Séverine Lannoy

Is there an all-embracing construct of emotion reactivity? Adaptation and validation of the emotion reactivity scale among a French-speaking community sample

BACKGROUND Emotion reactivity is defined as the extent to which an individual experiences emotions in response to a wide array of stimuli, intensely, and for a prolonged period. This construct is a key psychological factor in the development and maintenance of psychopathological disorders. The aim of the current study was to develop and validate a French version of the Emotion Reactivity Scale (ERS), which gauges three aspects of emotion reactivity: (1) emotional sensitivity, (2) emotional intensity, and (3) emotional persistence. METHOD The French ERS and both concurrent and divergent validated scales were administered to 258 participants from the community. RESULTS Confirmatory factor analyses revealed good fit indices for: (1) a single-factor model, (2) a three-factor model, and (3) a hierarchical three-factor solution with a single-factor solution as a second-order latent variable for a generic construct of emotion reactivity. The French version of the Emotion Reactivity Scale also exhibits acceptable internal scale score reliability (total scale and subscales). Eventually, meaningful relationships were found between factors of emotion reactivity and depression, distinct aspects of impulsive behaviors, and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. CONCLUSION Findings of the confirmatory factor analyses are consistent with previous studies suggesting that the ERS is mainly captured by a single major construct of emotion reactivity.

Binging at the campus: Motivations and impulsivity influence binge drinking profiles in university students

This study explored the involvement of two key psychological factors, drinking motives and impulsivity traits, in binge drinking. On the basis of a large screening phase (N=4424), 867 binge drinkers were selected and were first compared with 924 non-binge drinkers. Then, a cluster analysis was performed, focusing on the binge drinker sample, to explore the respective involvement of four drinking motives (DMQ-R model) and four impulsivity facets (UPPS model) in this habit. Centrally, the cluster analysis identified three clusters of binge drinkers presenting distinct psychological characteristics and alcohol consumption patterns: emotional, recreational, and hazardous binge drinkers. Hazardous binge drinkers were characterized by strong drinking motives but moderate impulsivity. Binge drinking should thus no more be considered as a unitary drinking pattern but rather as a habit encompassing a variety of psychological profiles. Moreover, risky drinking habits in young people might be mainly related to disproportionate drinking motives. Future studies should thus consider binge drinking heterogeneity, and prevention programs focusing on drinking motivations should be developed.

Electrophysiological correlates of performance monitoring in binge drinking: Impaired error-related but preserved feedback processing

OBJECTIVE Performance monitoring, which allows efficient behavioral regulation using either internal (error processing) or external (feedback processing) cues, has not yet been explored in binge drinking despite its adaptive importance in everyday life, particularly in the regulation of alcohol consumption. Capitalizing on a theoretical model of risky behaviors, the present study aimed at determining the behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of the cognitive (inhibition) and motivational (reward sensitivity) systems during performance monitoring. METHODS Event-related potentials were recorded from 20 binge drinkers and 20 non-binge drinkers during two experimental tasks, a speeded Go/No-Go Task [investigating internal error processing by Error-Related Negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe)] and a Balloon Analogue Risk Task [investigating external feedback processing by Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) and P3]. RESULTS While no group differences were observed at the behavioral level, electrophysiological results showed that binge drinkers, despite having intact feedback-related components, presented modified error-monitoring components (i.e. larger ERN amplitude, delayed Pe latency). CONCLUSIONS Internal performance monitoring is impaired in binge drinkers, showing an abnormal automatic processing of response errors (ERN) and a decreased processing of their motivational significance (Pe). SIGNIFICANCE These results suggest that the electrophysiological correlates of inhibitory control allow identifying the specific binge drinking consumption pattern.

Differential impairments across attentional networks in binge drinking.

RationaleThe cognitive deficits observed in young binge drinkers have been largely documented during the last decade. Yet, these earlier studies have mainly focused on high-level cognitive abilities (particularly memory and executive functions), and uncertainty thus still abounds regarding the integrity of less complex cognitive processes in binge drinking. This is particularly true for attentional abilities, which play a crucial role in behavior regulation and are impaired in other alcohol-related disorders.Objectives and methodsTo specify the attentional deficits associated with binge drinking, two groups of university students (40 binge drinkers and 40 matched controls) performed the Attention Network Task, a theoretically grounded test assessing three independent attentional networks: alerting, orienting, and executive control.ResultsBinge drinkers displayed preserved orienting performance but impaired alerting and executive control. Binge drinking is thus not related to a general attentional impairment but rather to specific impairments of the alerting and executive control networks.ConclusionsThese results underline that, beyond the already explored high-level deficits, binge drinking is also related to impairments for attentional abilities. In view of the role played by attentional impairments in alcohol dependence, the present data also suggest that rehabilitation programs should be developed to improve attentional abilities at the early stages of alcohol-related disorders.

