A conditional mutation in a wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) gene regulating root morphology.

KEY MESSAGE: Characterisation and genetic mapping of a key gene defining root morphology in bread wheat. Root morphology is central to plants for the efficient uptake up of soil water and mineral nutrients. Here we describe a conditional mutant of hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) that when grown in soil with high Ca2+ develops a larger rhizosheath accompanied with shorter roots than the wild type. In wheat, rhizosheath size is a reliable surrogate for root hair length and this was verified in the mutant which possessed longer root hairs than the wild type when grown in high Ca2+ soil. We named the mutant Stumpy and showed it to be due to a single semi-dominant mutation. The short root phenotype at high Ca2+ was due to reduced cellular elongation which might also explain the long root hair phenotype. Analysis of root cell walls showed that the polysaccharide composition of Stumpy roots is remodelled when grown at non-permissive (high) Ca2+ concentrations. The mutation mapped to chromosome 7B and sequencing of the 7B chromosomes in both wild type and Stumpy identified a candidate gene underlying the Stumpy mutation. As part of the process to determine whether the candidate gene was causative, we identified wheat lines in a Cadenza TILLING population with large rhizosheaths but accompanied with normal root length. This finding illustrates the potential of manipulating the gene to disconnect root length from root hair length as a means of developing wheat lines with improved efficiency of nutrient and water uptake. The Stumpy mutant will be valuable for understanding the mechanisms that regulate root morphology in wheat.

Personality Trait Change Across a Major Global Stressor.

The current research examined three related questions in a 21-month longitudinal study of a diverse sample of U.S. participants (N = 504): (a) How did Big Five traits change during the COVID-19 pandemic? (b) What factors were associated with individual differences in trait change? and (c) How was Big Five trait change associated with downstream well-being, mental health, and physical health? On average, across the 21-month study period, conscientiousness increased slightly, and extraversion decreased slightly. Individual trajectories varied around these average trajectories, and although few factors predicted these individual differences, greater increases in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, and greater decreases in neuroticism were associated better well-being and fewer mental and physical health symptoms. The present research provides evidence that traits can change in the context of a major global stressor and that socially desirable patterns of trait change are associated with better health.

Assessing Emotion Polyregulation in Daily Life: Who Uses It, When Is It Used, and How Effective Is It?

Most research on emotion regulation has focused on understanding individual emotion regulation strategies. Preliminary research, however, suggests that people often use several strategies to regulate their emotions in a given emotional scenario (polyregulation). The present research examined who uses polyregulation, when polyregulation is used, and how effective polyregulation is when it is used. College students (N = 128; 65.6% female; 54.7% White) completed an in-person lab visit followed by a 2-week ecological momentary assessment protocol with six randomly timed survey prompts per day for up 2 weeks. At baseline, participants completed measures assessing past-week depression symptoms, social anxiety-related traits, and trait emotion dysregulation. During each randomly timed prompt, participants reported up to eight strategies used to change their thoughts or feelings, negative and positive affect, motivation to change emotions, their social context, and how well they felt they were managing their emotions. In pre-registered analyses examining the 1,423 survey responses collected, polyregulation was more likely when participants were feeling more intensely negative and when their motivation to change their emotions was stronger. Neither sex, psychopathology-related symptoms and traits, social context, nor subjective effectiveness was associated with polyregulation, and state affect did not moderate these associations. This study helps address a key gap in the literature by assessing emotion polyregulation in daily life. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00166-x.

Reappraising reappraisal: an expanded view.

