Mindfulness training modifies attentional bias to facial emotion and emotional symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Mindfulness training has been shown to improve emotional symptoms such as anxiety and depressive symptoms. However, its cognitive-behavioral mechanism is still unclear. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of mindfulness training on attention to emotional faces and its role in the improvement in emotional symptoms. METHODS: Eighty participants were recruited and randomly divided into a training group (n = 40) that received eight weeks of mindfulness training and a control group (n = 40) that attended a mindfulness lecture. Before training (T1), immediately after training (T2), and three months after training (T3), all participants were asked to complete the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) and the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) to assess their emotional symptoms and a modified dot-probe task to measure their attention to emotional faces. RESULTS: Mindfulness training significantly reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms at both T2 and T3. After training, the attentional bias toward happy faces increased, while the attentional bias toward sad faces decreased in the training group compared with the control group. Mediation analysis showed that the improvement in attentional bias toward sad faces partially mediated the effect of mindfulness training on depression at T2. LIMITATIONS: Our participants were not a clinical sample (i.e., were not diagnosed with emotional disorders), and the time course of attention components was difficult to examine in the present study. CONCLUSIONS: Mindfulness training can stably reduce anxious and depressive symptoms. However, it may have a temporary effect on attentional bias toward facial emotions, which plays a limited role in improving emotional symptoms.

College Graduates' Negative Life Experiences, Coping Strategies and Enlightenment During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study in China.

Objective: The current study aimed to explore comprehensively college graduates' negative life experiences, coping strategies, and enlightenment in a qualitative way. Methods: This was a qualitative study. Purposeful sampling was used to select 31 college graduates majoring in various subjects from a Chinese University. The one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted online through Tencent QQ/WeChat and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. A phenomenological approach was used to guide this research in the data collection and analysis. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes across interviews around their negative life experiences, coping strategies, and enlightenment. Results: College graduates' negative life experiences were mainly focused on three aspects: negative work experience (eg, lack of adaptation, busy schedule, low salary), negative personal life experience (eg, multiple pressure, psychological problems, the hardship of life), and negative social life experience (eg, the incomprehension of those around you, complex interpersonal relationship, social complexity). The coping strategies they used can be classified into two categories: emotion-focused strategies (eg, accepting reality, self-persuasion, keeping a positive attitude), and problem-focused strategies (eg, goal-setting, asking for help to solve the problem, persistence). As for life enlightenment, six themes emerged: accept life, strive to life, love life, cherish life, recognize life, and learn to live. Conclusion: College graduates' negative experiences came from multiple levels, and they use multiple coping strategies to deal with the challenges. Our results provide important guidance for researchers and policymakers to design effective and targeted intervention programs to improve college graduates' coping abilities in response to negative life experiences and help them better transition from school to work. Specifically, future research and intervention to promote college graduates' mental health should target various social-ecological levels, focus on promoting coping from an ecological perspective, as well as facilitate post-traumatic growth to help them grow from negative life experiences and cope positively.

Development and validation of Chinese form Short Dark Tetrad (C-SD4).

The Short Dark Tetrad (SD4) was developed as a brief measure of the Dark Tetrad, which comprises narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Previous research suggests the possibility of cultural differences in these traits in Western and Eastern cultures. We developed and validated the Chinese form of SD4 (C-SD4) cross four studies in a large sample (total N = 3181) to assist in solving problems caused by these differences. In study 1, we adjusted the item pool on the basis of the original form of SD4. In Study 2, we trimmed the scale to generate a 28-item version of C-SD4 and examined correlations with Big-5. In study 3, we examined the internal structure, measurement invariance, and criterion validity of the C-SD4. In study 4 we examined C-SD4 test-retest reliability and compared item content to standard measures. This package of studies suggests that the C-SD4 is a reliable and valid measure of the Dark Tetrad in Chinese participants.

Cognitive deficits for facial emotions among male adolescent delinquents with conduct disorder.

According to the social-cognitive theory and the social-information-processing theory, individuals with conduct disorder, a persistent and repetitive pattern of problematic behavior, might have cognitive biases toward hostile facial expressions. However, according to the optimal stimulation/arousal theory, the stimulation-seeking theory and the fearlessness theory, individuals with conduct disorder might have less fear and show less response to hostile or threatening facial expressions. To reconcile the discrepancy, we examined the cognitive biases including attentional processing and working memory processing to emotional faces among adolescents with conduct disorder. 35 male adolescent delinquents with conduct disorder and 35 age-matched delinquents without conduct disorder completed a visual search task and a delayed-match-to-sample task to examine their attentional processing and working memory processing for sad, angry, happy, and fearful faces, respectively. It was found that conduct disordered individuals searched angry and fearful faces, rather than sad and happy faces, more slowly than individuals without conduct disorder. However, no difference in mnemonic processing for facial emotions was found between groups. The results indicated that male adolescent delinquents with conduct disorder showed deficits in attentional orientation to hostile and threatening faces, supporting the optimal stimulation/arousal theory, the stimulation-seeking theory and the fearlessness theory, but not the social-cognitive theory.

The impact of mindfulness training on supportive communication, emotional intelligence, and human caring among nursing students.

