MPA 2019

*Presentations authored/co-authored by student mentees.

Depression and Anxiety (Internalizing)
Disorders

*Agarwal, A., Lee, N. H., Bush, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Sex and acceptance moderating between maladaptive emotion regulation and stress. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Introduction: Stress is a normal part of our lives. Appropriate amount of stress serves as useful motivation in achieving goals. If stress becomes unbearable and starts to interfere with your daily activities, it can become problematic. Maladaptive emotion regulation is ineffective emotional response to distress. The adverse effects of maladaptive emotion regulation can be offset by adaptive coping responses aimed at managing stressors. Acceptance of stressful events has been shown to attenuate distress. In a study of college students, acceptance was associated with lower exposure to stressful events and higher levels of well-being. However, the contribution of acceptance to that of maladaptive emotion regulation in the perception of stress is not known. Further, Women tend to report higher levels of perceived stress than men, and to report accepting the occurrence of stressful events more readily than males. Given that effective coping responses are self-reinforcing, gender differences in the use of acceptance may reflect greater benefits for women relative to men. This effect has not yet been examined in empirical literature. Therefore, this study tested whether acceptance predicts reduced perceptions of stress independent of maladaptive emotion regulation repertoires, and whether the effects of acceptance are moderated by gender.
• Procedures: Sixty-nine undergraduates (n=49 Caucasians, 58% female, Mage= 19.97, SD=3.714) were given an informed consent and were asked to complete a survey. The survey consisted of measures of maladaptive emotion regulation (Feelings and Me-FAM), stress (Perceived Stress Scale-PSS-10), and coping mechanism (Brief-COPE).
• Results: Acceptance as a coping strategy was significantly higher among women than men, (ß=.88, p < .05). While maladaptive emotion regulation robustly predicted elevated levels of perceived stress (ß=.51, p < .001), acceptance failed to emerge a significant predictor. However, this null effect was moderated by gender (ß=-2.15, p < .05). Probing the interaction effect revealed that while perceived stress did not vary as a function of acceptance for males, perceived stress declined for females with increasing levels of acceptance. who evidenced levels of acceptance reported low perceived stress.
• Conclusion: Results suggest that acceptance as a coping response is protective against stress for women but may be as less effective for men. This suggests that women tend to accept and adopt this perspective of life stressors and difficulties, while men react to stressors in a more avoidant and egocentric way. As hypothesized, maladaptive emotion regulation results in increased levels of stress. Limitation and future research direction will be discussed.

*Bolla, P., Bush, A., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Maladaptive emotion regulation moderates depression and perceived stress across symptoms. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Major Purpose: 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.
• Procedures: 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=.42, p=.001). This effect was moderated by a two-way interaction between depression and maladaptive emotion regulation (b=-.013, p=.013). 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.
• Conclusions: 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.

*Dunn, C., Bush, A., Napolitano, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Depression uniquely predicts using substances to cope. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: In 2014, over 21.5 million Americans suffered from a substance use disorder (SUD). Four motives for substance use have been identified under the substance use motivational model: social, enhancement, conforming, and coping. In particular, coping motives have received empirical support across analogue and clinical samples in predicting substance use as a means to reduce distress. As distress is endemic to the human condition, identifying risk factors for substance use coping may curtail the transition from casual to problematic substance use. Previous research indicates that some individuals are at increased risk for substance use coping (SUC), including males, low SES, individuals with depression diagnoses, and those who use other maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) responses. However, little is known about the role of adaptive ER in SUC, and it remains unclear whether one domain ER (i.e., cognitive, interpersonal, or behavioral) is particularly linked to SUC. This study investigated male sex, SES, previous depression diagnoses, and use of adaptive and maladaptive ER responses as predictors of using substances to cope with distress.
• Methods: Eighty-nine college undergraduate students (76% female, Mage=19.70, SD=3.34) completed psychiatric interviews and reported on their SES, dispositional adaptive and maladaptive ER repertoires (Feelings and Me – FAM), and SUC (Brief-COPE).
• Results: Bivariate correlations indicate that SUC negatively correlated with SES (rs (88)=-.23, p<.05) and depression diagnosis was positively related to SUC (rs (88)=.24, p<.05). Maladaptive cognitive, behavioral, and social emotion regulation also positively related to SUC (rs (86) =.27, p<.05; rs (87)=.21, p<.05; rs (87)=.29, p<.05). In regression analyses that tested the unique value of each predictor, depression history consistently predicted SUC (bs=1.27–1.40, ps<.05), with male sex and low SES predicting SUC at a trend level (b=.90, p=.08; b=-.15, p=.09). Contrary to expectation an active depressive disorder status and maladaptive ER repertoires did not predict SUC independent of depression histories.
• Conclusion: We found a robust association between depression and SUC which is consistent with the extant literature, and future works should examine the temporal relation between the two constructs. As a current depressed state did not predict SUC, our results suggests that the association between depression and SUC is state-independent. Therefore, screening for SUC should be incorporated into clinical practice when depression histories are present. 50-word Abstract: As using substances to regulation emotions predicts problematic use, identifying risk fact

