Expression Of Negative Affect Research Articles

Can neutral episodic memories become emotional? Evidence from facial expressions and subjective feelings

Maladaptive emotional memories are a transdiagnostic feature of mental health problems. Therefore, understanding whether and how emotional memories can change might help to prevent and treat mental disorders. We tested whether neutral memories of naturalistic events can retroactively acquire positive or negative affect, in a preregistered three-day Modification of Valence in Episodes (MOVIE) paradigm. On Day 1, participants (N = 41) encoded memories of neutral movie scenes, representing lifelike naturalistic experiences. On Day 2, they retrieved each episode before viewing a happy, sad, or neutral scene from the same movie (yielding a within-subjects design with a neutral-negative, neutral-positive, and neutral-neutral condition). On Day 3, participants again retrieved each memory from Day 1. We assessed the affective tone of episodes through facial expressions of positive and negative affect (using facial electromyography, fEMG) and through self-reported feelings. Positive updating of neutral episodes led to increased expressions of positive affect, whereas negative updating led to increased self-reported negative feelings. These results suggest that complex neutral episodic memories can retroactively acquire an affective tone, but the effects were modest and inconsistent across affect readouts. Future research should investigate alternative approaches to updating emotional memories that produce more profound changes in the valence of memories.

Valence and Intensity of Emotional Expression in Autistic and Non-Autistic Toddlers.

Differences in emotional experience and expression have long been recognized as common in the presentation of autism, yet research examining emotional expression in early childhood is limited, with mixed findings. Understanding emotional reactivity and expression in autism in early life is an essential step towards uncovering the mechanisms of these risks and identifying targets for intervention. The present study examined emotional expression in autistic (N = 17) and non-autistic (N = 20) toddlers (mean age = 25.27; SD = 1.88) during emotion elicitation tasks aimed at eliciting joy, frustration, and unease. Video recorded tasks were coded in ten second intervals for emotional valence and intensity, and the following variables were computed: proportion of time in positive, neutral, and negative affect; maximum intensity of positive and negative affect; and range of affect (i.e., most negative to most positive intensity). Autistic toddlers spent more time in neutral facial expressions, less time displaying positive affect, and had somewhat less intense positive emotional expression than non-autistic peers. Small differences were apparent in intensity of negative affect expression, while no differences emerged in duration of time spent in negative affect. Findings emphasize that differences may be more apparent in duration, rather than intensity of emotional expression, and that it may be particularly important to examine periods of "neutral" affect in young autistic children. Future research should consider the best ways to understand emotional reactivity in this population considering their unique interests, challenges, and communication styles.

Maternal contingent responses to distress facilitate infant soothing but not in mothers with depression or infants high in negative affect.

Depression in mothers is consistently associated with reduced caregiving sensitivity and greater infant negative affect expression. The current article examined the real-time behavioral mechanisms underlying these associations using Granger causality time series analyses in a sample of mothers (N = 194; 86.60% White) at elevated risk for depression and their 3-month-old infants (46.40% female) living in a major metropolitan area in the United States. Overall, mothers contingently responded to infant distress, and mothers' responses to infant distress increased the likelihood of infant soothing in real time. However, there was no evidence for maternal contingent responding or facilitation of infant soothing in subsamples of mothers who were currently experiencing elevated depression symptoms or in mothers of highly negative infants. These findings suggest real-time behavioral mechanisms by which risks for maladaptive self-regulation may develop. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Nothing Is Certain Except Taxes and the Other Thing: Searching for Death Anxiety in a Large Online Sample

Philosophical and psychological literature has suggested that death anxiety has a profound impact on people’s lives and is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. Such claims motivated us to examine how people express their emotions and attitudes toward death in short free-text responses. We explored a qualitative dataset where 803 Americans stated their thoughts about either death or physical pain (toothache). Comparing these, we found that death prompts caused the expression of less negative affect and more positive affect than toothache prompts. The reactions to death were quite diverse and did not appear to be dominated by existential anxiety. We discuss whether this pattern may be due to psychological defense against death causing negative emotions, or whether the pattern reveals a “true” preference for contemplating death rather than toothache. The article serves as a companion for an open dataset, to allow other researchers to explore and reuse it.

