The effect of image category and incidental arousal on boundary restriction.

People's memory for scenes has consequences, including for eyewitness testimony. Negative scenes may lead to a particular memory error, where narrowed scene boundaries lead people to recall being closer to a scene than they were. But boundary restriction-including attenuation of the opposite phenomenon boundary extension-has been difficult to replicate, perhaps because heightened arousal accompanying negative scenes, rather than negative valence itself, drives the effect. Indeed, in Green et al. (2019) arousal alone, conditioned to a particular neutral image category, increased boundary restriction for images in that category. But systematic differences between image categories may have driven these results, irrespective of arousal. Here, we clarify whether boundary restriction stems from the external arousal stimulus or image category differences. Presenting one image category (everyday-objects), half accompanied by arousal (Experiment 1), and presenting both neutral image categories (everyday-objects, nature), without arousal (Experiment 2), resulted in no difference in boundary judgement errors. These findings suggest that image features-including inherent valence, arousal, and complexity-are not sufficient to induce boundary restriction or reduce boundary extension for neutral images, perhaps explaining why boundary restriction is inconsistently demonstrated in the lab.

Why the COVID-19 pandemic is a traumatic stressor.

The COVID-19 pandemic does not fit into prevailing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) models, or diagnostic criteria, yet emerging research shows traumatic stress symptoms as a result of this ongoing global stressor. Current pathogenic event models focus on past, and largely direct, trauma exposure to certain kinds of life-threatening events. Yet, traumatic stress reactions to future, indirect trauma exposure, and non-Criterion A events exist, suggesting COVID-19 is also a traumatic stressor which could lead to PTSD symptomology. To examine this idea, we asked a sample of online participants (N = 1,040), in five western countries, to indicate the COVID-19 events they had been directly exposed to, events they anticipated would happen in the future, and other forms of indirect exposure such as through media coverage. We then asked participants to complete the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-5, adapted to measure pre/peri/post-traumatic reactions in relation to COVID-19. We also measured general emotional reactions (e.g., angry, anxious, helpless), well-being, psychosocial functioning, and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. We found participants had PTSD-like symptoms for events that had not happened and when participants had been directly (e.g., contact with virus) or indirectly exposed to COVID-19 (e.g., via media). Moreover, 13.2% of our sample were likely PTSD-positive, despite types of COVID-19 "exposure" (e.g., lockdown) not fitting DSM-5 criteria. The emotional impact of "worst" experienced/anticipated events best predicted PTSD-like symptoms. Taken together, our findings support emerging research that COVID-19 can be understood as a traumatic stressor event capable of eliciting PTSD-like responses and exacerbating other related mental health problems (e.g., anxiety, depression, psychosocial functioning, etc.). Our findings add to existing literature supporting a pathogenic event memory model of traumatic stress.

The role of arousal in boundary judgement errors.

Eyewitnesses to a crime rely heavily on their visual memory; however, there are many ways that the details of visual scenes can be missed, or distorted. In particular, for emotional scenes, the "boundaries" are narrowed at retrieval, whereas central details-such as a weapon-are remembered in greater detail. This phenomenon is known as boundary restriction, the reverse of boundary extension whereby people tend to expand the boundaries of a neutral scene at retrieval. In the present series of experiments, we investigated whether arousal is the element of an emotional scene that leads to increased boundary restriction or reduced boundary extension. We presented neutral images to participants either with or without a stress-inducing noise. In Experiment 1a and 1b, at test, participants viewed the image they originally viewed next to the same image but with narrower or wider boundaries and selected which of the two images they originally viewed. In Experiment 2, at test, participants viewed the identical image they originally viewed, but were told the boundaries had been changed. Participants selected the extent to which the images at test had restricted or extended boundaries compared to their memory of the original image. When the noise stressor was present, participants made more boundary restriction errors-selecting the image with narrower boundaries than the original-and fewer boundary extension errors than when the noise was absent. Our data suggest that arousal plays a key role in boundary judgements.

Expecting the worst: Investigating the effects of trigger warnings on reactions to ambiguously themed photos.

Trigger warnings are messages alerting people to content containing themes that could cause distressing emotional reactions. Advocates claim that warnings allow people to prepare themselves and subsequently reduce negative reactions toward content, while critics insist warnings may increase negative interpretations. Here, we investigated (a) the emotional impact of viewing a warning message, (b) if a warning message would increase or decrease participants' negative evaluations of a set of ambiguous photos, and (c) how participants evaluated overall study participation. We meta-analyzed the results of 5 experiments (N = 1,600) conducted online, and found that trigger warnings did not cause participants to interpret the photos in a more negative manner than participants who were unwarned. However, warned participants experienced a negative anticipatory period prior to photo viewing that did little to mitigate subsequent negative reactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Trauma-related versus positive involuntary thoughts with and without meta-awareness.

In earlier work, we asked subjects to report involuntary thoughts relating to a trauma film and also probed subjects periodically. Subjects often reported involuntary thoughts in response to probes, suggesting they lacked meta-awareness of those thoughts. But it is possible that some or all probe-detected thoughts were continuations of thoughts subjects had spontaneously reported, leading us to overestimate involuntary thoughts lacking meta-awareness. It is also unclear whether failures in meta-awareness occur for other emotional events. We exposed subjects to a negative or positive film. Subsequently, they reported involuntary film-related thoughts and responded to probes that distinguished new from continuing thoughts. Many (54%) but not all probe-caught thoughts were thought continuations. This result supports our earlier finding that people can lack meta-awareness for trauma-related thoughts, but suggests caution in how meta-awareness is assessed. We also found that self-caught negative and positive involuntary thoughts occurred at a similar frequency, with different characteristics.