I feel good? Anhedonia might not mean “without pleasure” for people treated for opioid use disorder.
Anhedonia is usually defined as partial or total loss of the capacity for pleasure. People with anhedonia in the context of major depressive disorder may have an unexpected capacity for event-related mood brightening, observable when mood is assessed dynamically (with smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment [EMA]) rather than only statically via questionnaire. We used EMA to monitor mood and pleasant events for 4 weeks in 54 people being treated with opioid agonist medication for opioid-use disorder (OUD), which is also associated with anhedonia, said to manifest especially as loss of pleasure from nondrug reward....
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The associations between polygenic risk, sensation seeking, social support, and alcohol use in adulthood.
In this study, we examined the role of sensation seeking and social support from family and friends in linking genetic risk to alcohol use. We also examined the role of social support in moderating the associations between genetic risk and sensation seeking and alcohol use. Data were drawn from a sample of 2,836 European American adults from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (46% male, mean age = 35.65, standard deviation [SD] = 10.78). Results from path analysis indicated that genome-wide polygenic scores for alcohol consumption (alc-GPS) were associated with higher sensation seeking, which in turn was...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Does crude measurement contribute to observed unidimensionality of psychological constructs? A demonstration with DSM–5 alcohol use disorder.
Mental disorders are complex, multifaceted phenomena that are associated with profound heterogeneity and comorbidity. Despite the heterogeneity of mental disorders, most are generally considered unitary dimensions. We argue that certain measurement practices, especially using too few indicators per construct, preclude the detection of meaningful multidimensionality. We demonstrate the implications of crude measurement for detecting construct multidimensionality with alcohol use disorder (AUD). To do so, we used a large sample of college heavy drinkers (N = 909) for whom AUD symptomology was thoroughly assessed (87 items) a...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Consequences of exposure to the thin ideal in mass media depend on moderators in young women: An experimental study.
This study examined the consequences of media exposure to thin ideals compared to pictures of landscapes in healthy young women and women with eating and mixed mental disorders and investigated whether appearance-related cognitive factors and cognitive distortions moderate the effects. Two hundred seventy-five women in a multisite laboratory trial (174 in- or outpatients and 101 healthy women; Mage 22.87 years, SD = 3.94) were exposed to either thin ideals or to landscape pictures and guided through a vivid imagery of these pictures thereafter. Changes in body image dissatisfaction, mood, eating behavior, and physiological...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Fear conditioning in women with anorexia nervosa and healthy controls: A preliminary study.
Anorexia nervosa is characterized by anxiety-driven behaviors, such as food avoidance and distressing persistent thoughts about weight gain and body image. The present study used a classical fear conditioning procedure to test the processes of fear acquisition and generalization, extinction, and renewal in patients with anorexia nervosa and healthy controls. An app-based fear conditioning procedure was administered remotely to 64 patients and 60 healthy controls, over two sessions. A human female scream served as the unconditioned stimulus (US) and two neutral shapes were used as either the paired conditioned stimulus (dan...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social comparisons and social anxiety in daily life: An experience-sampling approach.
Judgments about the self compared to internalized standards are central to theoretical frameworks of social anxiety. Yet, empirical research on social comparisons—how people view themselves relative to others—and social anxiety is sparse. This research program examines the nature of everyday social comparisons in the context of social anxiety across 2 experience-sampling studies containing 8,396 unique entries from 273 adults. Hypotheses and analyses were preregistered with the Open Science Foundation (OSF) prior to data analysis. Study 1 was a 3-week daily diary study with undergraduates, and Study 2 was a 2-week ecol...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Posttraumatic stress symptom dimensions and brain responses to startling auditory stimuli in combat veterans.
We examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) of combat veterans (n = 102) to acoustic startle probes delivered during viewing of pleasant, neutral, unpleasant, and combat-related pictures. Interview-based assessments yielded dimensional characterizations of PTSD and mTBI. The P3 ERP response to startle probes was reduced during all affective relative to neutral pictures but failed to be associated with a PTSD diagnosis. However, two separable domains of PTSD symptomatology were associated with startle ERPs regardless of the picture conditions. Maladaptive avoidance was associated with smaller N1, P2, and P3 amplitudes, ...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A computational account of the mechanisms underlying face perception biases in depression.
