Binocular Rivalry of Emotional Expressions

A central debate in defining emotional space is whether emotions are organized categorically (e.g., fear, happy, disgust) or continuously (i.e., along the independent dimensions of valence and arousal). Emotional facial expressions are one tool often leveraged in trying to define emotional space. Faces are rich sources of social and emotional information. Faces, like emotions, can be organized in either categorical (e.g., happy, sad) or continuous (e.g., open-closed) ways. Therefore, understanding the relatedness of emotional facial expressions to each other may shed light on the underlying structure of emotions. Binocular rivalry (BR) is a tool which can be leveraged to measure the relatedness of two percepts. When each eye is presented with a different image, the visual system is forced to resolve the images into a coherent percept by either selecting one percept to dominate or blending the two images. BR was employed across three experiments with emotional expressions (happy, fear, disgust, sadness, and neutral) to quantify similarities and differences in how the visual system responds to emotional faces. In Study 1, emotional faces dominated over neutral faces. In Study 2, emotion-emotion conflict was explored, and results suggest a positivity bias in emotion perception, as happy faces dominated over all negative faces. In addition, fear dominated over disgust and sad faces. In Study 3, the role of top-down, directed attention on perception was tested by asking participants to direct their attention to the presence or absence of positivity or negativity. Results suggest that the positivity bias observed in Study 2 is enhanced by directed attention towards positivity. Overall, these studies demonstrate that emotion expression information is processed preferentially compared to neutral expressions, that emotion-emotion conflict can be characterized by both positivity and fear biases, and that top-down attention can modulate these biases. Results from these studies were not consistent with any continuous models that were tested. Therefore, results can be interpreted as supporting a categorical emotion model in which happy and fear are prioritized compared to other emotions

Replication of WA Cunningham, JJ Van Bavel, IR Johnsen (2008, PS 19(2))

This is an independent replication as part of the Reproducibility Project: Psychology

The Impact of Program Structure on Cortisol Patterning in Children Attending Out-of-home Child Care

Full-day center-based child care has repeatedly been associated with rising levels of cortisol, a hormone that helps the body manage challenge, across the day at child care. This article presents findings from two studies examining the relationship between child care program structure (number of days per week, and hours per day) and cortisol production across the day. Study 1 presents findings comparing cortisol production in 3- to 5-year-old children enrolled in either full-day (N = 55) or half-day (N = 63) Head-Start-funded programs. Study 2 presents findings comparing young children enrolled in either full-day full-time (5 days per week; N = 37) or full-day part-time (2–3days/week; N = 41) primarily tuition-funded programs. Using multilevel modeling and controlling for a number of child factors, attending full-day, full-time programs (as compared to either half-day or part-time programs) was associated with increased cortisol production across the day on child care and home days. Implications for early childhood educators are discussed

Overlapping and Distinct Neural Correlates of Imitating and Opposing Facial Movements

Previous studies have demonstrated that imitating a face can be relatively automatic and reflexive. In contrast, opposing facial expressions may require engaging flexible, cognitive control. However, few studies have examined the degree to which imitation and opposition of facial movements recruit overlapping and distinct neural regions. Furthermore, little work has examined whether opposition and imitation of facial movements differ between emotional and averted eye gaze facial expressions. This study utilized a novel task with 40 participants to compare passive viewing, imitation and opposition of emotional faces looking forward and neutral faces with averted eye gaze [(3: Look, Imitate, Oppose) x (2: Emotion, Averted Eye)]. Imitation and opposition of both types of facial movements elicited overlapping activation in frontal, premotor, superior temporal and anterior intraparietal regions. These regions are recruited during cognitive control, face processing and mirroring tasks. For both emotional and averted eye gaze photos, opposition engaged the superior frontal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus and the anterior intraparietal sulcus to a greater extent compared to imitation. Finally, stimulus type and instruction interacted, such that for the eye gaze condition only, greater activation was observed in the dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) during opposition compared to imitation, while no significant dACC differences were observed for the emotional expression conditions, which instead showed significantly greater activation in the middle and frontal pole. Overall these results showed significant overlap between imitation and opposition, as well as increased activation of these regions to generate an opposing facial movement relative to imitating

Normative Development of Ventral Striatal Resting State Connectivity in Humans

Incentives play a crucial role in guiding behavior throughout our lives, but perhaps no more so than during the early years of life. The ventral striatum is a critical piece of an incentive-based learning circuit, sharing robust anatomical connections with subcortical (e.g., amygdala, hippocampus) and cortical structures (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), insula) that collectively support incentive valuation and learning. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) is a powerful method that provides insight into the development of the functional architecture of these connections involved in incentive-based learning. We employed a seed-based correlation approach to investigate ventral striatal rsFC in a cross-sectional sample of typically developing individuals between the ages of 4.5 and 23-years old (n = 66). Ventral striatal rsFC with the mPFC showed regionally specific linear age-related changes in connectivity that were associated with age-related increases in circulating testosterone levels. Further, ventral striatal connectivity with the posterior hippocampus and posterior insula demonstrated quadratic age-related changes characterized by negative connectivity in adolescence. Finally, across this age range, the ventral striatum demonstrated positive coupling with the amygdala beginning during childhood and remaining consistently positive across age. In sum, our findings suggest that normative ventral striatal rsFC development is dynamic and characterized by early establishment of connectivity with medial prefrontal and limbic structures supporting incentive-based learning, as well as substantial functional reorganization with later developing regions during transitions into and out of adolescence

Emotional Reactivity and Emotion Regulation among Adults with a History of Self-harm: Laboratory Self-report and Functional MRI Evidence.