PURPOSE: This study was aimed to investigate the impact of mindfulness training on supportive communication and human caring ability among nursing students. DESIGN AND METHODS: Sixty nursing students were randomly divided into the mindfulness group who accepted 8-week mindfulness training and the control group who attended two 2-h lectures about mindfulness in 8 weeks. All of them completed the Supporting Communication Scale (SCS), Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS), and Caring Ability Inventory (CAI) before training (T1), after it (T2), and at 3-month follow-up (T3). FINDINGS: The mindfulness group showed higher scores on SCS, EIS, and CAI than the control group at both T2 and T3, and improvements in emotional intelligence partially mediated the training effects on supportive communication. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Mindfulness training could be applied to improve the abilities of communication and human caring during nursing education.

The Effect of Empathy on the Attentional Processing of Painful and Emotional Stimuli.

BACKGROUND: Empathy is shown to affect the attentional processing of painful stimuli and emotional stimuli. However, whether the attentional effects on emotional stimuli depend on emotional valence and the nature of the relationship between the attentional effects on different stimuli are still unknown. METHODS: In the present study, 25 high-empathy (HE) participants and 25 low-empathy (LE) participants were recruited to perform dot-probe tasks on painful stimuli and emotional stimuli. RESULTS: The results showed that HE individuals had weak attentional disengagement to painful pictures. More importantly, regarding emotional pictures, HE individuals showed attentional avoidance to negative emotion pictures, while LE individuals showed attentional bias to positive emotion pictures. Correlation analysis showed that the attentional bias score and attentional disengagement score were only associated with each other within the same category of stimuli (painful, positive or negative stimuli). CONCLUSION: These results revealed that HE individuals mainly showed attentional avoidance to negative stimuli, while LE individuals mainly showed attentional bias to positive stimuli.

Childhood Maltreatment Is Associated With Aggression Among Male Juvenile Delinquents in China: The Mediating Effects of Callous-Unemotional Traits and Self-Control.

Background: Aggression is an important risk factor for delinquency and crime in adolescents. Previous studies have indicated that childhood maltreatment plays an important role in the development of aggression. However, whether the effect could be mediated by other factors is still unknown. Evidence suggests that callous-unemotional (CU) traits and self-control may be candidate mediators in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression. Methods: A total of 585 male juvenile delinquents from China were recruited for the present study. We measured self-reported childhood maltreatment, CU traits, self-control, and aggression with the short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-SF), the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), the Self-Control Scale (SCS), and the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ), respectively. Furthermore, we constructed multiple mediation models to investigate the mediating effects of CU traits and self-control on the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression. Childhood maltreatment and aggression were entered into the model as the independent and dependent variables, respectively, and CU traits and self-control were treated as the mediating variables. In addition, the moderating role of self-control in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression was tested by constructing a moderation model. Results: Correlation analysis showed significant positive correlations among childhood maltreatment, CU traits, and aggression (all r values > 0.31, P values < 0.01), and self-control was negatively correlated with these three factors (all r values < -0.32, P values < 0.01). Mediation analyses showed that the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression was completely and sequentially mediated by the factors of CU traits and self-control (indirect effect = 0.31, P < 0.001). In addition, the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression could also be completely mediated by CU traits (indirect effect = 0.24, P < 0.001) and self-control (indirect effect = 0.26, P < 0.001) separately. Conclusion: Our results indicate that, in a sample of male juvenile delinquents in China, the relationship between childhood maltreatment and adolescent aggression was found to be mediated by CU traits and self-control, which may shed light on the development of aggression among male juvenile delinquents.

Visual Attentional Bias Induced by Face Direction.

The effect of spatial cueing on eye gaze has been confirmed by a large number of studies, but the effect of spatial cueing on face direction and the impact of eye gaze on this effect are less known. In four experiments, we investigated the attentional bias induced by face direction. A modified paradigm of spatial cueing was adopted with stimuli that were static faces rotated by 90 or 45° to the left or right from the frontal view. To control the effect of eyes, face stimuli with eyes open and those with eyes closed were both used in each experiment. In Experiment 1, the facial cue (face rotated by 90°) and target were presented simultaneously, and the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the facial cue and target was set to be 300, 600, and 900 ms in Experiments 2 (face rotated by 90°), 3 (inverted face rotated by 90°), and 4 (face rotated by 45°), respectively. The response time of detecting the target position was recorded. The spatial cueing effects were nonsignificant in Experiment 1, in which the cue and target were presented simultaneously. However, significant spatial cueing effects of face direction were found in Experiments 2 and 3, in which the upright and inverted faces rotated by 90° were adopted, respectively, in both the eyes open and eyes closed conditions. In addition, we did not find an effect of spatial cueing with the face rotated by 45° (Experiment 4). Our results indicate that face direction can bias visual attention. This effect might not be based on the holistic processing of faces.

Mechanisms for the Cognitive Processing of Attractiveness in Adult and Infant Faces: From the Evolutionary Perspective.

Research on the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness has mainly focused on adult faces. Recent studies have revealed that the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness in infant faces is not the same as that in adult faces. Therefore, it is necessary to summarize the evidence on the processing of facial attractiveness in each kind of face and compare their underlying mechanisms. In this paper, we first reviewed studies on the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness in adult faces, including attentional and mnemonic processing, and then discussed the underlying mechanisms. Afterward, studies on facial attractiveness in infant faces were reviewed, and the underlying mechanisms were also discussed. Direct comparisons between the two kinds of cognitive processing were subsequently made. The results showed that the mechanisms for the processing of attractiveness in adult faces and infant faces are mainly motivated by the perspectives of mate selection and raising offspring, respectively, in evolutionary psychology. Finally, directions for future research are proposed.