The association between aberrant salience and psychotic experiences in general population twins, and genetic vulnerability as a modifier.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies assessing the hypothesis that the construct of 'aberrant salience' is associated with psychosis and psychotic symptoms showed conflicting results. For this reason, the association between measures to index aberrant salience and subclinical psychotic symptoms in a general population sample was analysed. In addition, genetic vulnerability was added to the analysis as a modifier to test the hypothesis that modification by genetic vulnerability may explain variability in the results. METHODS: The TwinssCan project obtained data from general population twins (N = 887). CAPE (Community Assessment of Psychic Experience) scores were used to index psychotic experiences. Aberrant salience was assessed with white noise task and ambiguous situations task. RESULTS: Measures of aberrant salience were not associated with psychotic experiences, nor was there evidence for an interaction with genetic predisposition in this association (Z = 1.08, p = 0.282). CONCLUSIONS: Various studies including the present could not replicate the association between aberrant salience and psychotic experiences in general population samples. The conflicting findings might be explained by moderation by genetic vulnerability, but results are inconsistent. If there was evidence for a main effect or interaction, this was in the positive symptom scale only. On the other hand, the association was more robust in so-called 'ultra-high risk' patients and first episode psychosis patients. Thus, this association may represent a state-dependent association, present only at the more severe end of the psychosis spectrum.

Associations between childhood adversity, psychiatric symptoms, and self-esteem outcomes in adolescents and young adults: An experience sampling study.

OBJECTIVES: Self-esteem and self-esteem stability are important factors during adolescence and young adulthood that can be negatively impacted by childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms. We examined whether childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms are associated with decreased global self-esteem as well as increased self-esteem instability as measured with experience sampling method. In addition, we examined if childhood adversity moderates the association between psychiatric symptoms and self-esteem outcomes. METHODS: Our study consisted of 788 adolescents and young adults who were part of a twin pair. The twin structure was not of interest to the current study. Mean age was 16.8 (SD = 2.38, range: 14-25), 42% was male. We used a multilevel modeling approach to examine our hypotheses to account for the presence of twins in the data set. RESULTS: Childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms were negatively associated with global self-esteem (respectively standardized ß = -.18, SE = 0.04, p < .0001 and standardized ß = -.45, SE = 0.04, p < .0001), with a larger effect for psychiatric symptoms. Similarly, both were associated with increased self-esteem instability (respectively standardized ß = .076, SE = 0.025, p = .002 and standardized ß = .11, SE = 0.021, p < .0001). In addition, interactions between childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms on both global self-esteem (standardized ß = .06, SE = 0.01, p < .0001) and self-esteem instability (standardized ß = -.002, SE = 0.0006, p = .001) were found, showing that the negative association of psychiatric symptoms with self-esteem outcomes is less pronounced in young people with higher levels of childhood adversity, or formulated differently, is more pronounced in young people with little or no exposure to childhood adversity. CONCLUSION: Global self-esteem and self-esteem instability in young people are influenced by both current psychiatric symptomatology and exposure to childhood adversity. Those with more psychiatric symptoms show worse self-esteem and higher self-esteem instability, which is moderated by childhood adversity. For young people with high childhood adversity levels lower self-esteem and higher self-esteem instability are less influenced by reductions in psychiatric symptoms.

Gender differences in the associations between childhood adversity and psychopathology in the general population.

PURPOSE: To explore gender differences of the associations between childhood adversity (CA) subtypes and psychiatric symptoms in the general population. METHODS: Data of 791 participants were retrieved from a general population twin cohort. The Symptom Checklist-90 Revised (SCL-90) and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire were used to assess overall psychopathology with nine symptom domains scores and total CA with exposure to five CA subtypes, respectively. The associations between CA and psychopathology were analyzed in men and women separately and were subsequently compared. RESULTS: Total CA was associated with total SCL-90 and all symptom domains without significant gender differences. However, the analyses of CA subtypes showed that the association between emotional abuse and total SCL-90 was stronger in women compared to men [χ2(1) = 4.10, P = 0.043]. Sexual abuse was significantly associated with total SCL-90 in women, but emotional neglect and physical neglect were associated with total SCL-90 in men. Exploratory analyses of CA subtypes and SCL-90 subdomains confirmed the pattern of gender-specific associations. In women, emotional abuse was associated with all symptom domains, and sexual abuse was associated with all except phobic anxiety and interpersonal sensitivity. In men, emotional neglect was associated with depression, and physical neglect was associated with phobic anxiety, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid ideation, and hostility subdomains. CONCLUSION: CA is a trans-syndromal risk factor regardless of gender. However, differential associations between CA subtypes and symptom manifestation might exist. Abuse might be particularly associated with psychopathology in women, whereas neglect might be associated with psychopathology in men.

