The brain mechanism that reduces the vividness of negative imagery

The present study attempts to locate brain regions that are related to vividness control, a hypothesized mechanism that reduces the vividness of negative imagery by controlling memory retrieval and emotion processing. The results showed that BOLD response in the left posterior cingulate gyrus in the negative imagery condition, in which activation of vividness control mechanisms was considered to be strong, was greater than that in the positive imagery condition, in which the activation of control mechanisms was considered to be weak. Moreover, the activation of this region negatively correlated with the subjective vividness of negative imagery. These results support the idea that the posterior cingulate gyrus may be involved in the suppression of imagery generation. Several previous studies have suggested that the posterior cingulate cortex is involved in both memory and emotion processing. Therefore, the current results indicate that the posterior cingulate gyrus may function as the vividness control mechanism.     

Blood pressure reactivity to active and passive behavioral conditions in hypertensives and normotensives

Blood pressure reactivity and passive behavioral tasks was studied in patients with mild essential hypertension and normotensive controls. The passive condition included 10 presentations of a 6 sec, 78 dB, 1000 Hz tone without any response requirements. In the active condition subjects were given an additional 10 tone presentations and asked to press a push-button at tone termination. The absolute and percent increase in systolic blood pressure from rest was greater in hypertensives than normotensives in response to the active condition but similar to the passive condition. It is concluded that patients with hypertension compared to normotensive controls show exaggerated blood pressure reactivity to tasks involving active but not passive coping efforts. Since the tasks used to induce active and passive coping in the present study were identical apart from coping requirements, the notion that the activity dimension in and of itself modulates reactivity differences between patients and controls is supported.     

The Novacco Anger Scale and Jenkins Activity Survey as predictors of cardiovascular reactivity

This study investigated the relationship among anger, the Type A construct, and cardiovascular reactivity. The Novacco Anger Scale and the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) were used to measure anger proneness and Type A characteristics, respectively. Twenty-four college males were selected from the upper and lower quintiles of the JAS distribution. During the study, the subjects were exposed to varying levels of experimentally induced challenge, while measurements were taken of heart-rate and blood-pressure changes. The results showed a modest but significant correlation between scores on the Novacco Anger Scale and the JAS. More importantly, scores on the Novacco Anger Scale correlated significantly with heart rate and systolic blood pressure under all challenge conditions, while those on the JAS were unrelated to cardiovascular excitability. These results raise questions about the usefulness of the JAS as a predictor of CHD risk. They are also consistent with the beliefs of other investigators that anger and hostility are the most important Type A behaviors in predisposing patients to coronary heart disease. Additional implications of the study are discussed.     

Reactivity and unreliability of husbands as participant observers

This study examined the reliability and reactivity of participant observation. Twelve couples engaged in two discussions in a laboratory, one on a conflict topic and one on a consensus topic. For the eight couples in the experimental sequences, a baseline discussion was followed by participant observation in which the husband recorded his wife's use of I while continuing to converse. The four couples in the control sequences conversed without participant observation. Compared to observations made by a trained observer, the husbands were unreliable observers, underestimating their wives' use of I. Participant observation was reactive (P<.01), with more wives decreasing their use of I in the experimental sequences than in the control sequences (p<.094). The topic of discussion did not differentially influence reliability or reactivity.This research was conducted as the first author's independent doctoral research project. We extend gratitude to the Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for Grant 0-2-110-218-XXXXX-7548; the Statistical Consulting Center of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; two anonymous reviewers; and our research assistants, Suzanne Brannon, Ben Hardie, Kathy Lindamood, Amy Mitchem, Regina Pierce, and Elga Wulfert. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Washington, D.C., December 1983.     

