Not just emotion regulation, but cognition: An experience sampling study testing the relations of ecological interpretation biases and use of emotion regulation strategies with momentary affective states during daily life functioning.

BACKGROUND: Current research is moving from studying cognitive biases and maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) as relatively stable phenomena contributing to affective disturbances, adopting ecological methodologies, such as Experience Sampling Methods (ESM). However, there is still limited ESM evidence on the interactions between stress and ER strategies' use, and negative interpretation biases, regarding their relations with momentary affective states. In this study, we used a new ESM design to disentangle the contextual, regulatory and cognitive processes implicated in daily affective experiences. METHOD: A sample of 103 participants completed an ESM study (3 times a day for 10 days) that included self-reports of momentary affect, stress intensity, ER strategies' use and a cognitive task measuring momentary negative interpretation biases. RESULTS: Multilevel analyses supported significant interactions of both rumination and worry with stress intensity, to account for momentary higher negative and lower positive affect levels. Furthermore, higher state negative interpretation bias levels uniquely predicted both higher negative and lower positive momentary affect levels. CONCLUSION: This study implemented a novel online cognitive task within an ESM procedure, which helped to disentangle how contextual ER strategies' use and momentary cognitive biases uniquely relate to affective experiences in daily life.

An integrative analysis of potential mechanisms of reduced positive affect in daily life in depression: an ESM study.

Decreased levels of positive affect (PA) are a hallmark of depression. Current models propose as potential main mechanisms a dysfunctional use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies (i.e. dampening, positive rumination), and a maladaptive activation of pro-hedonic goals. However, the role of these mechanisms in PA in daily life remains understudied. We used a 10-day ESM design to assess how these mechanisms influence each other and contribute to depressive symptomatology-related low momentary PA in 139 individuals. Higher depressive symptoms were associated with lower PA, pro-hedonic goals, more frequent use of positive rumination, and higher use of dampening. Further, experiencing higher levels of PA predicted lower following time point use of dampening in individuals with higher symptoms. Finally, using positive rumination was more beneficial (i.e. predicted higher PA increases one moment later) for individuals with higher symptomatology. Our findings suggest that moment-to-moment changes in PA daily life are affected by, and have an effect on, both pro-hedonic goals and the use of dampening and positive rumination, highlighting specific cognitive-affective mechanisms that should be considered when designing interventions aimed at improving low PA characterising depression symptomatology.

Online Contingent Attention Training (OCAT): transfer effects to cognitive biases, rumination, and anxiety symptoms from two proof-of-principle studies.

The aim of the present research was to develop and test the efficacy of a novel online contingent attention training (i.e., OCAT) to modify attention and interpretation biases, improve emotion regulation, and reduce emotional symptom levels in the face of major stressors. Two proof-of-principle studies were carried out. In study 1, 64 undergraduates who were about to start a major stressful period (i.e., final exams) were randomized to undergo 10 days of active OCAT or a sham-control training. Emotion regulation (habitual use of rumination and reappraisal) and symptom levels (depression and anxiety) were assessed before and after the intervention. In study 2, the same 2 × 2 mixed design was used with 58 individuals from the general population undergoing a major stressful situation (the lockdown period at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020). In both studies, the OCAT group showed significant improvements on attention towards negative information and interpretation biases in comparison to the sham-control group. Additionally, changes in cognitive biases transferred to reductions of participants' use of rumination and anxiety symptom levels. These results show preliminary evidence regarding the efficacy of the OCAT to target attention and interpretation biases as well as to improve emotion regulation processes and to buffer against the effects of major stressors.

Moment-to-Moment Interplay Among Stress Appraisals and Emotion Regulation Flexibility in Daily Life.

