Emotional responses to mortality salience: Behavioral and ERPs evidence

Effects of anxiety state on N400 event-related brain potential response to unexpected semantic stimuli

Emotional states can influence how people use meaningful context to make predictions about what comes next. To measure whether state anxiety influences such prediction, we used the N400 event-related brain potential (ERP) response to semantic stimuli, whose amplitude is smaller (less negative) when the stimulus is more predicted based on preceding context. Participants (n = 28) were randomized to one of two groups, who underwent either an "anxious-uncertainty" procedure previously shown to increase anxiety, or a control procedure. Both before and after this procedure, participants' ERPs were recorded while they viewed category definitions (e.g., "a type of fruit"), each followed by a target word that was either a high-typicality category exemplar ("apple"), low-typicality exemplar ("cherry"), or non-exemplar ("clamp") of the category. Participants' task was to respond by pressing one of two buttons to indicate whether the target represented a member of the category. As expected, based on previous work, overall, N400 amplitudes were largest (most negative) in response to non-exemplars, intermediate to low-typicality exemplars, and smallest to high-typicality exemplars. N400 amplitudes were larger to non-exemplars after the anxious-uncertainty procedure than after the control procedure. N400 amplitudes to both types of exemplars did not differ after the anxious-uncertainty procedure versus the control procedure. The results are consistent with participants devoting more neural resources to processing contextually unexpected items under anxious states, rather than anxiety facilitating processing of expected items.

Reminders of Mortality: Investigating the Effects of Different Mortality Saliences on Somatosensory Neural Activity

The Terror Management Theory (TMT) offered a great deal of generative hypotheses that have been tested in a plethora of studies. However, there is a still substantive lack of clarity about the interpretation of TMT-driven effects and their underlying neurological mechanisms. Here, we aimed to expand upon previous research by introducing two novel methodological manipulations aimed to enhance the effects of mortality salience (MS). We presented participants with the idea of the participants' romantic partner's death as well as increased the perceived threat of somatosensory stimuli. Linear mixed modelling disclosed the greater effects of MS directed at one's romantic partner on pain perception (as opposed to the participant's own mortality). The theta event-related oscillatory activity measured at the vertex of the scalp was significantly lower compared to the control condition. We suggest that MS aimed at one's romantic partner can result in increased effects on perceptual experience; however, the underlying neural activities are not reflected by a classical measure of cortical arousal.

Kinesiophobia and self-management behaviour related to physical activity in Chinese patients with coronary heart disease: The mediating role of self-efficacy

AIM

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship among kinesiophobia, self-efficacy and self-management behaviour related to physical activity (SMBPA) in Chinese patients with coronary heart disease(CHD) and the mediating role of self-efficacy between kinesiophobia and SMBPA in Chinese patients with CHD.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional study.

METHODS

From March to July 2021, 540 Chinese patients with CHD were investigated with three scales using convenient sampling method. The data were analysed with Pearson correlation, univariate analysis, multivariate linear regression and the PROCESS macro.

RESULTS

509 valid questionnaires were collected (effective response rate: 94.2%). Low kinesiophobia and high self-efficacy were related to high-levels of SMBPA (all p < .01). Besides, the effect of kinesiophobia on SMBPA was partially mediated by self-efficacy, and the mediation effect accounted for 35.59% of the total effect.