"Managing emotion": Open label trial and waitlist controlled trial of an emotion regulation program for university students.

More than one-third of university students meet diagnostic criteria for a mental disorder, and three quarters experience role impairment in some aspect of their life. One determinant of whether young adults will experience mental health difficulties is their ability to regulate emotion. We conducted two pilot trials of a brief online program designed to teach emotion regulation skills to university students.

Selective attention to threat, anxiety and glycaemic management in adolescents with type 1 diabetes.

Objective: Previous research has established that adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) experience more anxiety symptoms than their healthy peers and are also more likely to develop an anxiety disorder. Research in cognitive psychology has found that selective attention favouring the processing of threatening information causally contributes to elevated levels of anxiety; however, this process has not been investigated in the context of T1D. The current study examined whether selective attention for threatening information contributes to the association between anxiety and glycaemic management in adolescents with T1D.

"The big wide world of school": Supporting children on the autism spectrum to successfully transition to primary school: Perspectives from parents and early intervention professionals.

Background: The transition to primary school is often a complex and uncertain time for autistic children and their families. Understanding how best to develop school readiness and support transition to primary school for autistic children is essential. School readiness and transition planning are influenced by a range of personal and contextual factors, and it is important to understand the perspectives of the various stakeholders involved in the transition process.

The use of wearable technology to measure and support abilities, disabilities and functional skills in autistic youth: a scoping review.

Background: Wearable technology (WT) to measure and support social and non-social functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been a growing interest of researchers over the past decade. There is however limited understanding of the WTs currently available for autistic individuals, and how they measure functioning in this population.

Objective: This scoping review explored the use of WTs for measuring and supporting abilities, disabilities and functional skills in autistic youth.

Development and Feasibility of MindChip™: A Social Emotional Telehealth Intervention for Autistic Adults.

The study aims to develop and pilot a telehealth social emotional program, MindChip™ delivered with a computer based interventions (CBI) (Mind Reading) for autistic adults. MindChip™ combined four theoretical perspectives and community feedback underpinning the essential mechanisms for targeting the social emotional understanding of autistic adults. A randomised pragmatic pilot trial (N = 25) was conducted to explore the feasibility of MindChip™ (n = 11) and to understand the preliminary efficacy of combining it with CBI compared to CBI only (n = 14).

Cross-Cultural Adaptation to Australia of the KONTAKT© Social Skills Group Training Program for Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Feasibility Study.

This study investigated the feasibility and cultural validity of KONTAKT©, a manualised social skills group training, in improving the social functioning of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). KONTAKT© was delivered to 17 adolescents (m = 14.09, SD = 1.

KONTAKT© for Australian adolescents on the autism spectrum: protocol of a randomized control trial.

Background: Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience impairing challenges in social communication and interaction across multiple contexts. While social skills group training (SSGT) has shown moderate effects on various sociability outcomes in ASD, there is a need for (1) replication of effects in additional clinical and cultural contexts, (2) designs that employ active control groups, (3) calculation of health economic benefits, (4) identification of the optimal training duration, and (5) measurement of individual goals and quality of life outcomes.

Method/design: With the aim of investigating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a SSGT, KONTAKT©, a two-armed randomized control trial with adolescents aged 12-17 years (N = 90) with ASD and an intelligence quotient (IQ) of over 70 will be undertaken.

Can Proficiency Criteria Be Accurately Identified During Real-Time Fundamental Movement Skill Assessment?

: Fundamental movement skill (FMS) assessors in education environments rely upon real-time FMS assessment; however, the recognition of individual proficiency criteria during real-time process-oriented FMS assessment may be problematic. Few studies consider the accuracy of identifying individual proficiency criteria in process-oriented FMS assessment, even though criteria are relied upon for intervention planning. This study aimed to further understand assessors' ability to recognize proficiency criteria during real-time FMS assessment and the impact of assessor experience on assessment accuracy.

Complex facial emotion recognition and atypical gaze patterns in autistic adults.

While altered gaze behaviour during facial emotion recognition has been observed in autistic individuals, there remains marked inconsistency in findings, with the majority of previous research focused towards the processing of basic emotional expressions. There is a need to examine whether atypical gaze during facial emotion recognition extends to more complex emotional expressions, which are experienced as part of everyday social functioning. The eye gaze of 20 autistic and 20 IQ-matched neurotypical adults was examined during a facial emotion recognition task of complex, dynamic emotion displays.

Atypical Visual Processing but Comparable Levels of Emotion Recognition in Adults with Autism During the Processing of Social Scenes.

Understanding the underlying visual scanning patterns of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during the processing of complex emotional scenes remains limited. This study compared the complex emotion recognition performance of adults with ASD (n = 23) and matched neurotypical participants (n = 25) using the Reading the Mind in Films Task. Behaviourally, both groups exhibited similar emotion recognition accuracy.

Brief social attention bias modification for children with autism spectrum disorder.

Reduced social attention is a hallmark feature in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), emerging as early as the first year of life. This difference represents a possible mechanism impacting upon the development of more complex social-communicative behaviors. The aim of this study was to develop and test the efficacy of a novel attention bias modification paradigm to alter social attention, specifically orienting to faces.

Emotion-in-Motion, a Novel Approach for the Modification of Attentional Bias: An Experimental Proof-of-Concept Study.

