Exposed to events that never happen: Generalized unsafety, the default stress response, and prolonged autonomic activity

FSW - Self-regulation models for health behavior and psychopathology - ou

The effects of perseverative cognition on diverse physiological responses: an integrative view

FSW - Self-regulation models for health behavior and psychopathology - ou

Prolonged non-metabolic heart rate variability reduction as a physiological marker of psychological stress in daily life

BACKGROUND\nProlonged cardiac activity that exceeds metabolic needs can be detrimental for somatic health. Psychological stress could result in such "additional cardiac activity."\nPURPOSE\nIn this study, we examined whether prolonged additional reductions in heart rate variability (AddHRVr) can be measured in daily life with an algorithm that filters out changes in HRV that are purely due to metabolic demand, as indexed by movement, using a brief calibration procedure. We tested whether these AddHRVr periods were related to worry, stress, and negative emotions.\nMETHODS\nMovement and the root of the mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) in heart rate were measured during a calibration phase and the subsequent 24 h in 32 participants. Worry, stress, explicit and implicit emotions were assessed hourly using smartphones. The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale and resting HRV were used to account for individual differences. During calibration, person-specific relations between movement and RMSSD were determined. The 24-h data were used to detect prolonged periods (i.e., 7.5 min) of AddHRVr.\nRESULTS\nAddHRVr periods were associated with worrying, with decreased explicit positive affect, and with increased tension, but not with the frequency of stressful events or implicit emotions. Only in people high in emotional awareness and high in resting HRV did changes in AddHRVr covary with changes in explicit emotions.\nCONCLUSIONS\nThe algorithm can be used to capture prolonged reductions in HRV that are not due to metabolic needs. This enables the real-time assessment of episodes of potentially detrimental cardiac activity and its psychological determinants in daily life.FSW - Self-regulation models for health behavior and psychopathology - ou

The Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test: Validity and relationship with cardiovascular stress-responses.

Self-report, i.e., explicit, measures of affect cannot fully explain the cardiovascular (CV) responses to stressors. Measuring affect beyond self-report, i.e., using implicit measures, could add to our understanding of stress-related CV activity. The Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT) was administered in two studies to test its ecological validity and relation with CV responses and self-report measures of affect. In Study 1 students (N = 34) viewed four film clips inducing anger, happiness, fear, or no emotion, and completed the IPANAT and the Positive And Negative Affect Scale at baseline and after each clip. Implicit negative affect (INA) was higher and implicit positive affect (IPA) was lower after the anger inducing clip and vice versa after the happiness inducing clip. In Study 2 students performed a stressful math task with (n = 14) or without anger harassment (n = 15) and completed the IPANAT and a Visual Analog Scale as an explicit measure afterwards. Systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP) blood pressure, heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) were recorded throughout. SBP and DBP were higher and TPR was lower in the harassment condition during the task with a prolonged effect on SBP and DBP during recovery. As expected, explicit negative affect (ENA) was higher and explicit positive affect (EPA) lower after harassment, but ENA and EPA were not related to CV activity. Although neither INA nor IPA differed between the tasks, during both tasks higher INA was related to higher SBP, lower HRV and lower TPR and to slower recovery of DBP after both tasks. Low IPA was related to slower recovery of SBP and DBP after the tasks. Implicit affect was not related to recovery of HR, HRV, and TPR. In conclusion, the IPANAT seems to respond to film clip-induced negative and positive affect and was related to CV activity during and after stressful tasks. These findings support the theory that implicitly measured affect can add to the explanation of prolonged stress-related CV responses that influence CV health.FSW - Self-regulation models for health behavior and psychopathology - ou

Measuring the unreportable: tests of unconscious stress and cardiovascular activity

FSW - Self-regulation models for health behavior and psychopathology - ou

Assessing new methods to optimally detect episodes of non-metabolic heart rate variability reduction as an indicator of psychological stress in everyday life: a thorough evaluation of six methods

Action Contro

A brief scale of pathological worry that everyone already has

Stress and Psychopatholog

Ecological momentary assessment of emotional awareness: preliminary evaluation of psychometric properties

Stress and Psychopatholog

Ecological momentary assessment of emotional awareness: preliminary evaluation of psychometric properties

The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) is a well-validated performance measure of trait emotional awareness (EA), which is associated with psychological and physical problems. EA is, however, expected to vary over time and we aimed to adapt the LEAS to permit the measurement of EA in daily life as a function of momentary state. Twenty-five students completed 12 ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) of EA across 2 days. The correlation between the mean EMAs of EA and trait EA, and the change over time in EA, was also examined. Findings revealed a significant positive correlation between state and trait EA. The within-person reliability was substantial, suggesting that EMAs can reliably assess EA over time across individuals. Importantly, latent state-trait analysis showed that about 50% of EA variability was due to state variance whereas only 2% of EA variability was due to trait variance. Preliminary psychometric properties suggest that the developed method allows for the measurement of EA in daily life and supports the claim that EA can be measured using both hypothetical (as in the LEAS) and real-life (using EMAs) scenarios.Prevention, Population and Disease management (PrePoD)Public Health and primary car