Identification of emotionally ambiguous interpersonal stimuli among dysphoric and nondysphoric individuals

Interpersonal Stress and Late Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: Moderation by Perceptual Sensitivity to Facial Expression of Anger

The interpersonal theories of depression highlight the role of interpersonal stress and individual's sensitivity to social rejection in the development of depression. However, previous research has tested their respective effects, whereas whether or not these two factors interact to affect depression, especially in ways of differential susceptibility or diathesis-stress, remains unknown. By adopting a morphed facial expressions recognition paradigm, the current study investigated the potential moderating role of perceptual sensitivity to facial expressions, especially that to angry expression which signaled social rejection, in the association between interpersonal stress and adolescent depressive symptoms. A total of 186 Chinese late adolescents (Mage = 21.16 ± 1.81 years; 73.7% females) participated in this study. The results demonstrated that perceptual sensitivity for angry faces, but not sad or happy faces, functioned as a plasticity factor significantly moderating the effect of interpersonal stress on depressive symptoms, which was consistent with hypothesis of differential susceptibility rather than diathesis-stress. No interactions were observed regarding non-interpersonal dimensions. These results were robust and survived a series of sensitivity analyses, including k-fold cross-validation test. The current findings highlight the crucial role of perceptual sensitivity to angry expression in explaining individual differences behind the links between interpersonal stress and adolescent depressive symptoms.

Impaired social learning in patients with major depressive disorder revealed by a reinforcement learning model

Background/objective

Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have altered learning rates for rewards and losses in non-social learning paradigms. However, it is not well understood whether the ability to learn from social interactions is altered in MDD patients. Using reinforcement learning during the repeated Trust Game (rTG), we investigated how MDD patients learn to trust newly-met partners in MDD patients.

Method

Sixty-eight MDD patients and fifty-four controls each played as 'investor' and interacted with ten different partners. We manipulated both the level of trustworthiness by varying the chance of reciprocity (10, 30, 50, 70 and 90%) and reputation disclosure, where partners' reputation was either pre-disclosed or hidden.

Results

Our reinforcement learning model revealed that MDD patients had significantly higher learning rates for losses than the controls in both the reputation disclosure and non-disclosure condition. The difference was larger when reputation was not disclosed than disclosed. We observed no difference in learning rates for gains in either condition.

Conclusions

Our findings highlight that abnormal learning for losses underlies the social learning process in MDD patients. This abnormality is higher when situational unpredictability is high versus low. Our findings provide novel insights into social rehabilitation of MDD.

Emotional bias training as a treatment for anxiety and depression: evidence from experimental medicine studies in healthy and medicated samples

BACKGROUND

Anxiety and depression are leading causes of disability worldwide, yet individuals are often unable to access appropriate treatment. There is a need to develop effective interventions that can be delivered remotely. Previous research has suggested that emotional processing biases are a potential target for intervention, and these may be altered through brief training programs.

METHODS

We report two experimental medicine studies of emotional bias training in two samples: individuals from the general population (n = 522) and individuals currently taking antidepressants to treat anxiety or depression (n = 212). Participants, recruited online, completed four sessions of EBT from their own home. Mental health and cognitive functioning outcomes were assessed at baseline, immediately post-training, and at 2-week follow-up.

RESULTS

In both studies, our intervention successfully trained participants to perceive ambiguous social information more positively. This persisted at a 2-week follow-up. There was no clear evidence that this change in emotional processing transferred to improvements in symptoms in the primary analyses. However, in both studies, there was weak evidence for improved quality of life following EBT amongst individuals with more depressive symptoms at baseline. No clear evidence of transfer effects was observed for self-reported daily stress, anhedonia or depressive symptoms. Exploratory analyses suggested that younger participants reported greater treatment gains.

CONCLUSIONS

These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of delivering a multi-session online training program to promote lasting cognitive changes. Given the inconsistent evidence for transfer effects, EBT requires further development before it can be considered as a treatment for anxiety and depression.

Trait anger and negative interpretation bias in neutral face perception

Introduction

Anger is a basic emotion helping people to achieve goals by preparing the body for action and prompting others to change their behavior but is also associated with health issues and risks. Trait anger, the disposition to experience angry feelings, goes along with an attribution of hostile traits to others. Negative distortions in the interpretation of social information have also been observed in anxiety and depression. The present study examined the associations between components of anger and negative interpretation tendencies in the perception of ambiguous and neutral schematic faces controlling for anxiety, depressed mood, and other variables.

