Current Progress and Future Directions for Theory and Research on Savoring

As research on savoring has increased dramatically since publication of the book Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience (Bryant and Veroff, 2007), savoring has gradually become a core concept in positive psychology. I begin by reviewing the evolution of this concept, the development of instruments for assessing savoring ability and savoring strategies, and the wide range of applications of savoring in the psychosocial and health sciences. I then consider important directions for future theory and research. To advance our understanding of how naturalistic savoring unfolds over time, future work should integrate the perceptual judgments involved in not only the later stages of attending to and regulating positive experience (where past research has concentrated), but also the initial stages of searching for and noticing positive stimuli. Whereas most research has investigated reactive savoring, which occurs spontaneously in response to positive events or feelings, future work is also needed on proactive savoring, which begins with the deliberate act of seeking out or creating positive stimuli. To advance the measurement of savoring-related constructs, I recommend future work move beyond retrospective self-report methods toward the assessment of savoring as it occurs in real-time. The development of new methods of measuring meta-awareness and the regulation of attentional focus are crucial to advancing our understanding of savoring processes. I review recent research on the neurobiological correlates of savoring and suggest future directions in which to expand such work. I highlight the need for research aimed at unraveling the developmental processes through which savoring skills and deficits evolve and the role that savoring impairments play in the etiology and maintenance of psychopathology. Research is also needed to learn more about what enhances savoring, and to disentangle how people regulate the intensity versus duration of positive emotions. Finally, I encourage future researchers to integrate the study of anticipation, savoring the moment, and reminiscence within individuals across time.

Positive attention bias trained during the Rethink therapeutic online game is linked to improvements in children and adolescents’ externalizing symptoms and peer relationships (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Attentional bias towards positive stimuli is considered a resilience factor for mental health and well-being. OBJECTIVE Attentional bias towards positive stimuli is considered a resilience factor for mental health and well-being. The aim of the present study was to analyze the effects of an attentional bias training for positive faces in a preventive therapeutic game for children and adolescents. METHODS Participants played the REThink game, which included an attentional bias training level based on the visual search paradigm, where children had the task to quickly find the happy face among other angry faces. RESULTS Attentional bias indicators demonstrated acceptable reliability and results showed that increases in attentional bias towards positive faces were associated with improvements in children and adolescents’ conduct problems, hyperactivity, and peer relationship problems. CONCLUSIONS Overall, our results support the protective role of training attentional bias towards positive faces as part of a preventive therapeutic game for children and adolescents.

Evidence for the Embodiment of the automatic approach bias

Tendencies of approach and avoidance seem to be a universal characteristic of humans. Specifically, individuals are faster in avoiding than in approaching negative stimuli and they are faster in approaching than in avoiding positive stimuli. The existence of this automatic approach/avoidance bias has been demonstrated in many studies. Furthermore, this bias is thought to play a key role in psychological disorders like drug addiction and phobias. However, its mechanisms are far from clear. Theories of embodied cognition postulate, that the nature of gestures play a key role in this process.To shed light on the role of the involved gesture we employed a 2x2 factorial design with two types of stimuli. Participants had either to approach positive and avoid negative stimuli (congruent conditions) or to avoid positive stimuli and approach negative stimuli (incongruent conditions). Further, they responded either with a joystick or a button press on a response pad. Participants reacted faster in congruent conditions, i.e., avoiding negative stimuli and approaching positive stimuli, then in incongruent conditions. This replicates the known approach and avoidance bias. However, directly analyzing the button press condition participants revealed no reaction time advantage for congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. In contrast, in the joystick condition participants were significantly faster performing congruent reactions than incongruent reactions. This interaction, a significant reaction time advantage, when the response is enacted by moving a joystick towards or away from the body gives evidence that approach-avoidance tendencies have a crucial bodily component.

