The Hurricane Exposure, Adversity, and Recovery Tool (HEART): Developing and Validating a Risk Screening Instrument for Youth Exposed to Hurricane Harvey

Given the increasing regularity with which severe (named) hurricanes arise, there is a need for valid, practically useful measures that facilitate child-centered post-hurricane situation analysis and needs assessment. Measures that accurately assess the most potent hurricane-related risk factors are essential to identifying youth at risk for developing posttraumatic stress reactions and providing them with effective post-disaster support. With feedback from community stakeholders (e.g., school personnel, physicians and hospital staff, community clinicians), we developed the Hurricane Exposure, Adversity, and Recovery Tool (HEART), a 29-item self-report measure of hurricane risk factors. Test development procedures included: (1) Reviewing the literature regarding hurricane exposure-related risk factors in youth; (2) Generating a developmentally-informed test item pool; (3) Conducting interviews with clinicians, as well as youth impacted by Hurricane Harvey, to evaluate the comprehensibility and acceptability of candidate items; and (4) evaluating endorsement rates for hurricane exposure-related risk factors among (N = 107) youth in an outpatient clinic specializing in the treatment of childhood trauma and loss. Disaster-related exposure, pre-existing indicators of risk, and ongoing post-disaster adversities were correlated with posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms. These results provide support for an integrative approach to post-hurricane screening for both hurricane-specific (e.g., witnessing injuries) and non-specific (e.g., prior trauma) factors

Effects of Resistance Training on Smoking Abstinence Self-Efficacy in Sedentary Smokers

ABSTRACT Introduction: Cigarette smoking is prevalent with 40 million Americans smoking and one in five deaths attributed to this behavior. Aims: This study examined effects of a resistance training (RT) program on smoking abstinence self-efficacy. Methods: Forty (40) participants were randomized into intervention or control groups. Smoking abstinence self-efficacy, withdrawal symptoms, and smoking behavior were measured. Results/Findings: RT group presented with statistically significant greater increases in self-efficacy compared to control. RT group participants also presented with non-significantly greater decreases in smoking behavior and withdrawal symptoms compared to control. Conclusions: This study demonstrates effectiveness of RT in improving smoking abstinence self-efficacy

Behavioural inhibition and early neural processing of happy and angry faces interact to predict anxiety: a longitudinal ERP study.

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. Data Availability: The research data and analysis code supporting this publication are openly available from ReShare at: https://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDASN-853813.Limited prospective research has examined whether attention biases to emotion moderate associations between Behavioural Inhibition (BI) and anxiety in preschool-aged children. Furthermore, there has been an over-reliance on behavioral measures in previous studies. Accordingly, we assessed anxiety in a sample of preschool-aged children (3-4 years) at baseline, and again approximately 6 and 11 months later, after they started school. At baseline, children completed an assessment of BI and an EEG task where they were presented with angry, happy, and neutral faces. EEG analyses focused on ERPs (P1, P2, N2) associated with specific stages of attention allocation. Interactions between BI and emotion bias (ERP amplitude for emotional versus neutral faces) were found for N2 and P1. For N2, BI was significantly associated with higher overall anxiety when an angry bias was present. Interestingly for P1, BI was associated with higher overall anxiety when a happy bias was absent. Finally, interactions were found between linear time and happy and angry bias for P1, with a greater linear decrease in anxiety over time when biases were high. These results suggest that attention to emotional stimuli moderates the BI-anxiety relationship across early development.Economic and Social Research Counci

The Landscape of Galaxies Harboring Changing-Look Active Galactic Nuclei in the Local Universe

We study the properties of the host galaxies of Changing-Look Active Galactic Nuclei (CL AGNs) with the aim of understanding the conditions responsible for triggering CL activity. We find that CL AGN hosts primarily reside in the so-called green valley that is located between spiral-like star-forming galaxies and dead ellipticals, implying that CL AGNs are activated during distinct periods of quenching and galaxy transformation processes. CL AGN hosts have low galaxy asymmetry indicators, suggesting that secular evolutionary processes (the influence of bars and spirals, and possibly minor mergers) might be the primary mechanism for transporting gas to the vicinity of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) rather than major mergers. Similar to tidal disruption events (TDEs) and highly variable AGNs, we find that CL AGN hosts are associated with SMBHs residing in high density pseudo-bulges and appear to overlap most significantly with the population of low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) galaxies. As such, CL AGN are likely fueled by strong episodic bursts of accretion activity, which appear to take place preferentially as the amount of material accessible for star formation and accretion dwindles. We also identify that CL AGN hosts are characterized by either large S\'ersic indices or high bulge fractions, which suggests a simple metric for identifying candidates for spectroscopic follow-up observations in forthcoming synoptic surveys.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures. Accepted to ApJ Letters. Revised version includes an expanded discussion on asymmetry measurements and galaxy disturbance

Behavioural inhibition and early neural processing of happy and angry faces interact to predict anxiety: a longitudinal ERP study

Limited prospective research has examined whether attention biases to emotion moderate associations between Behavioural Inhibition (BI) and anxiety in preschool-aged children. Furthermore, there has been an over-reliance on behavioral measures in previous studies. Accordingly, we assessed anxiety in a sample of preschool-aged children (3–4 years) at baseline, and again approximately 6 and 11 months later, after they started school. At baseline, children completed an assessment of BI and an EEG task where they were presented with angry, happy, and neutral faces. EEG analyses focused on ERPs (P1, P2, N2) associated with specific stages of attention allocation. Interactions between BI and emotion bias (ERP amplitude for emotional versus neutral faces) were found for N2 and P1. For N2, BI was significantly associated with higher overall anxiety when an angry bias was present. Interestingly for P1, BI was associated with higher overall anxiety when a happy bias was absent. Finally, interactions were found between linear time and happy and angry bias for P1, with a greater linear decrease in anxiety over time when biases were high. These results suggest that attention to emotional stimuli moderates the BI-anxiety relationship across early development

Uncertain world: How children’s curiosity and intolerance of uncertainty relate to their behaviour and emotion under uncertainty

Curiosity and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) are both thought to drive information seeking but may have different affective profiles; curiosity is often associated with positive affective responses to uncertainty and improved learning outcomes, whereas IU is associated with negative affective responses and anxiety. Curiosity and IU have not previously been examined together in children but may both play an important role in understanding how children respond to uncertainty. Our research aimed to examine how individual differences in parent-reported curiosity and IU were associated with behavioural and emotional responses to uncertainty. Children aged 8 to 12 (n = 133) completed a game in which they were presented with an array of buttons on the screen that, when clicked, played neutral or aversive sounds. Children pressed buttons (information seeking) and rated their emotions and worry under conditions of high and low uncertainty. Facial expressions were also monitored for affective responses. Analyses revealed that children sought more information under high uncertainty than low uncertainty trials and that more curious children reported feeling happier. Contrary to expectations, IU and curiosity were not related to the number of buttons children pressed, nor to their self-reported emotion or worry. However, exploratory analyses suggest that children who are high in IU may engage in more information seeking that reflects checking or safety-seeking than those who are low in IU. In addition, our findings suggest that there may be age-related change in the effects of IU on worry, with IU more strongly related to worry in uncertain situations for older children than younger children