Reappraisal is a frequently used and often successful emotion regulation strategy. However, its underlying cognitive mechanisms are not well understood. In this paper, we seek to clarify these mechanisms by expanding upon our recently proposed reAppraisal framework. According to this framework, reappraisal consists of appraisal shifts that arise from changes to the mental construal of a situation (reconstrual) or from changes to the goals that are used to evaluate the construal (repurposing). Here we propose that reappraisal can target both object-level construals and goals representing states in the environment as well as meta-level construals and goals about different states in the mind. We also propose that reappraisal can operate by facilitating decommitment from a dominant construal or goal as well as by facilitating commitment to alternative construals or goals. We demonstrate that the 2 × 2 × 2 matrix formed by crossing the three distinctions between reconstrual and repurposing, between object-level and meta-level representations, and between decommitment and commitment operations forms a useful map of different reappraisal tactics. We draw examples of each of the 8 reappraisal tactics from basic and clinical research. We conclude by considering future research inspired by the expanded reAppraisal framework.

The political is personal: The costs of daily politics.

Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics on the general public is largely unknown. Here, we apply an affective science framework to understand how the public experiences daily politics in a two-part examination. We first used longitudinal, daily diary methods to track two samples of U.S. participants as they experienced daily political events across 2 weeks (Study 1: N = 198, observations = 2,167) and 3 weeks (Study 2: N = 811, observations = 12,790) to explore how these events permeated people's lives and how people coped with that influence. In both diary studies, daily political events consistently not only evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also greater motivation to take political action (e.g., volunteer, protest) aimed at changing the political system that evoked these emotions in the first place. Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions, and regulating these emotions using effective cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action. Although people protected themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently used regulation strategies came with a trade-off between well-being and action. Second, we conducted experimental studies where we manipulated exposure to day-to-day politics (Study 3, N = 922), and the use of various emotion regulation strategies in response (Study 4, N = 1,277), and found causal support for the central findings of Studies 1-2. Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people's daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence politicians have beyond the formal powers endowed unto them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Cultural differences in caring for people with dementia: a pilot study of concern about losing face and loneliness in Chinese American and European American caregivers.

OBJECTIVES: Heavy demands upon dementia caregivers can lead to a number of poor health outcomes including declines in physical, mental, and brain health. Although dementia affects people from all backgrounds, research in the US has largely focused on European American caregivers. This has made providing culturally-competent care more difficult. This study begins to address this issue by empirically examining how culturally-shaped beliefs can influence loneliness in family caregivers of people with dementia. METHODS: We conducted a preliminary questionnaire study with Chinese American and European American family caregivers of people with dementia (N = 72). RESULTS: Chinese American caregivers were more concerned than European American caregivers about losing face, which in turn, was associated with greater loneliness. This pattern remained when accounting for caregiver gender, age, and relationship to the person with dementia. CONCLUSIONS: These preliminary findings highlight the role that cultural beliefs can play in adverse caregiver outcomes, and suggest that addressing concerns about losing face may be an important way for healthcare providers to help reduce loneliness among Chinese American caregivers. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Understanding how cultural beliefs influence caregiver outcomes is critical as healthcare professionals work to provide culturally-competent care and design culturally-sensitive interventions.

Emotional responses to a global stressor: Average patterns and individual differences.

Major stressors often challenge emotional well-being-increasing negative emotions and decreasing positive emotions. But how long do these emotional hits last? Prior theory and research contain conflicting views. Some research suggests that most individuals' emotional well-being will return to, or even surpass, baseline levels relatively quickly. Others have challenged this view, arguing that this type of resilient response is uncommon. The present research provides a strong test of resilience theory by examining emotional trajectories over the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In two pre-registered longitudinal studies (total N =1147), we examined average emotional trajectories and predictors of individual differences in emotional trajectories across 13 waves of data from February through September 2020. The pandemic had immediate detrimental effects on average emotional well-being. Across the next 6 months, average negative emotions returned to baseline levels with the greatest improvements occurring almost immediately. Yet, positive emotions remained depleted relative to baseline levels, illustrating the limits of typical resilience. Individuals differed substantially around these average emotional trajectories and these individual differences were predicted by socio-demographic characteristics and stressor exposure. We discuss theoretical implications of these findings that we hope will contribute to more nuanced approaches to studying, understanding, and improving emotional well-being following major stressors.