*Mirhosseini Ghamsari, T. S., Napolitano, S., Bush, A., Bolla, P., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Effects of parenting practices on offspring's emotion regulation and anxiety. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: 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 offspring's emotional wellbeing: problematic parenting predicts internalizing problems in their offspring in the forms of depression and anxiety. Emotion regulation (ER) is robust predictor of youths' 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 behaviors on the youth' maladaptive and adaptive ER and anxiety levels.
• Procedure: 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 predicts 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.

*Mirhosseini Ghamsari, T. S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted).  Emotion regulation influences parent-offspring affective dynamics during contentious interaction. In Yaroslavsky (Chair) Depression and anxiety: An examination of attentional, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms of risk and inter-generational transmission. Symposium conducted at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: 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.
• Procedure: 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.
• Conclusions: 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.

*Napolitano, S., Bush, A., Bolla, P., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Parental depression symptoms predict positive affect reactivity in offspring. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: There is ample evidence to suggest that children reared by parents with BPD and depression exhibit numerous impairments compared to their peers, including difficulties with emotion regulation and increased risk for developing psychopathology themselves, especially anxiety and depression. However, it remains unclear whether high rates of heritability may reflect a shared dispositional vulnerability in form of high negative affectivity (NA) in times of distress, blunted positive affect (PA) reactivity to positive events, or a combination of these in high-risk individuals. The present study aimed to test whether parental depression and BPD symptoms predict impaired state NA and PA to negative and positive mood inductions in their offspring, independent of offspring's depression symptoms, during a dyadic interaction in the lab.
• Procedure: Thirty-six (n=36) community-dwelling parents (95% female, Mage=43.88, SD=5.38) and their forty-five (n=45) children (57% female, M =14.48, SD=1.81) completed a dyadic age and their forty-five (n=45) children (57% female, Mage=14.48, SD=1.81) completed a dyadic interaction featuring a highly contentious conflict discussion followed by a planning discussion about a fun activity to do together. Parents filled out measures of BPD (PAI-Borderline Scale) and both parents and offspring filled out measures of depression (CES-D and CDIR) and affect ratings (PANAS) at multiple time points. Reactivity in each affect domain reflects the difference between each discussion's pre- and post-task levels.
• Results: Multilevel models revealed that greater NA reactivity to the conflict discussion predicted reduced NA (b conNA=-.40, p<.001) and increased PA (bconPA= -.84, p<.001) after the planning discussion. For NA reactivity, neither parental depression nor BPD symptoms predict NA reactivity in their children (ps=.66-.88). For PA reactivity, parental depression symptoms predicted smaller PA gains after planning discussion (bdepPA=.10, p=.02), as did parental BPD symptoms at a trend level (bpaiPA=.08, p=.08), independent of both a child's reactivity to conflict discussion and child's self-reported depression levels (ps=.87-1). 
• Conclusions: Results indicate that children of individuals with elevated depression symptoms may experience blunted PA reactivity, but not impaired NA reactivity, to positive interpersonal exchanges; this may also be true of offspring of parents with elevated BPD symptoms. These findings were significant independent of otherwise healthy mood repair demonstrated via successful attenuation of NA and healthy PA rebound. This suggests that children at high risk for psychopathology may be vulnerable via impaired PA reactivity, or the extent to which they can benefit from positive events. Findings are clinically relevant, as they may support targeting high-risk offspring's euthymic capacity in treatment to help ameliorate the effects of parental depression on mood repair.

*Olczyk, A., Napolitano, S., Bush, A., Bolla, P., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Attention inflexibility co-segregation among siblings but not parents and offspring. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Purpose: 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-occuring 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.
• Procedure: 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.
• Conclusions: 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.

