Cognitive Control in Young and Older Adults: Does Mood Matter?

The dual mechanisms of control framework (DMC) proposes two modes of cognitive control: proactive and reactive control. In anticipation of an interference event, young adults primarily use a more proactive control mode, whereas older adults tend to use a more reactive one during the event, due to age-related deficits in working memory. The current study aimed to examine the effects of mood induction on cognitive control mode in older (ages 65+) compared to young adults (ages 18–30) with a standard letter-cue (Experiment 1) and a modified face-cue AX-CPT (Experiment 2). Mood induction into negative and/or positive mood versus neutral mood was conducted prior to the cognitive control task. Experiment 1 replicated the typical pattern of proactive control use in young adults and reactive control use in older adults. In Experiment 2, older adults showed comparable proactive control to young adults in their response time (RT). Mood induction showed little effect on cognitive control across the two experiments. These results did not reveal consistent effects of mood (negative or positive) on cognitive control mode in young and older adults, but discovered (or demonstrated) that older adults can engage proactive control when dichotomous face cues (female or male) are used in AX-CPT.

Keep calm and manage impulsivity: Mood as a modulator of impulsive behaviour

This study investigated how different mood states affect distinct subtypes of impulsivity: motor impulsivity [measured with the Stop Signal (SST) and the 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task (5-CSRTT)], reflection impulsivity [assessed with the Information Sampling Task (IST)], and temporal impulsivity (the Delay Discounting Questionnaire). Eighty healthy volunteers completed two experimental sessions. During session 1, which served as a baseline measure, participants underwent a neutral mood induction procedure. In Session 2, they were randomly allocated to one of the mood-induction groups (Neutral, Positive, Sad, and Anxiety). Mood state ratings included bipolar visual analogue scales on mood (positive/negative), tension/relaxation and arousal (tired/active). No group effect was found on any of the impulsivity measures.24 Correlational analyses between mood changes (following the mood manipulation procedures) and behaviour in the tasks revealed that increased relaxation was related to increased information sampling in the IST (decreased reflection impulsivity). In addition, the more active subjects reported to be, the more likely they were to choose a delayed reward over the immediate one (decreased temporal impulsivity). These results indicate that subjective changes in mood state are associated with behavioural impulsivity levels. Importantly, distinct facets of impulsivity (reflection, motor and temporal) are differently affected by changes in mood state.

Laughter down-regulates negative emotional arousal amongst friends

Laughter is contagious, sensitive to social context, and can be used to mitigate negative emotional states. This experiment tested whether moments of transition from negative to positive affect were associated with more laughter if in familiar compared to unfamiliar company. 90 participants (47 females, mean age 20.61 years), either familiar (N=42) or unfamiliar (N=48) to the principle researcher, were randomly assigned to listen to 44 seconds of music which induced a fearful affect, positive affect or a neutral mood, followed by 30 seconds of infectious laughter (N=30/group). Filmed facial expressions were coded for four dependent variables (duration: half smile; full smile; laugh, and extent: peak mirth) of amusement in response to the laughter. Familiar participants fully smiled for longer than unfamiliar participants (F(1,84)=4.15, p=.045). There was an affect-familiarity interaction for peak mirth (F(2,84)=4.68, p=.01), time spent half smiling F(2,84)=5.00, p=.009), and fully smiling (F(2,84)=3.48, p=.035). Post hoc analyses revealed familiar participants exhibited greater peak mirth and smiled (half and full) for longer than unfamiliar participants in the fearful affect condition. Laughter and positive emotions may be used to moderate negative arousal more amongst people known to each other than amongst strangers.

Duchenne Smiles as Honest Signals of Chronic Positive Mood

Chronic positive mood (CPM) has been shown to confer a wide variety of social, functional, and health benefits. Some researchers have argued that humans evolved to feel CPM, which explains why most people report better than neutral mood (the “positivity offset bias”) and why particularly happy people have particularly good outcomes. Here, we argue that the Duchenne smile evolved as an honest signal of high levels of CPM, alerting others to the psychological fitness of the smiler. Duchenne smiles are honest because they express felt positive emotion, making it difficult for unhappy people to produce them. Duchenne smiles enable happy people to signal and cooperate with one another, boosting their advantages. In our literature review, we found (a) that not all Duchenne smiles are “honest,” although producing them in the absence of positive emotion is difficult and often detectable, and (b) that the ability to produce and recognize Duchenne smiles may vary somewhat by a person’s cultural origin. In the final section of the article, we consider behavioral influences on CPM, reviewing research showing that engaging in eudaimonic activity reliably produces CPM, as posited by the eudaimonic-activity model. This research suggests that frequent Duchenne smiling may ultimately signal eudaimonic personality as well as CPM.

Pilot Testing of a New App for Prospective Evaluation of Health-related Quality of Life in Breast Cancer