An autoactive NB-LRR gene causes Rht13 dwarfism in wheat.

Semidwarfing genes have greatly increased wheat yields globally, yet the widely used gibberellin (GA)-insensitive genes Rht-B1b and Rht-D1b have disadvantages for seedling emergence. Use of the GA-sensitive semidwarfing gene Rht13 avoids this pleiotropic effect. Here, we show that Rht13 encodes a nucleotide-binding site/leucine-rich repeat (NB-LRR) gene. A point mutation in the semidwarf Rht-B13b allele autoactivates the NB-LRR gene and causes a height reduction comparable with Rht-B1b and Rht-D1b in diverse genetic backgrounds. The autoactive Rht-B13b allele leads to transcriptional up-regulation of pathogenesis-related genes including class III peroxidases associated with cell wall remodeling. Rht13 represents a new class of reduced height (Rht) gene, unlike other Rht genes, which encode components of the GA signaling or metabolic pathways. This discovery opens avenues to use autoactive NB-LRR genes as semidwarfing genes in a range of crop species, and to apply Rht13 in wheat breeding programs using a perfect genetic marker.

The Benefits of Living With Close Others: A Longitudinal Examination of Mental Health Before and During a Global Stressor.

For better or worse, the people one lives with may exert a powerful influence on one's mental health, perhaps especially during times of stress. The COVID-19 pandemic-a large-scale stressor that prompted health recommendations to stay home to reduce disease spread-provided a unique context for examining how the people who share one's home may shape one's mental health. A seven-wave longitudinal study assessed mental health month to month before and during the pandemic (February through September 2020) in two diverse samples of U.S. adults (N = 656; N = 544). Preregistered analyses demonstrated that people living with close others (children and/or romantic partners) experienced better well-being before and during the pandemic's first 6 months. These groups also experienced unique increases in ill-being during the pandemic's onset, but parents' ill-being also recovered more quickly. These findings highlight the crucial protective function of close relationships for mental health both generally and amid a pandemic.

The Insulating Function of Sleep for Well-being: Daily Sleep Quality Attenuates the Link Between Current Affect and Global Life Satisfaction.

Transient affect can be tightly linked with people's global life satisfaction (i.e., affect globalizing). This volatile judgment style leaves life satisfaction vulnerable to the inevitable highs and lows of everyday life, and has been associated with lower psychological health. The present study examines a potentially fundamental but untested regulatory role of sleep: insulating people's global life satisfaction from the affective highs and lows of daily life. We tested this hypothesis in two daily diary samples (N 1 = 3,011 daily diary observations of 274 participants and N 2 = 12,740 daily diary observations of 811 participants). Consistent with preregistered hypotheses, following nights of reported high-quality sleep, the link between current affect and global life satisfaction was attenuated (i.e., lower affect globalizing). Sleep-based interventions are broadly useful for improving psychological health and the current findings suggest another avenue by which such interventions may improve well-being: by providing crucial protection against the risks associated with affect globalizing. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00092-4.

Whither Inhibition?

Inhibition is considered a process essential to goal pursuit and as a result has become a central construct in many disciplines in psychology and adjacent fields. Despite a century's worth of debate, however, there is little consensus about what inhibition actually is. We suggest that it is time to abandon the concept of inhibition as it currently stands, given that its definition has been problematic. Instead, we propose an alternative framework in which inhibition is the target outcome, rather than a process to obtain a goal. We leverage existing process models to elucidate how people can achieve an inhibition goal by actively regulating impulses and desires. Although the field has been led astray by classifying inhibition as a process, our framework is intended to provide greater practical utility to the study of goal pursuit moving forward.

White fragility: An emotion regulation perspective.

