The role of spatial selective attention in the processing of affective prosodies in congenitally blind adults: An ERP study.

The question whether spatial selective attention is necessary in order to process vocal affective prosody has been controversially discussed in sighted individuals: whereas some studies argue that attention is required in order to process emotions, other studies conclude that vocal prosody can be processed even outside the focus of spatial selective attention. Here, we asked whether spatial selective attention is necessary for the processing of affective prosodies after visual deprivation from birth. For this purpose, pseudowords spoken in happy, neutral, fearful or threatening prosodies were presented at the left or right loudspeaker. Congenitally blind individuals (N = 8) and sighted controls (N = 13) had to attend to one of the loudspeakers and detect rare pseudowords presented at the attended loudspeaker during EEG recording. Emotional prosody of the syllables was task-irrelevant. Blind individuals outperformed sighted controls by being more efficient in detecting deviant syllables at the attended loudspeaker. A higher auditory N1 amplitude was observed in blind individuals compared to sighted controls. Additionally, sighted controls showed enhanced attention-related ERP amplitudes in response to fearful and threatening voices during the time range of the N1. By contrast, blind individuals revealed enhanced ERP amplitudes in attended relative to unattended locations irrespective of the affective valence in all time windows (110-350 ms). These effects were mainly observed at posterior electrodes. The results provide evidence for "emotion-general" auditory spatial selective attention effects in congenitally blind individuals and suggest a potential reorganization of the voice processing brain system following visual deprivation from birth.

Neurosurgical lesions to sensorimotor cortex do not impair action verb processing.

There is ongoing debate regarding the role that sensorimotor regions play in conceptual processing, with embodied theories supporting their direct involvement in processing verbs describing body part movements. Patient lesion studies examining a causal role for sensorimotor activation in conceptual task performance have suffered the caveat of lesions being largely diffuse and extensive beyond sensorimotor cortices. The current study addresses this limitation in reporting on 20 pre-operative neurosurgical patients with focal lesion to the pre- and post-central area corresponding to somatotopic representations. Patients were presented with a battery of neuropsychological tests and experimental tasks tapping into motor imagery and verbal conceptual verb processing in addition to neurophysiological measures including DTI, fMRI, and MEP being measured. Results indicated that left tumor patients who presented with a lesion at or near somatotopic hand representations performed significantly worse on the mental rotation hand task and that performance correlated with MEP amplitudes in the upper limb motor region. Furthermore, performance on tasks of verbal processing was within the normal range. Taken together, while our results evidence the involvement of the motor system in motor imagery processes, they do not support the embodied view that sensorimotor regions are necessary to tasks of action verb processing.

Eighteen-month-olds integrate verbal cues into their action processing: Evidence from ERPs and mu power.

Behavioral research has shown that infants use both behavioral cues and verbal cues when processing the goals of others' actions. For instance, 18-month-olds selectively imitate an observed goal-directed action depending on its (in)congruence with a model's previous verbal announcement of a desired action goal. This EEG-study analyzed the electrophysiological underpinnings of these behavioral findings on the two functional levels of conceptual action processing and motor activation. Mid-latency mean negative ERP amplitude and mu-frequency band power were analyzed while 18-month-olds (N = 38) watched videos of an adult who performed one out of two potential actions on a novel object. In a within-subjects design, the action demonstration was preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent verbally announced action goal (e.g., "up" or "down" and upward movement). Overall, ERP negativity did not differ between conditions, but a closer inspection revealed that in two subgroups, about half of the infants showed a broadly distributed increased mid-latency ERP negativity (indicating enhanced conceptual action processing) for either the congruent or the incongruent stimuli, respectively. As expected, mu power at sensorimotor sites was reduced (indicating enhanced motor activation) for congruent relative to incongruent stimuli in the entire sample. Both EEG correlates were related to infants' language skills. Hence, 18-month-olds integrate action-goal-related verbal cues into their processing of others' actions, at the functional levels of both conceptual processing and motor activation. Further, cue integration when inferring others' action goals is related to infants' language proficiency.

