Fusing Biodiversity Metrics into Investigations of Daily Life: Illustrations and Recommendations With Emodiversity

Using Freely Generated Labels Instead of Rating Scales to Assess Emotion in Everyday Life

To measure emotion in daily life, studies often prompt participants to repeatedly rate their feelings on a set of prespecified terms. This approach has yielded key findings in the psychological literature yet may not represent how people typically describe their experiences. We used an alternative approach, in which participants labeled their current emotion with at least one word of their choosing. In an initial study, estimates of label positivity recapitulated momentary valence ratings and were associated with self-reported mental health. The number of unique emotion words used over time was related to the balance and spread of emotions endorsed in an end-of-day rating task, but not to other measures of emotional functioning. A second study tested and replicated a subset of these findings. Considering the variety and richness of participant responses, a free-label approach appears to be a viable as well as compelling means of studying emotion in everyday life.

Transdiagnostic effects of therapist self-disclosure on diverse emotional experiences of clients with emotional disorders and schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE

Despite the clinical significance of emotional diversity, also known as emodiversity, there has been limited investigation into the therapeutic interventions that influence this construct. In the current study we examined the association between immediate therapist self-disclosure (TSD) and emodiversity among two diagnostic groups who tend to experience emotional difficulties: people with schizophrenia and people with emotional disorders (i.e., depression and/or anxiety).

METHOD

The sample comprised 74 clients (37 diagnosed with schizophrenia and 37 with emotional disorders) treated by 45 therapists in a university clinic setting. Following each session, clients self-reported their emotions, and therapists completed a measure of frequency and centrality of their immediate TSD during the session.

RESULTS

Longitudinal multilevel models indicated that immediate TSD was positively associated with clients' global emodiversity, both at the within- and the between-client levels, as well as with clients' negative emodiversity at the between-client level. Moreover, clients with emotional disorders and clients with schizophrenia did not differ in the association between immediate TSD and emodiversity. In addition, across groups, clients treated by therapists who used more immediate TSD on average showed greater increases in global emodiversity during treatment.

CONCLUSIONS

immediate TSD is associated with clients' ability to experience rich and diverse emotional experiences across different disorders. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Positive event diversity: Relationship with personality and well-being

OBJECTIVE

Examining the personality and well-being correlates of positive event diversity.

BACKGROUND

Past research has highlighted that personality traits are linked to the frequency of daily positive events. This study is the first to examine positive event diversity, the extent to which positive events are spread across multiple types of positive life domains, as well as its personality and well-being correlates.

METHOD

We conducted parallel analyses of three daily diary datasets (Ns = 1919, 744, and 1392) that included evening assessment of daily positive events and affective well-being. The Big Five personality traits were assessed in baseline surveys.

RESULTS

Positive Event Diversity was related to higher person-mean daily positive affect but not negative affect. Higher Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness, and lower Neuroticism were correlated with more positive event diversity. These associations became nonsignificant when controlling for positive event frequency. Positive event frequency moderated the link between positive event diversity and person-mean affect, such that higher positive event diversity was associated with higher negative and lower positive affect for people who experienced more frequent positive events.

CONCLUSIONS

No consistent evidence was found for personality as a moderator of the positive event diversity-well-being link across the three studies. Further, the well-being implications of positive event diversity may be better understood when interpreting them alongside indexes of positive event frequency.

Childhood abuse and neglect and profiles of adult emotion dynamics

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is experienced by ∼40% of all children at major personal and societal costs. The divergent associations between emotional, physical, and sexual abuse or neglect in childhood and differences in adult emotional functioning and regulation were examined in terms of daily emotion intensity, variability, instability, inertia, and diversity, reported over 30 days by 290 Dutch aged 19-73. Participants described their abuse/neglect experiences retrospectively using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Dissecting CM effects on adult emotion dynamics may inform theories on the ontogenesis and functioning of emotions, on effects of abuse and neglect, to better understand (dys)functional emotional development, and to prevent their adverse sequelae. Structural equation models (SEM) showed that most types of CM were associated with specific patterns of emotion dynamics, and only emotional abuse had no unique effects on the emotional dynamic indices. Emotional neglect was associated with most measures of emotion dynamics (i.e., less intense, variable, unstable, and diverse emotions). Sexual abuse associated with increases and physical neglect decreases in negative affect variability and instability. Physical abuse was associated with inertia but with a small effect size. Social contact frequency did not mediate much of the relationship between CM types and emotion dynamics.