Methods

A sample of 150 young adults performed a computer-based perception of facial expressions task and completed the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI-2) along with other self-report measures and tests.

Results

Trait anger and anger expression correlated with the perception of negative affects in neutral but not in ambiguous faces. More specifically, trait anger was linked to the attribution of anger, sadness, and anxiety to neutral faces. Trait anger predicted perceived negative affects in neutral faces when adjusting for anxiety, depression, and state anger.

Discussion

For neutral schematic faces, the present data support an association between trait anger and negatively biased interpretation of facial expression, which is independent of anxiety and depressed mood. The negative interpretation of neutral schematic faces in trait angry individuals seems not only to comprise the attribution of anger but also of negative emotions signaling weakness. Neutral schematic facial expressions might be useful stimuli in the future study of anger-related interpretation biases.

Reliability of an Interpretation Bias Task of Ambiguous Faces and Its Relationship with Social Anxiety, Depression, and Looming Maladaptive Style

Social anxiety (SA) and depression have been associated with negative interpretation biases of social stimuli. Studies often assess these biases with ambiguous faces, as people with SA and depression tend to interpret such faces negatively. However, the test–retest reliability of this type of task is unknown. Our objectives were to develop a new interpretation bias task with ambiguous faces and analyse its properties in terms of test–retest reliability and in relation to SA, depression, and looming maladaptive style (LMS). Eight hundred sixty-four participants completed a task in which they had to interpret morphed faces as negative or positive on a continuum between happy and angry facial expressions. In addition, they filled out scales on SA, depressive symptoms, and LMS. Eighty-four participants completed the task again after 1–2 months. The test–retest reliability was moderate (r = .57–.69). The data revealed a significant tendency to interpret faces as negative for people with higher SA and depressive symptoms and with higher LMS. Longer response times to interpret the happy faces were positively associated with a higher level of depressive symptoms. The reliability of the present task was moderate. The results highlight associations between the bias interpretation task and SA, depression, and LMS.

The Relations of Attention to and Clarity of Feelings With Facial Affect Perception

Attention to emotions and emotional clarity are core dimensions of individual differences in emotion awareness. Findings from prior research based on self-report indicate that attention to and recognition of one's own emotions are related to attention to and recognition of other people's emotions. In the present experimental study, we examined the relations of attention to and clarity of emotions with the efficiency of facial affect perception. Moreover, it was explored whether attention to and clarity of emotions are linked to negative interpretations of facial expressions. A perception of facial expressions (PFE) task based on schematic faces with neutral, ambiguous, or unambiguous emotional expressions and a gender decision task were administered to healthy individuals along with measures of emotion awareness, state and trait anxiety, depression, and verbal intelligence. Participants had to decide how much the faces express six basic affects. Evaluative ratings and decision latencies were analyzed. Attention to feelings was negatively correlated with evaluative decision latency, whereas clarity of feelings was not related to decision latency in the PFE task. Attention to feelings was positively correlated with the perception of negative affects in ambiguous faces. Attention to feelings and emotional clarity were not related to gender decision latency. According to our results, dispositional attention to feelings goes along with an enhanced efficiency of facial affect perception. Habitually paying attention to one's own emotions may facilitate processing of external emotional information. Preliminary evidence was obtained suggesting a relationship of dispositional attention to feelings with negative interpretations of facial expressions.

Spring Break or Heart Break? Extending Valence Bias to Emotional Words

Ambiguous stimuli are useful for assessing emotional bias. For example, surprised faces could convey a positive or negative meaning, and the degree to which an individual interprets these expressions as positive or negative represents their "valence bias." Currently, the most well-validated ambiguous stimuli for assessing valence bias include nonverbal signals (faces and scenes), overlooking an inherent ambiguity in verbal signals. This study identified 32 words with dual-valence ambiguity (i.e., relatively high intersubject variability in valence ratings and relatively slow response times) and length-matched clearly valenced words (16 positive, 16 negative). Preregistered analyses demonstrated that the words-based valence bias correlated with the bias for faces, r _s (213) = .27, p < .001, and scenes, r _s (204) = .46, p < .001. That is, the same people who interpret ambiguous faces/scenes as positive also interpret ambiguous words as positive. These findings provide a novel tool for measuring valence bias and greater generalizability, resulting in a more robust measure of this bias.