Coping and sleep quality in youth: An Experience Sampling study.

INTRODUCTION: Sleep quality is closely linked with mental health. Two factors that influence sleep are coping style and locus of control, yet these have not been investigated in daily life. In this study, we examined associations between coping styles and sleep quality in daily life and the potential mediating effect of daily locus of control in a sample of youth, a group particularly vulnerable to developing psychopathology. METHODS: Three hundred and seventy-nine youths from the TwinssCan study participated in an Experience Sampling study, assessing sleep quality as well as state locus of control over the most negative event from the previous day. Participants also completed the Utrecht Coping List, which assessed engagement, disengagement, and emotion-focused coping. RESULTS: Disengagement, "passive reaction," and emotion-focused coping were associated with lower daily sleep quality. State locus of control did not mediate any effects of coping styles on quality of sleep. CONCLUSIONS: Disengagement, "passive reaction," and emotion-focused coping were associated with decreased sleep quality during several consecutive days, which may put youths at risk for developing future insomnia, and strain their mental well-being over time. Thus, there may be value in asking about coping when a young individual presents with sleep problems; however, impaired coping when sleeping poorly should also be considered.

Early warning signals in psychopathology: what do they tell?

BACKGROUND: Despite the increasing understanding of factors that might underlie psychiatric disorders, prospectively detecting shifts from a healthy towards a symptomatic state has remained unattainable. A complex systems perspective on psychopathology implies that such symptom shifts may be foreseen by generic indicators of instability, or early warning signals (EWS). EWS include, for instance, increasing variability, covariance, and autocorrelation in momentary affective states-of which the latter was studied. The present study investigated if EWS predict (i) future worsening of symptoms as well as (ii) the type of symptoms that will develop, meaning that the association between EWS and future symptom shifts would be most pronounced for congruent affective states and psychopathological domains (e.g., feeling down and depression). METHODS: A registered general population cohort of adolescents (mean age 18 years, 36% male) provided ten daily ratings of their affective states for 6 consecutive days. The resulting time series were used to compute EWS in feeling down, listless, anxious, not relaxed, insecure, suspicious, and unwell. At baseline and 1-year follow-up, symptom severity was assessed by the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90). We selected four subsamples of participants who reported an increase in one of the following SCL-90 domains: depression (N = 180), anxiety (N = 192), interpersonal sensitivity (N = 184), or somatic complaints (N = 166). RESULTS: Multilevel models showed that EWS in feeling suspicious anticipated increases in interpersonal sensitivity, as hypothesized. EWS were absent for other domains. While the association between EWS and symptom increases was restricted to the interpersonal sensitivity domain, post hoc analyses showed that symptom severity at baseline was related to heightened autocorrelations in congruent affective states for interpersonal sensitivity, depression, and anxiety. This pattern replicated in a second, independent dataset. CONCLUSIONS: The presence of EWS prior to symptom shifts may depend on the dynamics of the psychopathological domain under consideration: for depression, EWS may manifest only several weeks prior to a shift, while for interpersonal sensitivity, EWS may already occur 1 year in advance. Intensive longitudinal designs where EWS and symptoms are assessed in real-time are required in order to determine at what timescale and for what type of domain EWS are most informative of future psychopathology.

Measuring resilience prospectively as the speed of affect recovery in daily life: a complex systems perspective on mental health.

