Differentiating neural sensitivity and bias during face-emotion processing in youth: a computational approach.

The ability to interpret face-emotion displays is critical for the development of adaptive social interactions. Using a novel variant of a computational model and fMRI data, we examined behavioral and neural associations between two metrics of face-emotion labeling (sensitivity and bias) and age in youth. Youth and adults (n = 44, M age = 20.02, s.d. = 7.44, range = 8-36) completed an explicit face-emotion labeling fMRI task including happy to angry morphed face emotions. A drift-diffusion model was applied to choice and reaction time distributions to examine sensitivity and bias in interpreting face emotions. Model fit and reliability of parameters were assessed on adult data (n = 42). Linear and quadratic slopes modeled brain activity associated with dimensions of face-emotion valence and ambiguity during interpretation. Behaviorally, age was associated with sensitivity. The bilateral anterior insula exhibited a more pronounced neural response to ambiguity with older age. Associations between sensitivity and bias metrics and activation patterns indicated that systems encoding face-emotion valence and ambiguity both contribute to the ability to discriminate face emotions. The current study provides evidence for age-related improvement in perceptual sensitivity to facial affect across adolescence and young adulthood.

Parent Behaviors as Predictors of Preadolescent Appraisal and Coping.

Preadolescent appraisal and coping are significant predictors of youth psychopathology. However, little research examines how parenting behaviors relate to the development of these skills by forming a key context in which children learn to manage stressors. This study examined how observed maternal and paternal behaviors derived from a parent-child interaction task relate to levels of and growth in child appraisal (threat, positive) and coping (active, avoidant) across three years in preadolescence (n = 214, ages 8-12 years old at Time 1). Greater maternal warmth predicted lower threat appraisal and avoidant coping, and greater maternal negativity predicted greater increases in avoidance. Increased paternal warmth predicted lower initial levels of threat appraisal. Boys showed less growth in active coping than girls. These findings suggest parenting behaviors relate to preadolescents' utilization of maladaptive coping strategies such as avoidance and may be important intervention targets for supporting youth managing stressors.

Pre-COVID-19 predictors of low-income women's COVID-19 appraisal, coping, and changes in mental health during the pandemic.

Study examined predictors and mental health consequences of appraisal (threat, support satisfaction) and coping (active, avoidant) in a sample of low-income women during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Pre-COVID-19 contextual risk and individual resources and COVID-19-specific risk factors were examined as predictors of COVID-19 appraisal and coping, which, in turn, were tested as predictors of changes in depression and anxiety across the pandemic. Pre-COVID-19 resilience predicted more active coping, whereas pre-COVID-19 anxiety and depression predicted more avoidant coping and lower support satisfaction, respectively. Increases in anxiety were predicted by lower pre-COVID-19 self-compassion and higher concurrent threat appraisal and avoidant coping. Increases in depression were related to lower pre-COVID-19 self-compassion, active coping and support satisfaction, and higher COVID-19 hardships and health risk. Findings highlight contextual and individual factors and processes that contribute to mental health problems in a vulnerable population during community-level stressors, with implications for prevention and intervention.

The uncinate fasciculus in individuals with and at risk for bipolar disorder: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental disorder, characterized by prominent mood swings and emotion regulation (ER) deficits. The uncinate fasciculus (UF), a white matter tract connecting the amygdala and the ventral prefrontal cortex, has been implicated in ER. Aberrancies in UF microstructure may be an endophenotype associated with increased risk for BD. However, studies in individuals with BD and their first-degree relatives (REL) have yielded inconsistent findings. This meta-analysis takes a region-of-interest approach to consolidate the available evidence and elucidate the role of the UF in the risk-architecture of BD. METHODS: Using web-based search engines, we identified diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies focusing on the left and right UF and conducted meta-analyses comparing fractional anisotropy (FA) and radial diffusivity (RD) between BD or REL and healthy control participants (HC). RESULTS: We included 32 studies (nBD=1186, nREL=289, nHC=2315). Compared to HC, individuals with BD showed lower FA in the right (WMD=-0.31, p<0.0001) and left UF (WMD=-0.21, p = 0.010), and higher RD in the right UF (WMD=0.32, p = 0.009). We found no significant differences between REL and HC. In the right but not left UF, REL showed higher FA than BD (p = 0.043). CONCLUSION: Our findings support aberrant UF microstructure, potentially related to alterations in myelination, as a mechanism, but not as an endophenotype of BD. However, given the limited power in the REL subsample, the latter finding must be considered preliminary. Studies examining the role of the UF in individuals at familial risk for BD are warranted.

