APS 2019

*Presentations authored/co-authored by student mentees.

Depression and Anxiety (Internalizing)
Disorders

* Sonday, N. Agarwal, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May). How the relationship between social anxiety disorder and social cognition is mediated by alexithymia. Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington D.C.

• Introduction. Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is marked by fear of social situations that interferes with the daily lives of those affected by the disorder. Social anxiety is correlated with deficits in social cognition, or the ability to understand the mental states of one's self and others. Those who evidence high social cognition more effectively navigate interpersonal interactions than those who do not. Social cognitive deficits are also observed among those with alexithymia, or those who have difficulty accessing, identifying, communicating, and describing their emotions, as well as differentiating their emotional states from accompanying physical sensations. While both social cognitive deficits and alexithymia have been tied to SAD, few studies have examined the interplay between these constructs. This study tests whether the relationship between SAD and social cognitive deficits is mediated by alexithymia.
• Method. Undergraduate college students (n=38, M age = 22.05, SD=8.31) completed measures of SAD (Social Interaction Anxiety Scale), alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale), and two behavioral measures of social cognition: the Revised ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test and a Face Morphing Affect Recognition Task that employed speed and accuracy to indexed recognition of sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and happy affects.
• Results. As expected, social anxiety positively correlated with alexithymia levels, r=.58, p < .001, as did sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and happy affect recognition indices with one-another, rs = .36 - .70, ps = .05 - .001. Affect recognition indices were unrelated to RMET performance. In contrast to expectation neither social anxiety nor alexithymia levels predicted affect recognition nor RMET performance.
• Conclusion. Our finding a positive association between social anxiety and alexithymia are consistent with the extant literature, and may suggest that anxiety is experienced as a diffuse negative state among those with SAD. Though contrary to expectation, our finding no association between the two social cognition measures and alexithymia or social anxiety raise the possibility that method effects in part contributed to the robust correlation between social anxiety and alexithymia. That is, the self-report means by which both constructs were measured may have inflated their association, an effect that was reduced when examining the correlation between self-report and behavioral measures. It is also feasible that the two behavioral measures were affected by constructs that are unrelated to social cognition (e.g., reading level and motor speed). The non-significant association between our two social cognition tasks may suggest that the two measure distinct aspects of social cognition, or that each measure was saturated with afore mentioned constructs that are unrelated to social cognition. Together, our findings suggest that alexithymia may be a component of Social Anxiety Disorder, and that the role of social cognition in social anxiety is questionable. Future studies that employ multiple methods to examine each construct could clarify the role of social cognition in social anxiety and alexithymia.

* Mirhosseini, T., Olczyk, A., Napolitano, S. & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Do parenting practices mediate the effects of parental emotion regulation on childhood anxiety? Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