Testing a positive-affect induction to reduce verbally induced nocebo hyperalgesia in an experimental pain paradigm.

There is an ethical obligation to notify individuals about potential pain associated with diagnoses, treatments, and procedures; however, supplying this information risks inducing nocebo hyperalgesia. Currently, there are few empirically derived strategies for reducing nocebo hyperalgesia. Because nocebo effects are linked to negative affectivity, we tested the hypothesis that a positive-affect induction can disrupt nocebo hyperalgesia from verbal suggestion. Healthy volunteers (N = 147) were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (affect induction: positive vs neutral) by 2 (verbal suggestion: no suggestion vs suggestion of pain increase) between-subjects design. Participants were induced to experience positive or neutral affect by watching movie clips for 15 minutes. Next, participants had an inert cream applied to their nondominant hand, and suggestion was manipulated by telling only half the participants the cream could increase the pain of the upcoming cold pressor test. Subsequently, all participants underwent the cold pressor test (8 ± 0.04°C), wherein they submerged the nondominant hand and rated pain intensity on numerical rating scales every 20 seconds up to 2 minutes. In the neutral-affect conditions, there was evidence for the nocebo hyperalgesia effect: participants given the suggestion of pain displayed greater pain than participants not receiving this suggestion, P's < 0.05. Demonstrating a blockage effect, nocebo hyperalgesia did not occur in the positive-affect conditions, P's > 0.5. This is the first study to show that positive affect may disrupt nocebo hyperalgesia thereby pointing to a novel strategy for decreasing nocebo effects without compromising the communication of medical information to patients in clinical settings.

A pilot study of combined endurance and resistance exercise rehabilitation for verbal memory and functional connectivity improvement in epilepsy.

Memory impairment is common in persons with epilepsy (PWE), and exercise may be a strategy for its improvement. In this pilot study, we hypothesized that exercise rehabilitation would improve physical fitness and verbal memory and induce changes in brain networks involved in memory processes. We examined the effects of combined endurance and resistance exercise rehabilitation on memory and resting state functional connectivity (rsFC). Participants were randomized to exercise (PWE-E) or control (PWE-noE). The exercise intervention consisted of 18 supervised sessions on nonconsecutive days over 6 weeks. Before and after the intervention period, both groups completed self-report assessments (Short Form-36 (SF-36), Baecke Questionnaire (BQ) of habitual physical activity, and Profile of Mood States (POMS)), cognitive testing (California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II)), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); PWE-E also completed exercise performance tests. After completing the study, PWE-noE were offered cross-over to the exercise arm. There were no differences in baseline demographic, clinical, or assessment variables between 8 PWE-noE and 9 PWE-E. Persons with epilepsy that participated in exercise intervention increased maximum voluntary strength (all strength tests p < 0.05) and exhibited nonsignificant improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness (p = 0.15). Groups did not show significant changes in quality of life (QOL) or habitual physical activity between visits. However, there was an effect of visit on POMS total mood disturbance (TMD) measure showing improvement from baseline to visit 2 (p = 0.023). There were significant group by visit interactions on CVLT-II learning score (p = 0.044) and total recognition discriminability (d') (p = 0.007). Persons with epilepsy that participated in exercise intervention had significant reductions in paracingulate rsFC with the anterior cingulate and increases in rsFC for the cerebellum, thalamus, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and left and right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) (corrected p < 0.05). Change in CVLT-II learning score was associated with rsFC changes for the paracingulate cortex (rS = -0.67; p = 0.0033), left IPL (rS = 0.70; p = 0.0019), and right IPL (rS = 0.71; p = 0.0015) while change in d' was associated with change in cerebellum rsFC to angular/middle occipital gyrus (rS = 0.68; p = 0.0025). Our conclusion is that exercise rehabilitation may facilitate verbal memory improvement and brain network functional connectivity changes in PWE and that improved memory performance is associated with changes in rsFC. A larger randomized controlled trial of exercise rehabilitation for cognitive improvement in PWE is warranted.