Emodiversity evaluation of remote workers through health monitoring based on intra-day emotion sampling

Introduction

In recent years, the widespread shift from on-site to remote work has led to a decline in employees' mental health. Consequently, this transition to remote work poses several challenges for both employees and employers. To address these challenges, there is an urgent need for techniques to detect declining mental health in employees' daily lives. Emotion-based health assessment, which examines emotional diversity (emodiversity) experienced in daily life, is a possible solution. However, the feasibility of emodiversity remains unclear, especially from the perspectives of its applicability to remote workers and countries other than Europe and the United States. This study investigated the association between subjective mental health decline and emotional factors, such as emodiversity, as well as physical conditions, in remote workers in Japan.

Method

To explore this association, we conducted a consecutive 14-day prospective observational experiment on 18 Japanese remote workers. This experiment comprised pre-and post-questionnaire surveys, physiological sensing, daytime emotion self-reports, and subjective health reports at end-of-day. In daytime emotion self-reports, we introduced smartphone-based experience sampling (also known as ecological momentary assessment), which is suitable for collecting context-dependent self-reports precisely in a recall bias-less manner. For 17 eligible participants (mean ± SD, 39.1 ± 9.1 years), we evaluated whether and how the psycho-physical characteristics, including emodiversity, changed on subjective mental health-declined experimental days after analyzing descriptive statistics.

Results

Approximately half of the experimental days (46.3 ± 18.9%) were conducted under remote work conditions. Our analysis showed that physical and emotional indices significantly decreased on mental health-declined days. Especially on high anxiety and depressive days, we found that emodiversity indicators significantly decreased (global emodiversity on anxiety conditions, 0.409 ± 0.173 vs. 0.366 ± 0.143, p = 0.041), and positive emotional experiences were significantly suppressed (61.5 ± 7.7 vs. 55.5 ± 6.4, p < 0.001).

Discussion

Our results indicated that the concept of emodiversity can be applicable even to Japanese remote workers, whose cultural background differs from that of individuals in Europe and the United States. Emodiversity showed significant associations with emotion dysregulation-related mental health deterioration, suggesting the potential of emodiversity as useful indicators in managing such mental health deterioration among remote workers.

Emotional Granularity is Associated with Daily Experiential Diversity

Emotional granularity is the ability to create differentiated and nuanced emotional experiences and is associated with positive health outcomes. Individual differences in granularity are hypothesized to reflect differences in emotion concepts, which are informed by prior experience and impact current and future experience. Greater variation in experience, then, should be related to the rich and diverse emotion concepts that support higher granularity. Using natural language processing methods, we analyzed descriptions of everyday events to estimate the diversity of contexts and activities encountered by participants. Across three studies varying in language (English, Dutch) and modality (written, spoken), we found that participants who referred to a more varied and balanced set of contexts and activities reported more differentiated and nuanced negative emotions. Experiential diversity was not consistently associated with granularity for positive emotions. We discuss the contents of daily life as a potential source and outcome of individual differences in emotion.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00185-2.

