A Bipolar Continuum or Two Independent Dimensions?

In contrast to standard models of emotional valence, which assume a bipolar valence dimension ranging from negative to positive valence with a neutral midpoint, the evaluative space model (ESM) proposes two independent positivity and negativity dimensions. Previous imaging studies suggest higher predictive power of the ESM when investigating the neural correlates of verbal stimuli. The present study investigates further assumptions on the behavioral level. A rating experiment on more than 600 German words revealed 48 emotionally ambivalent stimuli (i.e., stimuli with high scores on both ESM dimensions), which were contrasted with neutral stimuli in two subsequent lexical decision experiments. Facilitative processing for emotionally ambivalent words was found in Experiment 2. In addition, controlling for emotional arousal and semantic ambiguity in the stimulus set, Experiment 3 still revealed a speed- accuracy trade-off for emotionally ambivalent words. Implications for future investigations of lexical processing and for the ESM are discussed

10 years of BAWLing into affective and aesthetic processes in reading: what are the echoes?

Reading is not only “cold” information processing, but involves affective and aesthetic processes that go far beyond what current models of word recognition, sentence processing, or text comprehension can explain. To investigate such “hot” reading processes, standardized instruments that quantify both psycholinguistic and emotional variables at the sublexical, lexical, inter-, and supralexical levels (e.g., phonological iconicity, word valence, arousal-span, or passage suspense) are necessary. One such instrument, the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) has been used in over 50 published studies demonstrating effects of lexical emotional variables on all relevant processing levels (experiential, behavioral, neuronal). In this paper, we first present new data from several BAWL studies. Together, these studies examine various views on affective effects in reading arising from dimensional (e.g., valence) and discrete emotion features (e.g., happiness), or embodied cognition features like smelling. Second, we extend our investigation of the complex issue of affective word processing to words characterized by a mixture of affects. These words entail positive and negative valence, and/or features making them beautiful or ugly. Finally, we discuss tentative neurocognitive models of affective word processing in the light of the present results, raising new issues for future studies

Past attachment experiences, the potential link of mentalization and the transmission of behavior to the child by mothers with mental health problems: cross-sectional analysis of a clinical sample.

Maternal capacity to mentalize (= reflective functioning, RF), secure attachment and emotionally available parenting has an impact on the child's development. The transmission of mothers' past attachment experiences gained with both her caregivers in her own childhood and the impact on current mother-child interaction is part of the 'transmission gap.' This study explores the transgenerational transmission mechanisms and the potential moderating effect of RF in a clinical sample of 113 mother-child dyads suffering from mental health problems. In a cross-sectional study, the associations between maternal attachment experiences, RF (coded based on Adult Attachment Interviews) and current mother-child interaction (Emotional Availability Scales) were examined with univariate correlation, moderator analyses, and structural equation models. We found relationships between attachment experiences and mother-child interaction, but RF had no moderating effect. Past loving experiences and perceived neglection, particularly with the own father in childhood, were predictors for the present mother-child interaction. There seems to be an intergenerational transmission of attachment experiences to the ongoing generation. Particularly past adverse childhood experiences with the own father seem to explain currently disruptive interactions with the child.Trial registration: DRKS00017008 and DRKS00016353

Utilization and costs of health care and early support services in Germany and the influence of mental health burden during the postnatal period

Limited evidence is available about health care utilization and its determinants in the vulnerable postnatal period for mothers and their children. Thus, the aim of our analyses was to assess determinants of health care and early support services utilization regarding mothers and their children and associated costs in the postnatal period in Germany. Moreover, we aimed to investigate the impact of noticeable mental health and psychosocial burdens on health care and early support services utilization and costs. Using a two-step assessment process of parents from a randomly selected sample of 30,000 recently born children in the multicenter observational population-based cohort study of the SKKIPPI project, we firstly identified mothers who were potentially at risk of mental health and psychosocial burden. These mothers were then invited to participate in an in-depth assessment, including a detailed self-developed questionnaire focusing on early support and health care services utilization. A follow-up after 6 months was conducted. Potential determinants of early support services utilization were analyzed using logistic regression. General linear models with gamma distribution and log link functions were applied to analyze potential determinants of health care costs and to estimate mean adjusted costs. Mothers with a noticeable mental health or psychosocial burden and their children caused mean early support services costs of €1073 and caused total costs of €10,849 in the postnatal period from a payer’s perspective compared to €349 (early support services) and €9136 (total costs) for mothers without a noticeable mental health or psychosocial burden and their children. The main determinants of total costs were facing a chronic disease (child), preterm delivery, bad experiences with doctors and midwives, and single parenthood. The majority of participants (69 %) utilized some kind of early support services. The most important determinants of early support service utilization in the postnatal period with respect to the children were facing a chronic disease, being the first child, and being born as a twin. Our findings highlight the importance of sufficient appreciation and treatment of mental health problems in the postnatal period from both a societal and payer’s perspective. Future research should investigate whether these and more specific interventions could be a costeffective way to support mothers with mental health or psychosocial burden and their children

