Emotional Material Research Articles

EP 112. Neurophysiological correlates of cognitive control in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD)

Affective cognitive control capacity (e.g., the ability to regulate emotions or manipulate emotional material in the service of task goals) is associated with professional and interpersonal success. Impoverished affective control, by contrast, characterizes many neuropsychiatric disorders. Resent studies already showed that patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) for example exhibit an attentional bias, meaning that they had slower reaction time for emotional valent pictures than for neutral pictures (Wolkenstein and Plewnia, 2013)? Our research group moreover discovered that emotional,in contrast to neutral valent pictures lead to an increased LPP (late positive potential) in EEGs of healthy subjects while carrying out a dual working memory task (DWM) (Faehling, 2014)? In our study we want to examine the interaction between emotion regulation,reaction time and working memory performance in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD).Therefore we used negative and neutral IAPS as distractors in a DWM and linked the task with EEG measurement. Our main hypothesis was that the late positive potential (LPP) over the prefrontal? cortex of depressed subjects, measured while watching negative pictures, increased more as in healthy subjects. Accordingly higher LPP amplitudes show higher cognitive capacity load for affective stimuli. This is in line with the discovered correlation between high LPP amplitudes and task accuracy and high LPP amplitudes and reaction time.

Just Swap Out of Negative Vibes? Rumination and Inhibition Deficits in Major Depressive Disorder: Data from Event-Related Potentials Studies.

Major depression is a serious disorder of impaired emotion regulation. Emotion hyperactivity leads to excessive negative ruminations that daily hijack the patient’s mental life, impacting their mood. Evidence from past researches suggest that depressive patients present several cognitive impairments in attention and working memory, leading to a more acute selective attention for negative stimuli and a greater accessibility of negative memories. Recently, is has been proposed that impaired inhibitory functioning with regard to emotional information processing might be one of the mechanisms of ruminations linking memory, attention and depression. It seems that inhibition deficit is present at both the input level (i.e., the ability to reduce the interference from emotional distracters) and the higher level (i.e., the ability to direct the attention away from emotional material that has already been processed) of emotional information processing. Event-related potentials (ERP) have widely been used to study inhibition in adults suffering from various psychopathological states. In particular, depressive disorder has been linked to ERPs modulations, at early as well as at latter stages of the information-processing stream, when processing affective material. For instance, deficits in inhibiting negative information have been indexed by changes in the parameters (amplitudes and latencies) of early P2, P1 and N1 components while other ERP studies have shown an ability to differentiate depressed patients from normal controls based upon response inhibition difficulties in go-nogo tasks, indexed by later NoGo P3 differences. In this review, we will focus on results of ERP studies investigating inhibition and its interaction with emotional related cue processing in depressive populations. Implications for future research and theoretical perspectives will be discussed within the framework of current models of depressive disorder, based upon the hypothesis that negative ruminations are at the center of depression processes.

Collaboration enhances later individual memory for emotional material

ABSTRACTResearch on collaborative remembering suggests that collaboration hampers group memory (i.e., collaborative inhibition), yet enhances later individual memory. Studies examining collaborative effects on memory for emotional stimuli are scarce, especially concerning later individual memory. In the present study, female undergraduates watched an emotional movie and recalled it either collaboratively (n = 60) or individually (n = 60), followed by an individual free recall test and a recognition test. We replicated the standard collaborative inhibition effect. Further, in line with the literature, the collaborative condition displayed better post-collaborative individual memory. More importantly, in post-collaborative free recall, the centrality of the information to the movie plot did not play an important role. Recognition rendered slightly different results. Although collaboration rendered more correct recognition for more central details, it did not enhance recognition of background details. Secondly, the collaborative and individual conditions did not differ with respect to overlap of unique correct items in free recall. Yet, during recognition former collaborators more unanimously endorsed correct answers, as well as errors. Finally, extraversion, neuroticism, social anxiety, and depressive symptoms did not moderate the influence of collaboration on memory. Implications for the fields of forensic and clinical psychology are discussed.

Supplemental Material for Positive Emotion, Appraisal, and the Role of Appraisal Overlap in Positive Emotion Co-Occurrence

Supplemental Material for Positive Emotion, Appraisal, and the Role of Appraisal Overlap in Positive Emotion Co-Occurrence

Development of a self-distancing task and initial validation of responses.