Reinforcement-based cognitive biases as vulnerability factors in alcohol addiction: From humans to animal models

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is one of the most common, but still poorly treated, psychiatric conditions. Developing new treatments requires a better understanding of the aetiology of symptoms and evaluation of novel therapeutic targets in preclinical studies. Recent developments in our understanding of the reinforcement-based cognitive biases (RBCBs) that contribute to the development of AUD and its treatment offer new opportunities for both clinical and preclinical research. In this review, we first briefly describe psychological and cognitive theories that involve various aspects of reinforcement sensitivity in the development, maintenance, and recurrence of alcohol addiction. Furthermore, in separate sections, we describe studies investigating RBCBs and their neural, neurochemical, and pharmacological correlates, and we discuss possible interactions between RBCBs and trajectories of AUD. Finally, we describe how recent translational studies using state-of-the-art animal models can facilitate our understanding of the role of reinforcement sensitivity and RBCBs in various aspects of AUD.

Positive social feedback alters emotional ratings and reward valuation of neutral faces

Evaluation of facial and vocal emotional cues is vital in social interactions but can be highly influenced by characteristics of the observer, such as sex, age, and symptoms of affective disorders. Our evaluations of others' emotional expressions are likely to change as we get to know them and anticipate how they are likely to behave. However, the role of associative learning in the evaluation of social cues remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated whether emotional ratings (valence and arousal) and reward valuation ("liking" and "wanting" measures) of neutral facial expressions can be altered through associative learning. We also examined whether emotional ratings and reward valuation varied with symptoms of anxiety and depression, disorders known to impair socio-affective functioning. Participants (N = 324) were young adults, ranging in scores across dimensions of depression and anxiety symptoms: "general distress" (common to depression and anxiety), "anhedonia-apprehension" (more specific to depression), and "fears" (more specific to anxiety). They rated neutral faces and completed a probabilistic learning task that paired images of neutral faces with positive or negative social feedback. Results demonstrated that pairing neutral faces with positive social feedback increased ratings of arousal, valence, and reward valuation (both "liking" and "wanting"). Pairing neutral faces with negative feedback reduced valence ratings and reduced "wanting," but did not impact arousal ratings or "liking." Symptoms of general distress were associated with negative bias in valence ratings, symptoms of anhedonia-apprehension were associated with reduced "wanting," and symptoms of fears were associated with altered accuracy over trials. Notably, the association between general distress and negative bias was reduced following the associative learning task. This suggests that disrupted evaluation of social cues can be improved through brief training.

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.

Ruminative response style is associated with a negative bias in the perception of emotional facial expressions in healthy women without a history of clinical depression

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Rumination has been shown to be an important cognitive vulnerability factor affecting development and maintenance of depression. Ruminative thinking can be divided into a self-focused component referring to persistent reflection about causes and consequences of depressed mood and a symptom-focused component characterized by repetitive thinking about depressive symptoms. Previous research on clinical depression has shown that rumination is associated with the perception of negative emotions in others' facial expressions. The present study was conducted to investigate the relation between habitual rumination and negative bias in face perception in healthy individuals.

METHODS

100 healthy young women without a history of clinical depression completed the Response Styles Questionnaire along with measures of depressive symptoms, dysfunctional attitudes, and anxiety. A computer-based version of the perception of facial expressions questionnaire using line drawings (schematic faces) was administered to assess perceived emotions in faces with ambiguous and unambiguous emotional expressions.

RESULTS

According to hierarchical regression analyses, symptom-based (but not self-focused) rumination predicted perceived negative emotions in ambiguous as well as in unambiguous negative faces after controlling for current depressive symptoms, state and trait anxiety, intelligence, and dysfunctional attitudes.

LIMITATIONS

Generalization of the present findings is limited by the fact that only women were included as study participants.

CONCLUSIONS

Habitual ruminating about depressive symptoms in healthy, never clinically depressed individuals goes along with a negative bias in the perception of others' facial expressions. Negatively biasing social perception might be one mechanism by which symptom-focused rumination might increase vulnerability for depression.

