Contextualizing linguistic acculturation and alcohol use among Hispanic college students in the social digital environment.

Objectives: Linguistic acculturation is a predictor of alcohol use among Hispanic college students, but existing linguistic acculturation measures do not capture language use in the social digital context (e.g., social media).

Denial, Attention-Seeking, and Posting Online While Intoxicated: Three Key Predictors of Collegiate Sadfishing.

Sadfishing, or the exaggeration of one's emotional state online to generate sympathy, is a maladaptive behavior that can negatively affect mental health. A better understanding of the characteristics of individuals who sadfish could inform tailored interventions to decrease sadfishing and improve quality of life. However, to date, the phenomenon of sadfishing remains understudied.

Women who pre-game: A study of stress and alcohol use in female collegiate predrinkers.

This study examined the relationship between stress and pre-gaming (i.e., drinking prior to going out to an event) in female college students.

Blackouts and hangover experiences among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White college students.

Blackouts and hangovers may negatively impact college students' health and productivity. However, few studies have considered the impact of cultural differences on students' individual experiences with blackouts and hangovers. To address this issue, the current study explored the potential relationships of shame and resilience with Hispanic ( = 381) and non-Hispanic White (NHW,  = 332) students' self-reported blackouts and hangover experiences.

Alcohol Preferences and Event-Related Potentials to Alcohol Images in College Students.

Objective: Research on attentional biases to alcohol images has used heterogeneous sets of stimuli (e.g., an isolated beer can or a group of people drinking).

Attentional blink to alcohol cues in binge drinkers versus non-binge drinkers.

Previous studies have shown alcohol-related attentional biases in social drinkers; however, the temporal dynamics of these biases are not well understood. The current study examined this issue in 94 participants (27 male) categorized as binge drinkers (BD) or non-binge drinkers (NBD). Two versions of an alcohol-related attentional blink (AB) paradigm were used: one with words and one with images.

Stress-induced change in serum BDNF is related to quantitative family history of alcohol use disorder and age at first alcohol use.

Previous research in animal models suggests that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is involved in stress-modulated alcohol consumption. However, relatively few studies have investigated this issue in humans, and results of existing studies have been heterogeneous. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the within-subjects effect of acute stress (timed math plus cold pressor) on serum BDNF levels (ΔBDNF: post- minus pre-stress) in healthy social drinkers (N=68, 20 male).

Factors that Influence Autism Knowledge in Hispanic Cultures: a Pilot Study.

Although the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is rising, Hispanic children are diagnosed at a disproportionately lower rate compared to other ethnic and racial groups. Lack of ASD knowledge in the Hispanic community may contribute to this disparity. The study objective was to determine whether sociocultural and environmental factors linked to ASD diagnostic disparities were related to Hispanic parents' ASD knowledge.

Stress, Immune Function and Collegiate Holiday Drinking: A Pilot Study.

Background/aims: Social aspects of collegiate holiday drinking have been studied frequently, but physiological consequences are often overlooked. This study examined self-reported stress, endocrine and immune indicators in students at an American university before and after their week-long spring break (SB) holiday.

Methods: Participants (n = 27; 9 males) provided saliva samples and completed surveys pre- and post-SB.

Individual and gender differences in subjective and objective indices of pain: gender, fear of pain, pain catastrophizing and cardiovascular reactivity.

According to fear-avoidance models of pain perception, heightened fear of pain may increase disruptive effects of pain; however, the extent to which this affects self-reported pain severity versus physiological indices of pain is not well delineated. The current study examined self-report measures and physiological indices of pain during a cold pressor (CP) task. Individual differences in fear of pain and pain catastrophizing were also assessed via questionnaire.

Acute stress and event-related potential correlates of attention to alcohol images in social drinkers.

Objective: The use of alcohol to cope with stress is a major health concern, yet the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of stress on alcohol-related cognition are not well understood. This study examined changes in event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by alcohol-related images before and after a stressor compared with a control condition.

Method: Social drinkers (N = 75; 38 male) were assigned to one of two target subgroups for completion of an oddball task: (a) to detect alcohol targets while ignoring household object distracters and frequently presented nonsense shapes or (b) to detect object targets while ignoring alcohol distracters and nonsense shapes.

Neurocognitive mechanisms of gaze-expression interactions in face processing and social attention.