Here, we take a computational approach to understand the mechanisms underlying face perception biases in depression. Thirty participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder and 30 healthy control participants took part in three studies involving recognition of identity and emotion in faces. We used signal detection theory to determine whether any perceptual biases exist in depression aside from decisional biases. We found lower sensitivity to happiness in general, and lower sensitivity to both happiness and sadness with ambiguous stimuli. Our use of highly-controlled face stimuli ensures that such asymmetry is truly p...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Rumination about obsessive symptoms and mood maintains obsessive-compulsive symptoms and depressed mood: An experimental study.
Rumination is common in individuals diagnosed with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). We sought to clarify the causal role of rumination in the immediate and intermediate maintenance of obsessive–compulsive symptoms and depressed mood. In total, 145 individuals diagnosed with OCD were asked to read aloud their most distressing obsessive thought (OT). OT activation was followed by a thought-monitoring phase in which frequency of the OT was assessed. Participants were randomly allocated to one of three experimental conditions: rumination about obsessive–compulsive symptoms, rumination about mood, or distraction. Rati...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - September 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Intrusive memories following disaster: Relationship with peritraumatic responses and later affect.
Cognitive theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suggest that intrusive memories result from disrupted information processing during traumatic memory encoding and are characterized by fear, helplessness, and horror at recall. Existing naturalistic studies are limited by the absence of direct comparisons between specific moments that do and do not correspond to intrusive memories. We tested predictions from cognitive theories of PTSD by comparing peritraumatic responses during moments experienced as intrusive memories versus distressing moments of the same traumatic event from the same individual not experienced a...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - August 26, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The dyadic effects of subclinical paranoia on relationship satisfaction in roommate relationships and college adjustment.
This study examined the trajectory of new roommate relationships over the course of the college semester. One hundred three same-sex roommate dyads were assessed on pathological personality traits at the beginning of the semester and on roommate relationship satisfaction and college adjustment at 2-week intervals. Individuals who were more paranoid reported lower satisfaction in their roommate relationship and poorer overall college adjustment. Importantly, individuals who lived with a more paranoid roommate also reported lower satisfaction in their roommate relationship. In contrast, elevated psychoticism, in either the i...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - August 16, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Face perception predicts affective theory of mind in autism spectrum disorder but not schizophrenia or typical development.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SCZ) have overlapping symptomatology related to difficulties with social cognition. Yet, few studies have directly compared social cognition in ASD, SCZ, and typical development (TD). The current study examined individual differences in face recognition and its relation to affective theory of mind (ToM) in each diagnostic group. Adults with ASD (n = 31), SCZ (n = 43), and TD (n = 47) between the ages of 18 and 48 years-old with full scale IQ above 80 participated in this study. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) measured affective ToM, and the Be...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - June 28, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Schizotypy 17 years on: Psychotic symptoms in midlife.
Determining the long-term psychosis-related outcomes of late-teen individuals characterized initially by a nonpsychotic, schizotypic feature (elevated perceptual aberrations) can further our understanding of the developmental pathways leading to schizophrenia, nonaffective psychotic conditions, and psychotic symptoms later in adulthood. Using the well-known laboratory/psychometric high-risk approach, the present study investigated the associations between nonpsychotic perceptual aberrations measured at age 18, in individuals with no prior history of psychosis, and clinical psychotic symptom outcomes 17 years later in midli...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - June 28, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
How changing life roles predict eating disorder pathology over 30-year follow-up.
Epidemiological data support higher prevalence of eating disorders in midlife than previously believed. Yet, few studies have examined risk factors unique to adult development. The present study examined how changes in life roles (educational, marital, and parental status) predicted disordered eating as participants transitioned from their 20s to their 50s. Participants (N = 624 women and N = 276 men) completed baseline assessments in college and at 10-, 20-, and 30-year follow-up, with 72% of women and 67% of men completing 30-year follow-up. Multilevel models examined how changes in life roles predicted changes in disord...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - June 28, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Sequencing of symptom emergence in anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and purging disorder and relations of prodromal symptoms to future onset of these disorders.
The objective of this study was to characterize the temporal sequencing of symptom emergence for anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge eating disorder (BED), and purging disorder (PD), as well as to test whether prodromal symptoms increase risk for future onset of each type of eating disorder and compare the predictive effects to those of established risk factors. Data from four prevention trials that targeted high-risk young women with body image concerns (N = 1,952; Mage = 19.7, SD = 5.7) and collected annual diagnostic interview data over 3-year follow-up were combined to address these aims. Regarding behav...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Psychology - June 28, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