Background: Individuals with heightened anxiety vulnerability tend to preferentially attend to emotionally negative information, with evidence suggesting that this attentional bias makes a causal contribution to anxiety vulnerability. Recent years have seen an increase in the use of attentional bias modification (ABM) procedures to modify patterns of attentional bias; however, often this change in bias is not successfully achieved.

Objective: This study presents a novel ABM procedure, Emotion-in-Motion, requiring individuals to engage in patterns of attentional scanning and tracking within a gamified, complex, and dynamic environment.

Designing a Serious Game for Youth with ASD: Perspectives from End-Users and Professionals.

Recent years have seen an emergence of social emotional computer games for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These games are heterogeneous in design with few underpinned by theoretically informed approaches to computer-based interventions. Guided by the serious game framework outlined by Whyte et al.

Inhibitory attentional control in anxiety: Manipulating cognitive load in an antisaccade task.

Theorists have proposed that heightened anxiety vulnerability is characterised by reduced attentional control performance and have made the prediction in turn that elevating cognitive load will adversely impact attentional control performance for high anxious individuals to a greater degree than low anxious individuals. Critically however, existing attempts to test this prediction have been limited in their methodology and have presented inconsistent findings. Using a methodology capable of overcoming the limitations of previous research, the present study sought to investigate the effect of manipulating cognitive load on inhibitory attentional control performance of high anxious and low anxious individuals.

Visual Processing of Emotional Faces is Preserved in Mild Cognitive Impairment.

Background: Research suggests that deficits in emotion recognition are evident in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), a group 'at risk' of developing dementia. The mechanisms underlying this deficit, however, are unclear.

Objective: In this study, we sought to determine whether there are alterations in the way in which individuals with MCI visually explore emotional facial stimuli.

Gaze-Based Assessments of Vigilance and Avoidance in Social Anxiety: a Review.

Purpose Of Review: A broad base of research has sought to identify the biases in selective attention which characterize social anxiety, with the emergent use of eye tracking-based methods. This article seeks to provide a review of eye tracking studies examining selective attention biases in social anxiety.

Recent Findings: Across a number of contexts, social anxiety may be associated with a mix of both vigilant and avoidant patterns of attention with respect to the processing of emotional social stimuli.

Mechanisms of facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: Insights from eye tracking and electroencephalography.

While behavioural difficulties in facial emotion recognition (FER) have been observed in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), behavioural studies alone are not suited to elucidate the specific nature of FER challenges in ASD. Eye tracking (ET) and electroencephalography (EEG) provide insights in to the attentional and neurological correlates of performance, and may therefore provide insight in to the mechanisms underpinning FER in ASD. Given that these processes develop over the course of the developmental trajectory, there is a need to synthesise findings in regard to the developmental stages to determine how the maturation of these systems may impact FER in ASD.

Attentional bias mediates the effect of neurostimulation on emotional vulnerability.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a neuromodulatory technique which has garnered recent interest in the potential treatment for emotion-based psychopathology. While accumulating evidence suggests that tDCS may attenuate emotional vulnerability, critically, little is known about underlying mechanisms of this effect. The present study sought to clarify this by examining the possibility that tDCS may affect emotional vulnerability via its capacity to modulate attentional bias towards threatening information.

Attention bias modification training under working memory load increases the magnitude of change in attentional bias.

Background And Objectives: Attention bias modification (ABM) procedures have shown promise as a therapeutic intervention, however current ABM procedures have proven inconsistent in their ability to reliably achieve the requisite change in attentional bias needed to produce emotional benefits. This highlights the need to better understand the precise task conditions that facilitate the intended change in attention bias in order to realise the therapeutic potential of ABM procedures. Based on the observation that change in attentional bias occurs largely outside conscious awareness, the aim of the current study was to determine if an ABM procedure delivered under conditions likely to preclude explicit awareness of the experimental contingency, via the addition of a working memory load, would contribute to greater change in attentional bias.

Time Course of Attention in Socially Anxious Individuals: Investigating the Effects of Adult Attachment Style.

Theoretical models of social anxiety propose that attention biases maintain symptoms of social anxiety. Research findings regarding the time course of attention and social anxiety disorder have been mixed. Adult attachment style may influence attention bias and social anxiety, thus contributing to the mixed findings.

Hyperscanning and avoidance in social anxiety disorder: the visual scanpath during public speaking.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a debilitating mental illness which is thought to be maintained in part by the aberrant attentional processing of socially relevant information. Critically however, research has not assessed whether such aberrant attentional processing occurs during social-evaluative contexts characteristically feared in SAD. The current study presents a novel approach for the assessment of the visuocognitive biases operating in SAD during a social-evaluative stressor.

Attentional bias modification facilitates attentional control mechanisms: evidence from eye tracking.

Social anxiety is thought to be maintained by biased attentional processing towards threatening information. Research has further shown that the experimental attenuation of this bias, through the implementation of attentional bias modification (ABM), may serve to reduce social anxiety vulnerability. However, the mechanisms underlying ABM remain unclear.

Biased saccadic responses to emotional stimuli in anxiety: an antisaccade study.

Research suggests that anxiety is maintained by an attentional bias to threat, and a growing base of evidence suggests that anxiety may additionally be associated with the deficient attentional processing of positive stimuli. The present study sought to examine whether such anxiety-linked attentional biases were associated with either stimulus driven or attentional control mechanisms of attentional selectivity. High and low trait anxious participants completed an emotional variant of an antisaccade task, in which they were required to prosaccade towards, or antisaccade away from a positive, neutral or threat stimulus, while eye movements were recorded.