The effects of eye movements on the content and characteristics of unpleasant autobiographical memories: an extended replication study.

Experimental studies show that vividness and emotionality of aversive memories decrease after recall with eye movements. We aimed at replicating this finding. Relatedly, consistent with Conway's view that memory retrieval is constructive, we examined changes in the content of the memories. If eye movements render a memory less aversive, it may be avoided less, stimulating recall and increasing the opportunity to infer (contextual) details. Two experiments (N = 97 and N = 250) examined whether eye movements affect the number of central and peripheral memory details and characteristics. Female undergraduate students were randomly allocated to either eye movements with recall (EM) or recall only (RO). Before and after the experimental task, participants rated the vividness and emotionality, provided a detailed description and evaluated other memory characteristics. We replicated earlier findings that vividness (both experiments) and emotionality (experiment 2) were reduced more after EM compared to RO. However, conditions did not statistically significantly differ with respect to content details and other memory characteristics. Overall, findings support the idea that eye movements decrease the experience of the memory as vivid and emotional. Results are inconclusive regarding the idea that eye movements alter the number of recalled central and peripheral memory details.

Anger Responses in Adolescents: Relationship with Punishment and Reward Sensitivity.

A substantial proportion of youth with anxiety disorders shows comorbid behavioral (anger) problems. Such comorbid profile is associated with low treatment effectiveness and negative (longterm) outcomes. This study was therefore designed to examine trait factors that may promote anger responding in adolescents. By presenting participants (N = 158, mean age = 15.7, 56% female) with a series of common anger-eliciting situations, we tested whether high reward sensitivity would be associated with anger via perceived non-reward, and high punishment sensitivity via perceived threat. In line with the hypotheses, an indirect effect of reward sensitivity on anger was found via perceived non-reward, and an indirect effect of punishment sensitivity on anger via perceived threat. The latter association also had an indirect effect via perceived non-reward. High punishment and reward sensitivity may thus set adolescents at risk for developing (comorbid) anger problems via heightened threat and non-reward perceptions.

Attentional Bias for Cues Signaling Punishment and Reward in Adolescents: Cross-Sectional and Prognostic Associations with Symptoms of Anxiety and Behavioral Disorders.

Heightened reward sensitivity has been proposed as a risk factor for developing behavioral disorders whereas heightened punishment sensitivity has been related to the development of anxiety disorders in youth. Combining a cross-sectional (n = 696, mean age = 16.14) and prospective (n = 598, mean age = 20.20) approach, this study tested the hypotheses that an attentional bias for punishing cues is involved in the development of anxiety disorders and an attentional bias for rewarding cues in the development of behavioral disorders. A spatial orientation task was used to examine the relation between an attentional bias for punishing cues and an attentional bias for rewarding cues with anxiety and behavioral problems in a subsample of a large prospective population cohort study. Our study indicates that attentional biases to general cues of punishment and reward do not seem to be important risk factors for the development of anxiety or behavioral problems respectively. It might be that attentional biases play a role in the maintenance of psychological problems. This remains open for future research.

Cognitive-behavior therapy for children and adolescents with anxiety disorders: A meta-analysis of secondary outcomes.

Anxiety-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) effectively reduces anxiety in children and adolescents. An important remaining question is to what extent anxiety-focused CBT also affects broader outcome domains. Additionally, it remains unclear whether parental involvement in treatment may have impact on domains other than anxiety. A meta-analysis (nstudies = 42, nparticipants = 3239) of the effects of CBT and the moderating role of parental involvement was conducted on the following major secondary outcomes: depressive symptoms, externalizing behaviors, general functioning, and social competence. Randomized controlled trials were included when having a waitlist or active control condition, a youth sample (aged<19) with a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis receiving anxiety-focused CBT and reported secondary outcomes. Controlled effect sizes (Cohen's d) were calculated employing random effect models. CBT had a large effect on general functioning (-1.25[-1.59;0.90], nstudies = 17), a small to moderate effect on depressive symptoms (-0.31[-0.41;-0.22], nstudies = 31) and a small effect on externalizing behaviors (-0.23[-0.38;-0.09], nstudies = 12) from pre-to post-treatment. Effects remained or even further improved at follow-up. Social competence only improved at follow-up (nstudies = 6). Concluding, anxiety-focused CBT has a positive effect on broader outcome domains than just anxiety. Higher parental involvement seemed to have beneficial effects at follow-up, with improvements in general functioning and comorbid symptoms.

A systematic review of online interventions for mental health in low and middle income countries: a neglected field.

BACKGROUND: Low and middle income countries (LMICs) are facing an increase of the impact of mental health problems while confronted with limited resources and limited access to mental health care, known as the 'mental health gap'. One strategy to reduce the mental health gap would be to utilize the internet to provide more widely-distributed and low cost mental health care. We undertook this systematic review to investigate the effectiveness and efficacy of online interventions in LMICs. METHODS: We systematically searched the data-bases PubMed, PsycINFO, JMIR, and additional sources. MeSH terms, Thesaurus, and free text keywords were used. We included all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of online interventions in LMICs. RESULTS: We found only three articles reported results of RCTs on online interventions for mental health conditions in LMICs, but none of these interventions was compared with an active control condition. Also, the mental health conditions were diverse across the three studies. CONCLUSIONS: There is a dearth of studies examining the effect of online interventions in LMICs, so we cannot draw a firm conclusion on its effectiveness. However, given the effectiveness of online interventions in high income countries and sharp increase of internet access in LMICs, online interventions may offer a potential to help reduce the 'mental health gap'. More studies are urgently needed in LMICs.

Co-occurrence of social anxiety and depression symptoms in adolescence: differential links with implicit and explicit self-esteem?

BACKGROUND: Social anxiety and depression often co-occur. As low self-esteem has been identified as a risk factor for both types of symptoms, it may help to explain their co-morbidity. Current dual process models of psychopathology differentiate between explicit and implicit self-esteem. Explicit self-esteem would reflect deliberate self-evaluative processes whereas implicit self-esteem would reflect simple associations in memory. Previous research suggests that low explicit self-esteem is involved in both social anxiety and depression whereas low implicit self-esteem is only involved in social anxiety. We tested whether the association between symptoms of social phobia and depression can indeed be explained by low explicit self-esteem, whereas low implicit self-esteem is only involved in social anxiety. METHOD: Adolescents during the first stage of secondary education (n=1806) completed the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) to measure symptoms of social anxiety and depression, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) to index explicit self-esteem and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure implicit self-esteem. RESULTS: There was a strong association between symptoms of depression and social anxiety that could be largely explained by participants' explicit self-esteem. Only for girls did implicit self-esteem and the interaction between implicit and explicit self-esteem show small cumulative predictive validity for social anxiety, indicating that the association between low implicit self-esteem and social anxiety was most evident for girls with relatively low explicit self-esteem. Implicit self-esteem showed no significant predictive validity for depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The findings support the view that both shared and differential self-evaluative processes are involved in depression and social anxiety.