Effects of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy on social cognition in major depression

Background: Social cognition is commonly affected in psychiatric disorders and is a determinant of quality of life. However, there are few studies of treatment.Objective: To investigate the efficacy of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy on social cognition in major depression.Method: This study used a parallel group randomized control design to compare pre-test and post-test social cognition scores between depressed participants receiving ISTDP and those allocated to a wait-list control group. Participants were adults (19-40 years of age) who were diagnosed with depression. We recruited 32 individuals, with 16 participants allocated to the ISTDP and control groups, respectively. Both groups were similar in terms of age, sex and educational level.Results: Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) demonstrated that the intervention was effective in terms of the total score of social cognition: the experimental group had a significant increase in the post-test compared to the control group. In addition, the experimental group showed a significant reduction in the negative subjective score compared to the control group as well as an improvement in response to positive neutral and negative states.Conclusion: Depressed patients receiving ISTDP show a significant improvement in social cognition post treatment compared to a wait-list control group.

Electrophysiological Evidence for Elimination of the Positive Bias in Elderly Adults with Depressive Symptoms

BACKGROUND

Depressed populations demonstrate a greater tendency to have negative interpretations on ambiguous situations. Cognitive theories concerning depression proposed that such a negative bias plays an important role in developing and maintaining depression. There is now fairly consistent evidence arising from different stimuli and assessment methods that depression is featured by such a bias. The current study aimed to explore the neural signatures associated with the interpretation bias in the elderly with depressive symptoms confronted with different facial expressions using event-related brain potentials (ERPs).

METHODS

Participants were 14 community-dwelling older adults with depressive symptoms assessed by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale scores. We collected event-related potentials of their brain compared to that of 14 healthy aged-matched adults. The late positive potential (LPP) was used to examine cognitive-affective processes associated with judgment of emotional facial expressions between the two groups.

RESULTS

Old adults with depressive symptoms have much smaller amplitude than healthy older adults irrespective of the prime types. When processing the targets, the two groups showed different patterns regarding the LPP. The healthy control group revealed no differences between ambiguous and happy primes, irrespective of whether the targets were sad or happy facial expressions. However, significant differences were found between happy and sad and between ambiguous and sad primes. Such a pattern indicates a positive bias in healthy elderly adults. Regarding the elderly with depressive symptoms, there were no significant differences between ambiguous versus happy, ambiguous versus sad primes, and happy versus sad primes. Concerning reaction times, there was no group difference. Thus, the findings provide some support for cognitive theories of depression.

CONCLUSION

The current study shows that there is an association between interpretative biases and depressive symptoms in the elderly by using the neuroscientific method of ERPs. The results suggest that ERPs are sensitive to explore the interpretation bias in depressed populations.

Identification of emotions in mixed disgusted-happy faces as a function of depressive symptom severity

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Interpersonal difficulties are common in depression, but their underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood. The role of depression in the identification of mixed emotional signals with a direct interpersonal value remains unclear. The present study aimed to clarify this question.

METHODS

A sample of 39 individuals reporting a broad range of depression levels completed an emotion identification task where they viewed faces expressing three emotional categories (100% disgusted and 100% happy faces, as well as their morphed 50% disgusted - 50% happy exemplars). Participants were asked to identify the corresponding depicted emotion as "clearly disgusted", "mixed", or "clearly happy".

RESULTS

Higher depression levels were associated with lower identification of positive emotions in 50% disgusted - 50% happy faces.

LIMITATIONS

The study was conducted with an analogue sample reporting individual differences in subclinical depression levels. Further research must replicate these findings in a clinical sample and clarify whether differential emotional identification patterns emerge in depression for different mixed negative-positive emotions (sad-happy vs. disgusted-happy).

CONCLUSIONS

Depression may account for a lower bias to perceive positive states when ambiguous states from others include subtle signals of social threat (i.e., disgust), leading to an under-perception of positive social signals.

Sensing emotion in voices: Negativity bias and gender differences in a validation study of the Oxford Vocal ('OxVoc') sounds database

Emotional expressions are an essential element of human interactions. Recent work has increasingly recognized that emotional vocalizations can color and shape interactions between individuals. Here we present data on the psychometric properties of a recently developed database of authentic nonlinguistic emotional vocalizations from human adults and infants (the Oxford Vocal 'OxVoc' Sounds Database; Parsons, Young, Craske, Stein, & Kringelbach, 2014). In a large sample (n = 562), we demonstrate that adults can reliably categorize these sounds (as 'positive,' 'negative,' or 'sounds with no emotion'), and rate valence in these sounds consistently over time. In an extended sample (n = 945, including the initial n = 562), we also investigated a number of individual difference factors in relation to valence ratings of these vocalizations. Results demonstrated small but significant effects of (a) symptoms of depression and anxiety with more negative ratings of adult neutral vocalizations (R2 = .011 and R2 = .008, respectively) and (b) gender differences in perceived valence such that female listeners rated adult neutral vocalizations more positively and infant cry vocalizations more negatively than male listeners (R2 = .021, R2 = .010, respectively). Of note, we did not find evidence of negativity bias among other affective vocalizations or gender differences in perceived valence of adult laughter, adult cries, infant laughter, or infant neutral vocalizations. Together, these findings largely converge with factors previously shown to impact processing of emotional facial expressions, suggesting a modality-independent impact of depression, anxiety, and listener gender, particularly among vocalizations with more ambiguous valence. (PsycINFO Database Record

