Attention and emotion influence the relationship between extraversion and neural response.

Extraversion has been shown to positively correlate with activation within the ventral striatum, amygdala and other dopaminergically innervated, reward-sensitive regions. These regions are implicated in emotional responding, in a manner sensitive to attentional focus. However, no study has investigated the interaction among extraversion, emotion and attention. We used fMRI and dynamic, evocative film clips to elicit amusement and sadness in a sample of 28 women. Participants were instructed either to respond naturally (n = 14) or to attend to and continuously rate their emotions (n = 14) while watching the films. Contrary to expectations, striatal response was negatively associated with extraversion during amusement, regardless of attention. A negative association was also observed during sad films, but only when attending to emotion. These findings suggest that attentional focus does not influence the relationship between extraversion and neural response to positive (amusing) stimuli but does impact the response to negative (sad) stimuli.

Use of brief psychiatric screening measures in a primary care sample.

Patients seen in primary medical clinics report higher rates of major depression [Pérez-Stable et al., 1990: Arch Intern Med 15:1083-1088], and panic disorder [Sherbourne et al., 1996b: Von Korff et al., 1987: Arch Gen Psychiatry 44:152-156] than the general population. Primary care staff therefore need efficient methods of identifying patients with psychiatric disorders. The current study evaluates the use of several brief psychiatric screening measures for identifying patients with major depression and/or anxiety disorders. Participants were 213 primary care patients who received the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and two new instruments, the Autonomic Nervous System Questionnaire (ANS) for assessing panic disorder and the Social Phobia Questionnaire (SPQ) for assessing social phobia. Participants received both the screening instruments and a structured diagnostic interview. Results suggest that the CES-D is a useful measure for detecting psychopathology, but it is not particularly specific to depression, the ANS was a highly sensitive and reasonably specific measure for panic disorder, and the SPQ was reasonably sensitive and specific for social phobia. The BAI was a relatively poor screening measure that added no significant information beyond the other measures.

Factor structure of the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-II) in a student sample.

A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to evaluate the factorial validity of the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-II) in a large sample of undergraduates (N = 576). Results suggest that the revised measure is internally consistent and consists of two underlying factors assessing cognitive-affective and somatic symptoms of depression. Results support the use of the BDI-II as a severity measure of symptoms of depression.