To address anti-Black Racism, systemic change across many domains in American life will be necessary. There are many barriers to change, however, and progress requires identifying these barriers and developing tools to overcome them. Given that White individuals disproportionately occupy "gatekeeping" positions of power, one key barrier to systemic change is rooted in White individuals' emotional (and emotion-regulatory) responses when considering their own role in racism (e.g., involvement in racist systems, biased actions). White people often experience such moments as a jeopardy to their valued goals and are consequently highly motivated to reduce the negative emotions that they feel by denying or avoiding the issue-a multifaceted response known as a White fragility response. When White individuals enact a White fragility response, they can further damage the well-being of Black members of their community and weaken their own motivation for systemic change. Given its stark costs, it is critical to understand White fragility responses. In this article, we argue that White fragility can be usefully viewed through the lens of emotion and emotion regulation theory. In particular, we describe the emotion and emotion regulation responses that characterize White fragility, summarize the wide-ranging consequences of White fragility responses, highlight more sustainable ways forward, and end by considering a broader fragility framework that acknowledges multiple dimensions of power. Although emotion regulation lies at the heart of White fragility, emotion regulation is also a tool that can be leveraged for greater justice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

An In Situ, Child-Led Intervention to Promote Emotion Regulation Competence in Middle Childhood: Protocol for an Exploratory Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND: Emotion regulation is a key transdiagnostic risk factor for a range of psychopathologies, making it a prime target for both prevention and treatment interventions in childhood. Existing interventions predominantly rely on workshops or in-person therapy-based approaches, limiting the ability to promote emotion regulation competence for children in everyday settings and at scale. Purrble is a newly developed, inexpensive, socially assistive robot-in the form of an interactive plush toy-that uses haptic feedback to support in-the-moment emotion regulation. It is accessible to children as needed in their daily lives, without the need for a priori training. Although qualitative data from previous studies show high engagement in situ and anecdotal evidence of the robot being incorporated into children's emotion regulation routines, there is no quantitative evidence of the intervention's impact on child outcomes. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to examine the efficacy of a new intervention model for child-led emotion regulation-Purrble-that can be deployed across prevention and treatment contexts. METHODS: Overall, 134 children aged 8 to 10 years will be selected from an enriched nonclinical North American population; for inclusion, the cutoff for the parents' rating of child dysregulation will be ≥10 points in the total difficulties score on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. This cutoff was selected to obtain a measurable, but not necessarily clinical, level of the child's emotion regulatory difficulties. The selected families will be randomly assigned with .5 probability to receive either a Purrble or an active control (noninteractive plush toy). The primary outcome will be a daily ecological momentary assessment measure of child emotion regulation capability (as reported by parents) over a period of 4 weeks. Exploratory analyses will investigate the intervention impact on secondary outcomes of child emotion regulation, collected weekly over the same 4-week period, with follow-ups at 1 month and 6 months postdeployment. Quantitative data will be analyzed on an intent-to-treat basis. A proportion of families (approximately 30% of the sample) will be interviewed after deployment as part of the process analysis. RESULTS: The study is funded by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/T041897/1) and an in-kind contribution from the Committee for Children. This study received ethical approval from the Pearl institutional review board (#18-CFC-101). Participant recruitment started in February 2021, with the 1-month deployment in April-May 2021. The results of this analysis will be published in 2022. CONCLUSIONS: This study will be the first quantitative evaluation of the efficacy of an innovative, proof-of-concept intervention model for an in situ, child-led emotion regulation intervention. Insights into the trajectory of daily changes, complemented with weekly questionnaire batteries and postdeployment interviews, will result in an in-depth understanding of whether and how the hypothesized intervention logic model works, leading to further intervention optimization. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04810455; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04810455. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/28914.