Music training is neuroprotective for verbal cognition in focal epilepsy.

Focal epilepsy is a unilateral brain network disorder, providing an ideal neuropathological model with which to study the effects of focal neural disruption on a range of cognitive processes. While language and memory functions have been extensively investigated in focal epilepsy, music cognition has received less attention, particularly in patients with music training or expertise. This represents a critical gap in the literature. A better understanding of the effects of epilepsy on music cognition may provide greater insight into the mechanisms behind disease- and training-related neuroplasticity, which may have implications for clinical practice. In this cross-sectional study, we comprehensively profiled music and non-music cognition in 107 participants; musicians with focal epilepsy (n = 35), non-musicians with focal epilepsy (n = 39), and healthy control musicians and non-musicians (n = 33). Parametric group comparisons revealed a specific impairment in verbal cognition in non-musicians with epilepsy but not musicians with epilepsy, compared to healthy musicians and non-musicians (P = 0.029). This suggests a possible neuroprotective effect of music training against the cognitive sequelae of focal epilepsy, and implicates potential training-related cognitive transfer that may be underpinned by enhancement of auditory processes primarily supported by temporo-frontal networks. Furthermore, our results showed that musicians with an earlier age of onset of music training performed better on a composite score of melodic learning and memory compared to non-musicians (P = 0.037), while late-onset musicians did not differ from non-musicians. For most composite scores of music cognition, although no significant group differences were observed, a similar trend was apparent. We discuss these key findings in the context of a proposed model of three interacting dimensions (disease status, music expertise, and cognitive domain), and their implications for clinical practice, music education, and music neuroscience research.

Do as I say - or as I do?! How 18- and 24-month-olds integrate words and actions to infer intentions in situations of match or mismatch.

Infants use behavioral and verbal cues to infer another person's action intention. However, it is still unclear how infants integrate these often co-occurring cues depending on the cues' coherence (i.e., the degree to which the cues provide coherent information about another's intention). This study investigated how 18- and 24-month-olds' (N = 88 per age group) action selection was influenced by varying the coherence of a model's verbal and behavioral cues. Using a between-subjects design, infants received six trials with different stimulus objects. In the conditions Congruent, Incongruent, and Failed-attempt, the model uttered a telic verb particle that was followed by a matching or contradicting goal-directed action demonstration, or by a non goal-directed slipping motion, respectively. In the condition Pseudo-word, a nonsense word was combined with a goal-directed action demonstration. Infants' action selection indicated an adherence to the verbal cue in Congruent, Incongruent, and Failed-attempt, and this was stronger in 24- than 18-month-olds. Additionally, in Incongruent and Failed-attempt, patterns of cue integration across the six trials varied in the two age groups. Regarding the behavioral cue, infants in Congruent and Pseudo-word preferentially followed this cue in both age groups, which also suggested a rather unspecific effect of the verbal cue in Congruent. Relatively longer first action-latencies in Incongruent and Failed-attempt implied that these types of coherence elicited higher cognitive demands than in Congruent and Pseudo-word. Results are discussed in light of infants' flexibility in using social cues, depending on the cue's coherence and on age-related social-cognitive differences.

Syntactic chameleons: Are there individual differences in syntactic mimicry and its possible prosocial effects?