Evaluation and Recall of Valenced Stimuli as a Function of Spatial Positions

<p>Meier and Robinson (2004) had subjects identify pleasant and unpleasant words presented individually either at the top or bottom of a computer screen. Subjects identified pleasant words faster when they appeared at the top of the screen and unpleasant words faster whey they appeared at the bottom of the screen. The authors discussed this finding in terms of metaphors noting that in language good things are often allocated upwards (e.g. “things are looking up for me”) and bad things downwards e.g. (“I’m down in the dumps”). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether this relationship between affective stimuli and visual space occurs automatically (implicitly) or whether explicit processing of affective stimuli is required. A second aim was to investigate if memory for affective words is influenced by spatial location. In Experiments 1 and 2 subjects were shown pleasant and unpleasant words presented either at the top or bottom of a computer screen. Half the words were coloured green and half coloured purple. Subjects had to identify the colour as quickly as possible. No significant interaction between stimulus valence and spatial position was found, nor did recall interact with spatial position. In Experiment 3 subjects had to explicitly identify the valence of the words shown either at the top or bottom of the screen. It was predicted that positive stimuli would be explicitly evaluated faster and recalled more accurately when shown at the top of the screen, with the opposite holding true for negative stimuli. Participants were quicker to identify positive words at the top of the screen. Recall did not interact with spatial position. Overall the results of this study were broadly supportive of the hypothesis for explicit evaluation but not so for implicit evaluation or recall.</p>

Evaluation and Recall of Valenced Stimuli as a Function of Spatial Positions

<p>Meier and Robinson (2004) had subjects identify pleasant and unpleasant words presented individually either at the top or bottom of a computer screen. Subjects identified pleasant words faster when they appeared at the top of the screen and unpleasant words faster whey they appeared at the bottom of the screen. The authors discussed this finding in terms of metaphors noting that in language good things are often allocated upwards (e.g. “things are looking up for me”) and bad things downwards e.g. (“I’m down in the dumps”). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether this relationship between affective stimuli and visual space occurs automatically (implicitly) or whether explicit processing of affective stimuli is required. A second aim was to investigate if memory for affective words is influenced by spatial location. In Experiments 1 and 2 subjects were shown pleasant and unpleasant words presented either at the top or bottom of a computer screen. Half the words were coloured green and half coloured purple. Subjects had to identify the colour as quickly as possible. No significant interaction between stimulus valence and spatial position was found, nor did recall interact with spatial position. In Experiment 3 subjects had to explicitly identify the valence of the words shown either at the top or bottom of the screen. It was predicted that positive stimuli would be explicitly evaluated faster and recalled more accurately when shown at the top of the screen, with the opposite holding true for negative stimuli. Participants were quicker to identify positive words at the top of the screen. Recall did not interact with spatial position. Overall the results of this study were broadly supportive of the hypothesis for explicit evaluation but not so for implicit evaluation or recall.</p>

Happy Times are Longer When We are Older: Emotions Affect Time Perception in Older Adults

Emotions change people’s time perception, which has been evidenced in children and younger adults. However, older adults, who cognitively process positive stimuli to a greater extent than negative and neutral stimuli (Carstensen &amp; Mikels, 2005), had been neglected in most empirical studies examining the role of emotion played in time perception. Using a temporal bisection task, the present study investigated age differences (Nolder =21, Nyounger=21) in time perception of negative (sad and angry), positive (happy), and neutral facial expressions. A significant age by emotion interaction in time perception was found in results, such that older adults perceived the presentation durations of happy faces longer than negative ones, whereas the opposite pattern was observed in younger adults. The present findings could be interpreted by the internal clock model and the “positivity effect” in older adults’ cognitive and affective processes.

Binge-like Alcohol Exposure in Adolescence: Behavioural, Neuroendocrine and Molecular Evidence of Abnormal Neuroplasticity… and Return

