Emotion regulation strategies explain associations of theta and Beta with positive affect.

Maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) strategies are a transdiagnostic construct in psychopathology. ER depends on cognitive control, so brain activity associated with cognitive control, such as frontal theta and beta, may be a factor in ER. This study investigated the association of theta and beta power with positive affect and whether emotion regulation strategies explain this association.

Anticipatory processing increases attentional biases to disgust faces in socially anxious individuals: Evidence from the N2pc and CDA.

Attentional biases to socially threatening facial expressions (anger, disgust) have been repeatedly observed in socially anxious individuals. These biases are thought to arise, in part, because anticipatory processing of social situations increases the salience of negative social cues. Additionally, self-focused attention on somatic symptoms of anxiety (e.

Electrophysiological effects of smartphone notifications on cognitive control following a brief mindfulness induction.

Smartphone use is nearly ubiquitous, with 93% of adults among economically developed countries, including the United States, Canada, Israel, and South Korea owning a smartphone (Taylor & Silver, 2019). Multiple studies have demonstrated the distracting effects of smartphone notifications on behavioral measures of cognition. Fewer studies have examined the effects of notifications on neural activity underlying higher-level cognitive processes or behavioral inductions to reduce smartphone-related distraction.

The association of emotion regulation with distress tolerance depends on a neural correlate of cognitive control.

Background: Distress tolerance is associated with transdiagnostic mental health problems. Theory and research implicate emotion regulation and cognitive control as factors in distress tolerance but their unique contributions and interdependency have been unclear. This study tested how emotion regulation and the N2, a neural index of cognitive control, uniquely and interactively predicted distress tolerance.

Understanding the Dimensions of Post-Event Processing: Applying a Bifactor Modeling Approach to the EPEPQ-15.

Social anxiety disorder is maintained in part by rumination about past social experiences, known as post-event processing. The Extended Post-Event Processing Questionnaire (EPEPQ-15) assesses post-event processing as three correlated factors. Competing against this structure is a bifactor model that has not yet been evaluated for the EPEPQ-15.

Loneliness and Depression in College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: the Role of Boredom and Repetitive Negative Thinking.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered increased rates of depression, especially among college students. Due to social distancing guidelines, loneliness has been suspected as a prominent factor in depression during the pandemic. Research is needed to identify possible mechanisms through which loneliness conveys risk for pandemic-era depression.

Distinct aspects of emotion dysregulation differentially correspond to magnitude and slope of the late positive potential to affective stimuli.

Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a transdiagnostic risk factor for several forms of psychopathology. One established, integrative conceptualisation of ED that has informed our understanding of psychopathology (Gratz, K. L.

Attentional Control Moderates the Relations between Intolerance of Uncertainty and Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Symptoms.

Background: Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), perceived attentional control (AC), and poor cognitive control abilities are risk factors for anxiety; however, few studies have examined their interactive effects in relation to anxiety. A more complete understanding of interplay between IU, perceived AC, and cognitive control could inform intervention efforts.

Methods: The current study examined the direct and interactive effects of IU and AC on anxiety in a sample of 280 community outpatients ( age = 36.

Win, lose, or draw: Examining salience, reward memory, and depression with the reward positivity.

The reward positivity (RewP) is a putative biomarker of depression. Careful control of stimulus properties and manipulation of both stimulus valence and salience could facilitate interpretation of the RewP. RewP interpretation could further be improved by investigating functional outcomes of a blunted RewP in depression, such as reduced memory for rewarding outcomes.

Anxiety Sensitivity and Arousal Symptom Implicit Association Task Performance: An Event-Related Potential Study of Cognitive Processing of Anxiety-Relevant Stimuli.

Background: Anxiety sensitivity (AS), or the fear of anxious arousal, is a transdiagnostic risk factor. Despite the proliferation of self-report research showing AS is related to anxiety, cognitive processes underlying AS are poorly understood. Specifically, AS may reflect processes related to early attentional orientation and response monitoring (reflecting automatic processes), or later engagement and assigning emotional salience towards stimuli (reflecting conscious processes).

A multimethod investigation of the impact of attentional control on a brief intervention for anxiety and depression.

Objective: Anxiety sensitivity (AS; fear of anxiety) is a malleable risk factor for anxiety and depression. Brief computerized interventions, including elements of psychoeducation, interoceptive exposure, and cognitive bias modification (CBM) can reduce anxiety and depression through AS reductions. These interventions are not equally efficacious for all who receive them, suggesting the need to explore moderators.

Worry as a mediator between psychosocial stressors and emotional sequelae: Moderation by contrast avoidance.

Background: Worry is the core feature of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), which is prevalent among emerging adults. The contrast avoidance model proposes that individuals with GAD use worry to avoid negative emotional contrasts by maintaining a state of negative affect. Research suggests worry in response to stressors increases anxiety, but more research is needed to examine depression as an outcome and the predictions of contrast avoidance in the context of multiple stressor subtypes.

