Racially invariant stimuli may bias outcomes in assessment of emotion processing.

OBJECTIVE: Difficulties identifying emotional facial expressions are commonly observed in alcohol use disorder (AUD). Critically, this work utilizes single-race stimulus sets, although study samples are not similarly constrained. This is particularly concerning given evidence among community samples showing the impact of racial incongruity, giving rise to interpretative caveats. METHOD: Community controls (n = 55, 12 Black) and individuals with AUD (n = 46, 9 Black) completed a two-choice emotion judgment task. A similar nonaffective sex judgment task was employed as a covariate. Repeated measures mixed-model analyses were conducted with race, AUD status (AUD vs. control), and their interaction as fixed effects. Accuracy and reaction time (RT) were primary dependent measures. A post hoc analysis was conducted on efficiency (accuracy/RT). RESULTS: In addition to lower accuracy by individuals with AUD (p = .02), Black participants were less accurate than White participants (p = .0001) overall. Significant interactions between race and AUD were also detected for accuracy (p = .002), RT (p = .05), and efficiency (p = .01), wherein Black participants with AUD identified emotional expressions most poorly. This latter finding suggests that AUD-associated differences may be biased under racial incongruity. CONCLUSION: Taken together, these preliminary findings do not reflect a deficit among Black respondents. Instead, our results reflect the need for greater attention to stimulus diversity and sensitivity to respondent demographics in emotion-processing examinations. Given the purported role of emotion processing in alcohol-related problems and the increase in racial minority representation in the U.S., elucidating these differences remains critical. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Building an Open Resources Repository for COVID-19 Research.

The COVID-19 outbreak is a global pandemic declared by the World Health Organization, with rapidly increasing cases in most countries. A wide range of research is urgently needed for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic, such as transmissibility, geographic spreading, risk factors for infections, and economic impacts. Reliable data archive and sharing are essential to jump-start innovative research to combat COVID-19. This research is a collaborative and innovative effort in building such an archive, including the collection of various data resources relevant to COVID-19 research, such as daily cases, social media, population mobility, health facilities, climate, socioeconomic data, research articles, policy and regulation, and global news. Due to the heterogeneity between data sources, our effort also includes processing and integrating different datasets based on GIS (Geographic Information System) base maps to make them relatable and comparable. To keep the data files permanent, we published all open data to the Harvard Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/2019ncov), an online data management and sharing platform with a permanent Digital Object Identifier number for each dataset. Finally, preliminary studies are conducted based on the shared COVID-19 datasets and revealed different spatial transmission patterns among mainland China, Italy, and the United States.

Race and socioeconomic status in substance use progression and treatment entry.

This study examined trajectories of progression from early substance use to treatment entry as a function of race, among inpatient treatment seekers (N = 945). Following primary race-contingent analyses of use progression, secondary analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on the observed differences. African Americans reported significant delays in treatment entry relative to Caucasians. Racial differences in alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine use trajectories were observed. Accounting for SES rendered observations of accelerated use among African Americans nonsignificant. However, inclusion of SES failed to mitigate the marked racial disparity in treatment entry.

Opioid Misuse Trends in Treatment Seeking Populations: Revised Prescription Opioid Policy and Temporally Corresponding Changes.

BACKGROUND: Over the last two decades, U.S. rates of prescription opioid (PO) misuse have risen drastically. In response, federal and state governments have begun to implement new PO policies. Recent legislative changes warrant up-to-date assessments of today's misuse rates. OBJECTIVE: To explore potential changes in opioid misuse trends among substance-using treatment seekers, in temporal relation to legislative response. METHODS: Substance-use data were collected from two cross-sectional Florida-based inpatient cohorts during periods preceding (pre-policy; n = 647) and following (post-policy; n = 396) statewide PO policy initiatives. Participants provided information concerning their most frequently used drugs before treatment. PO and illicit opioid (IO) use prevalence, frequency and route of administration were examined for pre-policy vs. post-policy cohort differences. RESULTS: Relative to the pre-policy cohort, a greater percentage of the post-policy cohort reported recent misuse, daily use, and intravenous administration of POs. IO use was also more frequently reported post-policy. Non-opioid drug use prevalence did not significantly differ between cohorts. Among the opioid-using subsample, equivalent percentages of the pre- and post-policy cohorts reported the use of POs without IOs, IOs without POs, and POs/IOs concurrently. Conclusions/Importance: Florida's PO policy amendments were temporally accompanied by a higher prevalence of PO misuse and IO use among treatment-seekers assessed in this study. Whether our data reflect increased awareness of and treatment seeking for opioid use disorders or insufficient efficacy of new policies to reduce opioid misuse remains in question. Regardless, findings suggest the need for enhanced emphasis on mitigating hazardous PO-use behaviors (e.g., IV use).