Cognitive Processing of Emotional Information in Depression, Panic, and Somatoform Disorder.

Emotional Stroop tasks (subliminal/supraliminal exposures), implicit memory tasks (tachistoscopic word identification), and explicit memory tasks (free recall after incidental learning) with 4 word types (physical threat, positive, negative, and neutral words) were administered to patients with major depressive disorder (n = 30), panic disorder (n = 33), somatoform disorder (n = 25), and healthy control participants (n = 33). On the Stroop task, panic patients showed subliminal interferences for physical threat and negative words, depressive patients showed supraliminal interferences for negative words, and somatoform patients showed supraliminal interferences for physical threat words. No patient groups demonstrated implicit memory biases. On the explicit memory task, depressive and panic patients showed memory biases for negative words; somatoform patients showed biases for physical threat words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remembering the Good, Forgetting the Bad: Intentional Forgetting of Emotional Material in Depression.

The authors examined intentional forgetting of negative material in depression. Participants were instructed to not think about emotional nouns that they had learned to associate with a neutral cue word. The authors provided participants with multiple occasions to suppress the unwanted words. Overall, depressed participants successfully forgot negative words. Moreover, the authors obtained a clear practice effect. However, forgetting came at a cost: Compared with the nondepressed participants and with the depressed participants who were instructed to forget positive words, depressed participants who were instructed to forget negative words showed significantly worse recall of the baseline words. These results indicate that training depressed individuals in intentional forgetting could prove to be an effective strategy to counteract automatic ruminative tendencies and mood-congruent biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Morning After: Limit Violations and the Self-Regulation of Alcohol Consumption.

The authors examined whether the reciprocal relationship between alcohol consumption and distress unfolded over time in 2 samples of social drinkers. Participants monitored their alcohol intake and their cognitive and emotional responses to that drinking on hand-held computers. On mornings after drinking, those who had violated their self-imposed limits the day before reported more guilt, even after controlling for acute negative symptoms of drinking and amount consumed. Reciprocally, guilt led to poorer self-regulation of alcohol intake: Greater distress over alcohol consumption was linked to more intake, intoxication, and more limit violations. Individual differences moderated the relationships among limit violations, distress, and drinking. Consistent with the limit violation effect, violating a limit produced distress over consumption among social drinkers, and they responded to that distress by drinking more. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' Affect in the Homework Context: The Importance of Staying Positive.

This research investigated mothers' affect in the context of children's homework. Mothers (N=109) of children 8 to 12 years old were interviewed daily about their affect while interacting with children, their assistance with children's homework, and children's behavior while completing homework. At this time and 6 months later, children's motivational and emotional functioning was assessed. Although mothers' negative affect was lower than their positive affect, it was elevated on days their assistance with homework was high. This was accounted for by mothers' perceptions of children as helpless on days they provided heightened assistance. Mothers' positive affect in the homework context buffered children's motivational and emotional functioning against mothers' negative affect as well as children's helplessness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Discrepancy in Analyses of the MSCEIT--Resolving the Mystery and Understanding Its Implications: A Reply to Gignac (2005).

Replies to comments made by G. E. Gignac (see record 2005-06671-010) on the current authors' original article (see record 2003-02341-015). Gignac reanalyzed the factor structure of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) and found results that differed from those the authors obtained initially. The authors tracked down the surprising sources of those discrepancies. G. E. Gignac's hierarchical model of emotional intelligence appears promising, and the authors anticipate that further investigations of the MSCEIT factor structure may yield additional information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of Emotion on Memory for Temporal Information.

Contextual information, such as color and spatial location, has been found to be better remembered for emotional than for neutral items. The current study examined whether the influence of emotion extends to memory for another fundamental feature of episodic memory: temporal information. Results from a list-discrimination paradigm showed that (a) item memory was enhanced for both negative and positive pictures compared with neutral ones and was better for negative than for positive pictures and (b) temporal information was better remembered for negative than for positive and neutral pictures, whereas positive and neutral pictures did not differ from each other. These findings are discussed in relation to the processes involved in memory for temporal information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Politics of Emotion in Everyday Life: "Appropriate" Emotion and Claims on Identity.

Emotions have a political dimension in that judgments regarding when and how emotion should be felt and shown are interpreted in the interests of regulating the organization and functioning of social groups. This article argues that claims to authenticity and legitimacy of one's self-identity or group identity are at stake in the everyday politics of emotion. A brief discussion of the study of sex differences in the 19th century illustrates how emotion politics can saturate even scientific inquiry. Three ways in which there is a political dimension to socially appropriate emotion in contemporary life are then discussed: (a) Is the emotion the "wrong" emotion for the situation? (b) How are competing standards for emotional experience and expression managed? and (c) What constitutes the boundary between "too much" and "too little" emotion? The author concludes by considering the relevance of emotion politics to research on emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral Inhibition and Amplification During Emotional Arousal: A Comparison of Two Age Groups.

This study investigated age differences in the ability to suppress and amplify expressive behavior during emotional arousal. Young and old participants viewed 3 film clips about medical procedures while their behavioral, autonomic, and subjective responses were recorded. Half of the participants viewed all 3 films without additional instructions; the other half was asked to suppress and amplify their behavioral expression during the 2nd and 3rd films. Except for heart rate, suppression and amplification produced similar patterns of autonomic activation. Neither suppression nor amplification had effects on self-reported emotion. There were no age differences in the ability to suppress or amplify emotional expression or in their physiological or subjective consequences. Considering that older people's unregulated reactivity was lower than that of young adults, suppression may have been easier and amplification more difficult for older adults. Voluntary emotion regulation might be one domain of human performance that is spared from age-related losses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Divergent trajectories in the aging mind: Changes in working memory for affective versus visual information with age.

Working memory mediates the short-term maintenance of information. Virtually all empirical research on working memory involves investigations of working memory for verbal and visual information. Whereas aging is typically associated with a deficit in working memory for these types of information, recent findings suggestive of relatively well-preserved long-term memory for emotional information in older adults raise questions about working memory for emotional material. This study examined age differences in working memory for emotional versus visual information. Findings demonstrate that, despite an age-related deficit for the latter, working memory for emotion was unimpaired. Further, older adults exhibited superior performance on positive relative to negative emotion trials, whereas their younger counterparts exhibited the opposite pattern. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing Positive and Negative Changes in the Aftermath of Adversity: Psychometric Evaluation of the Changes in Outlook Questionnaire.

The Changes in Outlook Questionnaire (CiOQ; S. Joseph, R. Williams, & W. Yule, 1993) is a 26-item self-report measure that was designed to assess positive and negative changes in the aftermath of adversity. This article had 3 aims: 1st, to investigate the factor structure of the CiOQ; 2nd, to test for internal consistency reliability and convergent and discriminant validity; and, 3rd, to investigate the association between positive and negative changes in outlook, posttraumatic stress, and psychological distress. Three studies are reported. Study 1 provides evidence that positive and negative changes are statistically separable and that the 2-factor model is a better fit than the 1-factor model. Studies 2 and 3 provide evidence for internal consistency reliability, convergent and discriminant validity of the CiOQ, and its associations with posttraumatic stress and psychological distress. In conclusion, the CiOQ has much promise for research on responses to stressful and traumatic events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)