RESUMO
Psychological inflexibility is theorized to underlie difficulties adjusting mental processes in response to changing circumstances. People show inflexibility across a range of domains, including attention, cognition, and affect. But it remains unclear whether common mechanisms underlie inflexibility in different domains. We investigated this possibility in a pre-registered replication and extension examining associations among attentional, cognitive, and affective inflexibility measures. Participants (N = 196) completed lab tasks assessing (a) emotion-induced blindness, the tendency for task-irrelevant emotional stimuli to impair attention allocation to non-emotional stimuli; (b) emotional inertia, the tendency for feelings to persist across time and contexts; and global self-report measures of (c) repetitive negative thinking, the tendency to repeatedly engage in negative self-focused thoughts (i.e., rumination, worry). Based on prior research linking repetitive negative thinking with negative affect inertia, on one hand, and emotion-induced blindness, on the other, we predicted positive correlations among all three measures of inflexibility. However, none of the three measures were related and Bayes factors indicated strong evidence for independence. Supplementary analyses ruled out alternative explanations for our findings, e.g., analytic decisions. Although our findings question the overlap between attentional, cognitive, and affective inflexibility measures, this study has methodological limitations. For instance, our measures varied across more than their inflexibility domain and our sample, relative to previous studies, included a high proportion of Asian participants who may show different patterns of ruminative thinking to non-Asian participants. Future research should address these limitations to confirm that common mechanisms do not underlie attentional, cognitive, and affective inflexibility. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00145-2.
RESUMO
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to characterize the expression of interleukin-11 (IL-11), a cytokine with anti-inflammatory, cytoprotective, and immune-modulating characteristics, in the canine eye. PROCEDURES: Normal canine eyes were collected from clinically healthy dogs that had been euthanized for reasons unrelated to this study. The distribution of IL-11 expression in the different ocular layers was evaluated by immunofluorescence (eight eyes). Expression levels were quantified (based on fluorescence intensity) using pixel density analysis. Primary cell cultures were derived from all three corneal cell layers. IL-11 mRNA expression was assessed in these cultures using quantitative RT-PCR before and after treatment with TGF-ß1, a known inducer of IL-11 expression. IL-11 protein expression was also assessed in the media of these cells by Western blot analysis. RESULTS: IL-11 protein was detected in the corneal epithelium, keratocytes, and the corneal endothelium of the normal canine eyes examined using immunofluorescence. Baseline IL-11 mRNA expression was noted in the corneal epithelium, fibroblasts, and endothelium using quantitative RT-PCR. Treatment of canine corneal cell lines with TGF-ß1 resulted in statistically significant increases in IL-11 expression in the corneal epithelium, endothelial and fibroblast cell lines with strongest induction noted in the fibroblasts and endothelium. CONCLUSION: This is the first description of IL-11 expression in the canine eye. The protein and mRNA appear to be constitutively present throughout all layers of the cornea and are increased by TGF-ß1, a cytokine important in ocular inflammation and disease.