*Olczyk, A. & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). First-fixations of socially anxious parent-child dyads support vigilance hypothesis. In Yaroslavsky (Chair) Depression and anxiety: An examination of attentional, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms of risk and inter-generational transmission. Symposium conducted at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: 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.
• Procedure: 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.
• Conclusions: 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.

*Sisk, S., Scamaldo, K., Bolla, P., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Depression severity and instructed emotion regulation outcomes in depressed adults. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Purpose: Depression affects over 350 million people worldwide and is characterized by deficits in emotion regulation. Emotion regulation (ER) refers to responses that modulate affect, which are often ineffective for reducing dysphoria among depressed persons. Despite reported difficulties implementing ER strategies in daily life, studies show that depressed individuals can effectively implement ER when instructed to do so in the lab. However, these studies have primarily relied on community samples, raising the question as to whether instructed ER retains its benefits for those at severe levels of the disorder. The current study examines the relationship between depression severity and instructed ER outcomes among depressed community-dwelling and psychiatric inpatient adult samples.
• Procedure: Fifty-five depressed adults (community-dwelling, N = 33, 73% female, Mage = 31.39, SD = 13.38; inpatient N = 20, 65% female, M 41.30, SD= 12.31) completed measures of age SD = 13.38; inpatient N = 20, 65% female, Mage 41.30, SD= 12.31) completed measures of depressive symptoms (CES-D) and an instructed ER protocol that consisted of sad mood inductions via two sad film clips that were followed by either an attention control (AC) period or an instructed ER (IER) task. The IER was followed by a two-minute resting period to evaluate group differences in maintaining ER gains. Affect was measured at baseline, following each mood induction, and post-AC or IER condition.
• Results: Both films successfully induced sad mood relative to baseline levels, which were reduced following AC and IER tasks: IER reduced sadness (ΔM = 2.93) more robustly than the AC condition (ΔM = 1.61), t(50) = 3.79, p <.001. In contrast to expectation, inpatient status did not significantly predict sadness levels across the protocol: both groups displayed comparable gains across AC and IER conditions that were maintained following IER. In contrast, depression severity affected reduction in sad affect across both AC and IER conditions. Specifically, those at high severity levels evidenced more enduring sadness as compared to those at lower severity levels, F(1, 154) = 11.01, p = .001. Further, those with elevated depression symptoms reported higher levels of sadness across the maintenance period (M = 5.03) relative to those with low depression levels (M = 2.16), F (1, 51) = 12.63, p < .001.
• Conclusions and implications: Our findings show that even at severe levels, depressed participants retain the capacity to benefit from IER. Instructed ER was shown to contribute to significant reduction in sadness across groups, regardless of severity or environment. However, gains are blunted at severe symptom levels. Clinical implications will be discussed.

*Sisk, S., Bush, A., Napolitano, S, & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Emotion regulation responses influence attentional bias in depressed adults. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Purpose: Depression is a common mood disorders that is associated with biased information processing. Attentional bias reflects one form of biased information processing and refers to preferential attention allocation towards emotionally laden or neutral information. In eye-tracking paradigms, such biases are reflected in the stimulus on which first visual fixations occur, or in the ratio of time spent viewing valenced versus neutral imagery. Though a large body of work associates depression with the preferential allocation of attention towards dysphoric stimuli and away from hedonic stimuli, it remains unclear whether such associations are mood-dependent, or are influenced by more enduring mechanisms. The habitual use of strategies that paradoxically maintain or exacerbate distress (maladaptive emotion regulation) and infrequent use of those that reduce distress (adaptive emotion regulation) may contribute to biased attentional processing, as emotion regulation use is contingent on external and internal cues that may over time increase in saliency. The present study tests the unique relationships between the dispositional use of adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation responses on attention bias for valenced faces, independent of depression levels.
• Procedure: Eighty-four undergraduate students (21% male, Mage = 19.67, SD = 3.43) completed measures of dispositional adaptive and maladaptive ER, depression symptoms, and a free-viewing eye-tracking tasks during which they were presented with pairs of valenced (i.e. disgusted, happy, and sad) and neutral faces. Proportions of first-fixations and average within-trial gaze duration ratios for valenced faces served as the dependent variables.
• Results: Contrary to expectation, neither ER indices nor depression levels were associated with attention bias indexed via proportion of first fixations towards the valenced face. However, both adaptive and maladaptive ER indices predicted the gaze duration ratio towards sad faces: greater tendencies to engage in maladaptive responses predicted greater time spent viewing sad relative to neutral faces (β= 29, p = .01) while the frequent use of adaptive responses predicted greater focus on neutral faces (β= -19, p = .04). Emotion regulation indices were not otherwise related to attention disengagement.
• Conclusions and implications: Our findings suggest that those who habitually deploy maladaptive emotion regulation responses and insufficiently use adaptive strategies are more primed to attend to dysphoric information in their environment, irrespective of their depression levels. As emotion regulation is enacted in the presence of distress, our findings may suggest a self-perpetuating relationship between attentional bias, which is known to bring forth and maintain negative information in the working memory, and emotion regulation deficits.

