Impact of gender and having children in the household on ambulatory blood pressure in work and nonwork settings: a partial replication and new findings.

Ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) has been shown to differ for men and women across work and nonwork settings. For men, ABP is higher at work than at home on workdays or on nonworkdays. For women, ABP levels in different settings depend on whether they have children in the household. Women without children at home exhibit the "male" pattern of higher ABP at work than at home. Women with children at home show either similar ABP levels in the two locations or higher ABP at home. These different patterns have been assumed to represent different stress levels in the two locations, but this assumption has rarely been tested. Also, few studies have examined ABP levels on a nonworkday in women or the effect of having children in the household for men. The present study monitored ABP in men and women during two workdays and one nonworkday. Comparisons were made between ABP levels in three settings (workday at work, workday at home, nonworkday) using mixed random effects regression models. Psychosocial variables (e.g. mood, stress) that might mediate the different ABP patterns were also assessed. ABP differences were analyzed by gender and whether children were living in the household using mixed random effects regression models. Results indicated that diastolic blood pressure was higher at work versus home for men with children and higher at work and on nonworkdays than at home for women without children. ABP did not differ across settings for women with children or men without children. These results were not mediated by mood or stress levels in the three settings.

Coping with daily events and short-term mood changes: an unexpected failure to observe effects of coping.

This study examined the relationship between coping efforts and stress-related mood changes. Men and women with high levels of work or marital stress reported stress and coping efforts approximately once an hour for 2 days using an electronic diary. Stress episodes were identified as a stress-free time followed by a stressor at the next time point. Analyses examined how appraisals and coping influenced pre- to poststress mood change and how problem appraisals were related to coping efforts. Greater mood changes were associated with appraisals of high stress and high disruptiveness. Appraisals of high control and high desirability were associated with more planning, direct action, and fewer acceptance coping efforts. Coping failed to predict any pre- to poststressor mood changes. Possible explanations for the overall failure of coping to predict momentary mood changes are discussed.

A comparison of coping assessed by ecological momentary assessment and retrospective recall.

Recent research suggests that retrospective coping assessments may not correspond well with day-to-day reports. The authors extended this work by examining the correspondence between short-term (within 48 hr) retrospective coping reports and momentary reports recorded via a palm-top computer close in time to when the stressor occurred. There was relatively poor correspondence between the 2 assessments. Some reports of momentary coping were not reported retrospectively, and some coping reported retrospectively was not reported at the time the stressor occurred. Cognitive coping was more likely to be underreported retrospectively; behavior coping was overreported. Participants were consistent in their discrepancies, but there was no correspondence between discrepancy rates and demographic or personality variables.

Assessment of coping strategies of child abusing mothers.

OBJECTIVE: Mothers who had physically abused their children were assessed to determine whether these mothers had a general coping skills deficit. METHOD: Abusing mothers (n = 17) were compared to nonabusing mothers of conduct problem children (n = 16). Coping was measured by several methods, each designed to address the insufficiencies of the others. RESULTS: In comparison to the nonabusing mothers, independent ratings indicated that abusing mothers exhibited a pattern of coping characterized by greater use of emotion-focused coping strategies and less use of effective problem-focused strategies. Finally, using self report ratings of coping, abusing mothers perceived their coping to be more ineffective than the nonabusing mothers. CONCLUSIONS: The possibility that the observed coping skills deficit may be indicative of a deficit in emotional responding to stress was discussed and suggestions were given for therapeutic interventions with child abusing mothers.

Do schizophrenic patients show a disjunctive relationship among expressive, experiential, and psychophysiological components of emotion?

Recent research has found a discrepancy between schizophrenic patients' outward expression of emotion and their reported emotional experience. In this study, which attempts to replicate and extend the findings of previous studies, participants with and without schizophrenia viewed emotional film clips while their facial expressions were videotaped and skin conductance was recorded. Participants also reported their subjective experience of emotion following each film. Those with schizophrenia were less facially expressive than controls during the emotional films and reported experiencing as much positive and negative emotion, replicating previous findings. Additionally, schizophrenic patients exhibited greater skin conductance reactivity to all films than controls. These findings suggest a disjunction among emotional response domains for schizophrenic patients; alternative explanations for the findings are considered as well as suggestions for future research.

