Publications by authors named "Jessie Provencher"
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates how stress and sex hormone levels influence fear regulation and memory extinction in men and women.
- It finds that while stress doesn't significantly affect learning of fear extinction, it impacts retention differently based on hormone status, with stressed men showing impairment and mid-cycle women performing better.
- Overall, early follicular women struggled with fear regulation regardless of stress, while those on oral contraceptives displayed variability in response to stress.
Following a traumatic event, fear dysregulation can increase the likelihood of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This psychopathology is twice as prevalent in women than in men. High physiological reactivity following trauma may be an early risk indicator for the development of PTSD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis chapter reviews the literature on the impact of stress and exercise on fear extinction. Given that key brain regions of the fear circuitry (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The COVID-19 pandemic heightened emotional distress in children, especially girls, with pre-existing vulnerabilities influencing this impact.
- A longitudinal study measured hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) to assess stress responses in 69 healthy children during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic levels.
- Findings indicated that girls showed higher HCC reactivity than boys, and socio-emotional vulnerability and prior internalizing symptoms were significant predictors of cortisol changes during the pandemic.
Background: Although the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the incidence of distress in youth, some children show increased resilience, emphasizing the need to better understand the predictors of distress in youth.
Objective: This longitudinal study aimed to assess the combined impact of known socio-emotional predictors of stress-related psychopathology, namely anxiety sensitivity, anxiety trait, intolerance to uncertainty, and rumination, on COVID-related distress in healthy youth.
Method: A total of 92 parent-child dyads that previously participated in a laboratory-based experiment assessing observational fear learning in families between 2017 and 2019 (T0) were recontacted.