Background: Given that BC patients now live longer and have a higher survival rate, long-term side effects of primary treatment and patients' Life Quality (LQ) have become a more central issue. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Life Quality changes after primary BC treatment.Method: A prospective cohort study was conducted including 149 Danish women with BC. Sixty had entered the date since chemotherapy termination and their daily measurement of QoL for mood in the app Bone@BC. All users can only enter the app with a Danish NemID and own mobile device. The app includes self-reported patient baseline characteristics related to BC treatment and simple self-reported data of LQ measured in mood, social life and wellbeing measured by fatigue, pain and appetite and physical activities. Results: During the pilot test period, 149 BC survivors entered baseline data. Of the 149 BC survivors 60 (40%) have entered chemotherapy history and LQ data. The mean age of the BC survivors was 58.2 ±9.6 years (range 27-78 years). Days since chemotherapy termination was with a mean of 450 days (range 54-5.175 days). In group A (n=20) 35% reported 0-365 days and in group B (n=39) 65% reported more than 365 days since chemotherapy termination. In the whole group 65% reported neutral mood. By division into group A vs. B showed that mood improve over time measured by several in group B had a neutral mood achieved. Half (53%) had a good social life. Similar changes were reported for pain with 79% reporting mild to moderate pain in the whole group, group A vs. B showed an increasing level of pain over time with 24% reporting moderate to severe pain in group B vs. 13% in group A. Finally, it was observed that 58% reported mild to moderate appetite and it is decreasing over time, 64% reported mild to moderate appetite in group B vs. 50% in group A. Conclusion: Our results indicate that BC survivors have impaired QoL up to several years after primary BC treatment but there is a trend of some improvement over time. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.grov:NCT03784651

DE-CNN: An Improved Identity Recognition Algorithm Based on the Emotional Electroencephalography

In the past few decades, identification recognition based on electroencephalography (EEG) has received extensive attention to resolve the security problems of conventional biometric systems. In the present study, a novel EEG-based identification system with different entropy and a continuous convolution neural network (CNN) classifier is proposed. The performance of the proposed method is experimentally evaluated through the emotional EEG data. The conducted experiment shows that the proposed method approaches the stunning accuracy (ACC) of 99.7% on average and can rapidly train and update the DE-CNN model. Then, the effects of different emotions and the impact of different time intervals on the identification performance are investigated. Obtained results show that different emotions affect the identification accuracy, where the negative and neutral mood EEG has a better robustness than positive emotions. For a video signal as the EEG stimulant, it is found that the proposed method with 0–75 Hz is more robust than a single band, while the 15–32 Hz band presents overfitting and reduces the accuracy of the cross-emotion test. It is concluded that time interval reduces the accuracy and the 15–32 Hz band has the best compatibility in terms of the attenuation.

Sustained Reductions in Children's Risk Taking from Peer-Communicated Behavioral Safety Norms

Objective This research examined whether the positive effects of a peer-communicated social norm that reduces risk-taking behaviors persist over time and if a reminder of this peer-communicated safety message has any impact on this outcome. Methods Positive mood in 7- to 9-year olds was induced experimentally and risk taking intentions and behaviors were measured when the child was in a positive and neutral mood state and after they had been exposed to either a safety or neutral peer-communicated social norm message. A few weeks later, half of the participants who experienced the safety social norm message were exposed to a reminder of this message via a slogan and risk-taking measures were taken again when in a heightened positive mood state. Results Exposure to a safety norm successfully counteracted the increase in risk taking associated with a positive mood state. These effects persisted for several weeks regardless of whether the children were exposed to a reminder. Conclusion Manipulating peer social norms holds promise as an approach to produce reductions in children’s risk taking and these effects persist at least over several weeks.

Overconfidence: The Influence of Positive and Negative Affect

The consequences of overconfidence affect many spheres of economic life. As yet, few factors are known that determine the extent of possible overconfidence. There are also few studies concerning the influence of positive and negative emotions on self-assessment. It has not yet been examined whether emotions can affect learning effects regarding self-assessment, wherefore the present study addresses this research question. In a real-effort-task experiment the participants are presented with tasks over the course of 5 rounds. After each round, they are asked to assess their own performance. They are then given feedback on their actual performance, thereby allowing for learning effects. Their mood is induced by positive (treatment “positive”), negative (treatment “negative”) and neutral (treatment “neutral”) movie clips. There are no significant differences in the three treatments regarding absolute and relative overconfidence. However, the participants’ moods differed with regard to the occurrence of learning effects. Obvious learning effects can be established in a neutral mood when examining absolute overconfidence. These learning effects cannot be detected in positive and negative moods.

Anger Increases Susceptibility to Misinformation

The effect of anger on acceptance of false details was examined using a three-phase misinformation paradigm. Participants viewed an event, were presented with schema-consistent and schema-irrelevant misinformation about it, and were given a surprise source monitoring test to examine the acceptance of the suggested material. Between each phase of the experiment, they performed a task that either induced anger or maintained a neutral mood. Participants showed greater susceptibility to schema-consistent than schema-irrelevant misinformation. Anger did not affect either recognition or source accuracy for true details about the initial event, but suggestibility for false details increased with anger. In spite of this increase in source errors (i.e., misinformation acceptance), both confidence in the accuracy of source attributions and decision speed for incorrect judgments also increased with anger. Implications are discussed with respect to both the general effects of anger and real-world applications such as eyewitness memory.

Wearable Emotion Recognition Using Heart Rate Data from a Smart Bracelet

Emotion recognition and monitoring based on commonly used wearable devices can play an important role in psychological health monitoring and human-computer interaction. However, the existing methods cannot rely on the common smart bracelets or watches for emotion monitoring in daily life. To address this issue, our study proposes a method for emotional recognition using heart rate data from a wearable smart bracelet. A ‘neutral + target’ pair emotion stimulation experimental paradigm was presented, and a dataset of heart rate from 25 subjects was established, where neutral plus target emotion (neutral, happy, and sad) stimulation video pairs from China’s standard Emotional Video Stimuli materials (CEVS) were applied to the recruited subjects. Normalized features from the data of target emotions normalized by the baseline data of neutral mood were adopted. Emotion recognition experiment results approved the effectiveness of ‘neutral + target’ video pair simulation experimental paradigm, the baseline setting using neutral mood data, and the normalized features, as well as the classifiers of Adaboost and GBDT on this dataset. This method will promote the development of wearable consumer electronic devices for monitoring human emotional moods.