Conceptualizing and Examining Change in Communication Research

Communication research often focuses on processes of communication, such as how messages impact individuals over time or how interpersonal relationships develop and change. Despite their importance, these change processes are often implicit in much theoretical and empirical work in communication. Intensive longitudinal data are becoming increasingly feasible to collect and, when coupled with appropriate analytic frameworks, enable researchers to better explore and articulate the types of change underlying communication processes. To facilitate the study of change processes, we (a) describe advances in data collection and analytic methods that allow researchers to articulate complex change processes of phenomena in communication research, (b) provide an overview of change processes and how they may be captured with intensive longitudinal methods, and (c) discuss considerations of capturing change when designing and implementing studies. We are excited about the future of studying processes of change in communication research, and we look forward to the iterations between empirical tests and theory revision that will occur as researchers delve into studying change within communication processes.

How Is Variety in Daily Life Related to the Expression of Personality States? An Ambulatory Assessment Study

People differ in the way they live their daily lives. For some people, daily life is characterized by multiple and diverse experiences, while others have more stability and routine in their lives. However, little is known about how variety in daily life relates to the expression of personality states. The present study examined within-person associations between variety in social partners, places, and activities with state expression. Data came from an ambulatory assessment study ( N = 962, Mage = 25.49) with four assessments per day over a period of six consecutive days. The results of the multilevel modeling analyses suggest that variety in daily life is associated with some, but not all, state expressions. For instance, on days when participants experienced a greater variety in activities, they reported being less neurotic and conscientious, but also more agreeable. In addition, the links between all social partners, places, and activities with the expression of the state were examined simultaneously to obtain more detailed information on the multifaceted nature of situation-state expression links. We conclude that variety in daily life has both theoretical and empirical relevance for the expression of personality states.

Capturing Hassles and Uplifts in Adolescents' Daily Lives: Links with Physical and Mental Well-Being

Despite the salient impacts of daily experiences, scarce research has measured various daily minor experiences and evaluated their influences on adolescent well-being in their daily life. This study assessed the exposure to multiple aspects of daily hassles and uplifts in adolescents' daily lives, and examined the links between the level, types, and diversity of these exposures and adolescents' daily physical and mental well-being. Ninety-nine adolescents (12-17 years old, M = 14.6, 51.5% White, 53.5% female) completed a 30-day daily diary study. Multilevel modeling revealed different associations between the level and types of daily hassles and uplifts and adolescent well-being on the same day. Experiencing diverse daily hassles was linked with more emotional problems, and experiencing diverse daily uplifts was related with lower negative affect. The findings underscore the importance of including level, types, and diversity of both daily hassles and uplifts in research to better characterize adolescents' daily experiences. The findings also highlight the concurrent and potential cumulative effects of daily minor social events and mundane experiences in adolescent development in their daily lives.

Advancing the Study of Resilience to Daily Stressors

Historically, studies of childhood and adult resilience have typically focused on adaptation to chronic life adversities, such as poverty and maltreatment, or isolated and potentially traumatic events, such as bereavement and serious illness. Here, we present a complementary view and suggest that stressors experienced in daily life may also forecast individual health and well-being. We argue that daily process approaches that incorporate intensive sampling of individuals in natural settings can provide powerful insights into unfolding adaptational processes. In making this argument, we review studies that link intraindividual dynamics with diverse health-related phenomena. Findings from this research provide support for a multiple-levels-analysis perspective that embraces greater unity in pivotal resilience constructs invoked across childhood and adult literatures. Drawing on insights and principles derived from life-span theory, we conclude by outlining promising directions for future work and considering their broader implications for the field of resilience.

Variability in the Functions of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury: Evidence From Three Real-Time Monitoring Studies

Despite functional models of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) helping to explain why people engage in this perplexing behavior, we still lack an understanding of some of the key properties of NSSI functions. Here, we address three unanswered questions about NSSI functions: how much do distinct NSSI functions (1) vary between people over time, (2) vary within people over time, and (3) simultaneously co-occur over time? Data were drawn from three ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies of self-injurious adult psychiatric outpatients (n = 7), community-based adolescents (n = 15), and community-based adults (n = 9). Across the three studies, there was a total of 271 NSSI episodes (all with corresponding functions captured by EMA). The vast majority (27 of 31; 87%) of participants exhibited unique patterns of NSSI functions during the monitoring periods, indicating high variability between people. The vast majority (26 of 31; 84%) of participants also showed changes in NSSI functions over time, indicating high variability within people. Although it was most common for only one function to be reported for a given NSSI episode, participants endorsed more than one function for 22% to 43% of NSSI episodes, indicating that different functions did simultaneously co-occur. These results underscore that reinforcement processes for NSSI differ from person-to-person, and are both time-varying and multifaceted, which has implications for personalized assessment and treatment of this clinical phenomenon.

