Affective Ratings of Pictures Related to Interpersonal Situations

The pictorial set of Emotional Social Interactive Scenarios between Chinese Adults (ESISCA): Development and validation

Affective picture databases with a single facial expression or body posture in one image have been widely applied to investigate emotion. However, to date, there was no standardized database containing the stimuli which involve multiple emotional signals in social interactive scenarios. The current study thus developed a pictorial set comprising 274 images depicting two Chinese adults' interactive scenarios conveying emotions of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and neutral. The data of the valence and arousal ratings of the scenes and the emotional categories of the scenes and the faces in the images were provided in the present study. Analyses of the data collected from 70 undergraduate students suggested high reliabilities of the valence and arousal ratings of the scenes and high judgmental agreements in categorizing the scene and facial emotions. The findings suggested that the present dataset is well constructed and could be useful for future studies to investigate the emotion recognition or empathy in social interactions in both healthy and clinical (e.g., ASD) populations.

Altered Emotion Perception Linked to Structural Brain Differences in Youth With Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia

CONTEXT

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a genetic disorder that results in hormonal imbalances and decreased brain volumes in regions important for emotional processing.

OBJECTIVE

To examine whether emotion perception differs between youth with CAH and control youth, and if these differences relate to brain volumes.

METHODS

In this cross-sectional study of 27 youths with CAH (mean age = 12.63 years, 16 female) and 35 age- and sex-matched controls (mean age = 13.03 years, 20 female), each participant rated picture stimuli and completed a 3T structural brain scan. Valence and arousal ratings and reaction times of 61 affective images were assessed. Gray matter volumes were measured by MRI.

RESULTS

Youth with CAH had lower valence ratings for negative (P = .007) and neutral (P = .019) images. Controls showed differences in reaction times and arousal ratings across stimuli conditions, but youth with CAH did not. Brain volumes of the right amygdala (P = .025) and left hippocampus (P = .002) were associated with valence ratings. Left rostral middle frontal (P < .001) and right medial orbitofrontal cortex (P = .002) volumes were negatively related to valence scores only in youth with CAH, whereas left medial orbitofrontal cortex (P < .001) volumes were associated with valence scores positively in youth with CAH and negatively in controls.

CONCLUSION

Findings suggest that youth with CAH perceive emotive stimuli as more unpleasant. Decreased brain volumes in the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex are associated with these measures of altered emotion perception in youth with CAH.

Cognitive flexibility and attentional patterns among trauma survivors: preliminary evidence from an eye-tracking study

BACKGROUND

Executive functioning has been linked to both the development of post-traumatic symptoms and the efficiency of therapy. Specifically, flexibility processes seem to play a major role in the use of efficient coping strategies after a traumatic event. However, only a few studies have focused on the links between flexibility, resilience, and concrete behaviours displayed by individuals.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of emotional content on the efficiency of cognitive flexibility among trauma-exposed individuals.

METHOD

Twenty-eight trauma-exposed (TE) and 27 non-trauma-exposed (NTE) individuals performed an overlap task in which neutral, positive, and negative pictures appeared in the centre of the screen. Participants were required to disengage their attentional focus from this picture to identify a peripheral target. Analyses included eye movements during the presentation of the scenes and the response times associated with target localization.

RESULTS

TE individuals initially presented a rapid overt disengagement from both neutral and negative emotional information. In other words, TE participants moved their gaze away from the central picture towards the target more rapidly than NTE participants. However, TE participants then displayed longer reaction times to identify the target in comparison with NTE participants.

DISCUSSION

This study presents preliminary evidence that cognitive flexibility may be relevant when considering the impact of trauma. The developed task could provide a novel way to assess this flexibility within an emotional context.

HIGHLIGHTS

• This study developed an original assessment of cognitive flexibility processes in an emotional context.• Cognitive flexibility was assessed using an overlap task and eye-tracking technology.• Cognitive flexibility may be relevant when considering the impact of a trauma.

Eye-tracking exploration of inhibitory control in post-traumatic stress disorder: an emotional antisaccade paradigm

Background: Cognitive-behavioural studies among individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have highlighted attentional biases towards threats as a key factor in the maintenance of the disorder. Anxiety-related studies have hypothesized that attentional biases were due to attentional control difficulties in inhibition and flexibility of threatening information. Objective: Because it remains unclear how this theory could be applied to PTSD, this study aims to evaluate the inhibitory control and flexibility abilities of negative and threatening information in this population, using eye-tracking technology. Method: Fifteen adults with a history of physical assault and a current diagnosis of PTSD, and 15 healthy control participants, completed an original mixed antisaccade task. Results: We found enhanced overt attentional allocation towards every item of emotional information among PTSD participants, such as indexed by the latencies of the first saccade in prosaccade trials, followed by disengagement difficulties, such as indexed by increased reaction time to identify the target. Conclusion: Our results could represent empirical evidence of the general enhancement of attentional vigilance in people with PTSD in comparison with healthy controls, as well as specific inhibitory deficits. The results are interpreted through a fear-generalization hypothesis.