Mindfulness-based interventions are believed to counteract cognitive biases that exacerbate cognitive and physiological reactivity to emotional experiences and that contribute to the development and persistence of psychopathology. One process by which mindful practices may produce such salutary effects is by enhancing the capacity to "decenter"-or to adopt a self-distanced, nonjudgmental perspective on conscious experiences (e.g., thoughts, memories, and feelings). Findings consistently indicate that decentering, assessed via self-report, represents an important aspect of mental health and well-being; however, numerous researchers have called for more objective measures of skills associated with mindfulness and decentering to further evaluate the mechanisms and benefits of mindfulness-based practices. Thus, in the current investigation, we developed a behavioral task that requires mental manipulation of negative emotional (and neutral) material away from the self (self-distancing), as a means to assess the skills associated with mindfulness and decentering that likely underlie healthy emotional processing. In 2 nonmeditating, university samples, we found that higher levels of self-reported mindfulness and higher levels of 1 facet of decentering (the capacity to adopt a distanced perspective on experiences) predicted behavioral indicators of self-distancing. Results suggest that the self-distancing task shows considerable promise for capturing skills associated with mindfulness and at least 1 element of decentering. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Berlin Affective Word List for Children (kidBAWL): Exploring Processing of Affective Lexical Semantics in the Visual and Auditory Modalities.

While research on affective word processing in adults witnesses increasing interest, the present paper looks at another group of participants that have been neglected so far: pupils (age range: 6–12 years). Introducing a variant of the Berlin Affective Wordlist (BAWL) especially adapted for children of that age group, the “kidBAWL,” we examined to what extent pupils process affective lexical semantics similarly to adults. In three experiments using rating and valence decision tasks in both the visual and auditory modality, it was established that children show the two ubiquitous phenomena observed in adults with emotional word material: the asymmetric U-shaped function relating valence to arousal ratings, and the inversely U-shaped function relating response times to valence decision latencies. The results for both modalities show large structural similarities between pupil and adult data (taken from previous studies) indicating that in the present age range, the affective lexicon and the dynamic interplay between language and emotion is already well-developed. Differential effects show that younger children tend to choose less extreme ratings than older children and that rating latencies decrease with age. Overall, our study should help to develop more realistic models of word recognition and reading that include affective processes and offer a methodology for exploring the roots of pleasant literary experiences and ludic reading.

Emotional Experience and Awareness of Self: Functional MRI Studies of Depersonalization Disorder.

This paper presents functional MRI work on emotional processing in depersonalization disorder (DPD). This relatively neglected disorder is hallmarked by a disturbing change in the quality of first-person experience, almost invariably encompassing a diminished sense of self and an alteration in emotional experience such that the sufferer feels less emotionally reactive, with emotions experienced as decreased or “damped down,” so that emotional life seems to lack spontaneity and subjective validity. Here we explored responses to emotive visual stimuli to examine the functional neuroanatomy of emotional processing in DPD before and after pharmacological treatment. We also employed concurrent skin conductance measurement as an index of autonomic arousal. In common with previous studies we demonstrated that in DPD, there is attenuated psychophysiological response to emotional material, reflected in altered patterns of (i) regional brain response, (ii) autonomic responses. By scanning participants before and after treatment we were able to build on previous findings by examining the changes in functional MRI response in patients whose symptoms had improved at time 2. The attenuation of emotional experience was associated with reduced activity of the insula, whereas clinical improvement in DPD symptoms was associated with increased insula activity. The insula is known to be implicated in interoceptive awareness and the generation of feeling states. In addition an area of right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex emerged as particularly implicated in what may be “top-down” inhibition of emotional responses. The relevance of these findings to the wider study of emotion, self-related processes, and interoception is discussed.

Timeless: A Large Sample Study on the Temporal Robustness of Affective Responses.

Emotion and its effects on other psychological phenomena are frequently studied by presenting emotional pictures for a short amount of time. However, the duration of exposure strongly differs across paradigms. In order to ensure the comparability of affective response elicitation across those paradigms, it is crucial to empirically validate emotional material not only with regard to the affective dimensions valence and arousal, but also with regard to varying presentation times. Despite this operational necessity for the temporal robustness of emotional material, there is only tentative empirical evidence on this issue. To close this gap, we conducted a large sample study testing for the influence of presentation time on affective response elicitation. Two hundred and forty emotional pictures were presented for either 200 or 1000 ms and were rated by 302 participants on the core affect dimensions valence and arousal. The most important finding was that affective response elicitation was comparable for 200 and 1000 ms presentation times, indicating reliable temporal robustness of affective response elicitation within the supra-liminal spectrum. Yet, a more detailed look on the data showed that presentation time impacted particularly on high arousing negative stimuli. However, because these interaction effects were exceedingly small, they must be interpreted with caution and do not endanger the main finding, namely the quite reliable temporal robustness of affective response elicitation. Results are discussed with regard to the comparability of affective response elicitation across varying paradigms.

