No fear, no panic: probing negation as a means for emotion regulation

This electroencephalographic study investigated if negating one's emotion results in paradoxical effects or leads to effective emotional downregulation. Healthy participants were asked to downregulate their emotions to happy and fearful faces by using negated emotional cue words (e.g., no fun, no fear). Cue words were congruent with the emotion depicted in the face and presented prior to each face. Stimuli were presented in blocks of happy and fearful faces. Blocks of passive stimulus viewing served as control condition. Active regulation reduced amplitudes of early event-related brain potentials (early posterior negativity, but not N170) and the late positive potential for fearful faces. A fronto-central negativity peaking at about 250 ms after target face onset showed larger amplitude modulations during downregulation of fearful and happy faces. Behaviorally, negating was more associated with reappraisal than with suppression. Our results suggest that in an emotional context, negation processing could be quite effective for emotional downregulation but that its effects depend on the type of the negated emotion (pleasant vs unpleasant). Results are discussed in the context of dual process models of cognition and emotion regulation.

Being moved: valence activates approach-avoidance behavior independently of evaluation and approach-avoidance intentions

Theories from diverse areas of psychology assume that affective stimuli facilitate approach and avoidance behavior because they elicit motivational orientations that prepare the organism for appropriate responses. Recent evidence casts serious doubt on this assumption. Instead of motivational orientations, evaluative-coding mechanisms may be responsible for the effect of stimulus valence on approach-avoidance responses. Three studies tested contrasting predictions derived from these two accounts. Results supported motivational theories, as stimulus valence facilitated compatible approach-avoidance responses even though participants had no intention to approach or to avoid the stimuli, and the valence of the response labels was dissociated from the approach and avoidance movements (Study 1). Stimulus valence also facilitated compatible approach-avoidance responses when participants were not required to process the valence of the stimuli (Studies 2a and 2b). These findings are at odds with the evaluative-coding account and support the notion of a unique, automatic link between the perception of valence and approach-avoidance behavior.

Fast and Fragile

Numerous studies suggest that processing verbal materials containing negations slows down cognition and makes it more error-prone. This suggests that processing negations affords relatively nonautomatic processes. The present research studied the role of two automaticity features (processing speed and resource dependency) for negation processing. In three experiments, we tested the impact of verbal negations on affective priming effects in the Affect Misattribution Paradigm. Going beyond previous work, the results indicate that negations can be processed unintentionally and quickly (Experiments 1 and 2). In Experiment 3, negations failed to qualify affective priming effects when participants’ working memory was taxed by memorizing an eight-digit number. In sum, the experiments suggest that negations can be processed unintentionally, very quickly, but that they rely on working-memory resources.

Response Interference as a Mechanism Underlying Implicit Measures

Over the last decade, implicit measures of mental associations (e.g., Implicit Association Test, sequential priming) have become increasingly popular in many areas of psychological research. Even though successful applications provide preliminary support for the validity of these measures, their underlying mechanisms are still controversial. The present article addresses the role of a particular mechanism that is hypothesized to mediate the influence of activated associations on task performance in many implicit measures: response interference (RI). Based on a review of relevant evidence, we argue that RI effects in implicit measures depend on participants’ attention to association-relevant stimulus features, which in turn can influence the reliability and the construct validity of these measures. Drawing on a moderated-mediation model (MMM) of task performance in RI paradigms, we provide several suggestions on how to address these problems in research using implicit measures.

Significance testing of a cluster of multivariate binary variables: comparison of the tripartite T index to three common similarity measures

Similarity measures quantify resemblance between pairs of items when each consists of a pattern of two-state (eg, presence versus absence) variables. Numerous similarity measures, many of which are straightforward to calculate and interpret, have been developed and characterized. Methods for testing if items within a specified cluster are significantly more similar to each other than to items outside the cluster have not been extensively developed for binary responses, but a permutation test procedure using a measure of distinctness is available to do this. We compare three well known similarity measures, the Dice, Jaccard and simple matching coefficients, with the more complex tripartite T similarity index recently proposed by Tulloss. Each measure is used in significance tests of whether hypothesized subsets of items are legitimately grouped for resemblance. Theoretically derived measures reflecting diverse scenarios found in medical research and data from neuropsychological research illustrate the methods. Results for the tripartite T measure were comparable to the other methods in some settings, and essentially the same as the Dice coefficient overall when compared theoretically and on the same clinical data. Some shortcomings with the Tulloss algorithm were found and limit the usefulness of the tripartite T index in medical applications.

