Directed forgetting of emotional stimuli in borderline personality disorder.

On the basis of clinical literature, the authors hypothesized that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) would show biased information processing when they were exposed to negative affective stimuli of a particular type. Individuals with BPD and controls were tested using a directed forgetting paradigm. Study participants were exposed to 3 types of words (borderline, neutral, positive) and were cued to either remember or forget each word as it was presented. There were no group differences on a free recall task for words in the remember condition. However, participants with BPD recalled significantly more of the borderline words from the forget condition than did controls. In other words, borderline participants remembered borderline words that they were instructed to forget. These results may be consistent with enhanced encoding of salient words and perhaps related themes in BPD individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hemispheric asymmetry for emotional stimuli detected with fMRI

Current brain models of emotion processing hypothesize that positive (or approach-related) emotions are lateralized towards the left hemisphere, whereas negative (or withdrawal-related) emotions are lateralized towards the right hemisphere. Brain imaging studies, however, have so far failed to document such hemispheric lateralization. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, 14 female subjects viewed alternating blocks of emotionally valenced positive and negative pictures. When the experience of valence was equated for arousal, overall brain reactivity was lateralized towards the left hemisphere for positive pictures and towards the right hemisphere for negative pictures. This study provides direct support for the valence hypothesis, under conditions of equivalent arousal, by means of functional brain imaging.     

Cortical brain regions engaged by masked emotional faces in adolescents and adults: An fMRI study.

Face-emotion processing has shown signs of developmental change during adolescence. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used on 10 adolescents and 10 adults to contrast brain regions engaged by a masked emotional-face task (viewing a fixation cross and a series of masked happy and masked fearful faces), while blood oxygen level dependent signal was monitored by a 1.5-T MRI scanner. Brain regions differentially engaged in the 2 age groups were mapped by using statistical parametric mapping. Summed across groups, the contrast of masked face versus fixation-cross viewing generated activations in occipital-temporal regions previously activated in passive face-viewing tasks. Adolescents showed higher maxima for activations in posterior association cortex for 3 of the 4 statistical contrasts. Adolescents and adults differed in the degree to which posterior hemisphere brain areas were engaged by viewing masked facial displays of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Habituation to complex emotional stimuli.

On each of 3 sessions, 45 male undergraduates viewed 20 presentations of an isolated accident (experimental group) and 23 Ss viewed a benign (control group) motion picture scene. At the end of each session, Ss also saw the complete movie from which these scenes were taken. Skin conductance, self-reported distress, and, to a lesser extent, heart rate showed considerable carry-over of habituation from the accident scene, viewed in isolation, to the same scene embedded in the complete movie. There was, however, very little generalization of habituation to other, similar accident scenes in the same movie. Heart rate response to the isolated accident scene was primarily deceleration, while cardiac acceleration was the primary response when the accident scene was viewed in the context of the complete film. The implication of these results for analogue studies of desensitization therapy is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-reflection and the psychosis-prone brain: An fMRI study.

Objective: The Cortical Midline Structures (CMS) play a critical role in self-reflection, together with the insula. Abnormalities in self-referential processing and its neural underpinnings have been reported in schizophrenia and at-risk populations, suggesting they might be markers of psychotic vulnerability. Psychometric measures of schizotypal traits may be used to index psychosis proneness (PP) in nonclinical samples. It remains an unresolved question whether differences in self-reflective processing are associated with PP. Method: Six hundred students completed the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences Questionnaire, positive subscale. Two groups were formed from the extremes of the distribution (total N = 36). fMRI was used to examine CMS/insula function during a self-reflection task. Participants judged personality trait sentences about self and about an acquaintance. Results: High PP subjects attributed less positive traits to others (i.e., acquaintances) than subjects with low PP. Across groups, the contrasts self > semantic and self > other induced activation in CMS and insula, whereas other > semantic did not produce insula activation. Other > self induced posterior cingulate cortex activation in low PP but not in high PP. In addition, high PP subjects showed stronger activation than low PP in left insula during self > semantic. Examining valence effects revealed that high PP individuals showed increased activation in left insula, right dMPFC, and left vMPFC for positive self-related traits, and in bilateral insula, ACC, and right dMPFC for negative self-related traits. Conclusions: The findings suggest that aspects of self-referential processing and underlying brain mechanisms are similar in clinical and subclinical (high PP) forms of psychosis, suggesting that these may be associated with vulnerability to psychosis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing mode causally influences emotional reactivity: Distinct effects of abstract versus concrete construal on emotional response.