This study investigated whether syntactic mimicry leads to prosocial effects and whether any such effects are modulated by personality traits. Participants and a confederate of the experimenters took turns describing simple scenes. Target scenes could be described using either a prepositional object or a double object dative structure and we tested whether the participants mimicked the structure used by the confederate (Experiments 1A and 2A), whether mimicry of the participant's sentence structure (Experiments 1B and 2B) made the participant act in a more prosocial manner, and whether any such effects vary with Big Five traits. Participants displayed significant syntactic mimicry, which was additionally negatively related to levels of Extraversion. Syntactic mimicry did not lead to more prosocial behavior, as gauged by the time spent on an extra task (Experiment 1B). This conclusion was confirmed in Experiment 2B, which used a slight adaptation of the task that prevented a ceiling effect. However, a positive relation between prosocial behavior and levels of Conscientiousness was observed in the mimicry condition, which appeared to invert in the non-mimicry condition. We discuss several potential reasons for the absence of prosocial effects of syntactic mimicry and provide suggestions for future research.

Verbal abilities in children of mothers with epilepsy: Association to maternal folate status.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the effect of maternal folic acid supplementation and maternal plasma folate and antiepileptic drug (AED) concentrations on language delay in AED-exposed children of mothers with epilepsy. METHODS: Children of mothers with and without epilepsy enrolled from 1999 to 2008 in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort study were included. Information on medical history, AED use, and folic acid supplementation during pregnancy was collected from parent-completed questionnaires. Maternal plasma folate and maternal plasma and umbilical cord AED concentrations were measured in blood samples from gestational weeks 17 to 19 and immediately after birth, respectively. Language development at 18 and 36 months was evaluated by the Ages and Stages Questionnaires. RESULTS: A total of 335 AED-exposed children of mothers with epilepsy and 104,222 children of mothers without epilepsy were surveyed. For those with no maternal periconceptional folic acid supplementation, the fully adjusted odds ratio (OR) for language delay in AED-exposed children compared to the controls at 18 months was 3.9 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.9-7.8, p < 0.001) and at 36 months was 4.7 (95% CI 2.0-10.6, p < 0.001). When folic supplementation was used, the corresponding ORs for language delay were 1.7 (95% CI 1.2-2.6, p = 0.01) and 1.7 (95% CI 0.9-3.2, p = 0.13), respectively. The positive effect of folic acid supplement use on language delay in AED-exposed children was significant only when supplement was used in the period from 4 weeks before the pregnancy and until the end of the first trimester. CONCLUSION: Folic acid use early in pregnancy may have a preventive effect on language delay associated with in utero AED exposure.

Cognitive training with action-related verbs induces neural plasticity in the action representation system as assessed by gray matter brain morphometry.

Embodied cognition theories of semantic memory still face the need for multiple sources of converging evidence in support of the involvement of sensory-motor systems in action-related knowledge. Previous studies showed that training manual actions improves semantic processing of verbs referring to the trained actions. The present work aimed to provide complementary evidence by measuring the brain plasticity effects of a cognitive training requiring sustained lexical-semantic processing of action-related verbs. We included two groups of participants, namely the Proximal Group (PG) and the Distal Group (DG), which underwent a 3-week training with verbs referring to actions involving the proximal and the distal upper limb musculature, respectively. Before and after training, we measured gray matter voxel brain morphometry based on T1 structural magnetic resonance imaging. By means of this 2 (Group: PG, DG) × 2 (Time: pre-, post-training) factorial design, we tested whether sustained cognitive experience with specific action-related verbs induces congruent brain plasticity modifications in target regions of interest pertaining to the action representation system. We found significant post- versus pre-training gray matter volume increases, specifically for PG in the left dorsal precentral gyrus, and for DG in the right cerebellar lobule VIIa. These preliminary results suggest that a cognitive training can induce structural plasticity modifications in brain regions specifically coding for the distal and proximal motor actions the trained verbs refer to.

Grunting's competitive advantage: Considerations of force and distraction.