Flexible use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies in daily life is theorized to depend on appraisals of occurring stressful events. Yet, to date, little is known about (a) how appraisals of the current situation modulate the use of ER strategies in daily life and (b) how individual differences in affective symptoms impact these relations among appraisals and ER strategy use. This study attempted to address these two limitations using a 5-day experience sampling protocol, with three surveys administered per day in a sample of 97 participants. Each survey measured momentary appraisals of stress intensity and controllability as well as ER strategy use (i.e., rumination, reappraisal, avoidance, and active coping). Results showed that, in situations of low-stress intensity, higher stress controllability was related to greater use of reappraisal and rumination. In situations of high-stress intensity, higher controllability was related to reduced use of rumination. This pattern of flexible use of ER strategies depending on momentary stress appraisals was found for both rumination and avoidance and occurred specifically in individuals reporting lower levels of depression and/or anxiety levels. These findings provide new insight into how flexible use of ER strategies in daily life is modulated by interactions between stress intensity and controllability appraisals at varying levels of affective symptoms. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00122-9.

Relations between emotion regulation strategies and affect in daily life: A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies using ecological momentary assessments.

Emotion regulation (ER) is a central target in the study of psychological and neurobiological processes of emotions for numerous psychological disorders. Ecological momentary assessments, overcoming retrospective self-reports, allow a better understanding of the relation between the use of ER strategies and daily life affective experiences. A systematic review and meta-analyses of studies testing these relations through experience sampling methods (ESM) and daily diaries were conducted. ESM studies showed significant large effect sizes in contemporaneous relations between negative affect (NA) and rumination, suppression, and worry, and in both contemporaneous and prospective relations between positive affect (PA) and reappraisal; medium effect sizes in prospective relations between NA and rumination, and PA and distraction; and a small effect size in the prospective relation between NA and suppression. Daily diary studies showed significant large effect sizes in contemporaneous relations between NA and rumination and suppression, and in both contemporaneous and prospective relations between PA and reappraisal; medium effect sizes in contemporaneous relations between PA and acceptance, and problem-solving; and a small effect size in the prospective relation between NA and reappraisal. These findings shed light on the temporal relations between the use of ER strategies and affective experiences and highlight conceptual and methodological limitations in the field.

A Novel Experience Sampling Method Tool Integrating Momentary Assessments of Cognitive Biases: Two Compliance, Usability, and Measurement Reactivity Studies.

BACKGROUND: Experience sampling methods (ESMs) are increasingly being used to study ecological emotion dynamics in daily functioning through repeated assessments taken over several days. However, most of these ESM approaches are only based on self-report assessments, and therefore, studies on the ecological trajectories of their underlying mechanisms are scarce (ie, cognitive biases) and require evaluation through experimental tasks. We developed a novel ESM tool that integrates self-report measures of emotion and emotion regulation with a previously validated app-based cognitive task that allows for the assessment of underlying mechanisms during daily functioning. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study is to test this new tool and study its usability and the possible factors related to compliance with it in terms of latency and missing responses. Among the compliance predictors, we considered psychological and time-related variables, as well as usability, measurement reactivity, and participants' satisfaction with the tool. METHODS: We conducted 2 extensive ESM studies-study 1 (N=84; a total of 3 assessments per day for 5 days) and study 2 (N=135; a total of 3 assessments per day for 10 days). RESULTS: In both studies, participants found the tool highly usable (average usability score >81). By using mixed regression models, we found both common and specific results for the compliance predictors. In both study 1 and study 2, latency was significantly predicted by the day (P<.001 and P=.003, respectively). Participants showed slower responses to the notification as the days of the study progressed. In study 2 but not in study 1, latency was further predicted by individual differences in overload with the use of the app, and missing responses were accounted for by individual differences in stress reactivity to notifications (P=.04). Thus, by using a more extensive design, participants who experienced higher overload during the study were characterized by slower responses to notifications (P=.01), whereas those who experienced higher stress reactivity to the notification system were characterized by higher missing responses. CONCLUSIONS: The new tool had high levels of usability. Furthermore, the study of compliance is of enormous importance when implementing novel ESM methods, including app-based cognitive tasks. The main predictors of latency and missing responses found across studies, specifically when using extensive ESM protocols (study 2), are methodology-related variables. Future research that integrates cognitive tasks in ESM designs should take these results into consideration by performing accurate estimations of participants' response rates to facilitate the optimal quality of novel eHealth approaches, as in this study.

Distinct Effects of Anxiety and Depression on Updating Emotional Information in Working Memory.