Are stress-induced immunological changes mediated by mood? A closer look at how both desirable and undesirable daily events influence sIgA antibody.

This investigation tested a three-path model of mood as a mediator of the relation between stress and immunity. Seventy-two married men completed end-of-day diaries in which they rated their mood for that day and the desirability of the day's events for I2 weeks. Events were coded as either desirable (nonstressful) or undesirable (stressful) in nature. Immunological functioning was assessed by secretory immunoglobulin-A NgA) antibody response lo an oral antigen. Regression analyses indicated that negative mood partially mediated the immunological response to both undesirable and desirable events. Undesirable events lowered antibody levels primarily by increasing negative mood: desirable events increased antibody levels by decreasing negative mood. Evidence for mediation by positive mood beyond that found for negative mood was weak.

Association between daily coping and end-of-day mood.

Research indicates that self-reports of coping with stressful occurrences are associated with psychological and health outcomes. However, measures of coping may be biased by retrospective distortion as they assess coping over relatively long periods. In this study, a sample of 79 men completed a coping assessment daily for several weeks about the day's most "bothersome" problem. Repeated daily measurement of coping allowed analysis of within-subject effects of coping efforts. Same-day mood reported by the men (targets) and reports of the men's mood by their spouses (observers) were outcome variables. Within-subject analyses indicated that catharsis and social supports were associated with increased negative affect, whereas use of acceptance was associated with less negative affect. Use of distraction, acceptance, and relaxation were associated with increased positive affect. These findings held for target- and observer-reported mood.

A multimethod, multichannel assessment of affective flattening in schizophrenia.

Flat affect was examined across multiple contexts (during interviews and emotional films), multiple channels of expression (facial and vocal), and different assessment techniques (clinical ratings, observational ratings of facial expression, and acoustic analyses) in 23 medication-free schizophrenic patients. Patients participated in three different interviews during which either clinical ratings were made or their voices were audiotaped for later acoustic analyses. Patients were also videotaped while they viewed positive and negative emotional films. The videotapes were then coded for the frequency, intensity, and duration of positive and negative facial expressions. Results indicated that general clinical ratings were related across different interviews. However, only those items specific to affective flattening bore significant relationships to vocal and facial expressiveness. Vocal expressiveness and negative facial expressiveness were related, but vocal expressiveness was not related to positive facial expressiveness.

Daily events are associated with a secretory immune response to an oral antigen in men.

To examine a hypothesized link between daily stressful events and secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) antibody, 96 adults from the community completed daily event questionnaires and gave daily saliva samples for up to 12 weeks. They also ingested a capsule of a novel protein to challenge their secretory immune systems. The questionnaire yielded measures of negative and positive experiences, of their content, and of negative and positive affect. On a within-subjects, day-to-day basis, reporting more desirable events was related to more sIgA antibody, and reporting more undesirable events was related to less. Desirable events also had lagged (1 and 2 days), positive effects on sIgA levels. Undesirable work events and desirable leisure and household events were more strongly related to sIgA than events in other categories. Positive affect related directly to sIgA, and negative mood related inversely to same-day sIgA.

Individual differences in dispositional expressiveness: development and validation of the Emotional Expressivity Scale.

Although emotional expressivity figures prominently in several theories of psychological and physical functioning, limitations of currently available measurement techniques impede precise and economical testing of these theories. The 17-item Emotional Expressivity Scale (EES) was designed as a self-report measure of the extent to which people outwardly display their emotions. Reliability studies showed the EES to be an internally consistent and stable individual-difference measure. Validational studies established initial convergent and discriminant validities, a moderate relationship between self-rated and other-rated expression, and correspondence between self-report and laboratory-measured expressiveness using both college student and community populations. The potential for the EES to promote and integrate findings across diverse areas of research is discussed.

Neuropsychological correlates of central monoamine function in chronic schizophrenia: relationship between CSF metabolites and cognitive function.