BACKGROUND: Grunting is pervasive in many athletic contests, and empirical evidence suggests that it may result in one exerting more physical force. It may also distract one's opponent. That grunts can distract was supported by a study showing that it led to an opponent being slower and more error prone when viewing tennis shots. An alternative explanation was that grunting masks the sound of a ball being hit. The present study provides evidence against this alternative explanation by testing the effect of grunting in a sport-mixed martial arts-where distraction, rather than masking, is the most likely mechanism. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We first confirmed that kicking force is increased when a grunt is performed (Experiment 1), and then adapted methodology used in the tennis study to mixed martial arts (Experiment 2). Lifting the foot to kick is a silent act, and therefore there is nothing for a grunt to mask, i.e., its effect on an opponent's response time and/or accuracy can likely be attributed to attentional distraction. Participants viewed videos of a trained mixed martial artist kicking that included, or did not include, a simulated grunt. The task was to determine as quickly as possible whether the kick was traveling upward or downward. Overall, and replicating the tennis finding, the present results indicate that a participant's response to a kick was delayed and more error prone when a simulated grunt was present. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The present findings indicate that simulated grunting may distract an opponent, leading to slower and more error prone responses. The implications for martial arts in particular, and the broader question of whether grunting should be perceived as 'cheating' in sports, are examined.

Abnormal neural hierarchy in processing of verbal information in patients with schizophrenia.

Previous research indicates abnormal comprehension of verbal information in patients with schizophrenia. Yet the neural mechanism underlying the breakdown of verbal information processing in schizophrenia is poorly understood. Imaging studies in healthy populations have shown a network of brain areas involved in hierarchical processing of verbal information over time. Here, we identified critical aspects of this hierarchy, examining patients with schizophrenia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined various levels of information comprehension elicited by naturally presented verbal stimuli; from a set of randomly shuffled words to an intact story. Specifically, patients with first episode schizophrenia (N = 15), their non-manifesting siblings (N = 14) and healthy controls (N = 15) listened to a narrated story and randomly scrambled versions of it. To quantify the degree of dissimilarity between the groups, we adopted an inter-subject correlation (inter-SC) approach, which estimates differences in synchronization of neural responses within and between groups. The temporal topography found in healthy and siblings groups were consistent with our previous findings - high synchronization in responses from early sensory toward high order perceptual and cognitive areas. In patients with schizophrenia, stimuli with short and intermediate temporal scales evoked a typical pattern of reliable responses, whereas story condition (long temporal scale) revealed robust and widespread disruption of the inter-SCs. In addition, the more similar the neural activity of patients with schizophrenia was to the average response in the healthy group, the less severe the positive symptoms of the patients. Our findings suggest that system-level neural indication of abnormal verbal information processing in schizophrenia reflects disease manifestations.

Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Cognitive Styles in High School Students.

The present study investigated object-spatial imagery and verbal cognitive styles in high school students. We analyzed the relationships between cognitive styles, object imagery ability, spatial visualization ability, verbal-logical reasoning ability, and preferred modes of processing math information. Data were collected from 348 students at six high schools in two school districts. Spatial imagery style was not correlated with object imagery style and was negatively correlated with verbal style. Object imagery style did not correlate significantly with any cognitive ability measure, whereas spatial imagery style significantly correlated with object imagery ability, spatial visualization ability, and verbal-logical reasoning ability. Lastly, spatial imagery style and verbal-logical reasoning ability significantly predicted students' preference for efficient visual methods. The results support the cognitive style model, in which visualizers are characterized as two distinct groups who process visual-spatial information and graphic tasks in different ways.

Verbal working memory and reading abilities among students with visual impairment.

AIM: This study investigated the relationship between working memory (WM) and reading abilities among students with visual impairment (VI). Seventy-five students with VI (visually impairment and blindness), aged 10-15 years old participated in the study, of whom 44 were visually impaired and 31 were blind. METHODS: The participants' reading ability was assessed with the standardized reading ability battery Test-A (Padeliadu & Antoniou, 2008) and their verbal working memory ability was assessed with the listening recall task from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (Pickering et al., 2001). RESULTS-IMPLICATIONS: Data analysis indicated a strong correlation between verbal WM and decoding, reading comprehension and overall reading ability among the participants with VI, while no correlation was found between reading fluency and verbal WM. The present study points out the important role of verbal WM in reading among students who are VI and carries implications for the education of those individuals.