What our eyes tell us about feelings: Tracking pupillary responses during emotion regulation processes

Emotion regulation is essential for adaptive behavior and mental health. Strategies applied to alter emotions are known to differ in their impact on psychological and physiological aspects of the emotional response. However, emotion regulation outcome has primarily been assessed via self‐report, and studies comparing regulation strategies with regard to their peripheral physiological mechanisms are limited in number. In the present study, we therefore aimed to investigate the effects of different emotion regulation strategies on pupil dilation, skin conductance responses, and subjective emotional responses. Thirty healthy females were presented with negative and neutral pictures and asked to maintain or up‐ and downregulate their upcoming emotional responses through reappraisal or distraction. Pupil dilation and skin conductance responses were significantly enhanced when viewing negative relative to neutral pictures. For the pupil, this emotional arousal effect manifested specifically late during the pupillary response. In accordance with subjective ratings, increasing negative emotions through reappraisal led to the most prominent pupil size enlargements, whereas no consistent effect for downregulation was found. In contrast, early peak dilations were enhanced in all emotion regulation conditions independent of strategy. Skin conductance responses were not further modulated by emotion regulation. These results indicate that pupil diameter is modulated by emotional arousal, but is initially related to the extent of mental effort required to regulate automatic emotional responses. Our data thus provide first evidence that the pupillary response might comprise two distinct temporal components reflecting cognitive emotion regulation effort on the one hand and emotion regulation success on the other hand

Lexical olfaction recruits olfactory orbitofrontal cortex in metaphorical and literal contexts

The investigation of specific lexical categories has substantially contributed to advancing our knowledge on how meaning is neurally represented. One sensory domain that has received particularly little attention is olfaction. This study aims to investigate the neural representation of lexical olfaction. In an fMRI experiment, participants read olfactory metaphors, their literal paraphrases, and literal olfactory sentences. Regions of interest were defined by a functional localizer run of odor processing. We observed activation in secondary olfactory areas during metaphorical and literal olfactory processing, thus extending previous findings to the novel source domain of olfaction. Previously reported enhanced activation in emotion-related areas due to metaphoricity could not be replicated. Finally, no primary olfactory cortex was found active during lexical olfaction processing. We suggest that this absence is due to olfactory hedonicity being crucial to understand the meaning of the current olfactory expressions. Consequently, the processing of olfactory hedonicity recruits secondary olfactory areas

Discrete Emotion Effects on Lexical Decision Response Times

Our knowledge about affective processes, especially concerning effects on cognitive demands like word processing, is increasing steadily. Several studies consistently document valence and arousal effects, and although there is some debate on possible interactions and different notions of valence, broad agreement on a two dimensional model of affective space has been achieved. Alternative models like the discrete emotion theory have received little interest in word recognition research so far. Using backward elimination and multiple regression analyses, we show that five discrete emotions (i.e., happiness, disgust, fear, anger and sadness) explain as much variance as two published dimensional models assuming continuous or categorical valence, with the variables happiness, disgust and fear significantly contributing to this account. Moreover, these effects even persist in an experiment with discrete emotion conditions when the stimuli are controlled for emotional valence and arousal levels. We interpret this result as evidence for discrete emotion effects in visual word recognition that cannot be explained by the two dimensional affective space account

Formation of a Bazooka–Stardust complex is essential for plasma membrane polarity in epithelia

Recruitment of the Crumbs–Stardust polarity complex depends on interactions between Bazooka and the Stardust PDZ domain and is regulated by aPKC-mediated phosphorylation