Binge alcohol consumption among adolescents affects the developing neural networks underpinning reward and stress processing in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). This study explores in rats the long-lasting effects of early intermittent exposure to intoxicating alcohol levels at adolescence, on: (1) the response to natural positive stimuli and inescapable stress; (2) stress-axis functionality; and (3) dopaminergic and glutamatergic neuroadaptation in the NAc. We also assess the potential effects of the non-intoxicating phytocannabinoid cannabidiol, to counteract (or reverse) the development of detrimental consequences of binge-like alcohol exposuredimensions. Our results show that adolescent binge-like alcohol exposure alters the sensitivity to positive stimuli, exerts social and novelty-triggered anxiety-like behaviour, and passive stress-coping during early and prolonged withdrawal. In addition, serum corticosterone and hypothalamic and NAc corticotropin-releasing hormone levels progressively increase during withdrawal. Besides, NAc tyrosine hydroxylase levels increase at late withdrawal, while the expression of dopamine transporter, D1 and D2 receptors xpression is dynamically altered during binge and withdrawal. Furthermore, the expression of markers of excitatory postsynaptic signaling —PSD95; Homer-1 and -2 and the activity-regulated spine-morphing proteins Arc, LIM Kinase 1 and FOXP1—increase at late withdrawal. Notably, subchronic cannabidiol, during withdrawal, attenuates social- and novelty-induced aversion and passive stress-coping and rectifies the hyper-responsive stress axis and NAc dopamine and glutamate-related neuroplasticity. Overall, the exposure to binge-like alcohol levels in adolescent rats makes the NAc, during withdrawal, a locus minoris resistentiae as a result of perturbations in neuroplasticity and in stress-axis homeostasis. Cannabidiol holds a promising potential for increasing behavioural, neuroendocrine and molecular resilience against binge-like alcohol level’s harmful effects.

A Novel Measure of Real-Time Perseverative Thought

Perseverative thinking (PT), or repetitive negative thinking, has historically been measured using global self-report scales. New methods of assessment are needed to advance understanding of this inherently temporal process. We developed an intensive longitudinal method for assessing PT. A mixed sample of 77 individuals ranging widely in trait PT, including persons with PT-related disorders (generalized anxiety disorder, major depression) and persons without psychopathology, used a joystick to provide continuous ratings of thought valence and intensity following exposure to scenarios of differing valence. Joystick responses were robustly predicted by trait PT, clinical status, and stimulus valence. Higher trait perseverators exhibited more extreme joystick values overall, greater stability in values following threatening and ambiguous stimuli, weaker stability in values following positive stimuli, and greater inertia in values following ambiguous stimuli. The joystick method is a promising measure with the potential to shed new light on the dynamics and precipitants of perseverative thinking.

Validation of New Methods of Using Simulated Whole-Body Movements as Implicit Indicators of Sound and Odor Preferences

Would you get close to a stinky perfume bottle or to a loudspeaker producing noise? In this paper, we present two procedures that allowed us to assess the ability of auditory and olfactory cues to elicit automatic approach/avoidance reactions toward their sources. The procedures resulted from an adaptation of the Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (VAAST; Rougier et al., 2018), a task having the peculiarity of simulating approach/avoidance reactions by using visual feedback coming from the whole-body movements. In the auditory VAAST (Experiment 1), participants were instructed to move forward or backward from a loudspeaker that produced spoken words differentiated by their level of distortion and thus by their hedonic value. In the olfactory VAAST (Experiment 2), participants were asked to move forward or backward from a perfume bottle that delivered pleasant and unpleasant odors. We expected, consistent with the approach/avoidance compatibility effect, shorter latencies for approaching positive stimuli and avoiding negative stimuli. In both experiments, we found an effect of the quality of the emotional stimulus on forward actions of participants, with undistorted words and pleasant odors inducing faster forward movements compared with that for distorted words and unpleasant odors. Notably, our results further suggest that the VAAST can successfully be used with implicit instructions, i.e., without requiring participants to explicitly process the valence of the emotional stimulus (in Experiment 1) or even the emotional stimulus itself (in Experiment 2). The sensitivity of our procedures is analyzed and its potential in cross-modal and (contextualized) consumer research discussed.

Psychological interventions for cognitive dysfunction in MDD

The chapter psychological interventions for cognitive function in MDD outlines promising cognitive training interventions that may yield neuropsychological, cognitive, emotional, and functional benefits for patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD). The chapter reviews how psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy are aimed to address cognitive biases, which include distorted information appraisal or attentional allocation towards negative and away from positive stimuli. It emphasizes that specific cognitive interventions target cognitive deficits and that the use of cognitive training represents a promising and novel therapeutic option which may yield neuropsychological, affective, functional, and behavioural improvements in patients with MDD.