At the boundaries of automaticity: Negation as reflective operation

The present research investigated whether automatic social-cognitive skills are based on the same representations and processes as their controlled counterparts. Using the cognitive task of negating valence, the authors demonstrate that enhanced practice in negating the valence of a stimulus can lead to changes in the underlying associative representation. However, procedural, rule-based components of negations were generally unaffected by practice (Experiments 1-3). Moreover, negations of evaluative stimuli did not influence automatic evaluative responses to these stimuli, unless the negation was included in the associative representation of a stimulus (Experiments 4-6). These results suggest that some practice-related skill improvements are limited to conditions in which a general procedure can be substituted by the retrieval of results of previous applications from associative memory. Implications for research on automaticity and social cognition are discussed.

Contextual influences on implicit evaluation: a test of additive versus contrastive effects of evaluative context stimuli in affective priming

Drawing on two alternative accounts of the affective priming effect (spreading activation vs. response interference), the present research investigated the underlying processes of how evaluative context stimuli influence implicit evaluations in the affective priming task. Employing two sequentially presented prime stimuli (rather than a single prime), two experiments showed that affective priming effects elicited by a given prime stimulus were more pronounced when this stimulus was preceded by a context prime of the opposite valence than when it was preceded by a context prime of the same valence. This effect consistently emerged for pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2) as prime stimuli. These results suggest that the impact of evaluative context stimuli on implicit evaluations is mediated by contrast effects in the attention to evaluative information rather than by additive effects in the activation of evaluative information in associative memory.

A phase 2 clinical trial of metformin as a treatment for non-diabetic paediatric non-alcoholic steatohepatitis

BACKGROUND

Children with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis are insulin-resistant and metformin has been proposed as a potential therapy. However, paediatric safety and efficacy data are absent.

AIM

To test the hypothesis that metformin therapy will safely improve markers of liver disease in paediatric non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.

METHODS

Single-arm open-label pilot study of metformin 500 mg twice daily for 24 weeks in non-diabetic children with biopsy-proven non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.

RESULTS

Ten obese children (mean body mass index 30.4) enrolled and completed the trial. Mean alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) improved significantly (P < 0.01) from baseline (184, 114 U/L) to end of treatment (98, 68 U/L). Alanine aminotransferase normalized in 40% and AST normalized in 50% of subjects. Children demonstrated significant improvements in liver fat measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (30-23%, P < 0.01); insulin sensitivity measured by quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (0.294-0.310, P < 0.05); and quality of life measured by pediatric quality of life inventory 4.0 (69-81, P < 0.01).

CONCLUSION

Open-label treatment with metformin for 24 weeks was notable for improvement in liver chemistry, liver fat, insulin sensitivity and quality of life. A large randomized-controlled trial is needed to definitively determine the efficacy of metformin for paediatric non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.

Reflective and impulsive determinants of social behavior

This article describes a 2-systems model that explains social behavior as a joint function of reflective and impulsive processes. In particular, it is assumed that social behavior is controlled by 2 interacting systems that follow different operating principles. The reflective system generates behavioral decisions that are based on knowledge about facts and values, whereas the impulsive system elicits behavior through associative links and motivational orientations. The proposed model describes how the 2 systems interact at various stages of processing, and how their outputs may determine behavior in a synergistic or antagonistic fashion. It extends previous models by integrating motivational components that allow more precise predictions of behavior. The implications of this reflective-impulsive model are applied to various phenomena from social psychology and beyond. Extending previous dual-process accounts, this model is not limited to specific domains of mental functioning and attempts to integrate cognitive, motivational, and behavioral mechanisms.