of negative and anxious appraisals were related to social anxiety, while positive and neutral appraisals were not. Results are discussed in terms of a multi-stage processing model of interpretation biases.     

Improvement in memory with time

Groups of rats which had incompletely learnt to escape from shock into the lit arm of a Y-maze, were tested for retention of the habit at various times after training. These times ranged from 30 min. to 17 days. Retention was found to be poor from 30 min. to 5 days, showed a marked improvement at 7 to 10 days and a subsequent decrement after 14 days. These results parallel those previously found for the differential susceptibility to cholinergic drugs of habits of different age. They provide further evidence that memory strength increases with time up to a point, and then gradually decreases.     

Evidence of Non-Linear Associations between Frustration-Related Prefrontal Cortex Activation and the Normal:Abnormal Spectrum of Irritability in Young Children

Burgeoning interest in early childhood irritability has recently turned toward neuroimaging techniques to better understand normal versus abnormal irritability using dimensional methods. Current accounts largely assume a linear relationship between poor frustration management, an expression of irritability, and its underlying neural circuitry. However, the relationship between these constructs may not be linear (i.e., operate differently at varying points across the irritability spectrum), with implications for how early atypical irritability is identified and treated. Our goal was to examine how the association between frustration-related lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) activation and irritability differs across the dimensional spectrum of irritability by testing for non-linear associations. Children (N = 92; ages 3–7) ranging from virtually no irritability to the upper end of the clinical range completed a frustration induction task while we recorded LPFC hemoglobin levels using fNIRS. Children self-rated their emotions during the task and parents rated their child’s level of irritability. Whereas a linear model showed no relationship between frustration-related LPFC activation and irritability, a quadratic model revealed frustration-related LPFC activation increased as parent-reported irritability scores increased within the normative range of irritability but decreased with increasing irritability in the severe range, with an apex at the 91st percentile. Complementarily, we found children’s self-ratings of emotion during frustration related to concurrent LPFC activation as an inverted U function, such that children who reported mild distress had greater activation than peers reporting no or high distress. Results suggest children with relatively higher irritability who are unimpaired may possess well-developed LPFC support, a mechanism that drops out in the severe end of the irritability dimension. Findings suggest novel avenues for understanding the heterogeneity of early irritability and its clinical sequelae.