Visual totality of rewards-based crowdfunding pitch videos: Disentangling the impact of peak negative affective visual expression on funding outcomes

In this study, we introduce visual totality of a crowdfunding pitch video which considers not only visual segments with human faces but also segments without human faces. Drawing from Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory and expression theory, we analyze more than 4 million frames in 3184 Indiegogo rewards-based crowdfunding pitch videos using the ResNet 50 deep neural network. Results indicate that the impact of peak negative affective visual expression on funding performance is stronger than that of its positive counterpart for both segments with and without human faces. Additionally, the influence of peak negative affective visual expression from human faces is stronger in the first half (vs. the second half) of the pitch video. Further, we found a substitute moderating effect between the peak negative affective visual expression from segments with and without human faces on funding performance. We conducted an additional data collection to ascertain that pain points serve as the underlying mechanism through which negative affective visual expressions related to funding outcome. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study to the crowdfunding literature and the broader research on entrepreneurial resource acquisition.

Cognitive Reappraisal Impairs Negative Affect Regulation in the Context of Social Rejection for Youth With Early-Stage Borderline Personality Disorder.

Application of emotion regulation strategies might be susceptible to the context of social rejection for individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This study compared the ability of 27 outpatient youths (15-25 years old) with early-stage BPD and 37 healthy controls (HC) to apply expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal in standard and socially rejecting laboratory contexts. BPD youths were largely as able as HCs to regulate negative affect across instruction and contexts. However, cognitive reappraisal in the context of social rejection heightened BPD negative facial expression relative to HCs. Thus, while BPD emotion regulation ability was largely normative, cognitive reappraisal might be ineffective in the context of social rejection for this group, with social rejection acting as an accelerant that heightens the expression of negative affect. Given the common experience of perceived and actual social rejection for this group, clinicians should carefully consider treatments that include cognitive reappraisal strategies because they might be contraindicated.

Parenting Among Women in Methadone Treatment: Contributions of Mental Health Problems and Violence Exposure.

The aim of the current study is to explore factors associated with quality of parenting among women in treatment for opioid use disorders. 150 Black American women with 3-5year old children were recruited through methadone treatment programs. Parenting representations were assessed through the Working Model of the Child Interview and parenting behavior through video recordings of mother-child interaction. Interviews were used to assess mothers' history of violence exposure and to make DSM diagnoses. Mothers' mood disorder was related to distorted representations and to expressions of concerned affect (anxiety, fear, guilt). Mothers' personality disorder was related to expressions of negative affect (anger and frustration) and inversely related to sensitive parenting behavior. Mothers' experience of family violence during childhood and partner violence during adulthood were related to concerned affect in their representations. Women in treatment for substance use disorder have complex and interconnected needs, including parenting supports and trauma-informed mental health services.

Bubbles and lockdown in Aotearoa New Zealand: the language of self-isolation in #Covid19NZ tweets

In March 2020, as cases of COVID-19 were found in Aotearoa New Zealand, the government moved to eliminate community transmission of the virus through self-isolation. During this month, as the...

Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults

Surgical face masks reduce the spread of airborne pathogens but also disturb the flow of information between individuals. The risk of getting seriously ill after infection with SARS-COV-2 during the present COVID-19 pandemic amplifies with age, suggesting that face masks should be worn especially during face-to-face contact with and between older people. However, the ability to accurately perceive and understand communication signals decreases with age, and it is currently unknown whether face masks impair facial communication more severely in older people. We compared the impact of surgical face masks on dynamic facial emotion recognition in younger (18–30 years) and older (65–85 years) adults (N = 96) in an online study. Participants watched short video clips of young women who facially expressed anger, fear, contempt or sadness. Faces of half of the women were covered by a digitally added surgical face mask. As expected, emotion recognition accuracy declined with age, and face masks reduced emotion recognition accuracy in both younger and older participants. Unexpectedly, the effect of face masks did not differ between age groups. Further analyses showed that masks also reduced the participants’ overall confidence in their emotion judgements, but not their performance awareness (the difference between their confidence ratings for correct and incorrect responses). Again, there were no mask-by-age interactions. Finally, data obtained with a newly developed questionnaire (attitudes towards face masks, atom) suggest that younger and older people do not differ in how much they feel impaired in their understanding of other people’s emotions by face masks or how useful they find face masks in confining the COVID-19 pandemic. In sum, these findings do not provide evidence that the impact of face masks on the decoding of facial signals is disproportionally larger in older people.

