Publications by authors named "Jennifer M DeCicco"

We used ecological momentary assessment to investigate momentary correlates, antecedents, and consequences of experiential avoidance (EA), and to explore whether depression and anxiety moderate these within-person relationships. Participants recorded their mood, thoughts, stress, and EA four times daily for one week. Baseline depression and anxiety were associated with EA.

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According to the facial feedback hypothesis, people's affective responses can be influenced by their own facial expression (e.g., smiling, pouting), even when their expression did not result from their emotional experiences.

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The late positive potential (LPP), which is reduced following the use of reappraisal, is a potential neurosignature for emotion regulation capacity. This sensitivity of the LPP to reappraisal is rarely studied in children. We tested whether, in 26 typically developing seven- to nine-year-olds, LPP amplitudes were reduced following reappraisal and whether this effect varied with age and anxiety.

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Enhanced threat processing has been associated with elevated anxiety in adults, but less is known about how threat processing influences the developmental trajectory of anxiety in children. We used the N170 to measure threat (angry faces) processing in relation to child anxiety over a 2-year period. Participants were 27 typically developing 5-to-7-year-olds (13 females).

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Although inhibited behavior problems are prevalent in childhood, relatively little is known about the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that predict a child's ability to regulate inhibited behavior during fear- and anxiety-provoking tasks. Inhibited behavior may be linked to both disruptions in avoidance-related processing of aversive stimuli and in approach-related processing of appetitive stimuli, but previous findings are contradictory and rarely integrate consideration of the socialization context. The current exploratory study used a novel combination of neurophysiological and observation-based methods to examine whether a neurophysiological measure sensitive to approach- and avoidance-oriented emotional processing, the late positive potential (LPP), interacted with observed approach- (promotion) and avoidance- (prevention) oriented parenting practices to predict children's observed inhibited behavior.

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The late positive potential (LPP) reflects increased attention to emotional versus neutral stimuli in adults. To date, very few studies have examined the LPP in children, and whether it can be used to measure patterns of emotional processing that are related to dispositional mood characteristics, such as temperamental fear and anxiety. To examine this question,39 typically developing 5–7 year olds (M age in months = 75.

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Cognitive emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraising the emotional meaning of events, are linked to positive adjustment and are disrupted in individuals showing emotional distress, like anxiety. The late positive potential (LPP) is sensitive to reappraisal: LPP amplitudes are reduced when unpleasant pictures are reappraised in a positive light, suggesting regulation of negative emotion. However, only one study has examined reappraisal in children using the LPP.

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Whether task-irrelevant emotional stimuli facilitate or disrupt attention performance may depend on a range of factors, such as emotion type, task difficulty, and stimulus duration. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the influence of these factors on attention performance. Sixty-three adults, scoring within a normative range for mood and anxiety symptoms, completed either an easy or difficult version of an attention task measuring three aspects of attention performance: alerting, orienting, and executive attention.

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