Expressive suppression mediates the relationship between sleep quality and generalized anxiety symptomology.

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent worldwide mental health disorder, resulting in high societal costs. Emotion regulation and sleep quality are associated with the development of psychopathologies including anxiety. However, it is unknown whether habitual emotion regulation strategy use can mediate the influence of sleep quality on anxiety symptomology. An opportunity sample in a healthy population completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index to provide a measure of sleep quality, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to assess habitual use of emotion regulation strategies, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale to record anxiety symptomology. Data were analysed using correlation and regression-based mediation analyses. Improved sleep quality was predictive of reduced habitual use of expressive suppression and reduced anxiety symptomology. Additionally, increased use of expressive suppression was predictive of greater anxiety symptomology. Cognitive reappraisal was not associated with sleep quality or anxiety severity. Further, novel findings using mediation analyses show that expressive suppression partially mediated the relationship between sleep quality and anxiety. Whilst longitudinal and experimental research are needed to establish causality, these findings suggest that simultaneously targeting improvements in sleep quality and the use of specific emotion regulation strategies, including expressive suppression, may improve the efficacy of interventions focussed on reducing anxiety-related symptomology.

The influence of stimuli valence, extraversion, and emotion regulation on visual search within real-world scenes.

Affective traits, including extraversion and emotion regulation, are important considerations in clinical psychology due to their associations with the occurrence of affective disorders. Previously, emotional real-world scenes have been shown to influence visual search. However, it is currently unknown whether extraversion and emotion regulation can influence visual search towards neutral targets embedded within real-world scenes, or whether these traits can impact the effect of emotional stimuli on visual search. An opportunity sample of healthy individuals had trait levels of extraversion and emotion regulation recorded before completing a visual search task. Participants more accurately identified search targets in neutral images compared to positive images, whilst response times were slower in negative images. Importantly, individuals with higher trait levels of expressive suppression displayed faster identification of search targets regardless of the emotional valence of the stimuli. Extraversion and cognitive reappraisal did not influence visual search. These findings add to our understanding regarding the influence of extraversion, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression on our ability to allocate attention during visual search when viewing real-world scenes.

Interactive influences of emotion and extraversion on visual attention.

INTRODUCTION: Emotion has been shown to influence selective visual attention. However, studies in this field have revealed contradictory findings regarding the nature of this influence. One possible explanation for the variation in findings is that affective inter-individual differences impact both attention and emotion and may therefore moderate any influence of emotion on attention. The current work is a novel investigation of the effects of induced emotional states and the traits of extraversion and neuroticism on visual attention. This allowed a direct investigation of any impact of extraversion and neuroticism on the way in which emotion influences attention. METHODS: Participants were induced into positive, neutral, and negative emotional states before completing a change detection flicker task in which they were required to locate a change to a real-world scene as quickly and accurately as possible. RESULTS: Participants scoring higher in extraversion were more accurate but slower at detecting changes. Importantly, this was particularly evident when induced into a negative emotional state compared to a neutral emotional state. Neuroticism had no impact on attention. CONCLUSIONS: The current study provides evidence that extraversion can moderate the influence of negative emotion upon visual attention and may help to explain some of the contradictory findings in this research area. When considered independently, increased trait levels of extraversion were associated with improved change detection. Individuals higher in extraversion appear better equipped to regulate negative emotion compared to individuals lower in extraversion, supporting research linking extraversion to affective reactivity and models of psychopathology.

Positive and Negative Affect Mediate the Influences of a Maladaptive Emotion Regulation Strategy on Sleep Quality.

Positive affect, negative affect, and emotion regulation strategies are related to sleep quality. Emotion regulation can also act as either a protective factor against the development of psychopathologies, or as a risk factor for their development, and therefore may be one mechanism linking mental health and sleep. However, currently it is not known whether affect can mediate the impact of emotion regulation strategy use on sleep quality. An opportunity sample in a healthy population completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule providing measures of positive and negative affect, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index providing a measure of sleep quality, and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to record habitual use of emotion regulation strategies. Data were analysed using regression and mediation analyses. Negative affect and expressive suppression were positively correlated with PSQI score suggesting that as negative affect and expressive suppression use increased, sleep quality decreased. Positive affect was negatively correlated with PSQI score suggesting that as positive affect increased sleep quality improved. Further, mediation analyses revealed that both positive affect and negative affect mediated the impact of expressive suppression on sleep quality. Moreover, this partial mediation provides the first description that the influences of affect and expressive suppression on sleep quality are at least partially distinct. Targeting improvements in negative affect and effective emotion regulation strategy use may improve the efficacy of interventions aimed at improving sleep quality and the reduction in symptomology in psychopathologies.