INTRODUCTION: There is growing evidence that mental disorders behave like complex dynamic systems. Complex dynamic systems theory states that a slower recovery from small perturbations indicates a loss of resilience of a system. This study is the first to test whether the speed of recovery of affect states from small daily life perturbations predicts changes in psychopathological symptoms over 1 year in a group of adolescents at increased risk for mental disorders. METHODS: We used data from 157 adolescents from the TWINSSCAN study. Course of psychopathology was operationalized as the 1-year change in the Symptom Checklist-90 sum score. Two groups were defined: one with stable and one with increasing symptom levels. Time-series data on momentary daily affect and daily unpleasant events were collected 10 times a day for 6 days at baseline. We modeled the time-lagged effect of daily unpleasant events on negative and positive affect after each unpleasant event experienced, to examine at which time point the impact of the events is no longer detectable. RESULTS: There was a significant difference between groups in the effect of unpleasant events on negative affect 90 min after the events were reported. Stratified by group, in the Increase group, the effect of unpleasant events on both negative (B = 0.05, p < 0.01) and positive affect (B = - 0. 08, p < 0.01) was still detectable 90 min after the events, whereas in the Stable group this was not the case. CONCLUSION: Findings cautiously suggest that adolescents who develop more symptoms in the following year may display a slower affect recovery from daily perturbations at baseline. This supports the notion that mental health may behave according to the laws of a complex dynamic system. Future research needs to examine whether these dynamic indicators of system resilience may prove valuable for personalized risk assessment in this field.

TwinssCan - Gene-Environment Interaction in Psychotic and Depressive Intermediate Phenotypes: Risk and Protective Factors in a General Population Twin Sample.

Meta-analyses suggest that clinical psychopathology is preceded by dimensional behavioral and cognitive phenotypes such as psychotic experiences, executive functioning, working memory and affective dysregulation that are determined by the interplay between genetic and nongenetic factors contributing to the severity of psychopathology. The liability to mental ill health can be psychometrically measured using experimental paradigms that assess neurocognitive processes such as salience attribution, sensitivity to social defeat and reward sensitivity. Here, we describe the TwinssCan, a longitudinal general population twin cohort, which comprises 1202 individuals (796 adolescent/young adult twins, 43 siblings and 363 parents) at baseline. The TwinssCan is part of the European Network of National Networks studying Gene-Environment Interactions in Schizophrenia project and recruited from the East Flanders Prospective Twin Survey. The main objective of this project is to understand psychopathology by evaluating the contribution of genetic and nongenetic factors on subclinical expressions of dimensional phenotypes at a young age before the onset of disorder and their association with neurocognitive processes, such as salience attribution, sensitivity to social defeat and reward sensitivity.

Evidence for interaction between genetic liability and childhood trauma in the development of psychotic symptoms.

PURPOSE: Whilst childhood trauma (CT) is a known risk factor across the spectrum of psychosis expression, little is known about possible interplay with genetic liability. METHODS: The TwinssCan Study collected data in general population twins, focussing on expression of psychosis at the level of subthreshold psychotic experiences. A multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analysis was performed including 745 subjects to assess the interaction between genetic liability and CT. The Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90-R) score of the co-twin was used as an indirect measure of genetic liability to psychopathology, while the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short-Form (CTQ-SF) was used to assess CT in the domains of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, as well as physical and emotional neglect. The Community Assessment of Psychic Experience (CAPE) questionnaire was used to phenotypically characterize psychosis expression. RESULTS: In the model using the CAPE total score, the interaction between CT and genetic liability was close to statistical significance (χ2 = 5.6, df = 2, p = 0.06). Analyses of CAPE subscales revealed a significant interaction between CT and genetic liability (χ2 = 8.8, df = 2, p = 0.012) for the CAPE-negative symptoms subscale, but not for the other two subscales (i.e. positive and depressive). CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the impact of CT on subthreshold expression of psychosis, particularly in the negative subdomain, may be larger in the co-presence of significant genetic liability for psychopathology.

Sensitivity to Peer Evaluation and Its Genetic and Environmental Determinants: Findings from a Population-Based Twin Study.

