The Effect of Expectations on Experiences and Engagement with an Applied Game for Mental Health

Objective: Applied games are considered a promising approach to deliver mental health interventions. Nonspecific factors such as expectations and motivation may be crucial to optimize effectiveness yet have not been examined so far. The current study examined the effect of expectations for improvement on (1) experienced fun and positive affect, and (2) in-game play behaviors while playing MindLight, an applied game shown to reduce anxiety. The secondary aim was to examine the moderating role of symptom severity and motivation to change. Materials and Methods: Fifty-seven participants (47 females; 17-21 years old) preselected on anxiety symptoms viewed a trailer in which MindLight was promoted as either a mental health or an entertainment game. These trailers were used to induce different expectations in participants. Participants subsequently played the game for 60 minutes. Before playing, participants filled out questionnaires about their general anxiety symptoms, motivation to change, state anxiety, affect, and arousal. While playing, in-game behaviors and galvanic skin response (GSR) were recorded continuously. After playing, state anxiety, affect, and arousal were measured again as well as experienced fun. Results: Participants in both trailer conditions showed increases in state anxiety, arousal, and GSR. Expectations did not influence experienced fun and positive affect, nor in-game behaviors. In addition, no moderation effects of motivation to change and symptom severity were found. Conclusion: Experiences and engagement with MindLight were not influenced by expectations, motivation to change, and symptom severity. For future research, it is recommended to examine individual differences in these effects, and long-term and more distal outcomes and processes

Fusion analysis of first episode depression: where brain shape deformations meet local composition of tissue.

Computational neuroanatomical techniques that are used to evaluate the structural correlates of disorders in the brain typically measure regional differences in gray matter or white matter, or measure regional differences in the deformation fields required to warp individual datasets to a standard space. Our aim in this study was to combine measurements of regional tissue composition and of deformations in order to characterize a particular brain disorder (here, major depressive disorder). We use structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data from young adults in a first episode of depression, and from an age- and sex-matched group of non-depressed individuals, and create population gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) tissue average templates using DARTEL groupwise registration. We obtained GM and WM tissue maps in the template space, along with the deformation fields required to co-register the DARTEL template and the GM and WM maps in the population. These three features, reflecting tissue composition and shape of the brain, were used within a joint independent-components analysis (jICA) to extract spatially independent joint sources and their corresponding modulation profiles. Coefficients of the modulation profiles were used to capture differences between depressed and non-depressed groups. The combination of hippocampal shape deformations and local composition of tissue (but neither shape nor local composition of tissue alone) was shown to discriminate reliably between individuals in a first episode of depression and healthy controls, suggesting that brain structural differences between depressed and non-depressed individuals do not simply reflect chronicity of the disorder but are there from the very outset

Sharing the burden: The interpersonal regulation of emotional arousal in mother-daughter dyads

According to social baseline theory (Beckes & Coan, 2011), load sharing is a feature of close relationships whereby the burden of emotional distress is distributed across relationship partners. Load sharing varies by physical closeness and relationship quality. We investigated the effect of load sharing on emotional arousal via galvanic skin response, an indicator of sympathetic nervous system arousal, during a social stressor. Social stress was elicited in 66 adolescent girls (Mage = 15 years) using a spontaneous public-speaking task. Mother-daughter dyads reported their relationship quality, and physical closeness was manipulated by having mothers either touch or not touch their daughter's hand during the performance. We found evidence of load sharing among dyads who held hands, independent of relationship quality. However, without physical contact, load sharing was only evident among dyads with higher relationship quality. Thus, high relationship quality buffers against threat in a similar way to the physical comfort of a loved one.status: publishe

THE REGULATION OF EMOTION SYSTEM SURVEY (RESS) TO ASSESS NURSES\u2019 EMOTIONAL REACTIONS TO SUFFERING PATIENTS

Most nurses have to interact with suffering patients and the distress elicited by these interactions may ultimately lead to burnout unless they efficiently regulate their emotional arousal. The aim of this study was to assess how a group of 86 nurses deal with this emotional distress, using the Regulation of Emotion System Survey (RESS: De France & Hollenstein, 2017). The RESS is a 24-item, self-report questionnaire that aims to assess on a common scale the individual\u2019s propensity to use six emotion regulation strategies (Distraction, Rumination, Reappraisal, Suppression, Engagement, Arousal Control). In the Italian version it has been demonstrated to be a valid tool to measure multiple regulation strategies to down-regulate personal experiences of negative emotions. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used to assess participants\u2019 levels of burnout.The results revealed that the most frequent strategies that the participants used during their job are Rumination, Reappraisal and Distraction. Rumination was significantly and positively correlated to Suppression and Engagement, whereas Reappraisal is associated with Distraction and Arousal Control. A SEM was run to test which strategies predict the three dimensions of the MBI: Rumination showed an effect on Emotional Exhaustion (B = .27, p = .01), whereas Distraction (B = -.30, p = .01), Suppression (B = .26, p = .02) and Arousal Control (B = .24, p = .04) were related to Depersonalisation. Interestingly, the relationships between Depersonalisation and both Distraction and Suppression was moderated by participant\u2019s level of satisfaction with life.The results suggest that the RESS is a useful tool to assess nurses\u2019 reactions to some aspects of their work experience because, in full, it is able to detect how some regulation strategies tend to be used together. Secondly, the data suggest that nurses\u2019 life satisfaction moderated the effect of their emotion regulation strategies on burnout