Rethinking fast and slow processing in autism.
Following the popularity of dual process models in social and cognitive psychology, there is major interest in the possibility that autism is associated with impaired “fast” intuitive thinking but enhanced “slow” or “rational” deliberative thinking. If correct, this has great potential to help understand various strengths and difficulties characteristic of autism. Previous empirical investigations of this phenomenon, however, are marred by concerns about the measurement of intuitive and deliberative processing, as well as broader problems in clinical psychological science (e.g., small underpowered studies, lack...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - March 31, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Threat and uncertainty in the face of perceptual decision-making in anxiety.
Anxiety is defined as an anticipatory response to uncertain, future threats. It is unknown how anticipatory information regarding uncertainty about upcoming threatening and neutral stimuli impacts attention and perception in anxiety. Individuals with and without anxiety disorders performed two perceptual decision-making tasks in which they used threat or neutral prestimulus cues to discriminate between subsequent threatening and neutral faces. In one task, cues provided no probability information (high uncertainty). In the other, cues indicated a high probability of encountering threatening or neutral faces (low uncertaint...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - March 31, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Shared and individual-specific daily stress-reactivity in a cross-diagnostic at-risk sample.
This study showed important similarities, as well as many differences between individuals, in terms of the impact of stress on mild expressions of psychopathology in daily life. Clustering based on similar stress-reactivity did not lead to stable subgroups. Finally, average daily stress levels, but not daily stress-reactivity, were associated with psychopathologic severity and social dysfunction. Findings highlight the importance of considering heterogeneity in stress-reactivity, but also challenges for identifying generalizable processes in doing so. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Jo...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - March 31, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Maternal prenatal infection and anxiety predict neurodevelopmental outcomes in middle childhood.
Prenatal maternal infection and anxiety have been linked, in separate lines of study, with child neurodevelopment. We extend and integrate these lines of study in a large prospective longitudinal cohort study of child neurodevelopment. Data are based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) cohort; prenatal maternal anxiety was assessed from self-report questionnaire; prenatal infection was derived from reports of several conditions in pregnancy (n = 7,042). Child neurodevelopment at approximately 8 years of age was assessed by in-person testing, reports of social and communication problems associate...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - March 3, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The perception-behavior dissociation in the ultimatum game in unmedicated patients with major depressive disorders.
In conclusion, MDD patients were impaired in their ability to flexibly adjust acceptance behavior based on fairness perception in social interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology)
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 28, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Geolocation features differentiate healthy from remitted depressed adults.
Depression recurrence is debilitating, and there is a pressing need to develop clinical tools that detect the reemergence of symptoms with the aim of bridging patients to treatment before recurrences. At baseline, remitted depressed adults (n = 22) and healthy controls (n = 24) were administered clinical interviews and completed self-report symptom measures. Then, smartphone apps were installed on personal smartphones to acquire geolocation data over 21 days and ecological momentary assessment of positive and negative affect during the initial 14-day period. Compared with healthy controls, remitted depressed adults exhibit...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 24, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Genetic variation mediating neuroticism’s influence on cardiovascular diseases.
The personality of neuroticism is phenotypically associated with cardiovascular diseases (CVD), but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. We conducted Mendelian randomization analysis to investigate causal relationships between neuroticism and CVD (including coronary artery disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, and hypertensive disease) using summary results of genome-wide association studies for these traits. Our results show that although neuroticism has low or minimal correlations with CVD in general, there are substantial polygenic overlaps between neuroticism and CVD (20%∼97%). Mendelian ra...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Pedophilia is a taxon among 706 adult males assessed at a civil commitment center.
This study examined whether pedophilia is best understood as a dimension or a discrete class (taxon). We considered pedophilia to include both physical sexual attraction to children as well as emotional attraction to children and childhood. Archival data from 901 adult males from a U.S. civil commitment treatment center for sexually dangerous persons were used. Three indicators were submitted to Meehl and Ruscio’s taxometric analyses: (a) a screening scale for pedophilic interests based on criminal history, (b) a composite indicator of pedophilic physical attraction, and (c) a composite indicator of pedophilic emotional ...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social functioning and the presentation of anxiety in children on the autism spectrum: A multimethod, multiinformant analysis.