*Sonday, N., Agarwal, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Social cognition as a mediator of affect ratings after stressful events. Poster presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Introduction: Social cognition reflects a person's ability to attribute mental states to themselves and others. Those who evidence high social cognitive skills have been shown to have more effective interpersonal interactions than those who do not. Interpersonal stress is a mental pressure on a person which is created or influenced by situations involving others, and is related to negative effects on performance. Since both social cognition and interpersonal stress involve the presence of others, it would make sense that they would be related. However, few studies have examined the relationship between social cognition and the stress experienced during interpersonal situations. This study is investigating that relationship, and whether having worse social cognition influences the stress experienced by a person in a situation that causes social distress. We predict that worse social cognition will be positively correlated with higher self-reported levels of discomfort after a socially distressing situation.
• Methods: Undergraduate college students (n=34, M age = 22.21, SD=8.77) completed a measure of Methods: Undergraduate college students (n=34, M age = 22.21, SD=8.77) completed a measure of social cognition (Movies for the Assessment of Social Cognition, MASC) and discreet affect ratings (sadness, fear, anger) at a free breathing baseline and during the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), an interpersonal stressor that involves speaking and counting-backwards in front of a research panel. Affect ratings following both portions of the TSST were used.
• Results: As expected, the TSST induced significant increase in anger, F(2, 68) = 16.04, p < .001, fear, F(2, 68) = 11.57, p < .001, and sadness, F(2, 68) = 5.50, p < .001, with each affect intensifying or sustaining across the two portions of the TSST. Though high social cognition was significantly associated with anger levels at baseline, r (33) = .48, p < .01, and tended to associate with elevated fear and sadness levels following the TSST, rs (33) = .30- .31, ps < .09 social cognition levels did not significantly predict levels or change in affect across the baseline and the TSST portions when age and sex effects were statistically covaried.
• Discussion: Our finding an association between social cognition and anger ratings indicates that those with high levels of social cognition may be more aware of and willing to disclose their internal emotional states. Our results did not indicate significant associations between social cognition and affective reactivity during the TSST, which may suggest that the TSST provides a "strong situation" that robustly induces distress regardless of individual differences in social cognition.

Borderline Personality Disorder

*Stewart, K., Agarwal, A., Weglicki, K., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Affectivity in BPD and emotion regulation: Subjective and physiological outcomes. Poster presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Purpose: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a disorder of emotion dysregulation that manifests in strong affective reactivity across subjective and physiological levels. Personally-meaningful stressors are particularly evocative among those with BPD traits, a body of work noting higher levels of distress among those with BPD when they are exposed to interpersonal stressors relative to healthy and clinical comparison groups. Though also elicited by interpersonal means, the nature of physiological reactivity among those with BPD is unclear, with some showing sympathetic nervous system (SNS) hyper-arousal, and others noting SNS suppression. Emotion regulation (ER) deficits in the form of the insufficient use of responses that reduce distress in the short/long-term (adaptive ER), or the frequent use of responses that maintain distress (maladaptive ER) may serve mechanistic roles in affective dysregulation. However most studies that investigate ER deficits in BPD focus on one of the two ER domains and do not consider SNS reactivity. The present study tests whether adaptive and maladaptive ER mediate the relationships between BPD symptoms and affective reactivity across subjective and physiological levels in response to interpersonal stressors, relative to impersonal stressors.
• Procedure: Eighty-three students (55% female, Mage=23.13, SD=7.38) completed a measure of BPD symptoms, a paced breathing baseline, and two mood induction procedures: a sad film depicting death (impersonal), and a speech in front of researchers (interpersonal). Negative affect (NA) ratings (sad, angry, & scared) and heart rate (HR) were measured across the protocol, with HR acceleration indexing SNS arousal and increased NA reflecting distress.
• Results: Both mood induction procedures elicited increased NA and HR acceleration. BPD symptoms predicted NA reactivity during the interpersonal stressor (β=.31, p<.05) that was more robust relative to the impersonal stressor (β=.16, p<.05). Further, BPD significantly predicted maladaptive ER (β= 81, p<.001), via which BPD predicted HR acceleration during the impersonal stressor (β=.45, 95% CI .10-.85). Interestingly, independent of maladaptive ER, BPD predicted HR deceleration during the impersonal stressor (β=-.45, p<.05).
• Conclusion and Implications: Consistent with existing literature, interpersonal stressors robustly evoke distress among those with elevated BPD symptoms. However, effects differ across subjective and physiological levels. Discordant effects of BPD on HR during the sad film may reflect competing processes: as HR deceleration may reflect a strong empathic response during the film that depicted a death scene, while HR acceleration may result from ineffective efforts by those with BPD to manage distress that resulted from over-identifying with the film's characters. Clinical implications will be discussed.

