Individual differences in naturalistic learning link negative emotionality to the development of anxiety

Organisms learn from prediction errors (PEs) to predict the future. Laboratory studies using small financial outcomes find that humans use PEs to update expectations and link individual differences in PE-based learning to internalizing disorders. Because of the low-stakes outcomes in most tasks, it is unclear whether PE learning emerges in naturalistic, high-stakes contexts and whether individual differences in PE learning predict psychopathology risk. Using experience sampling to assess 625 college students\u27 expected exam grades, we found evidence of PE-based learning and a general tendency to discount negative PEs, an optimism bias. However, individuals with elevated negative emotionality, a personality trait linked to the development of anxiety disorders, displayed a global pessimism and learning differences that impeded accurate expectations and predicted future anxiety symptoms. A sensitivity to PEs combined with an aversion to negative PEs may result in a pessimistic and inaccurate model of the world, leading to anxiety

The Power of Community: The Role of Community-Based Organizations in Mitigating COVID-19-Related Impacts on Well-Being Among South Florida's Minoritized Populations

The rapid closure of schools and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact in South Florida, highlighting diverse challenges to community well-being. Community-based organizations (CBOs) have served as a source of support for community members, particularly in stressful times. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, and in collaboration with Breakthrough Miami, a CBO committed to addressing the educational opportunity gap in Miami-Dade County, we conducted a study to assess challenges to the well-being of systematically minoritized families during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included longitudinal survey data collected via ecological momentary assessment and in-depth interviews with Breakthrough Miami families to gather richer and nuanced data regarding indicators of well-being and CBO engagement. Quantitative results indicated that as perceived stress increased over time, so too did emotional and informational support. Follow-up qualitative interviews indicated that 100% of families identified Breakthrough Miami as a source of academic support during the pandemic. Additionally, families cited the important role Breakthrough Miami played beyond their standard academic programs and services in coping with the most significant sources of stress reported through the pandemic: meeting basic needs and threats to socioemotional well-being. Implications for CBOs are addressed

The Power of Community: The Role of Community-Based Organizations in Mitigating COVID-19-Related Impacts on Well-Being Among South Florida's Minoritized Populations

The rapid closure of schools and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact in South Florida, highlighting diverse challenges to community well-being. Community-based organizations (CBOs) have served as a source of support for community members, particularly in stressful times. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, and in collaboration with Breakthrough Miami, a CBO committed to addressing the educational opportunity gap in Miami-Dade County, we conducted a study to assess challenges to the well-being of systematically minoritized families during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included longitudinal survey data collected via ecological momentary assessment and in-depth interviews with Breakthrough Miami families to gather richer and nuanced data regarding indicators of well-being and CBO engagement. Quantitative results indicated that as perceived stress increased over time, so too did emotional and informational support. Follow-up qualitative interviews indicated that 100% of families identified Breakthrough Miami as a source of academic support during the pandemic. Additionally, families cited the important role Breakthrough Miami played beyond their standard academic programs and services in coping with the most significant sources of stress reported through the pandemic: meeting basic needs and threats to socioemotional well-being. Implications for CBOs are addressed

Identification of Careless Responding in Ecological Momentary Assessment Research: From Posthoc Analyses to Real-Time Data Monitoring

With the emerging ubiquity of cell phones, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) as a set of methods enable researchers to study momentary social, psychological, and affective responses to everyday life. Additionally, EMA enables researchers to acquire longitudinal data without the need for multiple lab visits. As the use of EMA in research increases, so too does the necessity of determining what constitutes valid or careless individual EMA responses to ensure validity and replicability of findings. Currently, EMA studies solely consider the response rate of a participant for exclusion. Yet, other features of an assessment can help to determine whether a response is careless or implausible. Here, we examined over 18,000 EMA text message responses of individual affect items to derive a data-driven model of what constitutes a "careless response." Results from this study indicate that an overly fast time to complete items (= 60%) are independent and reliable indicators of a careless response. Excluding careless responses such as these remove implausible positive correlations among psychometric antonyms (e.g., relaxed and anxious). Further, by identifying and removing careless responses, we also identify careless responders, participants who could be removed from group analyses. We use these results to develop and introduce an R package, EMAeval, so EMA researchers may similarly identify careless responses and responders either online during data collection or posthoc, after data collection has completed

The affective benefits of real-world exploration during the COVID-19 pandemic

Increasing daily exploration is linked to improvements in affective well-being. However, COVID-19 elevated uncertainty when leaving the home, altering the risk-reward of balance of geospatial novelty. To this end, we simultaneously collected real-world geospatial tracking and experience sampling of emotion, prior to and during the first year of the pandemic in 630 individuals. COVID-19 reduced exploration and subjective well-being. Yet, despite the health risks of exploring during the pandemic, the days of highest affective well-being were those when individuals explored the most. However, this was not true for everyone: during the first months of the pandemic, at the height of the uncertainty surrounding the transmissibility and prognosis of a COVID-19 infection, more anxious individuals experienced no affective benefit to leaving home. Taken together, real-world exploration improved well-being regardless of the presence of real-world threat, but anxiety mitigated these benefits. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Identifying Real-World Affective Correlates of Cognitive Risk Factors for Internalizing Disorders

Cognitive risk factors are key in the vulnerability for internalizing disorders. Cognitive risk factors modulate the way individuals process information from the environment which in turn impacts the day-to-day affective experience. In 296 young adults, we assessed two transdiagnostic, general risk factors-repetitive negative thinking (RNT) and anxiety sensitivity in a high-RNT subsample (N = 119). We also assessed disorderand content-specific risk factors including worry, rumination, and three facets of anxiety sensitivity (cognitive, social, physical). To determine the day-to-day affective experience, we used cell-phone-based ecological momentary assessment to assess the mean and variability of positive and negative affect (PA; NA) over 3-4 months. Two multilevel multivariate Bayesian models were used to predict PA and NA mean and variability from (1) general and (2) specific cognitive risk factors. Mean NA was a nonspecific correlate of cognitive risk across both models, while mean PA was most strongly related to RNT and rumination. NA variability was most strongly related to RNT, rumination, and the physiological facet of anxiety sensitivity. PA variability was a specific correlate of RNT. Results highlight that cognitive risk factors for internalizing disorders manifest in unique patterns of day-to-day emotional experience

The Causes and Consequences of Drifting Expectations

Awaiting news of uncertain outcomes is distressing because the news might be disappointing. To prevent such disappointments, people often “brace for the worst,” pessimistically lowering expectations before news arrives to decrease the possibility of surprising disappointment (a negative prediction error, or PE). Computational decision-making research commonly assumes that expectations do not drift within trials, yet it is unclear whether expectations pessimistically drift in real-world, high-stakes settings, what factors influence expectation drift, and whether it effectively buffers emotional responses to goal-relevant outcomes. Moreover, individuals learn from PEs to accurately anticipate future outcomes, but it is unknown whether expectation drift also impedes PE-based learning. In a sample of students awaiting exam grades ( N = 625), we found that expectations often drift and tend to drift pessimistically. We demonstrate that bracing is preferentially modulated by uncertainty; it transiently buffers the initial emotional impact of negative PEs but impairs PE-based learning, counterintuitively sustaining uncertainty into the future