Numbers and functional lateralization: A visual half-field and dichotic listening study in proficient bilinguals.

Potential links between language and numbers and the laterality of symbolic number representations in the brain are still debated. Furthermore, reports on bilingual individuals indicate that the language-number interrelationships might be quite complex. Therefore, we carried out a visual half-field (VHF) and dichotic listening (DL) study with action words and different forms of symbolic numbers used as stimuli to test the laterality of word and number processing in single-, dual-language and mixed -task and language- contexts. Experiment 1 (VHF) showed a significant right visual field/left hemispheric advantage in response accuracy for action word, as compared to any form of symbolic number processing. Experiment 2 (DL) revealed a substantially reversed effect - a significant right ear/left hemisphere advantage for arithmetic operations as compared to action word processing, and in response times in single- and dual-language contexts for number vs. action words. All these effects were language independent. Notably, for within-task response accuracy compared across modalities significant differences were found in all studied contexts. Thus, our results go counter to findings showing that action-relevant concepts and words, as well as number words are represented/processed primarily in the left hemisphere. Instead, we found that in the auditory context, following substantial engagement of working memory (here: by arithmetic operations), there is a subsequent functional reorganization of processing single stimuli, whether verbs or numbers. This reorganization - their weakened laterality - at least for response accuracy is not exclusive to processing of numbers, but the number of items to be processed. For response times, except for unpredictable tasks in mixed contexts, the "number problem" is more apparent. These outcomes are highly relevant to difficulties that simultaneous translators encounter when dealing with lengthy auditory material in which single items such as number words (and possibly other types of key words) need to be emphasized. Our results may also shed a new light on the "mathematical savant problem".

Attentional capture by deviant sounds: A noncontingent form of auditory distraction?

The occurrence of an unexpected, infrequent sound in an otherwise homogeneous auditory background tends to disrupt the ongoing cognitive task. This "deviation effect" is typically explained in terms of attentional capture whereby the deviant sound draws attention away from the focal activity, regardless of the nature of this activity. Yet, there is theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting that the attention-capture mechanism underlying this form of distraction could rather be triggered in a task-contingent fashion. The present study aimed at determining whether the auditory deviation effect reflects the action of either a stimulus-driven or a task-contingent orienting mechanism. To do so, we conducted a systematic investigation whereby the impact of verbal deviants-a letter embedded in the repetition of another letter-and spatial deviants-a sound presented contralaterally to the other sounds-on verbal and spatial short-term memory (STM) was assessed. This study established that both verbal and spatial deviants can hinder both verbal and spatial order-reconstruction (Experiment 1) and missing-item tasks (Experiment 2). Such results demonstrate that the deviation effect reflects a general form of auditory distraction as interference took place both within and across domains and regardless of the processes engaged in the focal task. (PsycINFO Database Record

The effect of verbal and imagery-based worry versus distraction on the emotional response to a stressful in-vivo situation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: According to the Contrast Avoidance Model of worry, worrying induces prolonged negative affect and arousal and thereby suppresses sharp shifts in negative affect. The verbal and abstract nature of worry may be responsible for these effects as verbal thinking has been found to lead to less emotional and physiological responding than imagery. The present study was designed to test the Contrast Avoidance Model and to examine the role of verbal vs. imagery-based thinking during worrying.. METHODS: 125 participants were exposed to a social-evaluative stressor. Before the stressor, they were randomized into three different groups (1) verbal worrying about the upcoming stressor, (2) imagery-based worrying, or (3) distraction. Self-reported affect and physiological arousal, as well as heart rate, respiratory sinus arrhythmia and skin conductance level (SCL) were monitored. RESULTS: In line with the Contrast Avoidance Model, worrisome thinking (1) led to immediately increased self-reported negative affect and arousal as well as SCL, but (2) attenuated a further increase in self-reported negative affect and arousal in response to the stressor. No effect of style of worrying (verbal vs. imagery) was found.. LIMITATIONS: Effects were rather small and mostly confined to self-report data. CONCLUSION: By and large, our findings support the Contrast Avoidance Model of worry with regard to self-report measures and extend earlier findings by using an in-vivo stressor. The role of thinking style on the contrast avoidance effect as well as the contrast avoidance effect on physiological measures need to be explored in more detail..