Implizite und explizite Wiedererkennensleistungen für emotional valente Wörter

1\. Title Page and Table of Contents I 2\. Abstract V 3\. Zusammenfassung - German Summary X 4\. Chapter 1 1 5\. Chapter 2 14 6\. Chapter 3 33 7\. Chapter 4 48 8\. Chapter 5 56 9\. Chapter 6 70 10\. Chapter 7 79 11\. References 91 12\. Appendix 106 ErklärungThis dissertation examines the influences of the emotional valence of words on implicit and explicit word recognition. The research question arose from an ongoing debate in the scientific literature on whether emotional valence has an influence on cognition and how this influence is explained. Especially when looking at the implicit (non-intentional) processing of emotional information different authors proposed that no differences in the behavioural data should occur depending on the words emotional valence. The present dissertation examines the influence of emotional valence on implicit word recognition using the lexical decision task and highly controlled stimulus material. Study 1 examined the effects of emotional valence, study 2 the interaction between emotional valence and word frequency, and study 3 the effects of emotional valence and emotional arousal during the processing of high-frequency words. At the same time, this dissertation followed a multi-methodological approach: Psychophysiological (pupillometry in study 2, skin conductance responses in study 3) and neuroimaging methods (functional magnetic resonance imaging in study 1) were used to analyse the processes and neural correlates responsible for the processing of emotionally valenced words. The results of these three studies were taken to develop a computational model of visual word recognition that comprises an affective evaluation mechanism (study 4). Study 5 examined the neural correlates of explicit recognition of emotionally valenced words using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In summary, the results of this dissertation show a processing advantage of emotionally valenced material in implicit and explicit word recognition which is best explained by the proposition of an early affective evaluation. In addition, the results suggest that emotional valence and emotional arousal both contribute to the processing enhancement in the lexical decision task. Moreover, this effect is modulated by stimulus selection process in an important way, as indicated by an interactive influence of word frequency. The functional imaging data support the notion of a close relationship between semantic and emotional processing in implicit and explicit recognition, while the observed null effects for emotionally valenced words in the peripheral-physiological data point to little involvement of physiological reactions in the lexical decision task.Die vorliegende Dissertation befasst sich mit dem Einfluss der emotionalen Valenz von Wörtern auf implizite und explizite Wiedererkennungsleistungen. Der Hintergrund dieser Untersuchung ist dabei die in der Literatur andauernde Debatte, ob und inwieweit emotional valentes Material einen besonderen Einfluss auf unsere Gedächtnisprozesse besitzt. So wurde insbesondere für die implizite (also nicht-bewusste) Verarbeitung emotionaler Information von verschiedenen Autoren angenommen, dass es keine Verhaltensunterschiede in Abhängigkeit von der emotionalen Valenz von Wörtern geben sollte. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde der Einfluss der emotionalen Valenz auf implizite Wiedererkennensleistung anhand der lexikalischen Entscheidungsaufgabe untersucht, wobei für hoch-kontrolliertes Stimulusmaterial die emotionale Valenz (Studie 1), emotionale Valenz und Wortfrequenz (Studie 2), bzw. emotionale Valenz und emotionales Arousal bei hochfrequenten Wörtern (Studie 3) variiert wurden. Gleichzeitig verfolgte die vorliegende Arbeit einen muliti-methodalen Ansatz: Durch die Anwendung verschiedener psychophysiologischer (Pupilllometrie - Studie 2, Hautleitfähigkeitsmessung - Studie 3) und bildgebender Methoden (funktionelle Kernspintomographie - Studie 1) sollten zusätzliche Aussagen über die an der Verarbeitung emotional valenter Wörter beteiligten Prozesse und deren neuronale Grundlagen ermöglicht werden. Die Ergebnisse dieser drei Studien wurden dazu verwendet, ein komputationales Modell der Wortverarbeitung weiterzuentwickeln und es um einen affektiven Evaluationsmechanismus zu erweitern (Studie 4), während in Studie 5 die neuronalen Korrelate des expliziten Wiedererkennens emotional valenter Wörter mittels funktioneller Kernspintomographie untersucht wurden. Zusammenfassend zeigen die Ergebnisse dieser Studien einen Verarbeitungsvorteil zugunsten affektiv gefärbten Wortmaterials in impliziten und expliziten Wiedererkennungstests, welcher am besten durch die Annahme eines frühen affektiven Evaluationsmechanismus erklärt wird. Zusätzlich konnte gezeigt werden, dass emotionale Valenz und emotionales Arousal gemeinsam zu dem Verarbeitungsvorteil in der lexikalischen Entscheidungsaufgabe beitragen, und dieser Effekt insbesondere durch die Auswahl des Stimulusmaterials beeinflusst werden kann, wie es zum Beispiel ein interaktiver Einfluss des Faktors Wortfrequenz nahe legt. Während die funktionellen Bildgebungsdaten die Annahme einer engen Verbindung zwischen semantischer und emotionaler Verarbeitung in beiden Anforderungen nahe legen, können die beobachteten Nulleffekte für emotional valentes Material in den peripher-physiologischen Daten im Sinne einer geringen Beteiligung physiologischer Reaktionen in der lexikalischen Entscheidungsaufgabe gedeutet werden