Social Networking Family of Caregivers during Hospitalization of Children.

To identify and analyze the significant networks of family, social and hospital support described by the family caregivers of hospitalized children 5-12 years during the hospital stay. Descriptive study, exploratory and qualitative study conducted with 20 caregivers of children hospitalized in a hospital in a city in southern Brazil, through semi-structured interviews and significant social networks maps, tailored to the hospital setting. Data analysis showed that the most active social network was comprised of families through emotional support, material aid and services. Relations with hospital health care team and the hospital context were cited as providing support to the caregivers of the hospitalized child. The identification of social networks in the child's hospitalization course enables equip professionals working in the institution aiming at better targeting of actions and care for the family and hospitalized children. Identificar e analisar as redes significativas de suporte familiar, social e hospitalar descritas pelos familiares acompanhantes de crianças hospitalizadas de 5 a 12 anos, durante o período de internação. Estudo descritivo, exploratório e de cunho qualitativo realizado com 20 acompanhantes de crianças hospitalizadas em uma unidade hospitalar em uma cidade do Sul do Brasil, por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas e dos Mapas de Redes sociais significativas, adaptado para o contexto hospitalar. A análise dos dados demonstrou que a rede social mais atuante foi composta por familiares, através de apoio emocional, ajuda material e de serviços. As relações com a equipe de saúde do hospital e com o contexto hospitalar foram citadas como capazes de fornecer apoio ao acompanhante da criança internada. a identificação das redes sociais no curso da hospitalização da criança possibilita instrumentalizar os profissionais que atuam na instituição objetivando um melhor direcionamento de ações e cuidados destinados à família e a criança hospitalizada.

Revisiting Edwin Black: Exhortation as a Prelude to Emotional–Material Rhetoric

This essay extends efforts to facilitate emotional–material frameworks of rhetoric informed by strides in rhetorical and biological studies respectively. Specifically, I examine Edwin Black’s theory of exhortation in light of neurological theories of affect, emotion contagion, and embodiment. I argue Black’s theory offers a prescient precursor to emotional–material rhetoric but also demands revision in light of recent advances in neuroscience. I present two claims. First, I argue emotionally grounded rhetoric can exhort emotional–discursive connections and preference judgments absent the need to convert emotional experiences into formal beliefs. Second, I argue physiological indicators are at least as important as verbal discourse in facilitating emotional exhortation. Finally, I conclude with some theoretical implications for the emotional–material study of rhetoric.

Shedding light on emotional perception: Interaction of brightness and semantic content in extrastriate visual cortex

The rapid extraction of affective cues from the visual environment is crucial for flexible behavior. Previous studies have reported emotion-dependent amplitude modulations of two event-related potential (ERP) components – the N1 and EPN – reflecting sensory gain control mechanisms in extrastriate visual areas. However, it is unclear whether both components are selective electrophysiological markers of attentional orienting toward emotional material or are also influenced by physical features of the visual stimuli. To address this question, electrical brain activity was recorded from seventeen male participants while viewing original and bright versions of neutral and erotic pictures. Bright neutral scenes were rated as more pleasant compared to their original counterpart, whereas erotic scenes were judged more positively when presented in their original version. Classical and mass univariate ERP analysis showed larger N1 amplitude for original relative to bright erotic pictures, with no differences for original and bright neutral scenes. Conversely, the EPN was only modulated by picture content and not by brightness, substantiating the idea that this component is a unique electrophysiological marker of attention allocation toward emotional material. Complementary topographic analysis revealed the early selective expression of a centro-parietal positivity following the presentation of original erotic scenes only, reflecting the recruitment of neural networks associated with sustained attention and facilitated memory encoding for motivationally relevant material. Overall, these results indicate that neural networks subtending the extraction of emotional information are differentially recruited depending on low-level perceptual features, which ultimately influence affective evaluations.