Trajectory of emotion dysregulation in positive and negative affect across childhood predicts adolescent emotion dysregulation and overall functioning.

Emotion dysregulation is cross-diagnostic and impairing. Most research has focused on dysregulated expressions of negative affect, often measured as irritability, which is associated with multiple forms of psychopathology and predicts negative outcomes. However, the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) include both negative and positive valence systems. Emerging evidence suggests that dysregulated expressions of positive affect, or excitability, in early childhood predict later psychopathology and impairment above and beyond irritability. Typically, irritability declines from early through middle childhood; however, the developmental trajectory of excitability is unknown. The impact of excitability across childhood on later emotion dysregulation is also yet unknown. In a well-characterized, longitudinal sample of 129 children studied from ages 3 to 5.11 years through 14 to 19 years, enriched for early depression and disruptive symptoms, we assessed the trajectory of irritability and excitability using multilevel modeling and how components of these trajectories impact later emotion dysregulation. While irritability declines across childhood, excitability remains remarkably stable both within and across the group. Overall levels of excitability (excitability intercept) predict later emotion dysregulation as measured by parent and self-report and predict decreased functional magnetic resonance imaging activity in cognitive emotion regulation regions during an emotion regulation task. Irritability was not related to any dysregulation outcome above and beyond excitability.

How Do Child ADHD Symptoms and Oppositionality Impact Parent-Child Interactions When Crossing Virtual Roads?

This study examined how parents and children interact when crossing virtual roads together. We examined (1) whether children's inattention/hyperactivity and oppositionality and children's failure to jointly perform the task interfered with parents' efforts to scaffold children's road-crossing skill and (2) whether experience with the joint road-crossing task impacted children's subsequent performance in a solo road-crossing task. Fifty-five 8- to 10-year-old children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and their parents first jointly crossed a lane of traffic in an immersive pedestrian simulator. Children then completed the same road-crossing task alone. Parents completed questionnaires about children's symptoms of inattention/hyperactivity and oppositionality. Analyses of the joint road-crossing task showed that when parents and children crossed different gaps, parents suggested and opposed more gaps and were less likely to use a prospective gap communication strategy (i.e., communicating about a crossable gap prior to its arrival). Crossing different gaps was also associated with increased expressions of negative affect among parents and children and an increase in collisions among children. Children's level of parent-reported oppositionality also predicted an increase in child defiance and parental redirection of child behavior. Analyses of children's subsequent crossing performance indicated that parents' use of a prospective gap communication strategy during the joint road-crossing task predicted selection of larger gaps during the solo crossing task. Not crossing through the same gap and increased levels of child oppositionality interfered with the scaffolding process, potentially informing future parent-based intervention efforts for increasing children's road-crossing safety.

BNST specific mGlu5 receptor knockdown regulates sex-dependent expression of negative affect produced by adolescent ethanol exposure and adult stress

Adolescent alcohol use is one of the strongest predictors for the development of an alcohol use disorder (AUD). Notably, this period of risk coincides with the development of affective disorders, which disproportionately impact and drive problematic drinking behavior in women. Stress is a particularly salient factor that drives relapse during periods of abstinence. Previous work in our lab has shown that adolescent intermittent ethanol vapor (AIE) produces sex-dependent changes in glutamatergic activity in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and behavioral outcomes following acute restraint stress in adulthood. In females, AIE disrupts group 1 metabotropic glutamate (mGlu1/5) receptor activity and enhances anhedonia-like behavior. The current study site-specifically knocked down mGlu5 receptors in the BNST of male and female Grm5loxp mice, exposed them to AIE, and observed the interaction of AIE and stress on negative affect-like behaviors in adulthood. These negative affect-like behaviors included the novelty-induced hypophagia task following acute restraint stress, open field activity, and contextual fear conditioning. Overall, we replicated our previous findings that AIE enhanced anhedonia-like activity in the novelty-induced hypophagia task in females and fear acquisition in males. The primary effect of BNST-mGlu5 receptor knockdown was that it independently enhanced anhedonia-like activity in females. Correlation analyses revealed that behavior in these paradigms showed poor interdependence. These results indicate that preclinical models of negative affective-like states encompass distinct features that may have independent, clinically relevant mechanisms. Further, modulating mGlu5 receptors is a prospective treatment target for females experiencing anhedonic-like states that make them susceptible to alcohol relapse.