•  Introduction. Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent mental health disorders during the childhood years. Some risk factors that prognosticate children's anxiety include ineffective parenting practices and parental emotion regulation (ER) deficits (Otto et al. 2015). Parenting practices are conceptualized as parental responses in specific situations such as recognition and praise for the child's prosocial behavior (positive parenting), with ineffective practices reflecting a failure to follow through with consequences for misbehavior (inconsistent discipline), and to monitor the child's social activities (poor supervision). Ineffective parenting has been linked with an unpredictable home environment that can increase the risk of internalizing symptoms among vulnerable children (Laskey, 2009). Conversely, positive facilitates a stable home environment that reduces the risk for internalizing problems. Parental ER deficits in the form of the frequent use of maladaptive ER responses that temporality attenuate negative emotions at the cost of long-term gains have been shown to increase the risk for internalizing problems in their offspring. However, though conceptually tied, it remains unclear whether parental emotion regulation influences parent practices, thereby indirectly contributing to youths' internalizing problems. As distress is associated with less effective parenting practices, conceptual and empirical works suggest a relationship between parenting practices and emotional problems in their children (Elgar et al. 2006), it stands to reason that parenting practices could mediate the relationship between parental ER and anxiety in their children. This study set out to investigate the relationship between parental emotion regulation, and their parenting practices on their child's anxiety levels.
• Methods. Thirty-eight parents completed a measure of dispositional use of adaptive and maladaptive ER responses (Feelings and Me), reported on their disciplinary, supervision, and praise behaviors (Alabama Parenting Questionnaire Short-form), and the presence of emotional and behavioral problems in their child (Child Behavior Checklist-Anxiety Subscale). Forty-seven adolescents (Mage =14.5, SD=1.76, 54% female) completed measure of anxiety levels (Revised Children's Anxiety/Depression Scale).
• Results. Parental reports of child anxiety evidenced familial co-segregation among siblings (ICC= .57), as did child self-reported anxiety levels (ICC= .47). Across analyses, parents with higher levels of maladaptive ER perceived higher levels of anxiety in their children (b=0.34, p =.001), yet there was no association between parental ER and youths' anxiety per self-report. Parents who tended to deploy maladaptive ER responses also inconsistently disciplined their children (b=0.11, p=.011). However, parental ER was unrelated to positive parenting or supervision practices, each of which predicted youths' anxiety per parent-report (positive parenting, b=-.90, p =.007; poor supervision, b= -0.81, p=.004).
• Conclusion. These findings suggest that parental behaviors were not mediators in the relationship between parental ER and anxiety in their children. However, parents who engaged in maladaptive responses displayed inconsistent discipline practices that have been shown to predict internalizing and externalizing problems in children. Our null finding between inconsistent discipline and anxiety may in part be due to us not controlling for parental overprotection of their children that is a robust risk factor for anxiety and an unmeasured confound in this study. Clinical implications will be discussed.

* Mirhosseini, T., Olczyk, A., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Effects of parenting practices on children's maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation and anxiety levels. Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Among children and adolescents, anxiety disorders are one of the most prevalent mental health illnesses. Many studies show a relationship between parental behavior and their child's emotional wellbeing: problematic parenting predicts internalizing problems in their child in the forms of depression and anxiety. Emotion regulation (ER) is a robust predictor of children's social and emotional outcomes across development that may be adversely impacted by negative parenting behaviors. However, relatively little is known about how parental inconsistent discipline practices and poor supervision impact ER. Specifically, it is unknown whether such parenting behaviors diminish development of effective (adaptive) ER repertoires or potentiate the use of ineffective (maladaptive) ER responses that maintain or exacerbate distress. The current study examined the effects of parenting practices on the youth' maladaptive and adaptive ER and anxiety levels.
• Methods. Participants were 30 parents (Mage=43.88, SD=5.38) and 30 adolescents (Mage=14.57, SD=1.7, 57% female) who completed measures of youths' dispositional use of adaptive and maladaptive ER responses (Feelings and Me), and anxiety levels (Revised Children's Anxiety/Depression Scale). Parents and children also reported on parent's disciplinary, supervision, and praise behaviors (Alabama Parenting Questionnaire Short-form).
• Results. Our results showed across parent and child respondents, positive parenting behaviors predicted high levels of youths' adaptive ER (bparent=2.63, bchild=1.50, ps <.05); youths' appraisal of positive parenting showed a trend for predicting low maladaptive ER levels (b=-.82, p=.07). Conversely, parent's report of increased inconsistent discipline predicted lower adaptive ER levels (b=-2.04, p<.05). While youths' maladaptive ER repertoires robustly correlated with their anxiety levels (r=0.75, p<.001) neither parenting behaviors nor youths' adaptive emotion regulation predicted youths' anxiety symptoms.
• Conclusion. Our finding likely reflects the effects of parental reinforcement of their children's positive behaviors, which include adaptive ER responses. Surprisingly, parental behaviors, even those that are negative, do not appear to modify offspring's maladaptive repertoires. Additionally, more inconsistent discipline implemented by parents leads to their children utilizing less adaptive skills to modulate their emotions. Taken together, these results suggest that while parenting behaviors may not predict trait anxiety or maladaptive ER for offspring, healthy parenting decisions may increase offspring's use of adaptive ER strategies and reinforce adaptive behaviors.