Intentionally hurting one’s body (deliberate self-harm; DSH) is theorized to be associated with high negative emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation ability. However, little research has assessed the relationship between these potential risk factors and DSH using laboratory measures. Therefore, we conducted 2 studies using laboratory measures of negative emotional reactivity and emotion regulation ability. Study 1 assessed self-reported negative emotions during a sad film clip (reactivity) and during a sad film clip for which participants were instructed to use reappraisal (regulation). Those with a history of DSH were compared with 2 control groups without a history of DSH matched on key demographics: 1 healthy group low in depression and anxiety symptoms and 1 group matched to the DSH group on depression and anxiety symptoms. Study 2 extended Study 1 by assessing neural responding to negative images (reactivity) and negative images for which participants were instructed to use reappraisal (regulation). Those with a history of DSH were compared with a control group matched to the DSH group on demographics, depression, and anxiety symptoms. Compared with control groups, participants with a history of DSH did not exhibit greater negative emotional reactivity but did exhibit lower ability to regulate emotion with reappraisal (greater self-reported negative emotions in Study 1 and greater amygdala activation in Study 2 during regulation). These results suggest that poor emotion regulation ability, but not necessarily greater negative emotional reactivity, is a correlate of and may be a risk factor for DSH, even when controlling for mood disorder symptoms

Emotional Reactivity and Emotion Regulation Among Adults With a History of Self-Harm: Laboratory Self-Report and Functional MRI Evidence

Intentionally hurting one's body (deliberate self-harm; DSH) is theorized to be associated with high negative emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation ability. However, little research has assessed the relationship between these potential risk factors and DSH using laboratory measures. Therefore, we conducted 2 studies using laboratory measures of negative emotional reactivity and emotion regulation ability. Study 1 assessed self-reported negative emotions during a sad film clip (reactivity) and during a sad film clip for which participants were instructed to use reappraisal (regulation). Those with a history of DSH were compared with 2 control groups without a history of DSH matched on key demographics: 1 healthy group low in depression and anxiety symptoms and 1 group matched to the DSH group on depression and anxiety symptoms. Study 2 extended Study 1 by assessing neural responding to negative images (reactivity) and negative images for which participants were instructed to use reappraisal (regulation). Those with a history of DSH were compared with a control group matched to the DSH group on demographics, depression, and anxiety symptoms. Compared with control groups, participants with a history of DSH did not exhibit greater negative emotional reactivity but did exhibit lower ability to regulate emotion with reappraisal (greater self-reported negative emotions in Study 1 and greater amygdala activation in Study 2 during regulation). These results suggest that poor emotion regulation ability, but not necessarily greater negative emotional reactivity, is a correlate of and may be a risk factor for DSH, even when controlling for mood disorder symptoms

Emotional reactivity and emotion regulation among adults with a history of self-harm: Laboratory self-report and functional MRI evidence.

Intentionally hurting one’s body (deliberate self-harm; DSH) is theorized to be associated with high negative emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation ability. However, little research has assessed the relationship between these potential risk factors and DSH using laboratory measures. Therefore, we conducted 2 studies using laboratory measures of negative emotional reactivity and emotion regulation ability. Study 1 assessed self-reported negative emotions during a sad film clip (reactivity) and during a sad film clip for which participants were instructed to use reappraisal (regulation). Those with a history of DSH were compared with 2 control groups without a history of DSH matched on key demographics: 1 healthy group low in depression and anxiety symptoms and 1 group matched to the DSH group on depression and anxiety symptoms. Study 2 extended Study 1 by assessing neural responding to negative images (reactivity) and negative images for which participants were instructed to use reappraisal (regulation). Those with a history of DSH were compared with a control group matched to the DSH group on demographics, depression, and anxiety symptoms. Compared with control groups, participants with a history of DSH did not exhibit greater negative emotional reactivity but did exhibit lower ability to regulate emotion with reappraisal (greater self-reported negative emotions in Study 1 and greater amygdala activation in Study 2 during regulation). These results suggest that poor emotion regulation ability, but not necessarily greater negative emotional reactivity, is a correlate of and may be a risk factor for DSH, even when controlling for mood disorder symptoms

Emotion regulation changes the duration of the BOLD response to emotional stimuli

Emotion regulation theories posit that strategies like reappraisal should impact both the intensity and duration of emotional responses. However, research on reappraisal to date has examined almost exclusively its effect on the intensity of responses while failing to examine its effect on the duration of responses. To address this, we used inverse logit functions to estimate the height and duration of hemodynamic responses to negative pictures when individuals with recent life stress were instructed to use reappraisal either to decrease their negative emotion or to increase their positive emotion (relative to unregulated viewing of negative pictures). Several emotion-generative regions such as the amygdala, thalamus and midbrain exhibited decreases in duration of activation, even when controlling for differences in height of activation. In addition, whereas the amygdala exhibited both decreased activation height and duration when participants reappraised to decrease their negative emotion, it only exhibited decreased duration when participants reappraised to increase their positive emotion. These results indicate that emotion regulation alters the temporal dynamics of emotional responding and that models of reappraisal should accommodate whether reappraisal influences the height of activation, duration of activation or both, which may change based on the goal of the reappraisal strategy being used