Individual differences in cognitive control over emotional material modulate cognitive biases linked to depressive symptoms

ABSTRACTDeficient cognitive control over emotional material and cognitive biases are important mechanisms underlying depression, but the interplay between these emotionally distorted cognitive processes in relation to depressive symptoms is not well understood. This study investigated the relations among deficient cognitive control of emotional information (i.e. inhibition, shifting, and updating difficulties), cognitive biases (i.e. negative attention and interpretation biases), and depressive symptoms. Theory-driven indirect effect models were constructed, hypothesising that deficient cognitive control over emotional material predicts depressive symptoms through negative attention and interpretation biases. Bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that deficient inhibitory control over negative material was related to negative attention bias which in turn predicted a congruent bias in interpretation and subsequently depressive symptoms. Both shifting and updating impairments in response to negative material had an indirect effect on depression severity through negative interpretation bias. No evidence was found for direct effects of deficient cognitive control over emotional material on depressive symptoms. These findings may help to formulate an integrated understanding of the cognitive foundations of depressive symptoms.

Psychopathy, the PCL-R, and criminal justice: Some new findings and current issues.

Following a 3-day series of presentations on psychopathy that I delivered in Australia some 20 years ago, a criminal defence lawyer took the podium and said, Sitting beside me is a dangerous man. After looking around to find this man, I realised that he was talking about me, as the developer of the Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003), which he saw as a powerful tool capable of misuse and abuse. Prior to these comments, a prominent consultant psychiatrist said to the audience, Some but what do they mean? These were early brain images my colleagues and I had obtained from psychopathic and other individuals while they processed semantic and emotional material (later published as Intrator et al., 1997; Kiehl et al., 2001). As it turns out, the lawyer was correct in one respect; the PCL-R can and has been misused, but his characterization of me as a dangerous man seemed to conflate the creator of a tool with the ways in which it is used. The psychiatrist technically was correct at the time, but the few imaging studies then available have grown to several hundred, conducted by scores of researchers from around the world. Nonetheless, problems in interpreting neuroimages remain, most seriously in the legal system.Since my Australian experience the number of articles on the PCL-R and its derivatives has increased at an exponential rate, from less than 50 in 1995 to more than 1,100 by the time of this writing (Web of Science, October, 2015). These articles reflect, among other things, investigations and commentaries in two broad areas: basic theory and research on the nature and measurement of psychopathy (e.g., see Patrick, in press); and applications to the mental health and criminal justice systems (e.g., see Gacono, 2016). My web page (www.hare.org) contains a detailed and up-to-date list of articles on these and other issues.In this article, I address the criminal lawyer's concerns by outlining some of the advances in measuring and understanding psychopathy, and by discussing some current issues and debates in the legal system about the use of the PCL-R and the construct it measures. The psychiatrist's early concern about the use of pretty pictures in the study of psychopathy is echoed in current research on psychopathy and in the recent applications of neuroscience in the legal system (neurolaw) to determine criminal culpability (Lushing, Gaudet, & Kiehl, 2016). Because of space limitations, I will not discuss these latter issues, but will offer only a few comments.In the foreword to The Handbook on Psychopathy and Law (Kiehl & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2013), I had this to say,There is little doubt that many psychopathic features are associated, in theoretically relevant ways, with a variety of brain structures and functions that differ from those of the majority of other individuals. But, this does not necessarily mean that they suffer from a neurological deficit or dysfunction...weshould consider the possibility that the actions of psychopaths reflect cognitive, affective, and behavioural processes and strategies that are different from those of other people, but for reasons other than neuropathology or deficit, in the traditional medical and psychiatric sense of the terms. (Hare, 2013, pp. vii-ix).One viable possibility is that psychopathy is an evolutionary adaptive life-strategy rather than a disorder (e.g., Book, & Quinsey, 2003; Glenn & Raine, 2014; Lalumiere, Mishra, & Harris, 2008; Mealey, 1995). Further, with respect to neurolaw, how different from do brain structure and function, and cognitive, affective, and behavioural processes, need to be in order to be considered abnormal or deviant for legal purposes, including determinations of culpability? At present, we lack baselines for normal brain function from the general population during the tasks used to study psychopathy. Recent discussions of these and related issues are covered extensively in several recent articles and chapters (e. …