* Bolla, P., Bush, A., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Trait maladaptive emotion regulation moderates the relationship between depression and perceived stress across symptoms. Poster presented at 31^st annual conference of the Association of Psychological Science, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Depression is a highly prevalent disorder characterized by dysphoric mood and anhedonia; these symptoms accompanied by appetite, sleep, thought, and psychomotor irregularities, fatigue, feeling of worthlessness or guilt, and suicidal behaviors. Perception of life stress has been found to predict the severity of depressive symptoms in association with different factors such as social support, stressful life events, and coping strategies. Likewise, depressive symptoms have been shown to predict elevated perceived stress. However, the context by which depressive symptoms predict perceived stress remains unexplored by the literature. Emotion regulation (ER) may provide insight into this relationship. ER refers to efforts to modulate the intensity or experience of negative emotions, reflecting both effective strategies that down-regulate negative emotion (adaptive ER) and efforts that temporarily ease negative emotion but paradoxically increase and maintain them over time (maladaptive ER). Given that maladaptive ER strategies and adaptive ER deficits are related to depressive outcomes, we sought to examine the relationship between depressive symptoms and perceived stress in a sample of college students with both adaptive and maladaptive ER as possible moderators.
• Methods. Eighty-four undergraduate college students (76% Female, Mage=19.70, SDage=3.34) completed self-report measures of depressive symptoms in the past two weeks (Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale), perceived stress in the past month (Perceived Stress Scale), and measures of dispositional adaptive and maladaptive ER (Feelings and Me).
• Results. Independent of age and sex, depressive symptoms predicted elevated perceived stress (b=.45, p<.001). Additionally, maladaptive ER predicted elevated perceived stress (b=.38, p=.002). This effect was moderated by a two-way interaction between depression and maladaptive emotion regulation (b=-.014, p=.014). Specifically at lower depression levels, perceived stress was higher among those who engage in maladaptive ER; conversely, at higher depression levels perceived stress was higher for those who do not engage in maladaptive ER. Adaptive ER failed to moderate the relationship between depressive symptoms and perceived stress.
• Conclusion. Our results help elucidate the relationship between depression and perceived stress. At lower levels of depression, those who endorse high maladaptive ER tend to perceive their lives to be more stressful, whereas at high levels of depression, an individual's perception of stress is somewhat blunted by maladaptive ER compared to those who do not engage in maladaptive ER. One explanation for this is while maladaptive ER responses may exacerbate negative affect, they may provide a temporary relief from stress perception associated with depressive symptoms.

* Olczyk, A., Mirhosseini, T., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Cognitive reappraisal mediates the relationship between attention inflexibility and child anxiety. Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Anxiety disorders are known to have a high prevalence amongst children and adolescents. Anxiety disorders are also associated with deficits in attentional control and these deficits can be marked by inflexible attention switching away from negative-valence stimuli (attention inflexibility). Youth with anxiety and attention inflexibility have been evidenced to have greater difficulty disengaging attention from threat-related stimuli compared to their non-anxious peers. Additionally, recent conceptualizations of anxiety disorders have focused on emotion regulation deficits as a maintenance factor. One relevant emotion regulation strategy is cognitive reappraisal, or the ability to reinterpret emotional stimuli in less threatening ways. Deficits in cognitive reappraisal may be one underlying factor explaining the relationship between attention inflexibility and symptoms of anxiety. Therefore, the present study examined cognitive reappraisal as a mediator between attention inflexibility and anxiety symptoms. We hypothesized that lower cognitive reappraisal abilities may explain why those with greater attention inflexibility have elevated anxiety symptoms.
• Methods. In the present study, 33 adolescents between the ages of 12-17 (81.5% female; Mage = 14.74, SD = .27) completed the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) to assess individual differences in the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal and their parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to measure their child's levels of anxiety. The adolescents also completed an attention disengagement eye-tracking task during which they covertly engaged and disengaged visual attention across neutral-valenced face pairs (disgusted, sad, and happy). Mediation analyses were conducted to examine the study hypothesis.
• Results. Cognitive reappraisal evidenced familial co-segregation among siblings (ICC = .38), as did anxiety levels (ICC = .54). Controlling for age and sex, slow disengagement from disgusted faces (b = .03, p = .02) and happy faces (b=.04, p=.03) predicted higher levels of cognitive reappraisal. In turn, cognitive reappraisal predicted lower levels of anxiety symptoms (b = -.22, p = .04). As hypothesized, cognitive reappraisal mediated the relationship between attention disengagement away from happy faces and youths' anxiety levels (b= -.01, 95% CI = -.02 – .0005). Adolescents' attention disengagement indices did not directly predict anxiety levels.
• Conclusion. These findings provide evidence that attentional processes are linked to higher cognitive processes, and that attentional inflexibility may hinder emotion regulation efforts. Though others have linked attention inflexibility to rumination, our findings extend the role of attentional processes to adaptive emotion regulation. Though slow disengagement from positive valenced stimuli has been linked to salubrious outcomes, our finding a relationship between slow disengagement from disgusted faces and cognitive reappraisal is noteworthy, as it may suggest that delayed attention switching from negative valenced stimuli may not solely reflect inflexible attention. Future studies should examine the possibility that fast disengagement from such stimuli signals an avoidant response.