Three studies are reported showing that emotional responses to stress can be modified by systematic prior practice in adopting particular processing modes. Participants were induced to think about positive and negative scenarios in a mode either characteristic of or inconsistent with the abstract-evaluative mind-set observed in depressive rumination, via explicit instructions (Experiments 1 and 2) and via implicit induction of interpretative biases (Experiment 3), before being exposed to a failure experience. In all three studies, participants trained into the mode antithetical to depressive rumination demonstrated less emotional reactivity following failure than participants trained into the mode consistent with depressive rumination. These findings provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that processing mode modifies emotional reactivity and support the processing-mode theory of rumination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on eye movements as a measure of emotional reactivity to chromatic elements in Rorschach stimuli.

Measured s reactivity to colored stimuli by recording the eye movements of 24 impulsive and 24 inhibited undergraduates while they were shown rorschach cards. Analysis of eye-movement variables indicating the location of ss' visual inspection on cards ii and iii revealed that inhibited ss, compared with impulsive ss, spent more total time looking at chromatic elements. Inhibited ss tended to look at chromatic areas more frequently during the recording period. In contrast, impulsive ss mentioned color more often in verbal reports. It is suggested that eye movements may serve as a measure of the difficulty an s has in "handling" a particular stimulus element. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of worry on physiological and subjective reactivity to emotional stimuli in generalized anxiety disorder and nonanxious control participants.

The present study examined the effect of worry versus relaxation and neutral thought activity on both physiological and subjective responding to positive and negative emotional stimuli. Thirty-eight participants with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 35 nonanxious control participants were randomly assigned to engage in worry, relaxation, or neutral inductions prior to sequential exposure to each of four emotion-inducing film clips. The clips were designed to elicit fear, sadness, happiness, and calm emotions. Self reported negative and positive affect was assessed following each induction and exposure, and vagal activity was measured throughout. Results indicate that worry (vs. relaxation) led to reduced vagal tone for the GAD group, as well as higher negative affect levels for both groups. Additionally, prior worry resulted in less physiological and subjective responding to the fearful film clip, and reduced negative affect in response to the sad clip. This suggests that worry may facilitate avoidance of processing negative emotions by way of preventing a negative emotional contrast. Implications for the role of worry in emotion avoidance are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intensity coding of auditory stimuli: an fMRI study

The effect of stimulus intensity (sound pressure level, SPL) of auditory stimuli on the BOLD response in the auditory cortex was investigated in 14 young and healthy subjects, with no hearing abnormalities, using echo-planar, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a verbal and a non-verbal auditory discrimination task. The stimuli were presented block-wise at three different intensities: 95, 85 and 75 dB (SPL). All subjects showed fMRI signal increases in superior temporal gyrus (STG) covering primary and secondary auditory cortex. Most importantly, the spatial extent of the fMRI response in STG increased with increasing stimulus intensity. It is hypothesized that spreading of excitation is associated with the encoding of increasing stimulus intensity levels. In addition, we found bifrontal activation supposedly evoked by the auditory-articulary loop of working memory. The results presented here should assist in the design of optimal activation strategies for studying the auditory cortex with fMRI paradigms and may help in understanding intensity coding of auditory stimuli.     

An exploration of the emotional cascade model in borderline personality disorder.

The emotional cascade model proposes that the emotional and behavioral dysregulation of individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may be fundamentally linked through emotional cascades, vicious cycles of intense rumination and negative affect that may induce aversive emotional states. In order to reduce this aversive emotion, dysregulated behaviors such as non-suicidal self-injury may then be used as distractions from intense rumination. This study explored emotional cascades in a sample enriched with participants meeting diagnostic criteria for BPD. The first part of the study explored a structural equation model that examined the mediational effects of emotional cascades on the relationship between BPD symptoms and dysregulated behavior and found evidence for full mediation, even after controlling for symptoms of depression and other Cluster B disorders. The second part of the study examined the effects of a rumination induction conducted with the intention of eliciting emotional cascades in those diagnosed with BPD. The results demonstrated that individuals with BPD experienced greater reactivity and intensity of negative affect, but not of positive affect, following the procedure—even when controlling for current depressive symptoms. Future directions and clinical implications for the emotional cascade model are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Childhood personality influences on social–cognitive development: A longitudinal study.