Co-occurring anxiety in children on the autism spectrum is associated with greater social challenges, including poorer social skills and relationships, which may influence the severity and presentation of anxiety symptoms, particularly social anxiety. The current study used Bayesian network analytics (Williams & Mulder, 2020) and a multimethod approach to examine (a) how different facets of social functioning relate to one another and to anxiety severity and comorbidity, (b) which facet(s) are most influential and thus may represent optimal targets for intervention, and (c) how social functioning relates to the presentatio...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Self-esteem and psychosis in daily life: An experience sampling study.
This study investigated cross-sectional and temporal associations of momentary self-esteem and fluctuations in self-esteem with psychotic symptoms in three groups with different levels of (familial) liability to psychotic disorder. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), momentary self-esteem, fluctuations in self-esteem (i.e., variability and instability), and psychotic experiences, paranoia, negative symptoms (i.e., event anhedonia and social anhedonia), intensity of negative affect and altered affective experiences (instability and variability in negative affect) were assessed in 147 psychotic patients, 131 of their...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Characterizing speech heterogeneity in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.
This study investigated speech heterogeneity and its relation to clinical characteristics in a large sample of patients with SSD and healthy controls. Speech samples were obtained from 142 patients with SSD and 147 healthy controls by means of open-ended interviews. Speech was analyzed using standardized open-source acoustic speech software. Hierarchical clustering was conducted using acoustic speech markers. Symptom severity was rated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, and cognition was assessed with the Brief Assessment of Cognition for Schizophrenia. Three speech clusters could be distinguished in the patien...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Neural response to rewarding social feedback in never-depressed adolescent girls and their mothers with remitted depression: Associations with multiple risk indices.
This study investigated associations between neural responses to social reward and three well-established risk factors for depression: personal history, family history, and interpersonal stress. We examined the reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential sensitive to rewarding feedback, in a sample of 85 women with and without remitted depression and their never-depressed adolescent daughters. In never-depressed daughters, maternal history of depression predicted a blunted social RewP, but interpersonal stress did not. In the mothers, greater interpersonal stress predicted a blunted RewP, but personal depression h...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Prenatal distress links maternal early life adversity to infant stress functioning in the next generation.
Maternal stress in pregnancy exerts powerful programming effects into the next generation. Yet it remains unclear whether and how adversity from other times in the woman’s life influences her prenatal stress and her offspring’s stress functioning. In a sample of 217 Black American mother-infant dyads, we examined whether different types of maternal stress were differentially related to her infant’s stress functioning within the first few months after birth. We prospectively assessed maternal distress (perceived stress, depression, and anxiety) early and late in pregnancy, infant behavioral adaption in the context of ...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A double-blind study assessing the impact of orbitofrontal theta burst stimulation on goal-directed behavior.
Patients with disorders of compulsivity show impairments in goal-directed behavior, which have been linked to orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) dysfunction. We recently showed that continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS), which reduces OFC activity, had a beneficial effect on compulsive behaviors both immediately and at 1 week follow-up compared with inhibitory TBS (iTBS). In this same sample, we investigated whether two behavioral measures of goal-directed control (devaluation success on a habit override task; model-based planning on the two-step task) were also affected by acute modulation of OFC activity. Overall, model-base...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A five-factor model of perseverative thought.
This article addresses three major barriers to establishing such a taxonomy: (a) a lack of research explicitly comparing categorical (subtype) versus dimensional models, (b) primary reliance on between-person measures rather than modeling at the level of the thought (within person), and (c) insufficient emphasis on replication and refinement. Participants included an unselected crowdsourced sample (790 observations from 286 participants) and an independent anxious-depressed replication sample (808 observations from 277 participants). Participants made dimensional ratings for three idiographic clinically relevant thoughts o...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - February 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