The face conveys a rich source of non-verbal information used during social communication. While research has revealed how specific facial channels such as emotional expression are processed, little is known about the prioritization and integration of multiple cues in the face during dyadic exchanges. Classic models of face perception have emphasized the segregation of dynamic vs.

Body mass index moderates gaze orienting biases and pupil diameter to high and low calorie food images.

The primary goal of this study was to examine eye gaze behavior to different kinds of food images in individuals differing in BMI status. Eye-tracking methods were used to examine gaze and pupil responses while normal weight and overweight women freely viewed pairs of different food images: high calorie sweet foods, high calorie savory foods, and low calorie foods. Self-report measures of hunger, state and trait cravings, and restrained eating were also obtained.

Emotionally meaningful targets enhance orienting triggered by a fearful gazing face.

Studies investigating the effect of emotional expression on spatial orienting to a gazed-at location have produced mixed results. The present study investigated the role of affective context in the integration of emotion processing and gaze-triggered orienting. In three experiments, a face gazed nonpredictively to the left or right, and then its expression became fearful or happy.

Event-related potentials reveal temporal staging of dynamic facial expression and gaze shift effects on attentional orienting.

Multiple sources of information from the face guide attention during social interaction. The present study modified the Posner cueing paradigm to investigate how dynamic changes in emotional expression and eye gaze in faces affect the neural processing of subsequent target stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants viewed centrally presented face displays in which gaze direction (left, direct, right) and facial expression (fearful, neutral) covaried in a fully crossed design.

Happy and fearful emotion in cues and targets modulate event-related potential indices of gaze-directed attentional orienting.

The goal of the present study was to characterize the effects of valence in facial cues and object targets on event-related potential (ERPs) indices of gaze-directed orienting. Participants were shown faces at fixation that concurrently displayed dynamic gaze shifts and expression changes from neutral to fearful or happy emotions. Emotionally-salient target objects subsequently appeared in the periphery and were spatially congruent or incongruent with the gaze direction.

Implicit and explicit attitudes to high- and low-calorie food in females with different BMI status.

The study compared implicit and explicit attitudes to three types of foods (high-calorie non-sweet HCNS, high-calorie sweet HCS and low-calorie LC) among females varying in BMI status. Eight three participants completed an affective priming task (implicit attitudes), followed by explicit rating of food images. The results of ANOVA showed a significant difference in implicit attitudes to different types of food, F(3,246)=3.

Development of emotional facial recognition in late childhood and adolescence.

The ability to interpret emotions in facial expressions is crucial for social functioning across the lifespan. Facial expression recognition develops rapidly during infancy and improves with age during the preschool years. However, the developmental trajectory from late childhood to adulthood is less clear.

Garner interference reveals dependencies between emotional expression and gaze in face perception.

The relationship between facial expression and gaze processing was investigated with the Garner selective attention paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants performed expression judgments without interference from gaze, but expression interfered with gaze judgments. Experiment 2 replicated these results across different emotions.

Quantifying deficits in the perception of fear and anger in morphed facial expressions after bilateral amygdala damage.

Amygdala damage has been associated with impairments in perceiving facial expressions of fear. However, deficits in perceiving other emotions, such as anger, and deficits in perceiving emotion blends have not been definitively established. One possibility is that methods used to index expression perception are susceptible to heuristic use, which may obscure impairments.

Sequential ordering of morphed faces and facial expressions following temporal lobe damage.

A card ordering task was developed to evaluate the role of the temporal lobe in perceiving subtle featural displacements of faces that contribute to judgments of facial expression and identity. Individuals with varying degrees of temporal lobe damage and healthy controls were required to manually sort cards depicting morphs of facial expressions or facial identities so that the cards were sequentially ordered from one morph endpoint to another. Four morph progressions were used--three emotion morphs (neutral-to-anger, neutral-to-fear, and fear-to-anger) and an identity morph.

Similarities and differences in the neural correlates of episodic memory retrieval and working memory.

Functional neuroimaging studies have shown that different cognitive functions activate overlapping brain regions. An activation overlap may occur because a region is involved in operations tapped by different cognitive functions or because the activated area comprises subregions differentially involved in each of the functions. To investigate these issues, we directly compared brain activity during episodic retrieval (ER) and working memory (WM) using event-related functional MRI (fMRI).