A new diversity index

We introduce here a new index of diversity based on consideration of reasonable propositions that such an index should have in order to represent diversity. The behaviour of the index is compared with that of the Gini-Simpson diversity index, and is found to predict more realistic values of diversity for small communities, in particular when each species is equally represented and for small communities. The index correctly provides a measure of true diversity that is equal to the species richness across all values of species and organism numbers when all species are equally represented, as well as Hill's more stringent 'doubling' criterion when they are not. In addition, a new graphical interpretation is introduced that permits a straightforward visual comparison of pairs of indices across a wide range within a parameter space based on species and organism numbers.

Anticipatory Coping Diversity: Implications for Emotional, Physical, and Cognitive Reactivity to Daily Stressors

OBJECTIVES

This study examines the concept of anticipatory coping diversity, reflected in the evenness and richness of anticipatory coping strategies. The overarching goal of the present study is to show how individual differences in anticipatory coping diversity are associated with emotional, physical, and cognitive reactivity to daily stressors, and to examine whether these dynamic characteristics might differ between younger and older adults.

METHOD

107 younger (M age = 19.44, range 18-36) and 116 older (M age = 64.71, range 60-90) participants reported on 1627 total days via an online daily diary study. Participants reported baseline demographic information (Day 1) and anticipatory coping, stressor exposure, negative affect, physical symptoms, and memory failures (Days 2-9). Anticipatory coping diversity was indexed at the person level using Shannon's entropy to capture the evenness and richness of anticipatory coping strategies across stressors.

RESULTS

People with more anticipatory coping diversity were less emotionally reactive, but more physically and cognitively reactive to daily stressors. Older adults exhibited less anticipatory coping diversity than younger adults, but the patterns of anticipatory coping diversity differences in reactivity appeared to be consistent across younger and older adults.

DISCUSSION

Anticipatory coping diversity reflects a useful index within the stress process that is associated with benefits as well as costs. These findings bridge dispositional and contextual approaches to coping and highlight the importance of understanding how deployment of coping strategies are related to well-being across the adult lifespan.

Rich and Balanced Experiences of Daily Emotions are Associated with Activity Diversity Across Adulthood

OBJECTIVES

Studies demonstrate the association between diverse emotions and health. However, we know little about how these emotions are related to activities in daily life. This study examined whether the diversity of daily activities ("activity diversity") is associated with the diversity of both positive and negative daily emotions ("emodiversity") in adulthood. We also examined if these associations differed by age.

METHODS

Two separate samples of participants from the Midlife in the United States Study II (M2: 2004-2009, n=2,012, Mage=56yrs) and Refresher (MR: 2012-2016, n=779, Mage=47yrs) provided activity and emotion data for eight consecutive days. Using Shannon's entropy, we constructed activity diversity and emodiversity (positive, negative) scores. Analyses adjusted for sociodemographic and health characteristics, total activity time, mean positive/negative emotions, and number of days with positive/negative emotion data.

RESULTS

Greater activity diversity was associated with greater positive emodiversity and greater negative emodiversity in both samples. In the M2 sample, the association between activity diversity and positive emodiversity was stronger among relatively younger adults, such the positive association among those aged 33-44 years was greater than that observed among those aged 68-84 years. Results held after adjusting for time spent in each of the activities or when using different emodiversity metrics (Gini or Simpson coefficients).

