Needing to shout to be heard? Affective dysregulation, caregiver under-responsivity, and disconnection between vocal signalling and autonomic arousal in infants from chaotic households

Higher levels of household chaos have been related to increased child affect dysregulation during later development. To understand why this relationship emerges, we used miniature wearable microphones and autonomic monitors to obtain day-long recordings in home settings from a cohort of N=74 12-month-old infants and their caregivers from the South-East of the UK. Our findings suggest a disconnect between what infants communicate and their physiological arousal levels, that are likely to reflect what they experience. Specifically, in households which families self-reported as being more chaotic, infants were more likely to produce negative affect vocalisations such as cries at lower levels of arousal. This disconnection between signalling and autonomic arousal was also present in a lab still face procedure, where infants from more chaotic households showed reduced change in facial affect and slower physiological recovery despite equivalent change in arousal during the still face episode. Finally, we found that this disconnect between what infants communicate and their physiological arousal levels may influence the likelihood of a caregiver responding. Implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying the relationship between household chaos, emotion dysregulation and caregiver under-responsivity are discussed.

Investigating the relationship between Psychopathy, Fear Conditioning, and Facial Affect Recognition

<p>Psychopathic offenders are often considered to be untreatable, especially dangerous, and at very high risk of reoffending. Psychopathy has generated considerable research interest. Despite this interest, our understanding of psychopathy is relatively poor, with ongoing debate regarding how best to define psychopathy, and a lack of clarity regarding how psychopathy develops. Etiological theories of psychopathy posit deficits in recognising and responding to others’ emotions, and an attenuated experience of fear as crucial mechanisms in the development of psychopathy. The aims of this thesis are to investigate the pattern of psychopathic traits present within an inmate sample, and to investigate the relationship between these psychopathic traits and performance on two tasks related to etiological theories of psychopathy: facial affect recognition and fear conditioning. Part One of this thesis addresses the first aim, investigating the presentation of psychopathy in the current sample. The relationship between psychopathic traits in the present sample was largely consistent with previous research. A Principal Components Analysis identified two factors of psychopathic traits: a Bold/ Fearlessness factor which measures an absence of fear and anxiety and the presence of self-assurance, and a Mean/ Disinhibited factor which measures the presence of externalising and disinhibited behaviour, alongside aggression and the use of other people for one’s own gain. These findings are discussed in relation to common conceptualisations and operationalisations of psychopathy. Part Two of this thesis uses the measurement of psychopathy from Part One to investigate performance on a facial affect recognition task and a fear conditioning task. The Violence Inhibition Mechanism theory suggests that psychopaths should show impairments on facial affect recognition tasks, particularly in the recognition of fearful and sad facial expressions. However, in the current research psychopathy was unrelated to affect recognition, across all emotional expressions. When criminal offenders were compared to a student sample, the offenders showed poorer affect recognition than the students. These results suggest that there may be an effect of antisociality on affect recognition, but no effect of psychopathy. Low fear theories of psychopathy suggest that psychopaths should be impaired at learning conditioned fear associations. However, the present study found no evidence of psychopathy-related deficits in fear conditioning. Rather, higher psychopathy was related to better fear conditioning, with higher scores on the Mean/ Disinhibited factor predicting better discrimination between the conditioned and neutral stimuli. Taken together, these findings suggest that psychopathy was not related to deficits in either affect recognition or fear conditioning. These findings are inconsistent with etiological theories of psychopathy, and question common assumptions about the deficits which characterise psychopathy.</p>

Investigating the relationship between Psychopathy, Fear Conditioning, and Facial Affect Recognition