* Olczyk, A., Mirhosseini, T., Napolitano, S., Bush, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Rumination mediates the relationship between attention inflexibility and affect in daily life. Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Anxiety and depressive disorders (internalizing disorders) are prevalent amongst children and adolescents, frequently co-occur, and are marked by high levels of negative affect (e.g., nervousness and sadness). Internalizing disorders have also been linked to deficits in attention control, such as attention flexibility deficits or difficulty disengaging from emotional stimuli. In particular, those with anxiety have shown greater difficulty disengaging attention from threat stimuli compared to their non-anxious peers whereas those with depression have been noted to have greater difficulty disengaging from sad stimuli and rapid disengagement from positively valenced stimuli. Rumination, or the tendency engage in repetitive thinking about the causes, meanings, and implications of one's negative emotions, has been identified as a maladaptive emotion regulation response that is associated with internalizing disorders. The impaired disengagement hypothesis suggests that attention disengagement deficits may be a possible underlying mechanism of rumination. However, it remains unclear whether rumination is a mechanism by which attention control deficits predict negative affect, and whether these relations occur in children. The present study examined rumination as a mediator in the relationship between attention inflexibility and affect in daily life.
• Methods. In the present study, 40 adolescents between the ages of 12-17 (82.6% female; Mage = 14.82, SD = .25) completed the Children's Response Style Scale (CRSS) Rumination subscale. Adolescents also completed an attention disengagement eye-tracking task during which their visual attention disengagement patterns across neutral-valenced face pairs (disgusted, sad, and happy) were covertly monitored. Participants then completed a 7-day Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) follow-up consisting of a series of surveys via cell phone or email measuring their current and peak affect outside of the lab. Depressive, nervous, and happy affects at the time of the EMA prompts were measured on a 5-point Likert scale and were collected 5 times daily. Mediation analyses were conducted to examine the study hypothesis.
• Results. There were both family and day dependencies across levels of sadness, nervousness, and happiness (ICCs = .08 – .53). Slower disengagement from sad (b= -.002, p= .02) and disgusted faces (b= -.006, p=.04) significantly predicted lower happiness levels. Slower disengagement from sad (b= .05, p< .001) and disgusted faces (b= .09, p=.02) also predicted higher levels of rumination, whereas faster disengagement from happy faces predicted higher rumination (b= -.10, p= .03). Although rumination did not predict levels of sadness or nervousness, it did predict lower levels of happiness (b= -.02, p= .01). Rumination mediated the effects of each of the three disengagement indices on lower levels of happiness in daily life (indirect effects: sad=-.001, 95% CI= -.002 – -.0002; disgust=−.002, 95% CI= −.004 – −0.0002; happy=.002, 95% CI= .0001 – .005).
• Conclusion. These findings lend support to the impaired disengagement hypothesis, and extend its application to anxiety disorders. Our findings of a relationship between rumination and positive affect, but not negative affective states is curious given prior literature, and may reflect a greater willingness for adolescents to report changes in positive rather than negative affects. Clinical implications will be discussed.