Preserved crossmodal integration of emotional signals in binge drinking

Binge drinking is an alcohol consumption pattern with various psychological and cognitive consequences. As binge drinking showed qualitatively comparable cognitive impairments to those reported in alcohol-dependence, a continuum hypothesis suggests that this habit would be a first step toward alcohol-related disorders. Besides these cognitive impairments, alcohol-dependence is also characterized by large-scale deficits in emotional processing, particularly in crossmodal contexts, and these abilities have scarcely been explored in binge drinking. Emotional decoding, most often based on multiple modalities (e.g., facial expression, prosody or gesture), yet represents a crucial ability for efficient interpersonal communication and social integration. The present study is the first exploration of crossmodal emotional processing in binge drinking, in order to test whether binge drinkers already present the emotional impairments described among alcohol-dependent patients, in line with the continuum hypothesis. Twenty binge drinkers and 20 matched controls performed an experimental task requiring the identification of two emotions (happiness or anger) presented in two modalities (visual or auditory) within three conditions (unimodal, crossmodal congruent or crossmodal incongruent). In accordance with previous research in binge drinking and alcohol-dependence, this study was based on two main hypotheses. First, binge drinkers would present a reduced facilitation effect (i.e., classically indexed in healthy populations by faster reaction times when two congruent modalities are presented simultaneously). Second, binge drinkers would have higher difficulties to inhibit interference in incongruent modalities. Results showed no significant difference between groups in emotional decoding ability, whatever the modality or condition. Control participants, however, appeared slower than binge drinkers in recognizing facial expressions, also leading to a stronger facilitation effect when the two modalities were presented simultaneously. However, findings did not show a disrupted facilitation effect in binge drinkers, whom also presented preserved performance to inhibit incongruence during emotional decoding. The current results thus suggest that binge drinkers do not demonstrate a deficit for emotional processing, both in unimodal and crossmodal contexts. These results imply that binge drinking might not be characterized by impairments for the identification of primary emotions, which could also indicate that these emotional processing abilities are well-preserved at early stages of excessive alcohol consumption.

Crossmodal processing of emotions in alcohol-dependence and Korsakoff syndrome

ABSTRACT Introduction: Decoding emotional information from faces and voices is crucial for efficient interpersonal communication. Emotional decoding deficits have been found in alcohol-dependence (ALC), particularly in crossmodal situations (with simultaneous stimulations from different modalities), but are still underexplored in Korsakoff syndrome (KS). The aim of this study is to determine whether the continuity hypothesis, postulating a gradual worsening of cognitive and brain impairments from ALC to KS, is valid for emotional crossmodal processing. Methods: Sixteen KS, 17 ALC and 19 matched healthy controls (CP) had to detect the emotion (anger or happiness) displayed by auditory, visual or crossmodal auditory-visual stimuli. Crossmodal stimuli were either emotionally congruent (leading to a facilitation effect, i.e. enhanced performance for crossmodal condition compared to unimodal ones) or incongruent (leading to an interference effect, i.e. decreased performance for crossmodal condition due to discordant information across modalities). Reaction times and accuracy were recorded. Results: Crossmodal integration for congruent information was dampened only in ALC, while both ALC and KS demonstrated, compared to CP, decreased performance for decoding emotional facial expressions in the incongruent condition. Conclusions: The crossmodal integration appears impaired in ALC but preserved in KS. Both alcohol-related disorders present an increased interference effect. These results show the interest of more ecological designs, using crossmodal stimuli, to explore emotional decoding in alcohol-related disorders. They also suggest that the continuum hypothesis cannot be generalised to emotional decoding abilities.