The relation of childhood personality to the development of friendship understanding and moral judgment in adolescence was considered in a longitudinal study. Personality at age 7, assessed with the California Child Q-Set, was characterized in terms of ego-resiliency and ego-control. IQ and social class were also measured. Friendship understanding was assessed when the participants were ages 7, 9, 12, 15, and 19, and moral judgment was elicited when the participants were 12, 15, and 19. Ego-resiliency was found to predict social–cognitive development in adolescence, even after the effects of IQ and childhood measures of social–cognitive development were controlled for. Analyses indicate that the effects of ego-resiliency on social–cognitive development are largely unmediated by the ability to focus attention or by social participation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectancy influences the operation of personality on behavior.

The authors investigated the moderating effect of expectancies on personality for 2 different addictive behavior processes: (a) drinking and (b) binge eating and purging characteristic of bulimia nervosa. Study 1 found that positive expectancies for social facilitation from drinking moderated the effect of extraversion on drinking behavior among undergraduate men and women. Study 2 found that the expectancy that eating will help manage negative affect moderated the effect of trait urgency on bulimic symptoms among undergraduate women. Thus, the relationships of the trait risk factors to these 2 addictive behaviors are stronger if one also holds certain expectancies for reinforcement from those behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Childhood personality influences on social-cognitive development: a longitudinal study

The relation of childhood personality to the development of friendship understanding and moral judgment in adolescence was considered in a longitudinal study. Personality at age 7, assessed with the California Child Q-Set, was characterized in terms of ego-resiliency and ego-control. IQ and social class were also measured. Friendship understanding was assessed when the participants were ages 7, 9, 12, 15, and 19, and moral judgment was elicited when the participants were 12, 15, and 19. Ego-resiliency was found to predict social-cognitive development in adolescence, even after the effects of IQ and childhood measures of social-cognitive development were controlled for. Analyses indicate that the effects of ego-resiliency on social-cognitive development are largely unmediated by the ability to focus attention or by social participation.     

Weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli.

In 2 studies, 70 overweight and 76 normal-weight undergraduates were administered the Sadness and Elation components of the Nowlis Mood Adjective Check List to investigate weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli. Contrary to past evidence that overweight Ss are more emotional than normals, the emotional state of normal-weight Ss fluctuated with manipulations of their facial expression, whereas that of overweight Ss did not respond to these proprioceptive cues. Although research employing affectively loaded pictures found overweight Ss to be more emotionally responsive than normals to these external stimuli, no such weight differences were obtained when less polarized pictures were used in the present studies. It is concluded that even though overweight Ss were more emotionally responsive to extremely polarized external stimuli that demand perception, they were less responsive to proprioceptive stimuli derived from facial expressions and equally responsive to moderately polarized pictorial stimuli. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Isoflurane anesthesia blunts cerebral responses to noxious and innocuous stimuli: a fMRI study

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine how isoflurane affected cerebral neuronal activation resulting from noxious and innocuous stimuli. Five male volunteers were subjected to mild electrical shock and tactile stimuli applied to the hand. During low (0.7%) and moderate (1.3%) isoflurane anesthesia the stimuli were repeated and a supramaximal electrical shock was also applied. Tactile stimulation activated bilateral SI and SII, but resulted in no significant activation at low or moderate anesthesia. Electrical shock activated contralateral SI and bilateral SII; low anesthesia completely abolished this response. The supramaximal stimulus activated the caudate nucleus and bilateral thalamus at low anesthesia; these responses were diminished at moderate anesthesia. Isoflurane anesthesia blunts cerebral responses to somatosensory stimuli, and the absence of cortical activation during supramaximal stimulation suggests that noxious-induced movement is generated in lower CNS structures.     

Approach and avoidance responses of the hysterical personality to sexual stimuli.