Schizophrenia is associated with multiple cognitive deficits which in turn may be related to abnormal dopamine (DA) function. To examine possible associations between cognitive dysfunction and central DA activity in schizophrenia, neuropsychological measures (visuospatial and verbal recall; performance on the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST); visuospatial perception) were examined in 17 drug-free male schizophrenic patients and related to cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of the metabolites of dopamine (homovanillic acid (HVA)), serotonin, and norepinephrine. CSF HVA concentrations were correlated with the ability to recall visuospatial information, with attention to verbal tasks, and with WCST performance (low CSF HVA concentrations predicting poor performance on these tests) but not with the ability to recall verbally presented material and visuospatial perception. These data are consistent with earlier results suggesting that (cortical) DA function is associated with recall and retrieval of visuospatial information and with WCST performance.

Flat affect in schizophrenia: a test of neuropsychological models.

This study evaluated the association between neuropsychological indices of frontal lobe and right hemisphere impairment and deficits in the expression of affect in schizophrenia. The advantages of the present study were that unmedicated schizophrenia patients were studied and relevant demographic characteristics were controlled. Furthermore, deficits in affective expression were assessed both in a clinical interview and in subjects' response to affect-eliciting films. Despite the fact that schizophrenia subjects demonstrated significantly higher clinical ratings of affective flattening and less facial expression while viewing films than demographically matched control subjects, neuropsychological performance was not consistently related to these expressive deficits. The results thus failed to support for the proposed neuropsychological models of affective deficits in schizophrenia. The characterization of flat affect as a purely emotional deficit is questioned, and limitations of current neuropsychological theories of emotional expression and neuropsychological methods to test these theories in the study of schizophrenia are discussed as relevant concerns for future research.

The neuropsychological signature of schizophrenia: generalized or differential deficit?

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to provide a comprehensive assessment of neuropsychological functioning in schizophrenia so as to evaluate hypotheses of lateralized or differential cognitive impairment in this disorder. Furthermore, the study sought to address the potentially confounding factors of medication side effects and relevant demographic variables such as age, education, gender, and handedness. METHOD: The neuropsychological functioning of 28 schizophrenic patients whose medication had been withdrawn for research purposes and 15 demographically matched normal subjects was evaluated. A comprehensive battery of tasks was used to determine whether performance patterns of schizophrenic patients were consistent with models of lateralized or localized neuropsychological impairment in schizophrenia. To facilitate comparison with results of other studies, several analytic strategies were used, including comparisons of group performance on individual tests, composite function scores, and evaluation of performance based on "clinical" criteria of impairment. RESULTS: In contrast to the normal subjects, the schizophrenic patients displayed impairment across measures of motor, sensory, and perceptual functioning, verbal and nonverbal memory, and indexes of frontal lobe functioning. This pattern of generalized dysfunction was evident regardless of the method of analysis used to assess performance. CONCLUSIONS: These findings fail to support conjectures regarding differential neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia. However, the psychometric limitations of currently available neuropsychological measures may obscure the finding of differential impairment and must be considered in interpreting the results of this study as well as those of any investigation using such instruments.

Daily events and mood prior to the onset of respiratory illness episodes: a non-replication of the 3-5 day 'desirability dip'.

We attempted to replicate and extend the findings of three previous studies (Evans & Edgerton, 1991; Evans, Pitts & Smith, 1988; Stone, Reed & Neale, 1987) that found a lagged relationship between daily life events, mood and the onset of episodes of respiratory illness. The findings and methods of the three previous studies are reviewed, and similarities and differences in their analytic approaches are discussed. Seventy-nine middle-aged male subjects completed daily records of life events, mood and symptoms for an average of 83 days. Twenty-three men suffered at least one illness episode that met our selection criteria. Using the methodology of Stone et al. (1987) and Evans et al. (1988), we were unable to detect a relationship between daily events or mood and the onset of illness episodes. The necessity of standardizing procedures of defining illness episodes and control days and the importance of including analyses of variables that may mediate the relationship between events and illness are discussed.

Flat affect in schizophrenia does not reflect diminished subjective experience of emotion.

Although accorded historical significance, affective features of schizophrenia have only begun to receive systematic empirical attention. Interestingly, both early psychopathology writers and more recent investigators have reported frequent discrepancies between schizophrenics' feelings and outward expressions of emotion. Using a more comprehensive assessment of emotion, the present study examines the relationship between emotional experience and expression in a sample of medication-free schizophrenics. Compared with their normal counterparts, schizophrenics were indeed much less facially expressive of both positive and negative emotions during emotion-eliciting films, yet they reported experiencing as much positive and negative emotion. Therefore, the blunted affect typical of some schizophrenics misrepresents their underlying emotional experience. Future research into an inhibition hypothesis is recommended.

