The association between trait mindfulness and sleep problems: A three-level meta-analysis.

Trait mindfulness has shown potential in relieving the symptoms related to sleep problems, but the relationship between trait mindfulness and sleep problems varies across studies. To explore this association and obtain reliable estimates, a three-level meta-analysis was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach. A comprehensive literature search identified 86 studies involving 87 independent samples and 35,521 participants. A total of 441 effect sizes were analyzed. The study indicated a negative association between trait mindfulness and sleep problems. Furthermore, the meta-analysis revealed significant moderating effects of study design, mindfulness facets, and measurement for trait mindfulness on this relationship. This study suggests that trait mindfulness is closely related to the alleviation of sleep problems. Furthermore, trait mindfulness is vital important in strengthening prevention and intervention measures targeting individuals' sleep problems.

The Association Between Child Abuse and Internet Addiction: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis.

Child abuse is an important factor for Internet addiction. Despite numerous researches had observed there was a positive correlation between child abuse and Internet addiction, the strength of this association differed considerably in the previous studies. This study aims to obtain reliable estimates for effect sizes and investigate the potential moderator of the association between child abuse and Internet addiction. Thirty-one studies reported the association between child abuse and Internet addiction (273 effect sizes and 55,585 participants) through a systematic literature search. Based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis approach, a three-level model was employed to conduct a three-level meta-analysis. The current meta-analysis found that child abuse was significantly positively correlated with Internet addiction. Besides, the study found that the type of child abuse and publication year had significant moderating effects on the association between child abuse and Internet addiction. This study suggested child abuse was a risk factor for Internet addiction. Moreover, child abuse is an essential factor should be considered when strengthening interventions for individuals' Internet addiction.

The association between academic stress and test anxiety in college students: The mediating role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and the moderating role of parental expectations.

Academic stress has been showed to be an important factor associated with test anxiety. However, the internal mechanism between them is still not clear. The purpose of this study was to explore whether the relationship between academic stress and test anxiety was affected by parental expectations and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. This study recruited 1,315 volunteers aged 17-25 to complete self-reports on academic stress, parental expectations, regulatory emotional self-efficacy and test anxiety. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between academic stress and test anxiety. Additionally, parental expectations were negatively correlated with academic stress but positively correlated with regulatory emotional self-efficacy, and regulatory emotional self-efficacy was negatively correlated with academic stress and test anxiety. The results showed that regulatory emotional self-efficacy played a mediating role in academic stress and test anxiety, and the relationship between academic stress and regulatory emotional self-efficacy was moderated by parental expectations, which indicated that parental expectations and regulatory emotional self-efficacy may play an important role in the relationship between academic stress and test anxiety.

The association between callous-unemotional traits and suicide ideation among youth: A conditional process analysis.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between callous-unemotional (CU) traits (the affective facet of psychopathy and the psychopathy that occurs during childhood and adolescence) and suicide ideation (SI) remains unclear. The mechanisms underlying this association still have a gap in the literature. The aims of this study were to determine whether and how callous-unemotional traits were associated with suicide ideation, and to evaluate the mediating effect of negative affect (includes irritability, depression, and anxiety) and the moderating effect of future orientation on the association. METHODS: Data were extracted from a longitudinal study involving middle and high school students, with 1,913 students (55.3% girls) aged 11 to 19 years (14.9 ± 1.6 years) completing a self-reported online survey. The conditional process analysis was examined using Mplus 8.3. RESULTS: We found that callous-unemotional traits positively predicted youths' current suicide ideation, with the observed positive relationship partly mediated by negative affect. However, callous-unemotional traits did not predict the worst-point suicide ideation, which indicated the connection fully mediated by negative affect. Furthermore, future orientation moderated these indirect effects. LIMITATIONS: Use of self-report measures and cross-sectional design. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provided evidence for current debates and conflicting conclusions, and set the foundation for future research, as well as implied the important intervention goals for reducing suicide ideation in youth.

The Association between Parental Attachment and Youth Suicidal Ideation: A Three-Level Meta-analysis.