Single-Dose Effects of Citalopram on Neural Responses to Affective Stimuli in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial

BackgroundPsychiatric medication that has a soothing effect on limbic responses to affective stimuli could improve affective instability symptoms as observed in borderline personality disorder (BPD). The objective of this study was to investigate whether citalopram versus placebo reduces the response of the affective neural circuitry during an emotional challenge. MethodsA total of 30 female individuals with a BPD diagnosis participated in a placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover trial design. Three hours after oral drug intake, individuals with BPD viewed affective pictures while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Blood oxygen level–dependent responses to images of negative affective scenes and faces showing negative emotional expressions were assessed in regions of interest (amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex). Blood perfusion at rest was assessed with arterial spin labeling. ResultsThe neural response to pictures showing negative affective scenes was not significantly affected by citalopram (n = 23). Citalopram significantly reduced the amygdala response to pictures of faces with negative affective expressions (n = 25, treatment difference left hemisphere: −0.06 ± 0.16, p < .05; right hemisphere: −0.06 ± 0.17, p < .05). We observed no significant effects of citalopram on the other regions. The drug did not significantly alter blood perfusion at rest. ConclusionsCitalopram can alter the amygdala response to affective stimuli in BPD, which is characterized by overly responsive affective neural circuitry.

Negative Partner Attributions Moderate the Association between Heart Rate Reactivity During Relationship Conflict and Relationship Satisfaction

Numerous theoretical models of relationship distress suggest that strong, negative reactions to conflict are directly associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction. Consistent with this supposition, substantial evidence links higher levels of subjective negative emotion, more pronounced and frequent expressions of negative affect, and higher levels of negative communication behaviors to lower levels of relationship satisfaction (e.g., Bradbury, Fincham, & Beach, 2000, Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(4), 964). However, the evidence linking stress-related physiological responding during relationship conflict and relationship satisfaction is less compelling than would be anticipated based on theory. We propose that these theoretically unexpected but empirically well-replicated findings may be the result of different patterns in association between physiological reactivity and relationship satisfaction for couples with varying styles in how they typically perceive unwanted behavior in one another. The present study tests negative attributions for undesirable partner behaviors as a moderator of the association between heart rate reactivity (HRR) during relationship conflict and relationship satisfaction in a sample of 60 married couples. A significant interaction emerged between HRR and negative attributions of partner behavior in predicting relationship satisfaction such that higher levels of HRR were associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction for individuals who typically made more negative attributions for undesirable partner behaviors, but with higher levels of relationship satisfaction for individuals who typically made fewer negative attributions for undesirable partner behaviors. Implications for conceptualizing reactivity during relationship conflict and couple interventions are discussed.

Child Behavior Checklist: Cuestionario de conductas socio-afectivas en una población preescolar de Cienfuegos, Cuba.