Anxiety and depression have been shown to negatively influence the processing of emotional information in working memory. However, most studies have examined anxiety-related or depression-related working memory deficits independently, without considering their high co-morbidity. We tested the effects of emotional valence on working memory performance among healthy young adults with varying levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Ninety young adults aged between 18-24 (51 female) completed an emotional 2-back task in which positive, negative, and neutral images were presented. Multi-level modeling was used to examine anxiety and depressive symptoms as predictors of response accuracy and latency across the three emotional valence conditions. The results showed that participants responded to negative images with the highest accuracy and to positive images with the lowest accuracy. Both negative and positive images elicited slower responses than neutral images. Importantly, we found that more severe anxiety symptoms predicted a smaller difference in response accuracy between negative and neutral stimuli, whereas more severe depressive symptoms predicted a larger updating reaction time difference between positive and neutral stimuli. These findings demonstrated the uniquely anxiety-related deficits in processing negative contents and the uniquely depression-related deficits in updating positive contents in working memory, thus highlighting the necessity of novel cognitive bias modification interventions targeting the anxiety-specific and depression-specific deficits in working memory.

An Online Assessment to Evaluate the Role of Cognitive Biases and Emotion Regulation Strategies for Mental Health During the COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020: Structural Equation Modeling Study.

BACKGROUND: Extant research supports causal roles of cognitive biases in stress regulation under experimental conditions. However, their contribution to psychological adjustment in the face of ecological major stressors has been largely unstudied. OBJECTIVE: We developed a novel online method for the ecological examination of attention and interpretation biases during major stress (ie, the COVID-19 lockdown in March/April 2020) and tested their relations with the use of emotion regulation strategies (ie, reappraisal and rumination) to account for individual differences in psychological adjustment to major COVID-19-related stressors (ie, low depression and anxiety, and high well-being and resilience). METHODS: Participants completed an online protocol evaluating the psychological impact of COVID-19-related stressors and the use of emotion regulation strategies in response to them, during the initial weeks of the lockdown of March/April 2020. They also completed a new online cognitive task designed to remotely assess attention and interpretation biases for negative information. The psychometric properties of the online cognitive bias assessments were very good, supporting their feasibility for ecological evaluation. RESULTS: Structural equation models showed that negative interpretation bias was a direct predictor of worst psychological adjustment (higher depression and anxiety, and lower well-being and resilience; χ29=7.57; root mean square error of approximation=0.000). Further, rumination mediated the influence of interpretation bias in anxiety (P=.045; 95% CI 0.03-3.25) and resilience (P=.001; 95% CI -6.34 to -1.65), whereas reappraisal acted as a mediator of the influence of both attention (P=.047; 95% CI -38.71 to -0.16) and interpretation biases (P=.04; 95% CI -5.25 to -0.12) in well-being. CONCLUSIONS: This research highlights the relevance of individual processes of attention and interpretation during periods of adversity and identifies modifiable protective factors that can be targeted through online interventions.

Attentional biases in dysphoria when happy and sad faces are simultaneously presented.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Difficulties to engage attention to positive stimuli and to disengage attention from negative stimuli are typically found in depression. Yet, most of the evidence supporting these attentional biases comes from experimental paradigms in which emotional information (e.g., happy or sad faces) is simultaneously presented with neutral information. Few studies have explored attentional biases when emotional stimuli of different valence are presented simultaneously. The aim of the present study was to assess visual scan patterns of non-dysphoric and dysphoric participants when emotional information is presented simultaneously. METHOD: Using an eye-tracker methodology, the gradient relation between attentional biases and depression scores as well as differences between groups in their attentional performance were assessed in non-dysphoric participants (N = 84) and dysphoric participants (N = 58). Three different pairs of faces were used: happy-neutral, neutral-sad, and happy-sad. RESULTS: First, we found that simultaneous presentation of emotional information (i.e., happy vs. negative faces) reduces the magnitude of attentional biases towards positive information. Second, we also found a significant negative relation between attentional biases towards positive information and depression scores. Finally, compared to non-dysphoric participants, dysphoric individuals marginally spent less time attending positive information in both happy-neutral and happy-sad trials. LIMITATIONS: The cross-sectional nature of our study does not allow us to make inferences about causality. Further, only one type of simultaneous emotional faces presentation (i.e., happy-sad) was used. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the need for further research on the processing of competing emotional stimuli in depression.