Adolescents and young adults are highly focused on peer evaluation, but little is known about sources of their differential sensitivity. We examined to what extent sensitivity to peer evaluation is influenced by interacting environmental and genetic factors. A sample of 354 healthy adolescent twin pairs (n = 708) took part in a structured, laboratory task in which they were exposed to peer evaluation. The proportion of the variance in sensitivity to peer evaluation due to genetic and environmental factors was estimated, as was the association with specific a priori environmental risk factors. Differences in sensitivity to peer evaluation between adolescents were explained mainly by non-shared environmental influences. The results on shared environmental influences were not conclusive. No impact of latent genetic factors or gene-environment interactions was found. Adolescents with lower self-rated positions on the social ladder or who reported to have been bullied more severely showed significantly stronger responses to peer evaluation. Not genes, but subjective social status and past experience of being bullied seem to impact sensitivity to peer evaluation. This suggests that altered response to peer evaluation is the outcome of cumulative sensitization to social interactions.

Economic evaluation of an experience sampling method intervention in depression compared with treatment as usual using data from a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Experience sampling, a method for real-time self-monitoring of affective experiences, holds opportunities for person-tailored treatment. By focussing on dynamic patterns of positive affect, experience sampling method interventions (ESM-I) accommodate strategies to enhance personalized treatment of depression-at potentially low-costs. This study aimed to investigate the cost-effectiveness of an experience sampling method intervention in patients with depression, from a societal perspective. METHODS: Participants were recruited between January 2010 and February 2012 from out-patient mental health care facilities in or near the Dutch cities of Eindhoven and Maastricht, and through local advertisements. Out-patients diagnosed with major depression (n = 101) receiving pharmacotherapy were randomized into: (i) ESM-I consisting of six weeks of ESM combined with weekly feedback regarding the individual's positive affective experiences, (ii) six weeks of ESM without feedback, or (iii) treatment as usual only. Alongside this randomised controlled trial, an economic evaluation was conducted consisting of a cost-effectiveness and a cost-utility analysis, using Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) and quality adjusted life years (QALYs) as outcome, with willingness-to-pay threshold for a QALY set at €50,000 (based on Dutch guidelines for moderate severe to severe illnesses). RESULTS: The economic evaluation showed that ESM-I is an optimal strategy only when willingness to pay is around €3000 per unit HDRS and around €40,500 per QALY. ESM-I was the least favourable treatment when willingness to pay was lower than €30,000 per QALY. However, at the €50,000 willingness-to-pay threshold, ESM-I was, with a 46% probability, the most favourable treatment (base-case analysis). Sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of these results. CONCLUSIONS: We may tentatively conclude that ESM-I is a cost-effective add-on intervention to pharmacotherapy in outpatients with major depression. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands Trial register, NTR1974 .

Gene-environment interaction study on the polygenic risk score for neuroticism, childhood adversity, and parental bonding.

The present study examines whether neuroticism is predicted by genetic vulnerability, summarized as polygenic risk score for neuroticism (PRSN), in interaction with bullying, parental bonding, and childhood adversity. Data were derived from a general population adolescent and young adult twin cohort. The final sample consisted of 202 monozygotic and 436 dizygotic twins and 319 twin pairs. The Short Eysenck Personality questionnaire was used to measure neuroticism. PRSN was trained on the results from the Genetics of Personality Consortium (GPC) and United Kingdom Biobank (UKB) cohorts, yielding two different PRSN. Multilevel mixed-effects models were used to analyze the main and interacting associations of PRSN, childhood adversity, bullying, and parental bonding style with neuroticism. We found no evidence of gene-environment correlation. PRSN thresholds of .005 and .2 were chosen, based on GPC and UKB datasets, respectively. After correction for confounders, all the individual variables were associated with the expression of neuroticism: both PRSN from GPC and UKB, childhood adversity, maternal bonding, paternal bonding, and bullying in primary school and secondary school. However, the results indicated no evidence for gene-environment interaction in this cohort. These results suggest that genetic vulnerability on the one hand and negative life events (childhood adversity and bullying) and positive life events (optimal parental bonding) on the other represent noninteracting pathways to neuroticism.