La evaluación del desarrollo afectivo en la infancia preescolar es una necesidad en Cuba debido a la baja tasa de mortalidad infantil que puede tener en adelante, como consecuencia, niños con diversos riesgos de salud; por otro lado y en el caso concreto de problemas afectivos, existen pocas pruebas válidas para su detección temprana. Objetivo: Comprobar la validez del cuestionario Child Behavior Checklist en la provincia de Cienfuegos, y caracterizar el desarrollo afectivo en una muestra de niños entre 4 y 6 años de edad con necesidades educativas especiales. Material y Métodos: Se utilizaron dos muestras, N1 (320 niños) como grupo de referencia para obtener percentiles y realizar la validación, y N2 (60 niños) como muestra con alteraciones de desarrollo, para validar los percentiles y caracterizar a potenciales pacientes. Resultados: Se encontraron adecuados valores de confiabilidad (alfa cuando el ítem se elimina entre 0.84 y 0.85). La validez de contenido indicó un adecuado ajuste cultural del cuestionario en la población cubana y un 96,7% de los ítems con buenos y/o aceptables niveles de discriminación. En N2 se encontraron varios niños con alteraciones emocionales y conductuales (88,3%, tres cuartas partes de los cuales eran varones): Las alteraciones fueron manifiestas en las sub-escalas: Introversión, Atención, Sueño y Ansiedad. Conclusiones: El cuestionario Child Behavior Checklist (versión para padres) es una herramienta valiosa para profesionales cubanos de salud mental, pues permite clasificar expresiones afectivas negativas de tipo exteriorizante o interiorizante en la infancia preescolar. Este tipo de estudio debe realizarse en una muestra de referencia nacional a fin de revisar los percentiles y comprobar o confirmar los hallazgos de validez y confiabilidad.

Small-Group Student Talk Before Individual Writing in Tertiary English Writing Classrooms in China: Nature and Insights.

When exploring the nature of small-group student talk in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) individual writing in terms of what students are talking about, previous studies have mainly linked it to students’ writing and focused more on students’ written texts than their talk. Consequently, the analyses have largely been text-oriented rather than talk-oriented and have failed to reveal a complete picture of such talk and the socially negotiated nature of the interaction. To fill up the literature gap, we designed a study to investigate the nature of prewriting small-group student talk in Chinese tertiary EFL writing classrooms. Specifically, we examined what students were talking about when engaging in argumentative writing tasks prior to individual writing. Eight hours of audio recordings of student talk from eight small groups in two classes (N = 48) were collected during their prewriting small-group discussions. They were analyzed and interpreted in six categories: Content talk, language talk, task-management talk, organization talk, affective talk, and phatic talk. Major findings show that small-group student talk: (1) enabled students to generate content, language, and organization for their proceeding individual writing; (2) provided them with opportunities to facilitate collaborative linguistic problem-solving and the deliberate use of the first language (L1) for requesting and clarifying information; (3) allowed them to organize the group and scaffold each other collectively to manage the ongoing process of the task; and (4) assisted them to share their emotions and maintain group harmony at a surface level but did not help generate direct positive or negative affective expressions. Pedagogical insights into L2 writing instruction are also discussed.

Bipolar offspring and mothers: interactional challenges at infant age 3 and 12\xa0months\u2014a developmental pathway to enhanced risk?

BackgroundBipolar offspring are considered a high-risk group for developing mental disorders. Developmental outcomes result from additive and interactive effects of biological vulnerability and environmental influences. Mother–infant interactions represent important early environmental influences that may modify infants’ risk of mental disorders. The aim of the current prospective study was to investigate the patterns and development of mother–infant interactions in the first year of life in dyads in which the mothers have bipolar disorder (BD).MethodsTwenty-six dyads in which the mothers had BD and 28 dyads in which the mothers had no mental disorder were video-taped in a free play interaction. The Parent–Child Early Relational Assessment (PCERA) was used to assess the quality of the interactions on three domains (maternal behaviour, infant behaviour and dyadic coordination) at 3 and 12 months of infant age. First, we compared the mother–infant interaction patterns between the two groups at 12 months. Second, we investigated how the patterns developed within and between the groups from infant ages 3 to 12 months.ResultsBD dyads demonstrated significantly more challenges in all three interaction domains at infant age 12 months compared to the healthy dyads. This observation was in line with the findings at infant age 3 months. Subdued expression of positive affect and mutual underinvolvement represented core challenges in maternal and infant behaviours in the BD dyads. Continuous difficulties with dyadic coordination and reciprocity were the most concerning interaction behaviours at 3 and 12 months. On the positive side, there was little expression of negative affect or tension in maternal, infant and dyadic behaviour, and some positive changes in infant behaviour from 3 to 12 months.ConclusionsThe current results suggest that challenges in mother–infant interaction patterns in the first year of life may enhance the developmental risk for bipolar offspring. Clinical interventions should address both the BD mothers’ needs in relation to postpartum mood deviations and mother–infant interactions. We suggest interaction interventions to promote dyadic coordination and reciprocity, such as helping mothers being more sensitive to their infant’s cues and to provide attuned contingent responses.