Dispositional Mindfulness and Acute Heat Pain: Comparing Stimulus-Evoked Pain With Summary Pain Assessment.

OBJECTIVE: Dispositional mindfulness is associated with reduced pain in clinical and experimental settings. However, researchers have neglected the type of pain assessment, as dispositional mindfulness may have unique benefits for reduced pain sensitivity when relying on summary pain assessments, in contrast to assessing the pain of each noxious stimulus. Here, we test the association between dispositional mindfulness and pain using both trial-by-trial pain assessments and overall summary ratings after acute pain tasks. METHODS: One hundred thirty-one healthy adult volunteers (mean age = 29.09 [8.00] years, 55.7% female) underwent two experimental thermal pain paradigms. We tested whether dispositional mindfulness measured with the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale was related to a) heat-evoked pain sensitivity, as measured by pain threshold, pain tolerance, average pain, trial-by-trial ratings, and heat-evoked skin conductance response, and b) summary judgments of sensory and affective pain assessed using the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ). RESULTS: Mindful Attention Awareness Scale ratings were associated with decreased pain on the MPQ sensory (B = -0.18, SE = 0.05, 95% confidence interval = -0.29 to -0.07, t = -3.28, p = .001) and affective (B = -0.11, SE = 0.03, 95% confidence interval = -0.18 to -0.05, t = -3.32, p = .001) dimensions but not with experimental thermal pain assessments, including threshold, tolerance, heat-evoked pain, or skin conductance response (p values ≥ .29). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, dispositional mindfulness mitigated acute thermal pain only when pain was assessed using the MPQ. These findings may reflect differences in immediate versus retrospective judgments or the type of pain assessed by each measure. Future research should examine regulation processes that may explain these differential analgesic benefits, such as attention, rumination, or reappraisal.

Attention bias to negative versus non-negative faces is related to negative affectivity in a transdiagnostic youth sample.

This study identified a shared pathophysiological mechanism of pediatric anxiety and irritability. Clinically, anxiety and irritability are common, co-occurring problems, both characterized by high-arousal negative affective states. Behaviorally, anxiety and irritability are associated with aberrant threat processing. To build on these findings, we examined eye-tracking measures of attention bias in relation to the unique and shared features of anxiety and irritability in a transdiagnostic sample of youth (n = 97, 58% female, Mage = 13.03, SDage = 2.82). We measured attention bias to negative versus non-negative emotional faces during a passive viewing task. We employed bifactor analysis to parse the unique and shared variance of anxiety and irritability symptoms from self- and parent-report questionnaires. Negative affectivity is the derived latent factor reflecting shared variance of anxiety and irritability. We found that higher negative affectivity was associated with looking longer at negative versus non-negative faces, reflecting a shared mechanism of anxiety and irritability. This finding suggests that modification of elevated attention to negative emotional faces may represent a common potential treatment target of anxiety and irritability.

Charting the development of emotion comprehension and abstraction from childhood to adulthood using observer-rated and linguistic measures.

This study examined two facets of emotion development: emotion word comprehension (knowing the meaning of emotion words such as "anger" or "excitement") and emotion concept abstraction (representing emotions in terms of internal psychological states that generalize across situations). Using a novel emotion vocabulary assessment, we captured how a cross-sectional sample of participants aged 4-25 (N = 196) defined 24 emotions. Smoothing spline regression models suggested that emotion comprehension followed an emergent shape: Knowledge of emotion words increased across childhood and plateaued around age 11. Human coders rated the abstractness of participants' responses, and these ratings also followed an emergent shape but plateaued significantly later than comprehension, around age 18. An automated linguistic analysis of abstractness supported coders' perceptions of increased abstractness across age. Finally, coders assessed the definitional strategies participants used to describe emotions. Young children tended to describe emotions using concrete strategies such as providing example situations that evoked those emotions or by referring to physiological markers of emotional experiences. Whereas use of these concrete strategies decreased with age, the tendency to use more abstract strategies such as providing general definitions that delineated the causes and characteristics of emotions or by providing synonyms of emotion words increased with age. Overall, this work (a) provides a tool for assessing definitions of emotion terms, (b) demonstrates that emotion concept abstraction increases across age, and (c) suggests that adolescence is a period in which emotion words are comprehended but their level of abstraction continues to mature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).