Administered a paired-associates learning task and a visual recognition task to 32 female hysterical personalities and 32 nonhysterical personalities. Both tasks included neutral and sexual material. 1/2 the Ss in each group performed under sexually "seductive" conditions, the other 1/2 under neutral conditions. Results showed that (1) hysterics learned sexual material quickly under neutral conditions but relatively slowly under sexual conditions; (2) hysterics had a relatively low visual recognition threshold for sexual words under neutral conditions and a relatively high threshold under sexual conditions; and (3) these threshold differences were maximized when sexual stimuli referred to the self. It was concluded that the characteristic behavior of the hysteric was consistent with an approach-avoidance conflict involving sexual motives and behavior. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anger management style and emotional reactivity to noxious stimuli among chronic pain patients and healthy controls: The role of endogenous opioids.

Objective: Previous work suggests that elevated trait anger-out exacerbates pain responses in part through endogenous opioid dysfunction. The authors examined whether this opioid dysfunction affects not only perceived pain intensity, but also emotional responses to being hurt. Design: 79 chronic low back pain (LBP) patients and 46 healthy controls received opioid blockade (8 mg naloxone i.v.) and placebo in randomized, counterbalanced order in separate sessions. During each session, participants sequentially experienced finger pressure pain and ischemic forearm pain tasks, with emotional state assessed at baseline and postpain. Main Outcome Measures: Blockade effects indexing opioid modulation of emotional reactivity were derived by subtracting placebo from blockade condition emotional reactivity. Results: Significant Participant Type × Anger-Out interactions on blockade effects indicated that in LBP participants but not in controls, greater anger-out was associated with deficient opioid modulation of anxiety, anger, and fear reactivity to noxious stimulation. Across participant types, greater anger-in was associated with impaired opioid modulation of anxiety and fear reactivity. Anger-in opioid effects were partially due to overlap with general negative affect. Conclusions: Opioid dysfunction associated with trait anger-out may affect not only perceived pain intensity, but also pain-related suffering in individuals with chronic pain conditions. Implications for understanding the health effects of anger management styles are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How emotional auditory stimuli modulate time perception.

Emotional and neutral sounds rated for valence and arousal were used to investigate the influence of emotions on timing in reproduction and verbal estimation tasks with durations from 2 s to 6 s. Results revealed an effect of emotion on temporal judgment, with emotional stimuli judged to be longer than neutral ones for a similar arousal level. Within scalar expectancy theory (J. Gibbon, R. Church, & W. Meck, 1984), this suggests that emotion-induced activation generates an increase in pacemaker rate, leading to a longer perceived duration. A further exploration of self-assessed emotional dimensions showed an effect of valence and arousal. Negative sounds were judged to be longer than positive ones, indicating that negative stimuli generate a greater increase of activation. High-arousing stimuli were perceived to be shorter than low-arousing ones. Consistent with attentional models of timing, this seems to reflect a decrease of attention devoted to time, leading to a shorter perceived duration. These effects, robust across the 2 tasks, are limited to short intervals and overall suggest that both activation and attentional processes modulate the timing of emotional events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When room size matters: Acoustic influences on emotional responses to sounds.

When people hear a sound (a “sound object” or a “sound event”) the perceived auditory space around them might modulate their emotional responses to it. Spaces can affect both the acoustic properties of the sound event itself and may also impose boundaries to the actions one can take with respect to this event. Virtual acoustic rooms of different sizes were used in a subjective and psychophysiological experiment that evaluated the influence of the auditory space perception on emotional responses to various sound sources. Participants (N = 20) were exposed to acoustic spaces with sound source positions and room acoustic properties varying across the experimental conditions. The results suggest that, overall, small rooms were considered more pleasant, calmer, and safer than big rooms, although this effect of size seems to disappear when listening to threatening sound sources. Sounds heard behind the listeners tended to be more arousing, and elicited larger physiological changes than sources in front of the listeners. These effects were more pronounced for natural, compared to artificial, sound sources, as confirmed by subjective and physiological measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Genetic influences on the organization and development of personality.

Analyzed data from a longitudinal twin study of personality using Wilson's repeated measures analysis of variance for twin data obtained from 42 pairs of twins. Average age of Ss in adolescence was 15.9 yrs, and at follow-up 27.9 yrs. Genetic influences on the MMPI and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) profile contour and profile elevation at adolescence and at adulthood, and on the age-to-age changes in profile contour and profile elevation, were examined. Results provide evidence of significant genetic variance in the organization of personality as reflected by the CPI profile contour and in the global facets of personality reflected by the MMPI and CPI profile elevations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)