Genetic and environmental causes of individual differences in daily life positive affect and reward experience and its overlap with stress-sensitivity.

Momentary positive affect (PA) and reward experience may underlie subjective wellbeing, and index mental health resilience. This study examines their underlying sources of variation and the covariation with stress-sensitivity. The experience sampling method was used to collect multiple appraisals of mood and daily life events in 520 female twins. Structural equation model fitting was employed to determine sources of variation of PA, reward experience, and the association between reward experience and stress-sensitivity. PA was best explained by shared and non-shared environmental factors, and reward experience by non-shared environmental factors only, although the evidence was also suggestive of a small genetic contribution. Reward experience and stress-sensitivity showed no association. PA was not heritable. Most-if not all-variance of reward experience was explained by environmental influences. Stress-sensitivity, indexing depression vulnerability, and reward experience were non-overlapping, suggesting that resilience traits are independent from stress-sensitivity levels in a general population sample.

The relationship between daily positive future thinking and past-week suicidal ideation in youth: An experience sampling study.

Reduced positive future thinking has been associated with suicidal ideation and behavior in adults, and appears to be exacerbated by negative affect. Yet, this has received little attention in youth. Prior research has also focused on longer-term future thinking, e.g., months and years, and relied on lab-based assessments. Using the experience sampling method (ESM), we investigated whether short-term future thinking in daily life was associated with suicidal ideation in youth and explored the role of affect in the future thinking-suicidal ideation relationship. A community sample of N = 722 adolescent twins and their non-twin siblings completed ESM as part of the TwinssCan study (n = 55 with, and n = 667 without, past-week suicidal ideation). Participants completed self-report questionnaires, including on past-week suicidal ideation as part of the SCL-90. Subsequently, daily future thinking was assessed each morning for six days with ESM. To investigate the relationship between daily positive future thinking and past-week suicidal ideation, we estimated a mixed-effects linear regression model with a random intercept for participant, including age and sex as covariates. The relationship between daily positive future thinking, past-week suicidal ideation, and average positive and negative affect from the previous day was investigated by estimating two separate mixed-effects linear regression models (one for negative affect, one for positive affect), with a random intercept for participant, and random slopes for average positive and negative affect. Our results showed that participants reporting higher past-week suicidal ideation also reported significantly less daily positive future thinking during the ESM period, and this association remained significant when controlling for previous-day average positive and negative affect. Higher average positive affect from the previous day was significantly associated with higher positive future thinking. Although average negative affect from the previous day was associated with lower positive future thinking, this association was not statistically significant. Our findings indicate that short-term future thinking relates to suicidal ideation among a non-clinical sample of adolescents. Future research should investigate the directionality of the future thinking-suicidal ideation relationship, in order to investigate whether impaired future thinking may be an early warning signal for escalating suicidal ideation in youth.

Be(com)ing social: Daily-life social interactions and parental bonding.

Parents are known to provide a lasting basis for their children's social development. Understanding parent-driven socialization is particularly relevant in adolescence, as an increasing social independence is developed. However, the relationship between key parenting styles of care and control and the microlevel expression of daily-life social interactions has been insufficiently studied. Adolescent and young adult twins and their nontwin siblings (N = 635; mean age = 16.6; age range = 14.2-21.9; 58.6% female; 79.5% in or having completed higher secondary/tertiary education; 2.8% speaking language other than Dutch at home) completed the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) on parental care and control. Participants also completed a 6-day experience sampling period (10 daily beeps, mean compliance = 68.0%) to assess daily-life social interactions. Higher overall parental bonding quality (of both parents) related to more positive social experiences in daily life (e.g., belonging in company), but not to more social behaviors (e.g., being with others). Factor analysis indicated a three-factor structure of the PBI, with care, denial of psychological autonomy, and encouragement of behavioral freedom. Paternal care was uniquely predictive of better social experiences. These findings demonstrate how parenting styles may be uniquely associated with how adolescents experience their social world, with a potentially important role for fathers in particular. This complements the long-held idea of socialization through parenting by bringing it into the context of daily life and implies how both conceptualizations of social functioning and interventions aimed at alleviating social dysfunction might benefit from a stronger consideration of day-to-day social experiences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Lower emotional complexity as a prospective predictor of psychopathology in adolescents from the general population.