DISCUSSION

Broad and even participation of daily activities may provide more opportunities to experience rich and balanced emotions. Findings suggest that the association between activity diversity and emodiversity exists across adulthood, underscoring the value of including information about daily activities when examining emotional experiences across the lifespan.

Variety is the spice of life: How emotional diversity is associated with better student engagement and achievement

BACKGROUND

Past studies on emotions have mostly focused on mean levels of positive and negative emotions. In recent years, the concept of emotional diversity (emodiversity) which refers to the variety and relative abundance of emotions was introduced and was found to have important implications for mental and physical health. However, its role in the educational context is unexplored.

AIMS

The current study aimed to examine how emodiversity is associated with indicators of optimal school functioning including engagement and achievement.

SAMPLE(S)

Four hundred four Filipino high school students (M = 14.34, SD = 1.47; 55% female) and 10 class teachers participated in the study.

METHODS

Students completed surveys measuring their emotions, emodiversity, and engagement, while class teachers rated their students' engagement. Finally, grades from the school were obtained at the end of the semester.

RESULTS

Positive emodiversity-diversity of positive emotional experiences-was an independent predictor of academic engagement and school achievement over and above mean levels of positive and negative emotions. These results were found to generalize to self-reported and teacher-reported outcomes as well as more objective measures of achievement. Moreover, findings remained robust after controlling for demographic variables such as gender and year level.

CONCLUSIONS

Positive emodiversity is associated with higher engagement and achievement suggesting the importance of emodiversity in the educational context.

Sibling relationship quality in the context of digital leisure and geographic distance for college-attending emerging adults

During the transition to adulthood, emerging adults may experience new geographic distance separating them from their siblings. Digital leisure is common among emerging adults and may serve as a tool for maintaining relationship quality across geographic distance. Using qualitative data, we created individual digital leisure diversity scores for four categories of digital leisure identified from a constructed taxonomy. The sample included 185 college-attending emerging adults (M age = 20.1, 64.3% male). Analysis of variance indicated dyadic gender differences in social media and gaming. Digital leisure diversity was associated with greater levels of affective and cognitive sibling relationship quality, regardless of sibling dyad gender. The association between digital leisure diversity and cognitive relationship quality was significant for participants who lived closer to their sibling. During the transition to adulthood when new geographic separation is common, digital leisure shows potential as a compensatory activity that may help siblings maintain relationship quality.

Flexibility in using self-regulatory strategies to manage self-control conflicts: The role of metacognitive knowledge, strategy repertoire, and feedback monitoring

For regulating emotion, it has been shown that people benefit from being flexible in their use of emotion regulation strategies. In the current study, we built on research focused on regulatory flexibility with respect to emotions to investigate flexibility in the use of self-regulatory strategies to resolve daily self-control conflicts. We investigated three components of flexibility: (1) metacognitive knowledge, (2) strategy repertoire, and (3) feedback monitoring. In a 10-day experience sampling study, 226 participants reported whether they had, within the past hour, experienced a self-control conflict of initiating an aversive activity, persisting in it, or inhibiting an unwanted impulse in response to a temptation. Results support the hypothesis that higher levels of all three components of flexibility are associated with higher levels of success in managing daily self-control conflicts, except for strategy repertoire and feedback monitoring in conflicts of persistence. Results also support the hypothesis that higher levels of trait self-control are associated with higher levels of metacognitive knowledge and feedback monitoring for conflicts of initiation, but not for conflicts of persistence and inhibition. We found no evidence of an association between trait self-control and strategy repertoire. These findings demonstrate the importance of flexible strategy use during daily self-control conflicts.

Emotional complexity across the life story: Elevated negative emodiversity and diminished positive emodiversity in sufferers of recurrent depression

BACKGROUND

Greater diversity in the experience of negative and positive emotions - emodiversity - is associated with better mental health outcomes in the general population (Quoidbach et al. 2014). However, conceptual accounts of depression suggest this might differ in clinical depression. In this study, the diversity of negative and positive emotion experiences as remembered by a recurrently depressed sample and a never-depressed control group were compared.