Examination of evaluative threat in worry: Insights from the Error-Related Negativity (ERN).

Recent research suggests atypical error-monitoring is important to understanding pathological anxiety. Because uncertainty is a transdiagnostic factor associated with anxiety and related disorders, recent research has begun to examine the influence of uncertainty in error-monitoring. Moreover, task irrelevant threat has been shown to influence cognitive performance in individuals with maladaptive anxiety.

The relationship between social anxiety and heartbeat evoked potential amplitude.

Past research suggests that social anxiety is associated with increased processing of cardiac activity. Cognitive theories propose that this is one aspect of self-focus, which is driven by concerns that features of the self, such as anxiety symptoms, will elicit evaluation from others. We investigated the relationship of social anxiety to the cortical processing of heartbeats as reflected in the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) during false feedback of accelerated heart rate.

PTSD symptoms and overt attention to contextualized emotional faces: Evidence from eye tracking.

Abnormal patterns of attention to emotional faces and images are proposed by theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and this has been demonstrated empirically. However, few studies have examined how PTSD symptoms are associated with attention to emotional faces in the context of emotional background images. Eye tracking data were collected from seventy-eight undergraduates with a history of experiencing at least one traumatic event as they completed the Contextual Recognition of Affective Faces Task (CRAFT; Milanak and Berenbaum, 2014), which requires subjects to identify the emotion depicted by faces superimposed on an emotional background image.

Killing during combat and negative mental health and substance use outcomes among recent-era veterans: The mediating effects of rumination.

Objective: Although killing in combat is associated with negative mental health outcomes and hazardous alcohol use, mechanisms that underlie this risk are not well understood. To our knowledge, this present brief report is the first to use mediation analysis to examine associations between killing in combat, distinct facets of rumination (problem-focused thoughts, counterfactual thinking, repetitive thoughts, and anticipatory thoughts), and negative mental health outcomes (i.e.

The association between PTSD and facial affect recognition.

The major aims of this study were to examine how, if at all, having higher levels of PTSD would be associated with performance on a facial affect recognition task in which facial expressions of emotion are superimposed on emotionally valenced, non-face images. College students with trauma histories (N = 90) completed a facial affect recognition task as well as measures of exposure to traumatic events, and PTSD symptoms. When the face and context matched, participants with higher levels of PTSD were significantly more accurate.

Gender differences in the relation between the late positive potential in response to anxiety sensitivity images and self-reported anxiety sensitivity.

Anxiety sensitivity (AS), or the fear of anxious arousal, is a transdiagnostic risk factor predictive of a wide variety of affective disorders. Whereas AS is widely studied via self-report, the neurophysiological correlates of AS are poorly understood. One specific issue this may help resolve is well-established gender differences in mean levels of AS.

Hyperarousal Symptoms Explain the Relationship Between Cognitive Complaints and Working Memory Performance in Veterans Seeking PTSD Treatment.

Objective: Comorbidity and symptom overlap between traumatic brain injury and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans returning from deployment present challenges with respect to differential diagnosis and treatment. Both conditions frequently manifest with attention and working memory deficits, though the underlying neuropsychological basis differs. This study evaluated whether hyperarousal symptoms explain the relationship between subjective and objective measures of cognition in a veteran sample.

Concreteness of idiographic worry and anticipatory processing.

Background And Objectives: Worry and anticipatory processing are forms of repetitive negative thinking (RNT) that are associated with maladaptive characteristics and negative consequences. One key maladaptive characteristic of worry is its abstract nature (Goldwin & Behar, 2012; Stöber & Borkovec, 2002). Several investigations have relied on inductions of worry that are social-evaluative in nature, which precludes distinctions between worry and RNT about social-evaluative situations.

Neural responses to maternal praise and criticism: Relationship to depression and anxiety symptoms in high-risk adolescent girls.

Background: The parent-child relationship may be an important factor in the development of adolescent depressive and anxious symptoms. In adults, depressive symptoms relate to increased amygdala and attenuated prefrontal activation to maternal criticism. The current pilot study examined how depressive and anxiety symptoms in a high-risk adolescent population relate to neural responses to maternal feedback.

Trait attentional control influences the relationship between repetitive negative thinking and psychopathology symptoms.

Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) has been implicated in several disorders (e.g., Clark (2005)).

Electrocortical Evidence of Enhanced Performance Monitoring in Social Anxiety.

Self-focused attention is thought to be a key feature of social anxiety disorder. Yet few studies have used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether socially anxious individuals display greater monitoring of their performance and attention to their errors. Similarly, only a few studies have used ERPs to examine how social anxiety is related to processing of performance feedback.