Cultural Differences in Emotion,
Depression and Anxiety (Internalizing) Disorders

*Agarwal, A., Lee, N. H., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Culture Moderating between self-compassion, emotion dysregulation, and depression. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Introduction: Self-compassion (SC) reflects the tendency to treat oneself with kindness and acceptance when facing difficulties. Increasing evidence shows that SC protects against depression and may have emotion regulation (ER) benefits in the form of reduced difficulty engaging in goal-directed behaviors, less impulsive behavior, greater emotional clarity, and perceived ER effectiveness. This is important as ER difficulties are a well-known risk-factor for depression. Recent evidence suggests that SC is impacted by culture, whereby those of Indian (South Asian) backgrounds evidence lower SC levels than their Western peers. However, it is unknown whether the relationship between SC, emotion regulation difficulties, and depression vary as a function of culture. Clarifying the role of culture in these relationships is important as the US is becoming more diverse, particularly with those hailing from South Asian backgrounds. We examine whether culture, defined as identifying as South Asian versus Caucasian, moderates the relationships between the SC, emotion regulation deficits, and depression symptoms.
• Procedure: One hundred and twenty-seven students (n=114 Caucasian, 77% female, M age= 22.09 years, SD= 5.46) were presented with a letter of consent and completed a series of questionnaires that included measures of self-compassion (Self-Compassion Scale), emotion regulation difficulties (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale), and depression symptoms (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, CES-D).
• Results: Analyses revealed that sex, age, self-compassion, and race explained a significant amount of variance in emotion regulation difficulties, F(4,122)= 33.32, p< 0.001, R-squared = .52, self-compassion ( = -0.69, p< 0.001), and race ( = 0.13, p< 0.05). These variables also accounted for a significant amount of variance in depression symptoms, F(4,109)= 5.49, p< 0.001, although self-compassion was the sole predictor to reach a level of significance ( = -0.38, p< 0.001). Importantly, emotion regulation difficulties significantly mediated the effects of SC on depression symptoms ( = 0.67, p< 0.001). However, culture did not moderate the effects of self-compassion on either for difficulties in emotion regulation or depression.
• Conclusion: Culture did not moderate the effects of self-compassion on difficulties in emotion regulation or depression. This suggests that self-compassion is a protective factor for those of South Asian and Caucasian backgrounds. Therefore, efforts to increase self-compassion within therapeutic settings may prove effective in reducing depression risk for those of varied cultural backgrounds.