METHODS

Emodiversity was assessed using a life structure card sort task which allowed for the assessment of memory for emotional experience over the life course. Depressed (n=34) and non-depressed (n=34) participants completed the card sort task, from which emodiversity metrics were calculated for negative and positive emotion experience.

RESULTS

Depressed individuals showed recollections of enhanced emodiversity across negative emotion but reduced emodiversity across positive emotion, relative to never-depressed individuals.

LIMITATIONS

This study involved a relatively small sample size.

DISCUSSION

This study indicates that greater diversity of negative emotion experience, which has been interpreted as a protective factor against depressed mood in community samples (Quoidbach et al., 2014), instead characterises the remembered experience of recurrent clinical depression. The finding that positive emodiversity is adaptive in depression suggests that therapeutic outcomes may be improved by facilitating exposure to a diverse range of positive emotions. These findings indicate that the relationship between emotion diversity and mental health is more complex than hitherto assumed.

Same old, same old? Age differences in the diversity of daily life

Some research suggests that compared with younger adults, older adults have more homogeneous, less diverse daily life experiences because everyday situations and activities become increasingly stable and routine. However, strong empirical tests of this assumption are scarce. In two complementary studies, we examined whether older age is associated with less diversity in daily life experiences (e.g., regarding social interaction partners, activities, and places across and within days) and, if so, to what extent health limitations account for these age differences. In Study 1, we used daily diaries to investigate diversity across days among younger (N = 246; Mage = 21.8 years, SD = 2.5) and older adults (N = 119; Mage = 67.7 years, SD = 5.3). In Study 2, we investigated diversity within days employing experience sampling methods over three weeks in an adult life span sample (N = 365; range = 14-88 years). Results showed that across and within days, the daily lives of older adults were less diverse regarding their social interaction partners. Yet, older adults reported more diversity in activities within days and across days in the afternoons, whereas younger adults reported less diverse activities partly due to working or studying more often. Age differences remained statistically significant when controlling for health limitations. We conclude that age differences in the diversity of daily life are nuanced, depending on the domain and the level of analysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Emodiversity, health, and well-being in the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) daily diary study

Emodiversity, or the variety and relative abundance of emotions experienced, provides a metric that can be used to understand emotional experience and its relation to well-being above and beyond average levels of positive and negative affect. Past research has found that more diverse emotional experiences, both positive and negative, are related to better mental and physical health outcomes. The present research aimed to test the relationship between positive and negative emodiversity across the span of 8 days with measures of health and well-being using 2 samples of the Midlife in the United States study (http://midus.wisc.edu/). Participants (N = 2,788) reported emotional states (14 negative, 13 positive) once each day for 8 days. Emodiversity scores were computed for each day using an adaptation of Shannon's biodiversity index and averaged across the days. All models included average affect and demographic covariates. Greater positive emodiversity was associated with fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety and fewer physical health symptoms but was not related to eudaimonic well-being nor cognitive functioning. In contrast to previous research, greater negative emodiversity was related to more symptoms of depression and anxiety and more physical health symptoms. Greater negative emodiversity was only associated with one positive outcome: better executive functioning. These findings illustrate inconsistencies across studies in whether negative emodiversity is associated with better or worse outcomes and raise further questions about how the construct of emodiversity can be better refined. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Control diversity: How across-domain control beliefs are associated with daily negative affect and differ with age