Youth suicidal ideation is regarded as a serious psychological problem that hinders their mental health development. Parental attachment is considered a critical factor linked with youth suicidal ideation, but existing findings are still inconsistent. The present study was based on the PRISMA method; it employed a three-level meta-analysis to obtain reliable estimates of effect size and examined a range of moderators (sample, publication, outcome). Through the retrieval of articles published before November 2020, a systematic search yielded 31 independent studies (N = 12848) from which 109 effect sizes could be extracted. The present meta-analysis revealed a significant negative correlation between parental attachment and youth suicidal ideation (r = -0.108, p < 0.001), implying that youths show a higher level of suicidal ideation when they experienced lower quality of parental attachment. Moreover, the overall association was influenced by different parental attachment patterns. More specifically, youth suicidal ideation was more strongly associated with parental alienation (r = 0.501, p < 0.001) than with parental communication (r = -0.173, p < 0.001). The moderator analyses also showed that the type of instrument used was a significant moderator of the association between parental attachment and youth suicidal ideation. The strength of the overall association was significantly stronger when measured with the IPPA (Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment) (r = -0.181, p = 0.003) than with the ECR (Experiences in Close Relationships) (r = 0.085, p = 0.003). These results indicate that assessing parental attachment is important in strengthening interventions that target suicidal ideation among youths.HIGHLIGHTSOur analysis revealed a significant negative association between parental attachment and youth.Specifically, the presence of a secure relationship with parents, as perceived by the youth, brings forth feelings of appreciation, acceptance, safety, and confidence, that predispose the individual to seek help in a more consistent manner and to resist to maladjusted behavior when faced with adversity. However, a low quality of attachment produces cognitions associated with perceived burdensomeness and failed belongingness, which increase a youth's vulnerability to suicidal ideation.The parental attachment pattern showed a significant moderating effect on the association between parental attachment and youth suicidal ideation.Regarding the association between parental attachment and youth suicidal ideation, we observed that the manner in which parental attachment is measured is another moderating effect.

Direct and Indirect Paths between Parental Marital Conflict and Children's Sibling Conflict in Chinese Families.

Links between parental marital conflict and children's sibling conflict have been well examined; however, the underlying mechanism of this link needs to be further studied. This study investigated the mediating role of parental intervention styles (i.e. child-centered strategies, control strategies, and nonintervention strategies) and children's control behavior toward their sibling between parental marital conflict and children's sibling conflict. We recruited 689 Chinese children (53.7% girls) aged 8-13 years to participate in the study. Results indicated that parental marital conflict, control strategies, nonintervention strategies, and children's control behavior toward sibling were positively associated with sibling conflict among children. Child-centered strategies were negatively correlated with children's sibling conflict. Furthermore, control and nonintervention strategies of parents and control behavior of children toward sibling simultaneously partially mediated between parental marital and child-sibling conflict. The mediating role of child-centered strategies was not significant. These findings suggest that parental strategies of control and nonintervention and children's control behavior toward their sibling may increase the risk of sibling conflict among children after repeated exposure to parental marital conflict. In contrast, child-centered strategies may be a protective factor for children regarding sibling conflict. Current findings confirm the combined effects of parent and child behavior on child-sibling conflict. They also help parents deal with sibling conflict among their children and promote more positive relationships among siblings.

The Association Between Child Abuse and Aggressive Behavior: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis.

Child abuse is considered to be an essential factor in the development of aggressive behavior. The intensity of the positive relations between child abuse and aggressive behavior differed considerably among researches despite the fact that abundant studies have observed this relation. According to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, a three-level meta-analysis was employed to obtain reliable estimates for the sizes of effects and investigate some potential moderators of the relation between child abuse and aggressive behavior. The present study obtained 51 studies (30,566 participants; 680 effect sizes) through performing the detailed literature search. It was found that child abuse was positively associated with aggressive behavior in the current study. In addition, the present meta-analysis observed significant moderating effects for type of child abuse, culture, measurement of child abuse, and publication year in the association between child abuse and aggressive behavior. This study suggests that child abuse is a predictor for the development of aggressive behavior in humans. Moreover, child abuse is an important aspect for consideration in efforts toward strengthening of interventions targeting individuals' aggressive behavior.

Parental Psychological Control and Addiction Behaviors in Smartphone and Internet: The Mediating Role of Shyness among Adolescents.

Parental psychological control has been found to be a vital familial factor that is closely related to adolescents' addiction behaviors with regard to smartphones and the internet. However, the underlying mechanisms of these associations are less clear. The aim of the present study was to examine whether shyness mediated the relationships between parental psychological control and these two addiction behaviors. A positivist paradigm was used in the present study. The questionnaires (parental psychological control, shyness, and smartphone and internet addiction questionnaires) were used to collect data from a sample of 1857 Chinese adolescents (961 female, 896 male) in junior and senior middle schools. Descriptive statistics as well as correlation and mediation tests were employed to analyze the data. We observed that adolescents with siblings showed a higher level of internet addiction than those with no siblings. Moreover, three dimensions of parental psychological control were positively associated with addiction behaviors. The following analyses displayed that the correlation between authority assertion and smartphone addiction was greater than that between authority assertion and internet addiction. Subsequently, shyness was significantly positively related to parental psychological control and addiction behaviors. Importantly, we found that the relations between the three dimensions of parental psychological control and the addiction behaviors concerning smartphones and the internet were partially mediated by shyness. This study contributes to our understanding of how parental psychological control predicts high levels of adolescents' addiction behaviors surrounding smartphones and the internet.