Parenting

*Basting, E., Napolitano, S., Bush, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Discrepant views on parenting between mother-child dyads and mental health. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Introduction: Parenting practices shape adolescent socioemotional development. Importantly, empirical literature suggests that higher discrepancies between parental and child reports of monitoring practices are associated with child delinquent behaviors in a way that individual informant reports are not. Further, evidence also suggests that consistency across reporters in rating positive parenting practices are linked to lower prevalence of youth internalizing problems. Additionally, parents and children who disagree in one area of parenting are also more likely to disagree in rating other parenting practices. When considering gender differences in emotional expression, female youth show more internalizing emotions while males show more externalizing emotions. While research has found links between informant discrepancies within parent-child dyads and internalizing behavior in children, little is known about the relationship between externalizing behavior and rater behavior in children, little is known about the relationship between externalizing behavior and rater disagreement and resulting gender differences. This study seeks to understand how disagreement in parent-child reports of parenting styles predicts the presence of emotional and behavioral problems in children, and how gender moderates these associations.
• Method: Twenty-three mothers (Mage=44.09, SD=5.41) and twenty-eight adolescents (Mage=14.18, SD=1.76; 64% female) completed the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire, measuring Positive Parenting, Inconsistent Discipline, and Poor Supervision. Mothers also reported their offspring's level of internalizing and externalizing symptoms via Child Behavior Checklist.
• Results: Contrary to our hypotheses, discrepancies in reports of positive parenting were the only predictor of both internalizing and externalizing problems for children (β s=1.62–1.04, ps=.01). Importantly, gender was also associated with internalizing and externalizing problems in that female offspring were more likely to exhibit both types of issues according to parent reports (βs=5.83–3.70, p <.05). When considering moderation effects of gender on parenting practices, discrepancy in reporting inconsistent discipline was the only practice that interacted with gender to predict internalizing problems (β=2.04, p<.01). Discrepancies in poor supervision were the only practice that interacted with gender to predict externalizing problems (β =-2.04, p<.01) whereby females reporting more poor supervision than their mother were more likely to exhibit externalizing problems via parental report.
• Conclusion: Findings suggest that discrepant reporting of parenting practices has detrimental effects on female offspring's emotional and behavioral functioning. These findings emphasize the importance of communication among mothers and their children. Clinicians working with adolescents suffering from externalizing problems are advised to address parent-child depictions of poor supervision and positive parenting, while those addressing internalizing problems are encouraged to discuss inconsistent discipline and positive parenting styles within parent-child dyads.

*Bush, A., Napolitano, S., Scamaldo, K., Basting, E., Bolla, P., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Parental behaviors moderate affective dynamics in parent-child relationships.  Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: Examining the differences in child and parent perceptions of parenting behaviors represents a unique lens through which to view the parent-child relationship. Studies suggest that parents' and their offspring's mood states may affect one another, where elevated negative affectivity (NA) in one party evidences reciprocal, mutually-reinforcing NA in the other during interactions between parents and adolescents. The relationship between individual affect states in daily life and affect reciprocity among mother-child relationships is a relatively new exploration, and work reviewing these dynamics has been largely limited to cross-sectional and self-report examinations. One possible factor for affect reciprocity may be increased implementation of negative parenting practices, as meta-analytic findings suggest that harsh discipline, decreased acceptance, and lack of control and support are linked to increased NA in parents and their offspring. The present study aimed to examine the moderation effects of parenting practices on the affective dynamics between mothers and their offspring in daily life.
• Procedure: Participants were 31 mothers and their 44 offspring (57% female, Mage= 43.93, 14.14, SD=1.74, 5.62 respectively) who completed measures of parenting practices (APQ-9) as part of a larger protocol. Participants completed a 7-day ecological momentary assessment, during which current and peak hourly NA (sad, upset, and frustrated) was obtained 5 times daily (n=2,000 observations). Lagged and mixed effects models were used to examine moderation effects of parenting practices on parent and child NA.
• Results: Across analyses, offspring's current NA was predicted by their NA variability, mother's NA variability, and the interaction between offspring's NA variability and parenting behaviors. While higher maternal NA variability predicted increased offspring NA, offspring's NA variability did not predict mother's current NA as a function of mothers' self-reported parenting behaviors. Rather, greater offspring NA variability predicts greater current NA for mothers when offspring reported poorer parental behaviors (b=1.77, p<.05). Next, when mothers reported low NA variability, positive reinforcement from mothers predicted modest decreases in NA of offspring (b=-.02, p=.01). Additionally, offspring reported less distress when mothers exhibited low variability in NA and inconsistent parental discipline (b=-.04, p<.001). When mothers report more variability in NA, offspring reported feeling more distressed, which was exacerbated by consistent discipline.
• Discussion: Overall, results evidence that increased instability in maternal NA predicts reciprocal affect in their offspring; this is especially true when offspring perceive increased rigid discipline and a lack of effective parental supervision. Clinical implications and future directions will be discussed.