Transient emotional events and individual affective traits affect emotion recognition in a perceptual decision-making task

Both affective states and personality traits shape how we perceive the social world and interpret emotions. The literature on affective priming has mostly focused on brief influences of emotional stimuli and emotional states on perceptual and cognitive processes. Yet this approach does not fully capture more dynamic processes at the root of emotional states, with such states lingering beyond the duration of the inducing external stimuli. Our goal was to put in perspective three different types of affective states (induced affective states, more sustained mood states and affective traits such as depression and anxiety) and investigate how they may interact and influence emotion perception. Here, we hypothesized that absorption into positive and negative emotional episodes generate sustained affective states that outlast the episode period and bias the interpretation of facial expressions in a perceptual decision-making task. We also investigated how such effects are influenced by more sustained mood states and by individual affect traits (depression and anxiety) and whether they interact. Transient emotional states were induced using movie-clips, after which participants performed a forced-choice emotion classification task with morphed facial expressions ranging from fear to happiness. Using a psychometric approach, we show that negative (vs. neutral) clips increased participants' propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful during several minutes. In contrast, positive movies biased classification toward happiness only for those clips perceived as most absorbing. Negative mood, anxiety and depression had a stronger effect than transient states and increased the propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful. These results provide the first evidence that absorption and different temporal dimensions of emotions have a significant effect on how we perceive facial expressions.

Theory of Mind in Depressive Disorders: A Review of the Literature

BACKGROUND

Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to infer the mental states of others in order to understand and predict their behaviour. This ability is thought to be essential to social functioning and interpersonal relationships. As major depression is characterized by considerable social and interpersonal difficulties, exploration of the quality of ToM functioning can be particularly relevant in this and in related disorders. We aim to review the current state of research on ToM in depressive disorders in order to find out the extent to which ToM impairment is associated with these illnesses.

METHODS

An internet database search was carried out to collect all publications on the subject.

RESULTS

A total of 32 publications in English met our inclusion criteria: (a) 17 studies on ToM in major depression, (b) 4 studies on ToM in psychotic depression, (c) 3 studies on ToM in dysphoria or mild depression, (d) 4 studies on ToM in euthymic major depression, (e) 2 studies on ToM in chronic versus episodic depression, and (f) 2 studies on ToM in another psychiatric disorder with comorbid major depression.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite an increased interest in the research of the topic in recent years, no firm conclusions can be drawn, as the reviewed articles present some conflicting results. Acutely depressed patients have been found to be impaired on tasks involving both ToM social-perceptual and social-cognitive components. On the other hand, a number of studies have not reported significant between-group differences between depressed patients and healthy controls or have found minimal differences. Further research is needed in order to confirm and extend these results.

Temporal changes in attention to sad and happy faces distinguish currently and remitted depressed individuals from never depressed individuals

Depression is associated with attentional biases for emotional information that are proposed to reflect stable vulnerability factors for the development and recurrence of depression. A key question for researchers is whether those who have recovered from depression also exhibit attentional biases, and if so, how similar these biases are to those who are currently depressed. To address this question, the present study examined attention to emotional faces in remitted depressed (N=26), currently depressed (N=16), and never depressed (N=33) individuals. Participants viewed sets of four face images (happy, sad, threatening, and neutral) while their eye movements were tracked throughout an 8-s presentation. Like currently depressed participants, remitted depressed participants attended to sad faces significantly more than never depressed participants and attended to happy faces significantly less. Analyzing temporal changes in attention revealed that currently and remitted depressed participants did not reduce their attention to sad faces over the 8-s presentation, unlike never depressed participants. In contrast, remitted depressed participants attended to happy faces similarly to never depressed participants, increasing their attention to happy faces over the 8-s presentation. The implications for cognitive theories of depression and depression vulnerability are discussed.

