Social Interaction Anxiety in Developmental Prosopagnosia: Prevalence, Severity, and Individual Differences.

Objective: Although elevated social anxiety in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) has been reported in anecdotal and qualitative studies, the current study sought to better quantify the prevalence, severity, and moderators of social anxiety in a large DP sample.

Method: A total of 88 DPs and 58 controls completed the validated Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and assessments of face recognition, autism traits, personality (Big Five Inventory), and coping strategies.

Results: DPs reported greater social anxiety symptoms (M = 30.

Loneliness in the college student population: Prevalence and associations with substance use outcomes.

We assessed the prevalence of loneliness by gender and gender-specific associations between loneliness and substance use in university students. Participants were students enrolled in colleges and universities throughout the United States ( = 84,481). Gender was self-reported and categorized as male, female, and transgender/nonbinary.

Perceptual heterogeneity in developmental prosopagnosia is continuous, not categorical.

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is associated with considerable perceptual heterogeneity, though the nature of this heterogeneity and whether there are discrete subgroups versus continuous deficits remains unclear. Bennetts et al. (2022) recently found that holistic versus featural processing deficits distinguished discrete DP subgroups, but their sample was relatively small (N = 37), and subgroups were defined using a single task.

Inhibitory control and alcohol use history predict changes in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.

Objective: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with significant disability and can become chronic. Predictors of PTSD symptom changes over time, especially in those with a PTSD diagnosis, remain incompletely characterized.

Method: In the present study, we examined 187 post-9/11 veterans ( = 32.

What is the prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia? An empirical assessment of different diagnostic cutoffs.

The prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), lifelong face recognition deficits, is widely reported to be 2-2.5%. However, DP has been diagnosed in different ways across studies, resulting in differing prevalence rates.

Poorer Inhibitory Control Uniquely Contributes to Greater Functional Disability in Post-9/11 Veterans.

Objective: Post-9/11 Veterans endorse greater self-reported functional disability than 80% of the adult population. Previous studies of trauma-exposed populations have shown that increased post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive symptoms are consistently associated with greater disability. Additionally, poorer cognitive performance in the domain of executive functions, particularly inhibitory control, has been associated with disability, though it is unclear if this effect is independent of and/or interacts with PTSD and depression.

Investigating the Influence of Autism Spectrum Traits on Face Processing Mechanisms in Developmental Prosopagnosia.

Autism traits are common exclusionary criteria in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) studies. We investigated whether autism traits produce qualitatively different face processing in 43 DPs with high vs. low autism quotient (AQ) scores.

Social avoidance behavior modulates motivational responses to social reward-threat conflict signals: A preliminary fMRI study.

Social avoidance behavior (SAB) produces impairment in multiple domains and contributes to the development and maintenance of several psychiatric disorders. Social behaviors such as SAB are influenced by approach-avoidance (AA) motivational responses to affective facial expressions. Notably, affective facial expressions communicate varying degrees of social reward signals (happiness), social threat signals (anger), or social reward-threat conflict signals (co-occurring happiness and anger).

PTSD symptomatology is selectively associated with impaired sustained attention ability and dorsal attention network synchronization.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptomatology is associated with dysregulated sustained attention, which produces functional impairments. Performance on sustained attention paradigms such as continuous performance tasks are influenced by both the ability to sustain attention and response strategy. However, previous studies have not dissociated PTSD-related associations with sustained attention ability and strategy, which limits characterization of neural circuitry underlying PTSD-related attentional impairments.

An executive function subtype of PTSD with unique neural markers and clinical trajectories.

Previous work identified a cognitive subtype of PTSD with impaired executive function (i.e., impaired EF-PTSD subtype) and aberrant resting-state functional connectivity between frontal parietal control (FPCN) and limbic (LN) networks.

The Reliability and Validity of Response-Based Measures of Attention Bias.

Background: Attention bias to threat is a fundamental transdiagnostic component and potential vulnerability factor for internalizing psychopathologies. However, the measurement of attentional bias, such as traditional scores from the dot-probe paradigm, evidence poor reliability and do not measure intra-individual variation in attentional bias.