The recognition of dynamic-emotional faces in individuals with high and low social anxiety: An ERP study.

Individuals with high social anxiety (HSA) show abnormal processing of emotional faces, which may increase their social anxiety. A growing number of event-related potential (ERP) studies have explored the neural mechanisms underlying the static-emotional face processing of HSA individuals. In view of the ecological validity of dynamic faces, this study will further explore the time course of dynamic-emotional face processing in individuals with HSA. To this end, 30 high and 30 low social anxiety (LSA) participants were asked to perform an identification task of dynamic-emotional faces while their brain responses were recorded using an ERP technique. The behavioral results showed the recognition accuracy of dynamic faces was higher than static faces when these faces were happy. For the P100 component, HSA participants showed higher P100 mean amplitudes of dynamic than static faces in the left hemisphere when they viewed happy, but not angry faces. In addition, increased N170 mean amplitudes of dynamic-happy faces were showed. Furthermore, the LPP mean amplitudes of dynamic faces were smaller than those of static faces. In sum, this study could provide a better understanding of the time course of dynamic-emotional face processing in HSA individuals.

The Association between Interparental Conflict and Youth Anxiety: A Three-level Meta-analysis.

Anxiety in youth has been found to be a risk factor for the development of psychological problems and psychiatric symptoms in adulthood. Interparental conflict is considered an important factor in the emergence of symptoms of youth anxiety because conflicts between parents negatively affect parent-child and sibling relationships. Whereas some meta-analyses have investigated the association between interparental conflict and youth anxiety, the exact roles of certain moderators in this association are still not fully clear. Based on the PRISMA method, the present study used a three-level meta-analysis to obtain reliable estimates of effect sizes and examined a range of moderators (sample, publication, study design and outcome, and assessment characteristics). After a systematic search for articles published before September 2020, the present study identified 38 studies, with 12,380 young people and 222 effect sizes. The analysis revealed a significant positive association between interparental conflict and youth anxiety. Moreover, the present study found a significant moderating effect of interparental conflict variable. More specifically, youth anxiety was more strongly associated with parents' use of overt conflict style than with their use of cooperative conflict style. Study design was also found to be a significant moderator of the association between interparental conflict and youth anxiety. This association was smaller in longitudinal than in cross-sectional studies. Finally, the present results demonstrated that informant of interparental conflict was a significant moderator. A stronger correlation between these two variables was found when interparental conflict was reported by children than by parents. The results support the growing consensus that interparental conflict should be addressed when treating youth anxiety.

Intranasal oxytocin attenuates insula activity in response to dynamic angry faces.

The effects of intranasal oxytocin on amygdala activity during emotional perception are often mixed. Given that the brain is organized into networks of interconnected areas, functional connectivity might provide an effective way to further understand the oxytocin effect. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether oxytocin administration affects amygdala activity and its functional connectivity during dynamic facial expression perception. Using a between-group, double-blind, placebo-controlled design, 55 participants were randomly assigned to groups receiving a single dose of 24 IU oxytocin or a placebo via intranasal administration. An implicit emotional task was employed to investigate the effect of oxytocin on neural responses to dynamic angry, neutral, and happy facial expressions with fMRI. Participants were instructed to respond only when the inverted dynamic faces were presented. The results indicated that oxytocin attenuated activation of insula and emotional processing-related regions (e.g., ACC, thalamus, and MFG) during the viewing of dynamic angry faces. However, functional connectivity between the regions involved in the perception of dynamic angry faces was not changed following oxytocin administration. The present findings may contribute to our understanding of the anxiolytic effects of oxytocin and eventually facilitate human clinical applications.

Emotional face prediction in rejection sensitive individuals: Evidence from event-related potentials.