* Olczyk, A., Mirhosseini, T., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Do first-fixations of socially anxious parent-child dyads support the vigilance hypothesis? Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by persistent, excessive fear of negative judgement in social situations and increased attention towards threatening social stimuli. Anxiety-related attention biases have been understood with respect to first-fixation (vigilance) and maintained-attention (maintenance) on threatening stimuli. Specifically, the vigilance hypothesis asserts that individuals with anxiety disorders identify threat more easily than their peers, thereby more readily shifting attention towards threat. Conversely, the maintenance hypothesis posits that threatening stimuli capture and maintain attention. Meta-analytic findings provide support for the vigilance hypothesis in SAD, but have inconsistent evidence for the maintenance hypothesis. As parental histories of SAD increase the risk for their offspring to develop the disorder, identifying mechanisms by which such risk transmission occurs could facilitate early identification and intervention efforts. The present study tests the vigilance and maintenance hypotheses with respect to attentional bias patterns within the context of a parent-child dyad.
• Methods. Thirty-three mother-child dyads completed measures of anxiety and an attention task during which gaze information was collected via eye-tracking as participants freely-viewed pairs of neutral and valenced faces (disgusted, sad, and happy). Vigilance was indexed by proportions of first-fixations on valenced, relative to neutral, faces. Maintenance was indexed via the average within-trial ratio of fixation durations on valenced, relative to neutral, faces.
• Results. Mothers and offspring showed concordant patterns in first-fixation to sad (r=.35, p=.05) and disgusted faces (r=.34, p=.055), but not with respect to gaze durations. Independent of youths' sex, age, and maternal SAD levels, maternal tendencies for first-fixation on disgusted and sad faces predicted youths' first-fixation in parallel indices (disgusted b=.63, p<.001, sad b =.34, p=.058). Maternal SAD levels predicted offspring's tendency to fixate and maintain attention on happy faces (bs=.003, ps=.001 - .03). Importantly, SAD moderated the association between maternal fixation-duration on happy faces (b=.01, p=.04) and proportion of first-fixation on sad faces at a trend-level (b=-.05, p=.06): elevated SAD levels predicted stronger concordance between mothers and offspring maintaining attention on happy faces, and discordant first fixation on sad faces.
• Conclusion. Strong concordance between maternal and offspring first-fixation on negative-valence faces, but not in attention maintenance, lends support to the vigilance hypothesis and identifies one path for risk transmission. Social anxiety's moderation of attention indices may indicate a compensatory bias towards positive faces, and avoidance of dysphoric information, in offspring. Together, these findings suggest that screening efforts for SAD may benefit from incorporating attentional measures.