Substance Use

*Dunn, C., Scamaldo, K., Sisk, S., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Maladaptive and substance use emotion regulation predicting problematic substance use. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: Recent estimates suggest that over seven million adults in the United States have co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders (SUD), of which co-morbidity with depressive disorders is particularly common. Emotion regulation (ER) deficits have been linked to risk for SUD and depressive disorders, with such deficits arising from ineffective use of putatively adaptive ER responses and the frequent use of maladaptive strategies. Using substances to cope is one form of maladaptive ER that in particular has evidenced increased risk for enduring substance use problems and SUD. However, the relative contribution of other maladaptive ER over substance-related ER to depression and SUD co-occurrence is not known. Disambiguating the effect of substance-related and other maladaptive ER responses to the risk of depression-SUD co-occurrence has public health implications, as such dual diagnoses are often resistant to treatment and associated with marked societal burden. This study examined unique associations between the two forms of maladaptive ER in SUD problems among an inpatient sample of depressed persons.
• Methods: Forty-three depressed adults (51% female, Mage=40.31, SD=13.17) who were hospitalized in a psychiatric facility completed measures of maladaptive ER strategies (Feelings and Me–FAM), alcohol use (AUDIT) and drug use (DUDIT) problems as part of a larger protocol.
• Results: Hierarchical linear regressions were conducted to predict whether indication of substance use as a coping strategy is more predictive than reported use of various maladaptive ER strategies (e.g. rumination, denial). Participants' reliance on substances to cope with distress predicted greater severity in drug and alcohol problems during the past 12 months than did the use of other maladaptive ER responses. Specifically, as compared to maladaptive ER (b=-.11, p=.77; b=.04, p=.11), using substances to cope incrementally predicted drug and alcohol use related outcomes, respectively (b=14.14, p=.03; b=9.33, p=.05).
• Conclusion: The novelty of these finding is that understanding substance use as a coping strategy may depart from our current theoretical conception of maladaptive ER. These results are clinically relevant in that substance use in service of ER may provide a unique point of intervention in treatment for those struggling with comorbid SUD and mood disorders. Additionally, individuals who use substances to regulate their emotions, particularly those with mental health problems, may be at an increased risk for developing SUDs. Future research should examine these results in clinical substance use dependent samples.

*Scamaldo, K. Napolitano, S., Bush, A., & Yaroslavsky, I. (accepted). Sexual orientation predicts increased substance use to attenuate distress. Paper presented at the 91st annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

• Problem: The experience of stigma and discrimination is associated with worsened mental health outcomes, including increased likelihood for individuals to abuse illicit substances as individuals internalize negative beliefs about themselves. Several decades of empirical studies have demonstrated that sexual minorities (SM) are prime targets for such discrimination and, consequently, these populations are at elevated risk for abusing substances and developing substance use disorders. While the preponderance of evidence suggests that SM are more likely to abuse substances than their heterosexual peers due to experiencing minority stress, substance use has typically been examined as a risk related outcome rather than a coping strategy. This study aimed to examine whether sexual orientation increases an individual's risk for using substances as a coping strategy. Procedure: Participants were 773 undergraduate students (77.2% female; M = 24.83, SD =
• Procedure: Participants were 773 undergraduate students (77.2% female; MAge = 24.83, SD = 4.71) who completed a prescreening survey identifying their demographics (e.g., age, sex), sexual orientation (e.g. heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual), measures of dispositional adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation (Feelings and Me; FAM Questionnaire), and measures of substance use as a coping strategy (COPE-sub inventory), aggregated from three distinct items from the COPE and FAM.
• Results: One-way ANOVA with pairwise comparisons were performed to detect differences in substance use for coping by sexual orientation. Results showed a significant difference between groups, F(2, 802)=10.17, p<.001. While post hoc comparisons showed no differences between individuals who identified as homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual (ps=.12-.22), significant differences emerged between heterosexual and bisexual groups: those who identified as bisexual (M=2.14) reported using drugs to cope more regularly than their heterosexual peers (M=1.14), p<.001.
• Conclusions: Findings suggest that individuals that identify as bisexual may rely more on substance use in order to downregulate distress. This is important for a few key reasons, primarily, there is a dearth of information regarding substance use in ER in the extant literature and these results support its examination and extrapolation. Next, findings suggest that individuals who identify as bisexual may be at heightened risk for the harmful sequalae of increased substance use, including substance use disorders and increased health risks. Lastly, this difference may reflect a failure in emotion regulation for individuals who identify as bisexual, as the long-term reliance of substance use to modulate emotions is implicated in multiple psychopathological presentations. Using this information to inform evidence-based treatment for individuals of bisexual backgrounds could lead to better outcomes for these individuals.