Human beings live in an uncertain world, but they continuously generate top-down predictions about emotional face information of other people around them. Although the prediction processing has repeatedly been investigated in the literature of prediction, little is known about the impact of rejection sensitive (RS) on individuals' emotional face prediction. To this end, high and low RS participants were asked to perform an identification task of emotional faces in which target faces were shown in either an angry or happy expression while their brain responses were recorded using an event-related potential (ERP) technique. The behavioral results suggested an effect of emotional face prediction. For the P100 component, low RS participants showed longer P100 peak latencies in the left than right hemisphere when they viewed predictable emotional faces. In addition, low RS participants showed larger N170 mean amplitudes for angry compared to happy faces when they perceived unpredictable faces, but not when these faces were predictable. This presumably reflected a sensibility to angry faces in the unpredictable trails. Interestingly, high RS participants did not demonstrate such a N170 difference, suggesting that high RS participants showed a reduced sensitivity to unpredictable angry faces. Furthermore, angry faces triggered increased LPP mean amplitudes compared to happy faces, which was consistent with the results of other ERP studies examining the processing of emotional faces. Finally, we observed significant negative correlations between behavioral and ERP prediction effect, indicating one consistency between the behavioral and electrophysiological data.

Superhydrophobic and superaerophilic hierarchical Pt@MIL-101/PVDF composite for hydrogen water isotope exchange reactions.

A hierarchical porous composite of Pt@MIL-101/ployvinylidene fluoride (Pt@MIL-101/PVDF) was successfully prepared through a solution-processed method. This composite possesses advanced superhydrophobic and superaerophilic performance which makes it a promising catalyst facilitating liquid phase catalytic exchange techniques (LPCE) in hydrogen-water isotope exchange process. Its superhydrophobic property results in the repellence of water drops from flooding the catalytic surface with a relatively large contact angle in the exchange reaction, and its superaerophilic surface broke hydrogen bubbles into thin film so as to reach higher catalytic reactive efficiency. High reactivity and long-term stability in the reaction process can also be achieved by the configuration of mesoporous cages of MIL-101 confining Pt nanoparticles and preventing them from sintering.

The Perception of Facial Emotional Change in Social Anxiety: An ERP Study.

Social anxiety is one of the psychological symptoms that most commonly occur in social interaction. Although previous behavioral studies have investigated the neutral-angry facial emotion change in social anxiety, none of the previous studies have, however, directly investigated the angry-neutral facial emotional change. Furthermore, less is known about the neural correlates of the facial emotion changes in individuals with social anxiety. The main goal of the present study was to explore the perception of facial emotional changes in individuals with social anxiety, using high temporal resolution event-related potential techniques. Behaviorally, accuracy in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trail was lower than that in the neutral-neutral case. Neurally, we found that the N170 amplitudes in angry-neutral facial emotional change trial were larger than those in the neutral-neutral case for high social anxiety (HAS) participants, probably reflecting that they might engage in more analytical processing of different facial elements. Interestingly, HSA participants showed smaller P200 left hemisphere amplitudes in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trial when compared with the neutral-neutral case, which suggested that they might have difficulties in processing emotions when they encounter these facial emotional changes. Finally, the late positive potential amplitudes in the neutral-angry and angry-neutral facial emotional change trials were smaller than those in the neutral-neutral case, regardless of the social anxiety. These results suggest that social anxiety influences the facial emotional changes mainly at an earlier stage of processing.

Behavioral inhibition system and self-esteem as mediators between shyness and social anxiety.

Shyness has been demonstrated to be an important factor associating with social anxiety. However, it is less clear on the mechanisms responsible for such association. The aim of the present study was to examine whether behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and self-esteem mediated the relationship between shyness and social anxiety. A sample of 521 healthy volunteers in the age range of 18-25 years completed self-report measures of BIS, self-esteem, shyness and social anxiety. Our correlational analyses showed that shyness was positively associated with social anxiety, supporting the overlapping and continuum hypotheses. Furthermore, BIS was positively correlated with shyness and social anxiety while self-esteem was negatively related to them, indicating that BIS and self-esteem were different in the relation between shyness and social anxiety. Importantly, results from structural equation modeling revealed that the relation between shyness and social anxiety was partially mediated by BIS and self-esteem, which suggested that they might play important roles in the relation between shyness and social anxiety.

Brain correlates of adult attachment style: A voxel-based morphometry study.