Emotional complexity (EC) involves the ability to distinguish between distinct emotions (differentiation) and the experience of a large range of emotions (diversity). Lower EC has been related to psychopathology in cross-sectional studies. This study aimed to investigate (a) whether EC prospectively predicts psychopathology and (b) whether this effect is contingent on stressful life events. To further explore EC, we compared the effects of differentiation and diversity. Adolescents from the general population (N = 401) rated 8 negatively valenced emotions 10 times a day for 6 consecutive days. Further, they completed the Symptom Checklist-90 (baseline and 1-year follow-up) and a questionnaire on past year's life events at follow-up. Logistic regression analyses tested whether EC-reflected by emotion differentiation (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]) and diversity (diversity index [DI])-predicted prognosis (good: remitting or lacking symptoms vs. bad: worsening or persisting symptoms). EC predicted prognoses but only when based on the ICC (OREC.ICC = 1.42, p = .02). An ECICC 1 SD above average increased the probability of good prognosis from .67 to .74. This effect was not related to stressful life events (OREC × Life events = 1.03, p = .86) and disappeared when emotion intensity (mean level) was taken into account (OREC = 1.20, p = .20). Predicting future prognosis does not necessitate complex measures of emotional experience (ICC, DI) but rather might be achieved through simpler indices (mean). The discrepant effects of the ICC and DI on prognosis suggest that impaired emotion representation (ICC) plays a more important role in vulnerability to mental ill health than does low diversity of emotions (DI). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

General psychopathology and its social correlates in the daily lives of youth.

BACKGROUND: Adolescence is a period of both great social change, and of vulnerability to psychiatric distress. However, little is known about the associations between early psychopathology and social interactions at the fundamental level of daily life. To better understand the social correlates of subclinical psychopathology in adolescence, we assessed associations between general psychopathology and the quantity and quality of daily-life social interactions. METHODS: During a six-day experience sampling period, adolescent and young adult participants in Study 1 (n = 663) and Study 2 (n = 1027) reported the quantity and quality of their everyday social interactions. General psychopathology was assessed using the Symptom Checklist-90 and Brief Symptom Inventory-53. The relationship between psychopathology and each outcome variable was tested in separate multilevel linear and logistic regression models. RESULTS: General psychopathology was associated with social interaction quality. Associations between psychopathology and the number of social interactions were less apparent: In Study 1, participants with more psychopathology were not more alone, whereas Study 2 participants with higher levels of psychopathology were alone more. LIMITATIONS: Limitations include no separate investigation of distinct types of psychopathology, and relatively low compliance to the experience sampling in Study 2. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent associations between subclinical psychopathology and the quality of social interactions support the fundamentally social nature of early psychopathology. Moreover, negative experiences of social interactions may be more valuable markers of early psychopathology than a reduced quantity of social behaviors. Conceptualizations of daily-life social functioning, and prevention/intervention efforts would benefit from a greater consideration of the quality of everyday social experiences.

Network dynamics of momentary affect states and future course of psychopathology in adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Recent theories argue that an interplay between (i.e., network of) experiences, thoughts and affect in daily life may underlie the development of psychopathology. OBJECTIVE: To prospectively examine whether network dynamics of everyday affect states are associated with a future course of psychopathology in adolescents at an increased risk of mental disorders. METHODS: 159 adolescents from the East-Flanders Prospective Twin Study cohort participated in the study. At baseline, their momentary affect states were assessed using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). The course of psychopathology was operationalized as the change in the Symptom Checklist-90 sum score after 1 year. Two groups were defined: one with a stable level (n = 81) and one with an increasing level (n = 78) of SCL-symptom severity. Group-level network dynamics of momentary positive and negative affect states were compared between groups. RESULTS: The group with increasing symptoms showed a stronger connections between negative affect states and their higher influence on positive states, as well as higher proneness to form 'vicious cycles', compared to the stable group. Based on permutation tests, these differences were not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Although not statistically significant, some qualitative differences were observed between the networks of the two groups. More studies are needed to determine the value of momentary affect networks for predicting the course of psychopathology.