Methods: The present study examined, in three independent samples, the psychometric properties of a novel attentional bias (AB) scoring method of the dot-probe task based on responses to individual trials.

Punishment and reward normalize error-related cognitive control in PTSD by modulating salience network activation and connectivity.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptomatology disrupts inhibitory control during sustained attention. However, PTSD-related inhibitory control deficits are partially ameliorated when punishments and rewards are administered based on task performance, which suggests motivational processes contribute to these deficits. Additionally, PTSD may also impair error-related cognitive control following inhibitory control failures as measured by post-error slowing (PES).

Characterizing the time course of automatic action tendencies to affective facial expressions and its dysregulation in social anxiety disorder.

Affective facial expressions elicit automatic approach or avoidance action tendencies, which are dysregulated in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). However, research has not dissociated the initiation and execution phases of automatic action tendencies, which may be distinctly modulated by affective faces and SAD. In Study 1, fifty adults completed a modified Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) that characterized the time course of automatic approach or avoidance actions elicited by affective faces.

Neural mechanisms underlying heterogeneous expression of threat-related attention in social anxiety.

Theoretical frameworks propose that threat-related attention, which is typically assessed using the dot-probe paradigm, plays a key role in social anxiety. Within the dot-probe paradigm, novel computational approaches demonstrate that anxious individuals exhibit multiple patterns of threat-related attention on separate trials. However, no research has leveraged such novel computational methods to delineate the neural substrates of threat-related attention patterns in social anxiety.

Social avoidance behaviour modulates automatic avoidance actions to social reward-threat conflict.

Social avoidance behaviour (SAB) significantly interferes with social engagement and characterises various psychopathologies. Dual-process models propose that social behaviour is directed in part by automatic action tendencies to approach or avoid social stimuli. For example, happy facial expressions often elicit automatic approach actions, whereas angry facial expressions often elicit automatic avoidance actions.

Affective and physiological reactivity to emotional comments in individuals at elevated risk for psychosis.

Background: Individuals with schizophrenia are at increased risk of relapse when they live in highly critical (i.e., high expressed emotion; EE) family environments.

A psychometric comparison of anxiety-relevant attention measures.

Background And Objectives: Preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control each purportedly play a key role in anxiety disorders. Divergent psychometric properties among attention measures may produce differential detection of anxiety-related associations and treatment-related changes. However, no studies have directly compared the psychometric properties of these attention measures in the same sample.

Improving the psychometric properties of dot-probe attention measures using response-based computation.

Background And Objectives: Abnormal threat-related attention in anxiety disorders is most commonly assessed and modified using the dot-probe paradigm; however, poor psychometric properties of reaction-time measures may contribute to inconsistencies across studies. Typically, standard attention measures are derived using average reaction-times obtained in experimentally-defined conditions. However, current approaches based on experimentally-defined conditions are limited.

Vigilance-avoidance and disengagement are differentially associated with fear and avoidant behaviors in social anxiety.

Background: Individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) often exhibit preferential attention for social threat, demonstrating abnormal orientation to threat (i.e., vigilance-avoidance) and/or difficulty disengaging from threat.

Attention training to pleasant stimuli in anxiety.

Attentional bias for threatening stimuli in anxiety is a common finding in the literature. The present study addressed whether attention training toward pleasant stimuli can reduce anxiety symptoms and induce a processing bias in favor of pleasant information in nonpatients who were selected to score similarly to individuals with generalized anxiety or panic disorder on a measure of worry or physiological arousal, respectively. Participants were randomly assigned to attention training to pleasant (ATP) stimuli or to a placebo control (PC) condition.

Looking beyond Fear and Extinction Learning: Considering Novel Treatment Targets for Anxiety.

Fear conditioning studies provide valuable insight into how fears are learned and extinguished. Previous work focuses on fear and extinction learning to understand and treat anxiety disorders. However, a cascade of cognitive processes that extend beyond learning may also yield therapeutic targets for anxiety disorders.