Evidence from human and animal studies has shown that experiences of early attachment can influence brain development and structure. Adult attachment style develops from early attachment experiences. However, little is known about the relationship between gray matter volume and attachment style. Further, the structural bases of sex-related differences in adult attachment styles remain unknown. We used voxel-based morphometry to investigate the neuroanatomical basis underlying adult attachment styles and the structural basis of sex-related differences in adult attachment styles. Participants were 106 healthy young adults (57 women and 49 men; age, 20.8 ±â€¯1.55 years). Negative correlations were found between attachment avoidance and the volumes of the left middle temporal gyrus and the right parahippocampal gyrus, and between attachment anxiety and the right ventral anterior cingulate volume. Further analysis revealed that attachment avoidance was negatively correlated with the volume of the right middle occipital gyrus in women, but the inverse correlation was found in men. These findings suggest that differences in adult attachment styles are correlated with structural brain differences in adulthood, and that sex-related differences in adult attachment styles are associated with intrinsic structural brain differences involved in visual processing. These findings may improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of attachment-related disorder.

The neural correlates of attachment style during emotional processing: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.

Attachment style is a relatively stable trait linked to emotion regulation and coping as measured by questionnaire responses. An increasing number of functional brain imaging studies have explored the neural underpinnings of attachment style during emotional processing. However, until now, an overall picture of brain regions involved in this trait remained unexplored. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of 12 peer-reviewed studies on attachment style using activation likelihood estimation (ALE) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We observed a significant negative correlation between avoidance attachment scores and activation of left inferior frontal gyrus to emotional stimuli, implying an inhibition processing for emotional stimuli in people with high avoidance attachment. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between anxiety attachment scores and activation of left amygdala during emotional processing, which suggested an increased vigilance to emotional stimuli.

Adult Attachment Affects Neural Response to Preference-Inferring in Ambiguous Scenarios: Evidence From an fMRI Study.

Humans are highly social animals, and the ability to cater to the preferences of other individuals is encouraged by society. Preference-inferring is an important aspect of the theory of mind (TOM). Many previous studies have shown that attachment style is closely related to TOM ability. However, little is known about the effects of adult attachment style on preferences inferring under different levels of certainty. Here, we investigated how adult attachment style affects neural activity underlying preferences inferred under different levels of certainty by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI results demonstrated that adult attachment influenced the activation of anterior insula (AI) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in response to ambiguous preference-inferring. More specifically, in the ambiguous preference condition, the avoidant attached groups exhibited a significantly enhanced activation than secure and anxious attached groups in left IPL; the anxious attached groups exhibited a significantly reduced activation secure attached group in left IPL. In addition, the anxious attached groups exhibited a significantly reduced activation than secure and avoidant attached groups in left AI. These results were also further confirmed by the subsequent PPI analysis. The results from current study suggest that, under ambiguous situations, the avoidant attached individuals show lower sensitivity to the preference of other individuals and need to invest more cognitive resources for preference-reasoning; while compared with avoidant attached group, the anxious attached individuals express high tolerance for uncertainty and a higher ToM proficiency. Results from the current study imply that differences in preference-inferring under ambiguous conditions associated with different levels of individual attachment may explain the differences in interpersonal interaction.

Emotional prediction: An ALE meta-analysis and MACM analysis.

The prediction of emotion has been explored in a variety of functional brain imaging and neurophysiological studies. However, an overall picture of the areas involved this process remains unexploited. Here, we quantitatively summarized the published literature on emotional prediction using activation likelihood estimation (ALE) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Furthermore, the current study employed a meta-analytic connectivity modeling (MACM) to map the meta-analytic coactivation maps of regions of interest (ROIs). Our ALE analysis revealed significant convergent activations in some vital brain areas involved in emotional prediction, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). For the MACM analysis, we identified that the DLPFC, VLPFC and OFC were the core areas in the coactivation network of emotional prediction. Overall, the results of ALE and MACM indicated that prefrontal brain areas play critical roles in emotional prediction.

The Impact of Top-Down Prediction on Emotional Face Processing in Social Anxiety.

There is evidence that people with social anxiety show abnormal processing of emotional faces. To investigate the impact of top-down prediction on emotional face processing in social anxiety, brain responses of participants with high and low social anxiety (LSA) were recorded, while they performed a variation of the emotional task, using high temporal resolution event-related potential techniques. Behaviorally, we reported an effect of prediction with higher accuracy for predictable than unpredictable faces. Furthermore, we found that participants with high social anxiety (HSA), but not with LSA, recognized angry faces more accurately than happy faces. For the P100 and P200 components, HSA participants showed enhanced brain activity for angry faces compared to happy faces, suggesting a hypervigilance to angry faces. Importantly, HSA participants exhibited larger N170 amplitudes in the right hemisphere electrodes than LSA participants when they observed unpredictable angry faces, but not when the angry faces were predictable. This probably reflects the top-down prediction improving the deficiency at building a holistic face representation in HSA participants.