* Olczyk, A., Mirhosseini, T., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Attention inflexibility supports co-segregation among siblings, but not between parents and offspring. Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association of Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Social anxiety (SAD) and depressive disorders are highly prevalent amongst children and adults, frequently co-occur within individuals, and are transmitted within families. Though concordant within families as literature suggests, mechanisms for transmission of these disorders are unclear. Deficits in attentional control, marked by inflexible attention switching away from negative-valence stimuli (attention inflexibility) may reflect one mechanism of transmission risk. For example, children with SAD evidenced poorer attention control and greater difficulty disengaging attention from threat stimuli compared to their non-anxious peers. Further, adults with co-occurring depression and SAD evidenced slower disengagement from sad faces. However, there is a dearth of studies that investigate the relationship between parental attention inflexibility together with that of their offspring. Testing whether attention inflexibility co-segregates within families, as in SAD and depression, would shed light on its role as a putative mechanism for risk transmission. The present study aimed to examine co-segregation of attention inflexibility among children and parents who were symptomatic for SAD and depression.
• Methods. Thirty-three parent-child dyads completed measures of trait-level anxiety and depression and completed an attention disengagement eye-tracking task during which they covertly engaged and disengaged visual attention across neutral-valence face pairs (disgusted, sad, and happy).
• Results. Parental SAD robustly associated with their own and offspring's depression levels (r=.53-.56, ps<.01), as well as their faster attentional withdrawal from disgusted faces (r=-.36, p=.05). Parental depression correlated with offspring depression levels (r=.49, p<.01), but not offspring anxiety, and evidenced a trend association with offspring's longer disengagement time from disgusted faces (r=.32, p=.07). Attentional disengagement evidenced familial co-segregation among siblings, who shared between 43%-63% variance in their disengagement patterns (ICC =.43-.63). Offspring's anxiety levels predicted slow disengagement times from sad faces (b=5.30, p<.01) that was moderated by parental disengagement: disengagement times were inversely related to their parents' among anxious youth (b=-1.00), and positively for their non-anxious peers (b=1.26). Parental and offspring's attention disengagement indices were otherwise unrelated, and were not influenced by youths' depression levels, nor the levels of their parents' depression and anxiety.
• Conclusion. Our findings support familial co-segregation of attention inflexibility among siblings, but not between parents and their offspring. Though observed among parents, attention inflexibility was unrelated to youths' anxiety levels for disgusted faces. The inverse relationship between anxious offspring's disengagement from sad faces from their parents' may reflect a compensatory mechanism, whereby youth's anxious arousal potentiates their rejection of dysphoric emotional content. Clinical implications will be discussed.

* Sisk, S., Bolla, P., Bush, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Attention bias and disengagement patterns within depression and generalized anxiety. Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Attentional bias refers to patterns of visual attention preferences towards stimuli of one valence over another. Attention disengagement refers to the delay in which an individual shifts their attention between stimuli of divergent valences. Prior research suggests that individuals endorsing higher levels of generalized anxiety show greater attentional bias towards, as well as delayed attentional disengagement from, threatening stimuli compared to those endorsing lower levels of generalized anxiety. Prior research also suggests that individuals endorsing higher levels of depressive symptoms display greater attentional bias towards negative stimuli, reduced bias towards positive stimuli, delayed disengagement from negative stimuli and faster disengagement from positive stimuli than those endorsing lower levels of depressive symptoms. Due to frequent co-occurrence of depression and generalized anxiety, it is unclear to what extent these disorders independently affect attentional bias and disengagement. The present study seeks to examine the unique associations between generalized anxiety and depression symptoms with attentional bias and disengagement metrics when viewing valenced human faces.
• Method. Eighty-seven undergraduate students (72% female, Mage = 19.85, SD = 3.52) completed measures of generalized anxiety (Penn State Worry Questionnaire), depression symptoms (Center for Epidemiology Depression Scale), an eye-tracking tasks during which they were presented with pairs of valenced (i.e. disgusted, happy, and sad) and neutral faces and either freely viewed or shifted their attention in response to a visual prompt. Attention bias was indexed as the proportions of first-fixations and average within-trial gaze duration ratios for pairs of valenced and neutral faces. Attention disengagement indices reflect how quickly an individual shifted their attention away from valenced faces towards neutral faces in response to a visual prompt (i.e., a shape framing the phase).
• Results. Independent of endorsed levels of generalized anxiety, higher levels of depression symptoms predicted faster disengagement from happy faces, (B = -.07, p = .041). Though below a level of significance, generalized anxiety levels predicted longer disengagement time from disgusted faces at a trend level after statistically controlling for depression symptoms (B = -.07, p = .092). Neither attention bias index was associated with depression or generalized anxiety symptoms.
• Conclusion. Our finding of an association between faster disengagement from happy faces and depression symptoms is consistent with meta-analytic findings showing an avoidance of positive information among depressed persons. Such avoidance appears to be specific to depression, as it remained when generalized anxiety symptoms were covaried, and may be indicative of deficits in participants' hedonic capacity. Though observed at a trend level, the tendency for those with elevated generalized anxiety symptoms to disengage from disgusted faces, independent of depression levels, suggests the presence of anxiety-specific attention inflexibility. As disgust is a socially-threatening stimuli, it is feasible that more robust associations would emerge with respect to social anxiety, rather than generalized anxiety symptoms.