The effect of filled pauses on the processing of the surface form and the establishment of causal connections during the comprehension of spoken expository discourse.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of filled pauses (uh) on the verification of words and the establishment of causal connections during the comprehension of spoken expository discourse. With this aim, we asked Spanish-speaking students to listen to excerpts of interviews with writers, and to perform a word-verification task and a question-answering task on causal connectivity. There were two versions of the excerpts: filled pause present and filled pause absent. Results indicated that filled pauses increased verification times for words that preceded them, but did not make a difference on response times to questions on causal connectivity. The results suggest that, as signals of delay, filled pauses create a break with surface information, but they do not have the same effect on the establishment of meaningful connections.

Autobiographical memory specificity in response to verbal and pictorial cues in clinical depression.

BACKGROUND: Depressed individuals have been consistently shown to exhibit problems in accessing specific memories of events from their past and instead tend to retrieve categorical summaries of events. The majority of studies examining autobiographical memory changes associated with psychopathology have tended to use word cues, but only one study to date has used images (with PTSD patients). OBJECTIVE: to determine if using images to cue autobiographical memories would reduce the memory specificity deficit exhibited by patients with depression in comparison to healthy controls. METHODS: Twenty-five clinically depressed patients and twenty-five healthy controls were assessed on two versions of the autobiographical memory test; cued with emotional words and images. RESULTS: Depressed patients retrieved significantly fewer specific memories, and a greater number of categorical, than did the controls. Controls retrieved a greater proportion of specific memories to images compared to words, whereas depressed patients retrieved a similar proportion of specific memories to both images and words. LIMITATIONS: no information about the presence and severity of past trauma was collected. CONCLUSIONS: results suggest that the overgeneral memory style in depression generalises from verbal to pictorial cues. This is important because retrieval to images may provide a more ecologically valid test of everyday memory experiences than word-cued retrieval..

Negative mental imagery in public speaking anxiety: Forming cognitive resistance by taxing visuospatial working memory.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This study sought to reconcile two lines of research. Previous studies have identified a prevalent and causal role of negative imagery in social phobia and public speaking anxiety; others have demonstrated that lateral eye movements during visualisation of imagery reduce its vividness, most likely by loading the visuospatial sketchpad of working memory. It was hypothesised that using eye movements to reduce the intensity of negative imagery associated with public speaking may reduce anxiety resulting from imagining a public speaking scenario compared to an auditory control task. METHODS: Forty undergraduate students scoring high in anxiety on the Personal Report of Confidence as a Speaker scale took part. A semi-structured interview established an image that represented the participant's public speaking anxiety, which was then visualised during an eye movement task or a matched auditory task. Reactions to imagining a hypothetical but realistic public speaking scenario were measured. RESULTS: As hypothesised, representative imagery was established and reduced in vividness more effectively by the eye movement task than the auditory task. The public speaking scenario was then visualised less vividly and generated less anxiety when imagined after performing the eye movement task than after the auditory task. LIMITATIONS: Self-report measures and a hypothetical scenario rather than actual public speaking were used. Replication is required in larger as well as clinical samples. CONCLUSIONS: Visuospatial working memory tasks may preferentially reduce anxiety associated with personal images of feared events, and thus provide cognitive resistance which reduces emotional reactions to imagined, and potentially real-life future stressful experiences.