Domain-specific control beliefs typically buffer the influence stressors have on people's negative affect (affective stressor reactivity). However, little is known about the extent to which individuals' control beliefs vary across stressor types and whether such stressor-related control diversity is adaptive for affective well-being. We thus introduce a control diversity construct (a person-level summary of across-domain control beliefs) and examine how control diversity differs with age and relates to negative affect and affective stressor reactivity. We apply a multilevel model to daily diary data from the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE; N = 2,022; mean age = 56 years; 33-84; 57% women). Our findings indicate that above and beyond average control beliefs, people whose control is spread over fewer stressor domains (less control diversity) have lower negative affect and less affective stressor reactivity. Older adults are more likely than younger adults to have their control beliefs concentrated in one domain. Additionally, associations between control diversity and negative affect and affective stressor reactivity were age invariant. Moderation effects indicated that when people with low average control beliefs are faced with stressors, having control beliefs focused on fewer domains rather than spread broadly across many domains is associated with less negative affect. Our findings suggest that control diversity provides unique insights into how control beliefs differ across adulthood and contribute to affective well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A Comprehensive Comparison of Quantifications of Intraindividual Variability in Response Times: A Measurement Burst Approach

OBJECTIVES

To formally identify and contrast the most commonly-employed quantifications of response time inconsistency (RTI) and elucidate their utility for understanding within-person (WP) and between-person (BP) variation in cognitive function with increasing age.

METHOD

Using two measurement burst studies of cognitive aging, we systematically identified and computed five RTI quantifications from select disciplines to examine: (a) correlations among RTI quantifications; (b) the distribution of BP and WP variation in RTI; and (c) the comparability of RTI quantifications for predicting attention switching.

RESULTS

Comparable patterns were observed across studies. There was significant variation in RTI BP as well as WP across sessions and bursts. Correlations among RTI quantifications were generally strong and positive both WP and BP, except for the coefficient of variation. Independent prediction models indicated that slower mean response time (RT) and greater RTI were associated with slower attention switching both WP and BP. For selecting simultaneous prediction models, collinearity resulted in inflated standard errors and unstable model estimates.

DISCUSSION

RTI reflects a novel dimension of performance that is a robust and theoretically informative predictor of BP and WP variation in cognitive function. Among the plenitude of RTI quantifications, not all are interchangeable, nor of comparable predictive utility.

Emodiversity and biomarkers of inflammation

There is growing evidence that inflammatory responses may help to explain how emotions get "under the skin" to influence disease susceptibility. Moving beyond examination of individuals' average level of emotion, this study examined how the breadth and relative abundance of emotions that individuals experience-emodiversity-is related to systemic inflammation. Using diary data from 175 adults aged 40 to 65 who provided end-of-day reports of their positive and negative emotions over 30 days, we found that greater diversity in day-to-day positive emotions was associated with lower circulating levels of inflammation (indicated by IL-6, CRP, fibrinogen), independent of mean levels of positive and negative emotions, body mass index, anti-inflammatory medications, medical conditions, personality, and demographics. No significant associations were observed between global or negative emodiversity and inflammation. These findings highlight the unique role daily positive emotions play in biological health. (PsycINFO Database Record

More than Counting: An Intraindividual Variability Approach to Categorical Repeated Measures

Objectives

Age-related differences in daily experiences are often described using summaries of categorical repeated measures, including typologies of stressors, activities, social partners, and coping strategies. This paper illustrates how an intraindividual variability (IIV) framework can be used to extract additional meaning from categorical IIV data.

Method

Using 8-occasion categorical data on daily stressors from the National Study of Daily Experiences (N = 1,499, MAge = 46.74, SDAge= 12.91), we derive and compute six IIV metrics that invoke numeric and nominal measurement of the central tendency, dispersion, and asymmetry of individuals' stressor experiences and examine how these metrics, relative dominance, diversity, log-skew and mode, spread, order, are related to age and interindividual differences in negative affect.

Results

Results demonstrate the utility of the numeric and nominal categorical IIV metrics, with theoretically meaningful age gradients in the three numeric IIV stressor metrics and five of six IIV metrics mapping differences in negative affect.

Discussion

Findings highlight how the unique constructs measured by these six metrics of categorical IIV may be used to examine dynamic process, study interindividual and age-related differences, and expand the variety of developmental research questions that may be answered using categorical repeated measures data.