Negative emotional reactivity to minority stress: measure development and testing.

The purpose of the present investigation was to develop and test a measure of negative emotional reactivity to racial/ethnic minoritized stress. In Study 1, we developed item content for a measure of negative emotional reactivity to racial/ethnic minoritized stress. We then evaluated item performance and produced a refined 15-item scale among a large sample of racial/ethnic minority adults (N = 1,343). Results supported a unidimensional construct and high levels of internal consistency. The factor structure and internal consistency were replicated and extended to a sample of Latinx persons who smoke (N = 338) in Study 2. There was evidence of convergent validity of the Emotional Reactivity to Minoritized Stress (ERMS) total score in terms of theoretically consistent and statistically significant relations with indices of mental health problems, social determinants of health, and substance use processes. There was also evidence that the ERMS demonstrated divergent validity in that it was negatively associated with psychological well-being, health literacy, subjective social status in Study 1, and positive abstinence expectancies in Study 2. Overall, the present study establishes the reliability and validity of measuring individual differences in negative emotional reactivity to racial/ethnic minority stress with the ERMS and that such responsivity is associated with behavioral health problems.

Racial Stress and Trauma and the Development of Adolescent Depression: A Review of the Role of Vigilance Evoked by Racism-Related Threat.

There are known disparities in the burden of illness and access/quality of care for African, Latino/a, Asian, and Native American (ALANA) patients diagnosed with depressive disorders, which may occur because of health inequities. Racial stress and trauma (RST), or the significant fear and distress that can be imparted from exposure to racism, is one such inequity linked to the development of depression. The current review summarizes past research examining the association between racism, RST, and depression, as well as avenues in which RST becomes biologically embedded in ALANA individuals. We describe multimodal research that supports vigilance as a potential mediator of the association between RST and depression and consider the nuanced role that vigilance plays during experiences with racism. Finally, we describe methodological advances in the assessment of vigilance evoked by RST and the clinical implications that may be generated by future improvements. In each of these areas, we present examples of how ongoing and future research can be leveraged to provide support for psychosocial programs that facilitate autonomous community healing and resilience, increase calls for public policy changes, and support clinical interventions that lessen the burden of racism on ALANA communities.

Adolescents' perceptions of maternal response to negative affect predict emotional reactivity during mother-daughter interaction: A multi-modal assessment.

Parental socialization of emotion consists of parental behaviors that scaffold child emotional reactivity and regulation. The current study examined whether adolescents' perceptions of their mothers' supportive versus non-supportive responses to negative emotions could predict adolescent emotional reactivity. Thirty adolescent girls (Mage  = 14.41 [1.55]) reported on how their mothers typically respond to their negative emotions and then completed a laboratory-based mother-adolescent interaction task. A multi-modal assessment of adolescent emotional reactivity during the interaction included adolescents' skin conductance levels (SCLs) and state anxiety, and mother-daughter interactions were behaviorally coded to assess how often dyads engaged in both negative and positive escalation (i.e., a pattern of negative or positive behavior of one partner being reciprocated by the other). Adolescents who reported that their mothers used more non-supportive responses to their negative emotion tended to exhibit higher SCL and engage in more negative escalation with their mothers during the interaction task. Furthermore, adolescents' SCL was positively correlated with both their state anxiety levels and negative escalation during the task. Together, these findings suggest that adolescents who perceive their mothers as less supportive of negative emotions are more likely to exhibit greater negative emotionality during parent-adolescent interaction, which may relate to risk for emotional disorders.

Time course of pupillary response to threat words before and after attention bias modification for transdiagnostic anxiety disorders: A randomized controlled trial.

INTRODUCTION: Altered attention to threatening stimuli at initial and sustained stages of processing may be dissociable dimensions that influence the development and maintenance of transdiagnostic symptoms of anxiety, such as vigilance, and possibly require distinct intervention. Attention bias modification (ABM) interventions were created to implicitly train attention away from threatening stimuli and have shown efficacy in treating anxiety. ABM alters neurocognitive functioning during initial stages of threat processing, but less is known regarding effects of ABM on neural indices of threat processing at sustained (i.e., intermediate and late) stages, or if ABM-related neural changes relate to symptom response. The current study utilized pupillary response as a temporally sensitive and cost-effective peripheral marker of neurocognitive response to ABM. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In a randomized controlled trial, 79 patients with transdiagnostic anxiety provided baseline data, 70 were randomized to receive eight sessions of twice-weekly ABM (n = 49) or sham training (n = 21), and 65 completed their assigned treatment condition and returned for post-training assessment. RESULTS: Among ABM, but not sham, patients, pupillary response to threat words during initial and intermediate stages decreased from pre- to post-training. Pre- to post-training reductions in intermediate and late pupillary response to threat were positively correlated with reductions in patient-reported vigilance among ABM, but not sham, patients. CONCLUSIONS: All measured stages of threat processing had relevance in understanding the neural mechanisms of ABM, with overlapping yet dissociable roles exhibited within a single neurophysiological marker across an initial-intermediate-late time continuum. Pupillometry may be well suited to measure both target engagement and treatment outcome following ABM.