Emotion regulation in response to daily negative and positive events in youth: The role of event intensity and psychopathology.

Environmental and individual contextual factors profoundly influence how people regulate their emotions. The current article addresses the role of event intensity and psychopathology (an admixture of depression, anxiety, and psychoticism) on emotion regulation in response to naturally occurring events. For six days each evening, a youth sample (aged 15-25, N = 713) recorded the intensity of the most positive and most negative event of the day and their subsequent emotion regulation. The intensity of negative events was positively associated with summed total emotion regulation effort, strategy diversity, engaging in rumination, situation modification, emotion expression, and sharing and negatively associated with reappraisal and acceptance. The intensity of positive events was positively associated with strategy diversity, savoring, emotion expression, and sharing. Higher psychopathology symptoms were only related to ruminating more about negative events. We interpret these findings as support for the role of context in the degree of effort and type of emotion regulation that young people engage in.

Evidence that the association of childhood trauma with psychosis and related psychopathology is not explained by gene-environment correlation: A monozygotic twin differences approach.

BACKGROUND: Converging evidence supports childhood trauma as possible causal risk for psychosis and related psychopathology. However, studies have shown that baseline psychotic symptoms may actually increase risk for subsequent victimization, suggesting that exposure to CT is not random but may result from pre-existing vulnerability. Therefore, studies testing whether the association between CT and psychopathology persists when accounting for gene-environment correlation are much needed. METHODS: A monozygotic (MZ) twin differences approach was used to examine whether differences in CT exposure among MZ twin pairs would be associated with MZ differences in symptoms. As MZ twins are genetically identical, within-pair correlations between CT exposure and psychopathology rule out the possibility that the association is solely attributable to gene-environment correlation. 266 monozygotic twins (133 pairs) from a larger general population study were available for analysis. RESULTS: CT was associated with symptoms of psychosis (B = 0.62; SE = 0.08, p < .001) and overall psychopathology (B = 43.13; SE = 6.27; p < .001). There were measurable differences within pairs in CT exposure and symptoms, allowing for meaningful within-pair differences. Within-pair differences in CT exposure were associated with within-pair differences in symptoms of psychosis (B = 0.35; SE = 0.16; p = .024), as well as with overall psychopathology (B = 29.22; SE = 12.24; p = .018), anxiety (B = 0.65; SE = 0.21; p = .002) and depression (B = 0.37; SE = 0.18; p = .043). CONCLUSION: While it is not unlikely that pre-existing vulnerability may increase the risk for traumatic exposures, such gene-environment correlation does not explain away the association between CT and psychopathology. The present findings thus suggest that at least part of the association between CT and psychopathology may be causal.

Effect of self-monitoring through experience sampling on emotion differentiation in depression.

BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder has been linked to an inability to differentiate between negative emotions. The current study investigates whether emotion differentiation improves when individuals with major depressive disorder are required to report on specific emotions multiple times a day through the experience sampling method (ESM) - a structured self-report diary technique. METHODS: Seventy-nine patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder participated in this study, of whom 55 used ESM for 6 weeks (3 days a week, 10 times a day). Changes from baseline to post assessment in positive and negative emotion differentiation were compared between the participants who did and those who did not use ESM. RESULTS: Engaging in ESM related to an improvement in both positive and negative emotion differentiation, but only the latter reached statistical significance. The relationship between the number of ESM measurements (dose) and emotion differentiation change (response) was not significant. LIMITATIONS: The sample size for the dose-response analysis was relatively small (N = 55). It is unknown whether emotion differentiation improvements generalize beyond the emotions (N = 12) we probed in this study. Other factors could also have contributed to the change (e.g., meetings with the researchers). CONCLUSIONS: The present study suggests that patients with depression using ESM for 3 days a week for 6 weeks can improve their negative emotion differentiation. Future studies should assess after what period of ESM changes in emotion differentiation become apparent, and whether these changes are persistent and relate to actual improvement in depressive symptoms.