*Sisk, S., Bush, A., Bolla, P., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Longitudinal influence of emotion regulation response patterns on depression symptoms. Poster  presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Emotion regulation deficits in the form of the frequent use of maladaptive responses and the infrequent use of adaptive responses are associated with depression risk, and span cognitive, interpersonal, and behavioral domains. Prior literature states that individuals endorsing frequent use of maladaptive responses report greater depressive symptom severity. However, data on the relative contribution of adaptive versus maladaptive responses to trajectories of depression symptoms is limited, and it is not clear whether some domains of ER are more robust in predicting depression over time. The present study examines the influence of adaptive and maladaptive cognitive, interpersonal and behavioral ER response patterns on the trajectory of depression symptoms over time.
• Methods. Two hundred and twenty adults (69.7% female Mage = 24.03, SD = 9.86) from a mixed sample of undergraduate students and community-dwelling adults completed measures of dispositional adaptive and maladaptive ER response across the cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal domains (Feelings and Me) and depression symptoms (Center for Epidemiology Depression Scale, CES-D) as part of an in-lab study. They were then scheduled to complete the CES-D at four, eight and twelve months after their lab visit, though the timing of follow-up administrations at times varied across participants.
• Results. Higher overall use of maladaptive ER responses predicted elevated depression symptoms at the laboratory visit (B = .90, p < .001), as did the infrequent use of adaptive ER (B = -.22, p<.001). These effects were driven by maladaptive responses in the cognitive (B = .97, p < .001) and behavioral (B = .99, p < .001) domains, as well as adaptive cognitive responses (B = -0.59, p = .003). Unexpectedly, the use of maladaptive ER predicted a faster reduction in depression symptoms over time (B = -.01, p = .002), although those with elevated maladaptive ER repertoires remained above threshold levels of depression symptoms across the follow-up period (CES-D > 22). Follow-up analyses revealed divergent patterns in the effects of specific maladaptive ER domains on depression trajectories: maladaptive social responses led to increased depression symptoms over time (B = .02, p = .033) whereas maladaptive cognitive responses were associated with a decline in depression (B = -.01, p = .002). Adaptive responses were unrelated to depression symptom trajectory.
• Conclusion. Results show that maladaptive ER responses play a greater role in the trajectory of depression symptoms over time than adaptive ER, though their effects are domain-specific. Consistent with stress generation models of depression, maladaptive interpersonal responses exacerbated depression symptoms over time. Our finding of a relationship between maladaptive cognitive responses and reduction in depression symptoms over time is curious. Though not tested in this study, others have shown that adaptive responses moderate the effects of their maladaptive counterparts. It is therefore feasible that a similar effect may underlie the apparent salubrious effects of maladaptive cognitive responses.