Ecological Momentary Assessment of Depression in People With Advanced Dementia: Longitudinal Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND: Barriers to assessing depression in advanced dementia include the presence of informant and patient recall biases. Ecological momentary assessment provides an improved approach for mood assessment by collecting observations in intervals throughout the day, decreasing recall bias, and increasing ecological validity. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to evaluate the feasibility, reliability, and validity of the modified 4-item Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia for Momentary Assessment (mCSDD4-MA) tool to assess depression in patients with advanced dementia. METHODS: A intensive longitudinal pilot study design was used. A total of 12 participants with advanced dementia were enrolled from an inpatient psychogeriatric unit. Participants were assessed using clinical depression assessments at admission and discharge. Research staff recorded observations four times a day for 6 weeks on phones with access to the mCSDD4-MA tool. Descriptive data related to feasibility were reported (ie, completion rates). Statistical models were used to examine the interrater reliability and construct and predictive validity of the data. RESULTS: Overall, 1923 observations were completed, representing 55.06% (1923/3496) of all rating opportunities with 2 raters and 66.01% (1923/2913) with at least one rater. Moderate interrater reliability was demonstrated for all items, except for lack of interest. Moderate correlations were observed between observers and patient-reported outcomes, where observers reported fewer symptoms relative to participants' self-reports. Several items were associated with and able to predict depression. CONCLUSIONS: The mCSDD4-MA tool was feasible to use, and most items in the tool showed moderate reliability and validity for assessing depression in dementia. Repeated and real-time depression assessment in advanced dementia holds promise for the identification of clinical depression and depressive symptoms.

Coping With Health Threats: The Costs and Benefits of Managing Emotions.

How people respond to health threats can influence their own health and, when people are facing communal risks, even their community's health. We propose that people commonly respond to health threats by managing their emotions with cognitive strategies such as reappraisal, which can reduce fear and protect mental health. However, because fear can also motivate health behaviors, reducing fear may also jeopardize health behaviors. In two diverse U.S. samples (N = 1,241) tracked across 3 months, sequential and cross-lagged panel mediation models indicated that reappraisal predicted lower fear about an ongoing health threat (COVID-19) and, in turn, better mental health but fewer recommended physical health behaviors. This trade-off was not inevitable, however: The use of reappraisal to increase socially oriented positive emotions predicted better mental health without jeopardizing physical health behaviors. Examining the costs and benefits of how people cope with health threats is essential for promoting better health outcomes for individuals and communities.

The Health Behavior Model of Personality in the Context of a Public Health Crisis.

OBJECTIVE: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended behavioral measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as social distancing and wearing masks. Although many individuals comply with these recommendations, compliance has been far from universal. Identifying predictors of compliance is crucial for improving health behavior messaging and thereby reducing disease spread and fatalities. METHODS: We report preregistered analyses from a longitudinal study that investigated personality predictors of compliance with behavioral recommendations in diverse US adults across five waves from March to August 2020 (n = 596) and cross-sectionally in August 2020 (n = 405). RESULTS: Agreeableness-characterized by compassion-was the most consistent predictor of compliance, above and beyond other traits, and sociodemographic predictors (sample A, ß = 0.25; sample B, ß = 0.12). The effect of agreeableness was robust across two diverse samples and sensitivity analyses. In addition, openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion were also associated with greater compliance, but effects were less consistent across sensitivity analyses and were smaller in sample A. CONCLUSIONS: Individuals who are less agreeable are at higher risk for noncompliance with behavioral mandates, suggesting that health messaging can be meaningfully improved with approaches that address these individuals in particular. These findings highlight the strong theoretical and practical utility of testing long-standing psychological theories during real-world crises.

R-locus for roaned coat is associated with a tandem duplication in an intronic region of USH2A in dogs and also contributes to Dalmatian spotting.