Emotional real-world scenes impact visual search.

Research shows that emotional stimuli can capture attention, and this can benefit or impair performance, depending on the characteristics of a task. Additionally, whilst some findings show that attention expands under positive conditions, others show that emotion has no influence on the broadening of attention. The current study investigated whether emotional real-world scenes influence attention in a visual search task. Participants were asked to identify a target letter embedded in the centre or periphery of emotional images. Identification accuracy was lower in positive images compared to neutral images, and response times were slower in negative images. This suggests that real-world emotional stimuli have a distracting effect on visual attention and search. There was no evidence that emotional images influenced the spatial spread of attention. Instead, it is suggested that findings may provide support for the argument that positive emotion encourages a global processing style and negative emotion promotes local processing.

Decentering mediates the relationship between vmPFC activation during a stressor and positive emotion during stress recovery.

The stress response has profound implications on health and behavior and stress is considered a risk factor for the development of psychopathologies including depression. The neural mechanisms supporting successful stress recovery are not fully understood; however, a novel study by Yang et al. (Yang X, Garcia KM, Jung Y, Whitlow CT, McRae K, Waugh CE. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 13: 256-268, 2018) demonstrates that ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activation during a stressor is related to improved stress recovery, and that decentering is able to mediate this relationship, suggesting a role during stress recovery. It was also revealed that vmPFC activation at different time points during the stressor predicts altering aspects of stress recovery, an observation that was only possible due to the adoption of change-point analysis.

A Brief Review of Research Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to Measure Activation of the Prefrontal Cortex during Emotional Processing: The Importance of Experimental Design.

During the past two decades there has been a pronounced increase in the number of published research studies that have employed near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to measure neural activation. The technique is now an accepted neuroimaging tool adopted by cognitive neuroscientists to investigate a number of fields, one of which is the study of emotional processing. Crucially, one brain region that is important to the processing of emotional information is the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and NIRS is ideally suited to measuring activity in this region. Compared to other methods used to record neural activation, NIRS reduces the discomfort to participants, makes data collection from larger sample sizes more achievable, and allows measurement of activation during tasks involving physical movement. However, the use of NIRS to investigate the links between emotion and cognition has revealed mixed findings. For instance, whilst some studies report increased PFC activity associated with the processing of negative information, others show increased activity in relation to positive information. Research shows differences in PFC activity between different cognitive tasks, yet findings also vary within similar tasks. This work reviews a selection of recent studies that have adopted NIRS to study PFC activity during emotional processing in both healthy individuals and patient populations. It highlights the key differences between research findings and argues that variations in experimental design could be a contributing factor to the mixed results. Guidance is provided for future work in this area in order to improve consistency within this growing field.

Emotion has no impact on attention in a change detection flicker task.

Past research provides conflicting findings regarding the influence of emotion on visual attention. Early studies suggested a broadening of attentional resources in relation to positive mood. However, more recent evidence indicates that positive emotions may not have a beneficial impact on attention, and that the relationship between emotion and attention may be mitigated by factors such as task demand or stimulus valence. The current study explored the effect of emotion on attention using the change detection flicker paradigm. Participants were induced into positive, neutral, and negative mood states and then completed a change detection task. A series of neutral scenes were presented and participants had to identify the location of a disappearing item in each scene. The change was made to the center or the periphery of each scene and it was predicted that peripheral changes would be detected quicker in the positive mood condition and slower in the negative mood condition, compared to the neutral condition. In contrast to previous findings emotion had no influence on attention and whilst central changes were detected faster than peripheral changes, change blindness was not affected by mood. The findings suggest that the relationship between emotion and visual attention is influenced by the characteristics of a task, and any beneficial impact of positive emotion may be related to processing style rather than a "broadening" of attentional resources.