Children as Earwitnesses: Memory for Emotional Auditory Events

SummaryWe examined the influence of age and emotionality of auditory stimuli on long‐term memory for environmental sound events. Sixty children aged 7–11 years were presented with two environmental sound events: an emotional car crash and a neutral event, someone brushing their teeth. The sound events comprised six individual environmental sounds, and the participants passively listened to the sound events through a headset. After a two‐week delay, participants performed a cued recall task and a recognition task. Independent of age, children were notably poor at recalling the sound events. Children recalled and recognized significantly more sounds from the emotional sound event than the neutral sound event. Additionally, the older children performed the recall task better than the younger children. The present findings confirm and expand the previously reported superiority of emotional material in memory.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Supplemental Material for Negative Emotion Boosts Quality of Visual Working Memory Representation

Supplemental Material for Negative Emotion Boosts Quality of Visual Working Memory Representation

Supplemental Material for Emotion and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Physiological Arousal Predicts Increased Gambling During Ambiguity but Not Risk

Supplemental Material for Emotion and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Physiological Arousal Predicts Increased Gambling During Ambiguity but Not Risk

Relationship between emotion and forgetting.

A major determinant of forgetting in memory is the presence of interference in the retrieval context. Previous research has shown that proactive interference has less impact for emotional than neutral study material (Levens & Phelps, 2008). However, it is unclear how emotional content affects the impact of interference in memory. Emotional content could directly affect the buildup of interference, leading to reduced levels of interference. Alternatively, emotional content could affect the controlled processes that resolve interference. The present study employed the response deadline speed-accuracy trade-off procedure to independently test these hypotheses. Participants studied 3-item lists consisting of emotional or neutral images, immediately followed by a recognition probe. Results indicated a slower rate of accrual for interfering material (lures from previous study list) and lower levels of interference for emotional than neutral stimuli, suggesting a direct impact of emotion on the buildup of interference. In contrast to this beneficiary effect, resolution of interference for emotional material was less effective than neutral material. These findings can provide insight into the interactions of emotion and memory processes.

Commentary: Spacing as the friend of both memory and induction in young and older adults.

Commentary: Spacing as the friend of both memory and induction in young and older adults.

Interactions among emotional attention, encoding, and retrieval of ambiguous information: An eye-tracking study.

Emotional biases in attention modulate encoding of emotional material into long-term memory, but little is known about the role of such attentional biases during emotional memory retrieval. The present study investigated how emotional biases in memory are related to attentional allocation during retrieval. Forty-nine individuals encoded emotionally positive and negative meanings derived from ambiguous information and then searched their memory for encoded meanings in response to a set of retrieval cues. The remember/know/new procedure was used to classify memories as recollection-based or familiarity-based, and gaze behavior was monitored throughout the task to measure attentional allocation. We found that a bias in sustained attention during recollection-based, but not familiarity-based, retrieval predicted subsequent memory bias toward positive versus negative material following encoding. Thus, during emotional memory retrieval, attention affects controlled forms of retrieval (i.e., recollection) but does not modulate relatively automatic, familiarity-based retrieval. These findings enhance understanding of how distinct components of attention regulate the emotional content of memories. Implications for theoretical models and emotion regulation are discussed.

Memory for emotional material in temporal lobe epilepsy.

Several studies suggest that highly emotional information could facilitate long-term memory encoding and consolidation processes via an amygdala-hippocampal network. Our aim was to assess emotional perception and episodic memory for emotionally arousing material in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) who are candidates for surgical treatment. We did this by using an audiovisual paradigm. Forty-six patients with medically resistant TLE (26 with left TLE and 20 with right TLE) and 19 healthy controls were assessed with a standard narrative test of emotional memory. The experimental task consisted of sequential picture slides with an accompanying narrative depicting a story that has an emotional central section. Subjects were asked to rate their emotional arousal reaction to each stimulus after the story was shown, while emotional memory (EM) was assessed a week later with a multiple choice questionnaire and a visual recognition task. Our results showed that ratings for emotional stimuli for the patients with TLE were significantly higher than for neutral stimuli (p=0.000). It was also observed that patients with TLE recalled significantly less information from each slide compared with controls, with a trend to lower scores on the questionnaire task for the group with LTLE, as well as poorer performance on the visual recognition task for the group with RLTE. Emotional memory was preserved in patients with RTLE despite having generally poorer memory performance compared with controls, while it was found to be impaired in patients with LTLE.