Maternal psychological factors, including anxiety, depression, and substance use, may negatively affect parenting. Previous works with mothers have often assessed each of these factors in isolation despite their frequent co-occurrence. Psychological factors have also been associated with neural processing of facial stimuli, specifically the amplitude (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReward-related activity in the dopaminergic midbrain is thought to guide animal behavior, in part by boosting the perceptual and attentional processing of reward-predictive environmental stimuli. In line with this incentive salience hypothesis, studies of human visual search have shown that simple synthetic stimuli, such as lines, shapes, or Gabor patches, capture attention to their location when they are characterized by reward-associated visual features, such as color. In the real world, however, we commonly search for members of a category of visually heterogeneous objects, such as people, cars, or trees, where category examples do not share low-level features.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaternal attachment security is an important predictor of caregiving . However, little is known regarding the neurobiological mechanisms by which attachment influences processing of infant cues, a critical component of caregiving. We examined whether attachment security, measured by the Adult Attachment Interview, might relate to neural responses to infant cues using event-related potentials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch has demonstrated relative success with brief interventions that utilize social psychological theory to target the root cause of unwanted behaviours. Given the intersections among anxious attachment, depression, and emotion dysregulation, the current research utilises an interpersonal conflict cognitive reappraisal intervention to evaluate improvements in depressive symptoms. We also evaluated mediation via improvements in emotion regulation and moderation by attachment anxiety.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch has shown links between interpersonal conflict and problematic drinking behaviors as a way to cope. The present research examined the effects of a brief interpersonal conflict cognitive reappraisal intervention on short-term reductions in alcohol-related problems in a sample of college student drinkers. Undergraduates who were regular drinkers ( = 190) participated in a randomized control online study, completing self-reported measures of alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems at baseline and 2 weeks later.
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