Emotion Processing & Emotion Regulation

* Stewart, K., Agarwal, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) Subjective and physiological changes in response to decreased empathy. Poster presented at the 31^st annual convention of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Empathy is at the base of prosocial behaviors, providing the capability to acknowledge and attempt to understand others' suffering through emotional resonance. Individuals with higher levels of empathy have been shown to express more pronounced responses to emotional situations via both subjective and physiological means. The connection between physiological changes and empathy has been observed through the vagus nerve, a cranial nerve connecting the brain to the body to perform functions related to the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). Parasympathetic activity is often measured via respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an index of cardiac vagal control that reflects heart rate fluctuations in the bandwidth of respiration. Studies have shown that the relationship between prosociality and RSA during resting states is potentially nonlinear, whereby low and high RSA levels predict poor social functioning. However, relatively little is known about the association between empathy and RSA, particularly in response to empathy-evoking stimuli. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether RSA change is synchronous to subjective affect during such a mood induction. This study examines the relationship between empathy and its purported physiological and subjective substrates during an empathy-evoking mood induction.
• Methods. Fifty-six students (57% female, Mage=24.02, SD=8.61) completed the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire, a psychophysiology protocol that involved a 3 minute paced breathing baseline and a negative mood induction via a sad film clip (SF) portraying a death scene ("The Champ"). Electrocardiography data were continuously collected and used to derive indices of RSA during baseline and SF epochs, and sadness ratings were collected following each task. Changes in sadness ratings and RSA estimates from baseline levels indexed an emotional response.
• Results. As expected, lower levels of empathy positively correlated with lower emotional responses following SF, r=.38, p=.004, lower resting RSA levels, r=.27, p=.04, and led to a less affective response shown through RSA augmentation during SF, r=.29, p=.03. These associations remained when controlling for demographic characteristics, though resting RSA and empathy levels were reduced to a trend level, r=.24, p=.08. Affect reactivity and RSA indices were unrelated to one-another, yet through regression models that examined the unique predictive value of affect and physiological indices, affective response were shown to be the sole and most consistent predictor of empathic levels; RSA indices predicted empathy in the presence of affective ratings, but not independent of each other. Neither RSA index evidenced a non-linear association with empathy.
• Conclusion. Consistent with conceptual and growing empirical literature, higher levels of empathy, indicating prosociality, were associated with PNS activity. These results support the Polyvagal Theory, which places vagal activation as a key physiological process that supports effective social behavior. Importantly, our finding that no association between change in RSA and emotional responses to the sad film suggest a dissociation between physiological and subjective dimensions of affective states. In light of conceptual works, our findings may suggest the presence of distal shared neurocognitive processes that tie PNS activity to emotional states, but the influence of which is not readily measured via methodology used in this study. Clinical implications will be discussed.

* Mirhosseini, T., Olczyk, A., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (2019, May) How is emotion regulation effected by parent-child contentious interaction during a dyadic protocol? Poster presented at the 31^st annual conference of the Association for Psychological Sciences, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction. Emotion regulation (ER) reflects responses that are goal-directed and alter the intensity, time course, and morphology of emotional experience. ER responses are considered adaptive if they are goal-consistent and appropriate to context, and maladaptive if they are not. The family dynamic is a key context wherein ER is developed, with frequent contentious interactions between parents and their offspring inhibiting ER development. Consequently, distress experienced during such interactions is influenced by both parties' ER repertoires, with offspring's affect shaped by their own and their parents' adaptive and maladaptive responses. However, relatively little is known about the roles of parental and offspring's ER on affective dynamics during interpersonal arguments. The present study examines the role of emotional responses and ER in the course of distress experienced by both parents and their offspring during a contentious interaction and a subsequent rest period.
• Methods. Thirty-nine mother-offspring dyads completed self- and parent-reported measures of adaptive and maladaptive ER and identified topics of frequently disagreement. Dyads then completed an interaction protocol during which affect ratings were collected at baseline, and following an 8-minute discussion of common disagreements, and a 2-minute recovery period.
• Results. Maternal ER significantly predicted mothers' NA levels: adaptive repertoires predicted less distress while maladaptive predicted elevated distress levels during the dyadic interaction, Fs(1, 75) = 4.51-7.26, ps< 05. Mothers with low adaptive ER evidenced strong distress reactivity during the interaction relative to mothers with high adaptive ER, F(2, 75) =3.59, p=.03. Neither ER index predicted change in NA during the recovery period. Offspring's self-reported maladaptive ER predicted elevated NA levels during the interaction protocol, and parent-reports of youths' maladaptive ER predicted sustained distress during the recovery period, Fs(1-2, 75) = 3.52-4.47, ps < 05. Importantly, mothers' tendencies to engage in maladaptive responses predicted blunted affective reactivity in their offspring, Fs(1-2, 72) =3.08-8.07, ps=.052-.01.
• Conclusion. Consistent with the extant literature, maladaptive ER predicted respondents' distress during the interaction protocol. It is noteworthy that the role of adaptive and maladaptive ER in affective dynamics differed across parents and their offspring, and may reflect maturational effects whereby maladaptive repertoires are more closely tied to affective experience during childhood and adaptive repertoires during adulthood. Blunted affective reactivity among youths whose mothers tend to deploy maladaptive responses may reflect habituation effects, whereby ongoing exposure to negative maternal behavior attenuates youths' reactivity.