Examining the trajectory of parent emotion talk in mothers of toddlers: A predominantly Latine sample

Supportive parent emotion socialization has been associated with greater child emotion understanding and expression and lower levels of externalizing behavior problems, with limited understanding on parent emotion socialization in toddlerhood. The current study examined the developmental trajectory of emotion socialization via emotion talk in mothers of toddlers from a predominantly Latine sample. Participants were 101 mother-toddler dyads assessed over three time points from ages 12–25 months. Overall, maternal emotion talk remained relatively stable over time, although there was a significant decrease between the first and second assessments before returning to initial rates at the third assessment. Maternal emotion talk did not predict child externalizing behavior over time. Interestingly, however, greater toddler externalizing behavior problems was associated with an increase in maternal emotion talk over time. These findings suggest maternal emotion talk is relatively stable for parents of children who are low on externalizing behaviors and may fluctuate (i.e., slowly increase) for mothers of children who are high in externalizing behaviors. Understanding these mechanisms further could help inform how we implement and personalize parenting interventions.     

A French validation of the short Need For Affect scale

IntroductionThe way we interact with our environment depends on our spontaneous tendency to approach or to avoid emotional experiences triggered by that environment. This dimension of the emotional experience is called the need for affect, that is, the tendency of individuals to adopt approaching or avoidance behaviour with regard to emotional stimuli.MethodsThe Need For Affect (NFA) Scale has been the subject of numerous studies since the validation of the original version (Maio & Esses, 2001) and its short version (Appel et al., 2012). However, no validation of the latter scale has been conducted in French. We propose a French version of the short NFA scale on a student sample and a sample from the general population.ResultsWe found the structure of the original scale in a French translation (of the English version). In addition, invariance tests showed that this structure remained the same for both samples.ConclusionWe recommend the use of this version of the short NFA scale for studies conducted on French-speaking samples.     

Reducing residential electrical energy use: payments, information, and feedback

Monetary payments, energy information, and daily feedback on consumption were employed to reduce electricity use in four units of a university student housing complex. A combined multiple-baseline and withdrawal design permitted both within- and between-unit comparisons. Payments produced immediate and substantial reductions in consumption in all units, even when the magnitude of the payments was reduced considerably. Feedback also produced reductions, but information about ways to conserve and about the cost of using various appliances did not. It was also found that, in general, payments combined with either information or feedback produced no greater effect than payments alone.     

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants’ task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.     

Horizontal eye movements foster approach to negative pictures but do not change emotional valence: A dopaminergic regulation hypothesis

A new dopaminergic regulation hypothesis is proposed based on two experiments exploring eye-movement effects. In the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Saccade-Induced Retrieval Enhancement (SIRE) domains, eye-movement mechanisms are mainly studied with explicit measures. Here implicit and explicit measures of emotion and memory for positive and negative pictures were investigated after eye movements or fixation in extreme right-handers. Eye movements enhanced explicit recognition predominantly for negative pictures. The absence of implicit repetition priming in both experiments supported a dissociation between implicit and explicit memory. Motivational eye-movement effects emerged but implicit and explicit affect remained unchanged. Experiment 2 revealed, after initial freezing to negative pictures, an acceleration, particularly of approach responses. Eye movements are postulated to foster approach towards negative memories, and promote, though dopaminergic pathways from the Superior Colliculus, enhanced explicit memory and active emotion regulation, primarily in persons with a collateralization of eye and dopamine dominance.     

Primary caregiver emotional expressiveness relates to toddler emotion understanding

The present study examined the impact of emotional expressiveness in toddlers’ environments on their emotion understanding. Primary caregivers of 35 toddlers completed two surveys regarding the family’s emotional expressiveness and the primary caregiver’s expressivity. Toddlers participated in the Affective Knowledge Test to measure emotion understanding. Toddler emotion understanding related to primary caregiver expressivity, but not family expressiveness. Further, toddler emotion understanding related to primary caregiver Impulse Strength, but not Negative or Positive Emotionality. This suggests that primary caregivers with more impulsive emotional response tendencies may help their children to identify associations between emotional events and reactions.