<p>Psychopathic offenders are often considered to be untreatable, especially dangerous, and at very high risk of reoffending. Psychopathy has generated considerable research interest. Despite this interest, our understanding of psychopathy is relatively poor, with ongoing debate regarding how best to define psychopathy, and a lack of clarity regarding how psychopathy develops. Etiological theories of psychopathy posit deficits in recognising and responding to others’ emotions, and an attenuated experience of fear as crucial mechanisms in the development of psychopathy. The aims of this thesis are to investigate the pattern of psychopathic traits present within an inmate sample, and to investigate the relationship between these psychopathic traits and performance on two tasks related to etiological theories of psychopathy: facial affect recognition and fear conditioning. Part One of this thesis addresses the first aim, investigating the presentation of psychopathy in the current sample. The relationship between psychopathic traits in the present sample was largely consistent with previous research. A Principal Components Analysis identified two factors of psychopathic traits: a Bold/ Fearlessness factor which measures an absence of fear and anxiety and the presence of self-assurance, and a Mean/ Disinhibited factor which measures the presence of externalising and disinhibited behaviour, alongside aggression and the use of other people for one’s own gain. These findings are discussed in relation to common conceptualisations and operationalisations of psychopathy. Part Two of this thesis uses the measurement of psychopathy from Part One to investigate performance on a facial affect recognition task and a fear conditioning task. The Violence Inhibition Mechanism theory suggests that psychopaths should show impairments on facial affect recognition tasks, particularly in the recognition of fearful and sad facial expressions. However, in the current research psychopathy was unrelated to affect recognition, across all emotional expressions. When criminal offenders were compared to a student sample, the offenders showed poorer affect recognition than the students. These results suggest that there may be an effect of antisociality on affect recognition, but no effect of psychopathy. Low fear theories of psychopathy suggest that psychopaths should be impaired at learning conditioned fear associations. However, the present study found no evidence of psychopathy-related deficits in fear conditioning. Rather, higher psychopathy was related to better fear conditioning, with higher scores on the Mean/ Disinhibited factor predicting better discrimination between the conditioned and neutral stimuli. Taken together, these findings suggest that psychopathy was not related to deficits in either affect recognition or fear conditioning. These findings are inconsistent with etiological theories of psychopathy, and question common assumptions about the deficits which characterise psychopathy.</p>

Altered functional brain dynamics in chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome during facial affect processing

Chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is a multisystem disorder associated with multiple congenital anomalies, variable medical features, and neurodevelopmental differences resulting in diverse psychiatric phenotypes, including marked deficits in facial memory and social cognition. Neuroimaging in individuals with 22q11.2DS has revealed differences relative to matched controls in BOLD fMRI activation during facial affect processing tasks. However, time-varying interactions between brain areas during facial affect processing have not yet been studied with BOLD fMRI in 22q11.2DS. We applied constrained principal component analysis to identify temporally overlapping brain activation patterns from BOLD fMRI data acquired during an emotion identification task from 58 individuals with 22q11.2DS and 58 age-, race-, and sex-matched healthy controls. Delayed frontal-motor feedback signals were diminished in individuals with 22q11.2DS, as were delayed emotional memory signals engaging amygdala, hippocampus, and entorhinal cortex. Early task-related engagement of motor and visual cortices and salience-related insular activation were relatively preserved in 22q11.2DS. Insular activation was associated with task performance within the 22q11.2DS sample. Differences in cortical surface area, but not cortical thickness, showed spatial alignment with an activation pattern associated with face processing. These findings suggest that relative to matched controls, primary visual processing and insular function are relatively intact in individuals with 22q11.22DS, while motor feedback, face processing, and emotional memory processes are more affected. Such insights may help inform potential interventional targets and enhance the specificity of neuroimaging indices of cognitive dysfunction in 22q11.2DS.

Diversifying Emotional Experience by Layered Interfaces in Affective Interactive Installations

This paper aims to improve users’ experience in affective interactive installations through the diversification of interfaces. With logically organized hierarchical experience, diverse interfaces with emotion data as inputs enhance users’ emotional interaction to be more natural and immersive. By using facial affect detection technology, an installation with diverse input interfaces was tested with an organic formal setting. Mechanical flowers and support structure based on the organic form were deployed as its physical output for a multitude of sensorial dimensions. With actions of the mechanical flowers, such as blooming, closing, rotating, glowing and blinking, a layered experiential sequence was created and the atmosphere of the installation was evaluated to be more engaging. In this way, the layered complexity of information was transferred to users’ immersive emotional experience. We believe that the practices in this work can contribute to deeper emotional engagement with users and add new layers of emotional interactivity.

Interventions for social cognitive deficits

Interventions for social cognitive deficits establishes the large impact these deficits exert on psychosocial functioning in major depressive disorder. The chapter reviews a variety of impairments of social cognition and how these may influence psychosocial functioning in the key domains of social performance, emotional/empathic performance, general cognitive functioning, and quality of life. It introduces multiple treatment modalities including antidepressant medication, psychotherapeutic approaches, and procedural interventions with potential treatment efficacy on facial affect recognition, interpretation of affective pictures, theory of mind performance, and prosody. It reviews evidence indicating that many current therapies are shown to have a normalizing effect on the accuracy of interpretation and the reduction of underlying negative interpretative bias. It concludes from evaluating the literature that certain antidepressants seem to correct facial affect recognition deficits, and several psychotherapeutic approaches appear well-suited for addressing impaired theory of mind or mood-congruent interpretive biases.