Emotion perception in schizophrenia: specific deficit or further evidence of generalized poor performance?

Several studies have investigated the ability of schizophrenics to perceive facial and vocal emotion in others. Although most suggest that schizophrenics have an emotion perception deficit, there is little agreement as to its specific nature. Much of the confusion may be attributed to the failure of investigators to use the differential deficit design and standardized measures of emotion perception. The present study reexamined the question of an emotion recognition deficit in a sample of 29 unmedicated schizophrenics and 23 normal controls, using facial and vocal emotion identification and discrimination tests that have been standardized and cross-validated plus two neuropsychological control tests. Results suggested that differences between schizophrenics and normals on such tasks reflect a generalized performance deficit, rather than a specific emotion recognition deficit.

Medication status of participants in psychopathology research: selective review of current reporting practices.

The majority of Ss included in studies of psychopathology are typically receiving psychoactive medication. In view of concerns regarding the confounding effects of psychoactive medication, it appears that researchers should provide information regarding at least the drug status of the Ss studied. A review of the articles on adult psychopathology that appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology during a 5-year period, however, revealed that nearly 50% of reports on Ss presumably receiving psychoactive medications failed to specify the medication status of those Ss. Few studies (15%) provided adequate information regarding the types and dosages of psychoactive drugs received by the Ss. It is argued that researchers should provide a full report of the psychoactive drugs received by research participants and, when participants are unmedicated, to indicate the reasons for drug-free status.

Development of common cold symptoms following experimental rhinovirus infection is related to prior stressful life events.

Previous studies of rhinovirus infection indicate that about one third of the persons with confirmed viral infection do not show evidence of cold symptoms. Factors that determine which infected individuals will develop colds are not known. Using a rhinovirus inoculation protocol, the authors explored the possible role of recent life events, current mood, and perceived stress in the development of symptoms in individuals known to be infected. As part of a larger study, 17 subjects were exposed to a rhinovirus and were individually isolated for 5 consecutive days; cold symptoms, mucus weights, and tissue use were monitored on a daily basis during this period. Although all 17 subjects had confirmed rhinovirus infection, only 12 subjects developed clinical colds, as indicated by self-reported symptoms and by objective symptom indices. The average number of reported major life events for the previous year was significantly higher for those who developed colds than for those who did not (p < .05). Measures of affect and perceived stress before the inoculation were not different for those who did and did not develop colds. Complementing recent research demonstrating psychosocial influences on experimental infection rates, these results provide evidence that the development of cold symptomatology in experimentally infected individuals is related to prior life events.

An alternative statistical treatment for summarizing the central tendency of replicate assay data.

Standard assay procedures call for multiple replicates for the purpose of averaging random error from individual replicate scores to obtain a reliable estimate of the true score and for the purpose of specifying the degree of variability within the assay. In this paper we focus on the variability and magnitude of within-assay replicates in order to improve the estimate of the true score. A rule is presented for deciding (1) when individual replicates should be omitted from the computation of the assay's summary score or (2) when an entire sample of replicates should be discarded based on the pattern of replicate scores. It is suggested that this rule improves the reliability of the estimated assay score and this is supported by an illustrative analysis of lymphocyte proliferation assays.

Self-focused attention, coping responses, and distressed mood in everyday life.

Several questions concerning the relation between self-focused attention and depressed mood were examined: (a) Does the association involve global negative affect, rather than sadness per se? (b) is self-focus associated with specific negative affects other than sadness? and (c) does the association occur at the between-subjects or within-subject level? Also hypothesized was that self-focus is associated with coping responses that may perpetuate negative mood. In an idiographic/nomothetic design, 40 male community residents completed daily reports for 30 days. Results suggest that self-focus is linked with global negative mood as well as specific negative affects other than sadness and that the association occurs on a between-persons, rather than a day-to-day within-person, basis. In addition, highly self-focused men reported using passive and ruminative coping styles, which in turn were associated with distressed affect.