Longitudinal Observational Evidence of the Impact of Emotion Regulation Strategies on Affective Expression

The ability to regulate our emotions plays an important role in our psychological and physical health. Regulating emotions influences how and when emotions are expressed. We performed a large scale, longitudinal observational study to investigate the effect of emotion regulation ability on expressed affect. We found that expression of negative affect increased throughout the day. For people who suppress emotion this increase is slower that for those who do not. For those with stronger cognitive reappraisal abilities, though not significant, there was a trend for higher positive affect and negative affect increased significantly less steeply, suggesting that they might experience more positive and less negative affect. These results reflect some of the first results based on large scale, continuous tracking of behavioral expression of emotion longitudinally. Our results demonstrate the need to carefully consider the time of day and emotion regulation ability, in addition to gender and age, when attempting to automatically infer affective states for facial behavior.

Differences in alexithymia, emotional awareness, and facial emotion recognition under conditions of self-focused attention among women with high and low eating disorder symptoms: a 2 x 2 experimental study

BackgroundWomen with eating disorders generally perform more poorly on measures of alexithymia, defined as difficulty identifying and describing emotions, and theory of mind, or the ability to infer what others are thinking and feeling. The extent to which these abilities may be influenced by variables such as self-focused attention, or directing attention toward internally generated information, has yet to be investigated. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to examine differences between women high and low in disordered eating symptoms on measures of emotional awareness and facial affect recognition under conditions of high and low self-focused attention.MethodsUniversity women scoring high or low on a measure of disordered eating (n = 79) were randomly assigned to a condition of high or low self-focused attention. Outcomes included alexithymia (self-rated ability to identify and describe emotions), emotional awareness (ability to describe the emotions of oneself and others), and facial affect recognition. Scores on a measure of negative affect were statistically controlled.ResultsWomen with high disordered eating symptom scores rated themselves as having more difficulties identifying, but not describing emotions after controlling for negative affect, but demonstrated greater difficulties describing their own and others’ emotions on a measure of emotional awareness. In the self-focused attention condition, women scored lower on self emotional awareness and were quicker to identify expressions of negative facial affect regardless of eating disorder symptom status than women in the non-self-focused attention condition. There were no significant interactions between eating disorder status and self-focused attention.ConclusionsFurther examination of different types of emotion recognition and description in oneself and others as well as processes that may influence these abilities is warranted.

Depression symptoms’ impact on personality disorder treatment: Depression symptoms amplifying the interpersonal benefits of negative-affect expression

BackgroundWhile there is some evidence that patients with elevated depression symptoms experience greater benefits from negative-affect expression, this amplifying effect has not been investigated within a psychotherapeutic context. This is particularly notable considering the substantial evidence linking affect expression with desired outcomes across psychotherapeutic approaches. The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate if depression symptoms amplified (i.e., moderated) the association between negative-affect expression and reductions in interpersonal problems for patients in a psychiatric day treatment for personality disorders. The secondary purpose was to investigate milieu (i.e., other patients concurrently enrolled) negative-affect intensity and its association with patients’ reductions in interpersonal problems. MethodsParticipants (N = 239) were patients consecutively admitted into a psychiatric day treatment program for people with personality disorders. Patients completed measures of (1) depression symptoms at pre-treatment, (2) interpersonal problems at pre- and post-treatment, and (3) negative-affect expression each week of treatment. ResultsThe association between patient negative-affect expression and reductions in interpersonal problems was amplified by depression symptoms. Depression symptoms also amplified the association between milieu negative-affect intensity and reductions in interpersonal problems. ConclusionsOur findings indicate that depression symptoms amplified the therapeutic value of negative-affect expression and amplified the value of an affectively intense milieu. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.