Dysfunctional Attitudes Lead to Depressive Symptoms by Generating Subjective Stress

Previous studies have indicated that objective stress-negative events that have actually occurred outside of individuals-is involved in processes of dysfunctional attitudes leading to depression. Subjective stress-individuals' perception of negative events that have not actually occurred outside of them-is also predicted to be involved in these processes. However, few studies have empirically investigated this prediction. The primary purpose of this study was to fill this gap by testing the hypothesis that dysfunctional attitudes lead to depression by generating subjective stress. A longitudinal design was employed and initial depression was controlled. The results supported the hypothesis. It was also found that initial depression fostered subsequent depression by generating subjective stress. This study contributes to the literature on depression mechanisms by elucidating that subjective stress plays an important role in the development and exacerbation of depression. This study also has important clinical implications as it suggests that preventing subjective stress in individuals with dysfunctional attitudes or depression helps to protect the development or exacerbation of their depression.

Early maladaptive schema-related impairment and co-occurring current major depressive episode-related enhancement of mental state decoding ability in borderline personality disorder

Disturbed interpersonal relationships specific to borderline personality disorder (BPD) suggest biased processing of social information. The goal of this study was to examine alterations in mental state decoding (MSD) and their associations with early maladaptive schemas (EMS) that may lead to the misinterpretation of incoming information. In addition, the authors' aim was to evaluate the effects of a co-occurring current major depressive episode (MDE) on the MSD performance of BPD patients. Seventy-eight BPD patients (34 with MDE) and 76 matched healthy controls (HC) were assessed for Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) and the level of EMS. The authors found that impairment in the total RMET performance, as well as specific impairment regarding the recognition of positive and neutral items, was associated with EMS, and enhanced vigilance to negative mental states was characteristic to BPD with MDE. Results suggest that MSD ability is altered in two independent ways in BPD.

Executive control of emotional processing: a set-shifting task

Emotional activation can interfere with cognitive control processes in healthy individuals, and depression is associated with impaired disengagement from negative information. However, traditional measures of executive functions are free from emotionally relevant stimuli. In the current study we designed a new task based on the structure of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), using emotional faces as stimuli. Here 110 adult participants performed either the Emotional Picture Sorting Task (EPST) or the WCST. Generally, participants performed the EPST similarly to the WCST, but significantly more trials were needed to complete the EPST. Results across six outcome variables indicate that the EPST was somewhat more difficult than the WCST. Larger standard deviations were observed in the EPST group, suggesting that the emotional stimuli might have had an interfering effect in some, but not in all, individuals. This task may become useful as a psychometric test of executive control over emotional stimuli.

Misclassification and identification of emotional facial expressions in depressed youth: a preliminary study

Accurate processing of social and affective cues, especially facial cues, is important for human adaptation. Previous studies have examined depressed adults' sensitivity to identify emotional facial expressions, yet only one study has investigated this in depressed youth. In addition, very little is known about whether depressed individuals exhibit biases when incorrectly labeling, or misclassifying, emotional expressions. Therefore, this preliminary study explored whether sensitivity to, or misclassification of, emotional facial expressions differed among currently depressed youth, those with a history of depression, and never-depressed control participants. A community sample of 280 youth (7-16 years; M = 11.51, SD = 2.44; 56% girls) completed a forced-choice emotion identification task consisting of a series of randomly presented facial images that morphed an emotional expression (angry, happy, and sad) with a neutral expression in 10% increments (e.g., 10% sad/90% neutral; 20% sad/80% neutral). Findings demonstrated that currently depressed were more likely than remitted and never-depressed youth to misclassify happy and sad facial expressions as angry. No depression group differences were found in sensitivity to identify emotional expressions. Results suggest that currently depressed youth show biased perceptions of threat, which may contribute to the maintenance of their depressive symptoms.

Altered emotion perception in insomnia disorder

STUDY OBJECTIVES

Chronic insomnia is a prevalent sleep disorder that negatively affects daytime functioning and confers risk for the future development of psychiatric disorder. Patients with insomnia often report problems with emotion regulation and impaired social interactions. Moreover, experimental sleep loss in healthy adults is associated with altered reactivity to and interpretation of emotional information. In the current study, we investigated socioemotional processing in patients with chronic insomnia disorder relative to healthy good sleepers.

DESIGN

Between-groups comparison.

SETTING

Sleep Research Laboratory.

