Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2023-09-13
Abstract: Background: While psychosocial stressors trigger neuroendocrine responses and affect task performance, many studies overlook the dynamic nature of the stress appraisal process. Goal: This study aims to explore whether subjective appraisals at various time points can interpret individual stress responses, both behaviorally and physiologically, using controlled laboratory conditions. Methods: A total of 137 effective participants were recruited to induce individual stress states using the Trier Social stress Test (TSST). Subjective appraisals were measured both before (anticipatory appraisal) and after the stressor (retrospective appraisal). Concurrently, participants' cortisol responses and task performances were documented. Results: Findings indicate that anticipatory appraisal doesn't significantly impact task performance, whereas retrospective appraisal markedly affects performance of the corresponding tasks. Regarding cortisol levels, multivariate regression analysis revealed that only the retrospective appraisal of the speech task accounted for the observed variance in cortisol response under stress. Discussion: The data suggests that retrospective appraisals are more indicative of behavioral and physiological responses to psychosocial stressors than anticipatory appraisals. These findings lend empirical support to refining the biopsychosocial model and underscore the utility of retrospective appraisal in capturing individual stress response variations.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-07-27
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Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-07-10
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Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-02-05
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Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Medical Psychology submitted time 2019-11-05
Abstract: Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a wide range of cognitive impairments. Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to mentally re-experience past events and pre-experience possible future events. Studies have shown MTT impairments in individuals with ASD, however, these findings may be confounded by a number of factors including verbal ability to report MTT, factors related to MTT task and demographic factors of participants. The present study provided a meta-analysis on MTT deficits in individuals with ASD and examined the potential moderating variables for these impairments. Twenty-six studies were included, and the participants comprised 667 individuals with ASD and 671 healthy controls. Results showed significant overall MTT impairments (Cohen’s d = −0.95) in individuals with ASD. Moderator and meta-regression analyses revealed that verbal IQ was significantly related to MTT impairments; type of MTT, type of task, measurement indices of MTT, age of participants, gender ratio and full IQ did not explain the MTT impairments. These findings suggest that MTT is severely impaired in individuals with ASD, verbal IQ contributed to MTT impairments, and task characteristics did not affect the degree of impairments.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2019-09-18
Abstract: " Age-related differences in affective meanings of words are widely used by researchers studying emotions, word recognition, attention, memory and text-based sentiment analysis. However, no Chinese affective norms for older adults are available. This article firstly presents the available large-scale Chinese affective norms for 2, 061 4-character words rated in labs by 114 older and 150 younger adults (CAN4Age) who evaluated these words on four dimensions: valence, arousal, dominance, and familiarity. We also compiled 4 lexical variables for each word, including word frequency, word complexity, character frequency and character complexity. In general, older adults tend to evaluate emotional words more extremely than younger adults do. That is, they rate positive words as more positive and negative words as more negative than younger adults do. Specifically, older adults tend to perceive positive words as more arousing and less controllable and negative words as less arousing and more controllable than that of younger adults. This age-related database will enable researchers to study how emotional characteristics of words influence their cognitive processing, and how this influence evolves with age in Chinese. This age-related difference study on affective norms not only provides insights to cognitive neuroscience, gerontology and psychology in experimental studies, but the produced affective word collection also has great value as a resource for affective analysis in natural language processing applications. These norms can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this published article. "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Biology >> Neurobiology submitted time 2017-07-24
Abstract:Although depression-induced altered pain perception has been described in several laboratory and clinical studies, its neurobiological mechanism in the central nervous system, particularly in the spinal dorsal horn remains unclear. In this study, we therefore aimed to clarify whether nociceptive sensitivity of neuropathic pain is altered in the olfactory bulbectomy (OB) model of depression and whether glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which is involved in the etio-pathologic mechanisms of both major depression and neuropathic pain, contributes to these processes in the spinal dorsal horn of male Sprague-Dawley rats. The results showed that mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia induced by spinal nerve ligation (SNL) were attenuated in OB-SNL rats with decreased spinal GR expression and nuclear translocation, while NOB (non-olfactory bulbectomy)-SNL rats showed an increased spinal GR nuclear translocation. Decreased GR nuclear translocation with normal mechanical nociception and hypoalgesia of thermal nociception were observed in OB-Sham rats, too. Intrathecal injection of GR agonist dexamethasone (4 µg / rat / day for 1 week) eliminated the attenuating effect of depression on the nociceptive hypersensitivity in OB-SNL rats and aggravated neuropathic pain in NOB-SNL rats, associating with the up-regulation of BDNF, TrkB and NR2B expression in the spinal dorsal horn. The present study shows that depression attenuates the mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia of neuropathic pain and suggests that altered spinal GR-BDNF-TrkB signaling may be one of the reasons for depression-induced hypoalgesia.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Biology >> Neurobiology submitted time 2017-03-31
Abstract:Although depression-induced altered pain perception has been described in several laboratory and clinical studies, its neurobiological mechanism in the central nervous system, particularly in the spinal dorsal horn remains unclear. In this study, we therefore aimed to clarify whether nociceptive sensitivity of neuropathic pain is altered in the olfactory bulbectomy (OB) model of depression and whether glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which is involved in the etio-pathologic mechanisms of both major depression and neuropathic pain, contributes to these processes in the spinal dorsal horn of male Sprague-Dawley rats. The results showed that mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia induced by spinal nerve ligation (SNL) were attenuated in OB-SNL rats with decreased spinal GR expression and nuclear translocation, while NOB (non-olfactory bulbectomy)-SNL rats showed an increased spinal GR nuclear translocation. Decreased GR nuclear translocation with normal mechanical nociception and hypoalgesia of thermal nociception were observed in OB-Sham rats, too. Intrathecal injection of GR agonist dexamethasone (4 µg / rat / day for 1 week) eliminated the attenuating effect of depression on the nociceptive hypersensitivity in OB-SNL rats and aggravated neuropathic pain in NOB-SNL rats, associating with the up-regulation of BDNF, TrkB and NR2B expression in the spinal dorsal horn. The present study shows that depression attenuates the mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia of neuropathic pain and suggests that altered spinal GR-BDNF-TrkB signaling may be one of the reasons for depression-induced hypoalgesia.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review