Structural variations (SVs) represent a large fraction of all genetic diversity, but how this genetic diversity is translated into phenotypic and organismal diversity is unclear. Explosive diversification of dog coat color and patterns after domestication can provide a unique opportunity to explore this question; however, the major obstacle is to efficiently collect a sufficient number of individuals with known phenotypes and genotypes of hundreds of thousands of markers. Using customer-provided information about coat color and patterns of dogs tested on a commercial canine genotyping platform, we identified a genomic region on chromosome 38 that is strongly associated with a mottled coat pattern (roaning) by genome-wide association study. We identified a putative causal variant in this region, an 11-kb tandem duplication (11,131,835-11,143,237) characterized by sequence read coverage and discordant reads of whole-genome sequence data, microarray probe intensity data, and a duplication-specific PCR assay. The tandem duplication is in an intronic region of usherin gene (USH2A), which was perfectly associated with roaning but absent in non-roaned dogs. We detected strong selection signals in this region characterized by reduced nucleotide diversity (π), increased runs of homozygosity, and extended haplotype homozygosity in Wirehaired Pointing Griffons and Australian Cattle Dogs (typically roaned breeds), as well as elevated genetic difference (FST) between Wirehaired Pointing Griffon (roaned) and Labrador Retriever (non-roaned). Surprisingly, all Dalmatians (N = 262) carried the duplication embedded in identical or similar haplotypes with roaned dogs, indicating this region as a shared target of selection during the breed's formation. We propose that the Dalmatian's unique spots were a derived coat pattern by establishing a novel epistatic interaction between roaning "R-locus" on chromosome 38 and an uncharacterized modifier locus. These results highlight the utility of consumer-oriented genotype and phenotype data in the discovery of genomic regions contributing to phenotypic diversity in dogs.

The Future of Women in Psychological Science.

There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field's investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women's career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issues that have been the subject of empirical study, discuss relevant evidence within and outside of psychological science, and draw on established psychological theory and social-science research to begin to chart a path forward. We hope that better understanding of these issues within the field will shed light on areas of existing gender gaps in the discipline and areas where positive change has happened, and spark conversation within our field about how to create lasting change to mitigate remaining gender differences in psychological science.

Examination of the efficacy of small genetic panels in genomic conservation of companion animal populations.

In many ways, dogs are an ideal model for the study of genetic erosion and population recovery, problems of major concern in the field of conservation genetics. Genetic diversity in many dog breeds has been declining systematically since the beginning of the 1800s, when modern breeding practices came into fashion. As such, inbreeding in domestic dog breeds is substantial and widespread and has led to an increase in recessive deleterious mutations of high effect as well as general inbreeding depression. Pedigrees can in theory be used to guide breeding decisions, though are often incomplete and do not reflect the full history of inbreeding. Small microsatellite panels are also used in some cases to choose mating pairs to produce litters with low levels of inbreeding. However, the long-term impact of such practices has not been thoroughly evaluated. Here, we use forward simulation on a model of the dog genome to examine the impact of using limited marker panels to guide pairwise mating decisions on genome-wide population-level genetic diversity. Our results suggest that in unmanaged populations, where breeding decisions are made at the pairwise-rather than population-level, such panels can lead to accelerated loss of genetic diversity at genome regions unlinked to panel markers, compared to random mating. These results demonstrate the importance of genome-wide genetic panels for managing and conserving genetic diversity in dogs and other companion animals.

Overgrowth mutants determine the causal role of gibberellin GA2oxidaseA13 in Rht12 dwarfism of wheat.

The induced dwarf mutant Rht12 was previously shown to have agronomic potential to replace the conventional DELLA mutants Rht-B1b/Rht-D1b in wheat. The Rht12 dwarfing gene is not associated with reduced coleoptile length (unlike the DELLA mutants) and it is dominant, characteristics which are shared with the previously characterized dwarfing genes Rht18 and Rht14. Using the Rht18/Rht14 model, a gibberellin (GA) 2-oxidase gene was identified in the Rht12 region on chromosome 5A. A screen for suppressor mutants in the Rht12 background identified tall overgrowth individuals that were shown to contain loss-of-function mutations in GA2oxidaseA13, demonstrating the role of this gene in the Rht12 dwarf phenotype. It was concluded that Rht12, Rht18, and Rht14 share the same height-reducing mechanism through the increased expression of GA 2-oxidase genes. Some of the overgrowth mutants generated in this study were semi-dwarf and taller than the original Rht12 dwarf, providing breeders with new sources of agronomically useful dwarfism.