PARTICIPANTS

Patients with well-defined psychophysiological insomnia (PI; n = 16), free from psychiatric disorder, and an age- and sex-matched control group of good sleepers (GS; n = 15).

INTERVENTIONS

N/A.

MEASUREMENT AND RESULTS

All participants completed a facial expression recognition task, between 18:00 and 19:00, requiring participants to categorize and rate the intensity of four emotional expression categories: anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. People with PI did not differ from GS with respect to categorization of facial expressions. However, in terms of intensity judgements, across all emotion categories, patients tended to rate faces as less emotionally intense (Cohen's d = 0.70). Specifically, they rated expressions displaying sadness and fear as significantly less emotionally intense than healthy GS (both P < 0.05; Cohen's d = 0.77 and 0.89, respectively). Measures of sleepiness (Psychomotor Vigilance Test, Karolinska Sleepiness Scale) or self-reported sleep were not reliably associated with emotional intensity ratings. However, anxiety and depression were negatively related to intensity ratings.

CONCLUSION

For the first time we show that chronic insomnia is associated with reduced ratings of emotion intensity for face expressions displaying sadness and fear. Further work is required to elucidate possible mechanisms and pathways underlying insomnia-related emotional impairment.

Unpacking the neural associations of emotion and judgment in emotion-congruent judgment

The current study takes a new approach to understand the neural systems that support emotion-congruent judgment. The bulk of previous neural research has inferred emotional influences on judgment from disadvantageous judgments or non-random individual differences. The current study manipulated the influence of emotional information on judgments of stimuli that were equivocally composed of positive and negative attributes. Emotion-congruent processing was operationalized in two ways: neural activation significantly associated with primes that lead to emotionally congruent judgments and neural activation significantly associated with judgments that were preceded by emotionally congruent primes. Distinct regions of medial orbitofrontal cortex were associated with these patterns of emotion-congruent processing. Judgments that were incongruent with preceding primes were associated with dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and lateral orbitofrontal cortex activity. The current study demonstrates a new approach to investigate the neural systems associated with emotion-congruent judgment. The findings suggest that medial OFC may support attentional processes that underlie emotion-congruent judgment.

Interpretation of infant facial expression in the context of maternal postnatal depression

Postnatal maternal depression is associated with difficulties in maternal responsiveness. As most signals arising from the infant come from facial expressions one possible explanation for these difficulties is that mothers with postnatal depression are differentially affected by particular infant facial expressions. Thus, this study investigates the effects of postnatal depression on mothers’ perceptions of infant facial expressions. Participants (15 controls, 15 depressed and 15 anxious mothers) were asked to rate a number of infant facial expressions, ranging from very positive to very negative. Each face was shown twice, for a short and for a longer period of time in random order. Results revealed that mothers used more extreme ratings when shown the infant faces (i.e. more negative or more positive) for a longer period of time. Mothers suffering from postnatal depression were more likely to rate negative infant faces shown for a longer period more negatively than controls. The differences were specific to depression rather than an effect of general postnatal psychopathology—as no differences were observed between anxious mothers and controls. There were no other significant differences in maternal ratings of infant faces showed for short periods or for positive or neutral valence faces of either length. The findings that mothers with postnatal depression rate negative infant faces more negatively indicate that appraisal bias might underlie some of the difficulties that these mothers have in responding to their own infants signals.

Depressive symptomatology, rather than neuroticism, predicts inflated physical symptom reports in community-residing women

OBJECTIVE

To examine the roles of depressive symptomatology and neuroticism/negative affect (N/NA) on common physical symptom reporting in a sample of community residents.

METHODS

Community-residing women (n = 108) participated in a combined concurrent-retrospective design. Physical symptoms were assessed concurrently over 21 consecutive days followed by a retrospective assessment of the collective symptom experience for the same time period.

RESULTS

Based on evidence of differences in cognitive processing of emotion-relevant material, we predicted and found that depressive symptomatology (at baseline) was a stronger predictor of inflated physical symptom recall than N/NA. Depressive symptomatology was also a stronger, independent predictor of concurrent physical symptoms. Notably, these results were obtained even when physical depressive symptoms in both the physical symptom checklist and the baseline depression assessment were eliminated.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that the classic symptom perception hypothesis should be refined and operationalized in terms of depressive symptomatology rather than N/NA. This study demonstrates how cognitive-affective processing differences associated with depressive symptomatology can shed additional light on the psychology of symptom perception. Implications for treatment seeking, medical diagnoses, and treatment decisions are discussed.