Imbalance between cognitive systems in alcohol-dependence and Korsakoff syndrome: An exploration using the Alcohol Flanker Task

ABSTRACT Background: Alcohol-dependent individuals (ALC) simultaneously present decreased inhibitory control and increased attention towards alcohol-related cues. The dual-process models have proposed that these symptoms reflect an imbalance between prefrontal/reflective and limbic/automatic systems, respectively leading to cognitive dysfunctions in executive processes and to alcohol-related bias. However, most previous research has focused on a separate exploration of these systems among ALC, and the direct measure of their interactions remains to be conducted. Moreover, no study has explored the evolution of this imbalance across the successive stages of alcohol-related disorders, and particularly in Korsakoff syndrome (KS), the most frequent neurological complication of alcohol-dependence. Method: Ten KS, 14 ALC, and 14 matched control participants performed a modified Flanker task, the “Alcohol Flanker Task,” based on congruent, incongruent, and neutral conditions with alcohol-related stimuli. This task required inhibitory processing on alcohol-related stimuli and evaluated, through a behavioral approach, the interaction between reflective and automatic systems, as well as its evolution between ALC and KS. Results: ALC and KS both presented high reactivity towards alcohol-related stimuli, confirming the presence of alcohol-related bias. KS showed increased omission rates (related to distractor interference) while ALC showed higher false-alarm rates (related to prepotent response inhibition). These results suggest that different inhibitory subcomponents might be altered at the successive stages of the pathology, and experimentally confirms the crucial role of the interaction between reflective and automatic processes in alcohol-use disorders. Conclusion: The present results reinforce the proposal that alcohol-related cues significantly impact inhibitory control in alcohol-related disorders. However, ALC and KS present different patterns of deficits depending on task complexity (i.e., executive load), thus suggesting a dissociation in inhibitory functions when processing alcohol-related cues.

Executive Impairments in Binge Drinking: Evidence for a Specific Performance-Monitoring Difficulty during Alcohol-Related Processing

This study evaluated inhibition and performance-monitoring abilities through the explicit processing of alcohol cues. Twenty-two binge drinkers (BD) and 22 control participants performed a speeded Go/No-Go task using pictures of alcohol and soft cans as Go and No-Go targets. This task measures inhibitory control and performance monitoring (i.e., task adjustment through errors and feedback processing) during the explicit processing of alcohol cues. Groups did not significantly differ regarding inhibition abilities. However, BD had poorer performance-monitoring abilities, reflected by a difficulty to adjust after errors, especially when these errors were related to alcohol cues. These findings suggest that the explicit processing of alcohol cues negatively impacts cognitive abilities among BD.

Binge drinking is associated with reduced quality of life in young students: A pan-European study

BACKGROUND Binge drinking (BD) is frequently observed in youth, with psychological and cognitive consequences, but its link with quality of life has been scarcely explored. METHODS Sociodemographic and alcohol consumption characteristics were collected in a cross-sectional survey including 15,020 European students. Health-related quality of life was assessed using the Alcohol Quality of Life Scale (AQoLS) measuring the self-reported negative impact of alcohol consumption. A flexible link function, using Bayesian P-splines, was used to study the relationship between alcohol-related quality of life and alcohol consumption. RESULTS A non-linear relationship between BD and AQoLS scores was identified, showing that: (1) For students presenting moderate BD pattern, alcohol consumption is related to a robust reduction in quality of life, this link remaining stable for students with more intense BD patterns; (2) BD are not strongly associated with social, personal, and work activities, but are linked to an increase in perceived loss of control over consumption; (3) Harmful or hazardous consumption is also related with a massive decrease in quality of life; (4) The strongest relationship between BD and impacted quality of life is found among males and Eastern European students. CONCLUSIONS These results demonstrate the importance of measuring the perceived relation between alcohol and quality of life, beyond the classically assessed consequences, as this relation is strong among young students. Prevention programs should take this into account, notably regarding the perceived loss of control over alcohol consumption, which constitutes a key factor for the emergence of severe alcohol-use disorders.

Affective impairments in binge drinking: Investigation through emotional facial expression decoding

OBJECTIVE Binge drinking, an excessive alcohol consumption pattern frequently observed in young people, is known to be associated with psychological and cerebral deficits. While cognitive dysfunctions have been widely investigated, emotional abilities have scarcely been explored. Such an exploration would however offer a more exhaustive understanding of the deficits associated with binge drinking, as well as of the possible transition towards alcohol-dependence. METHODS 46 young adults (23 binge drinkers, 12 women; 23 control participants, 12 women) were recruited among university students. They performed an emotional recognition task consisting of the visual decoding of six basic emotions (i.e. anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness). Accuracy scores and detection thresholds were collected for each emotion. RESULTS Binge drinkers showed lower performance than control participants for the decoding of all emotions and increased detection threshold, this later reflecting less ability to capture an emotion. Binge drinking is thus associated with a need for higher emotional intensity to perform correct detection. Moreover, these emotional difficulties appear specifically related to alcohol consumption. CONCLUSION These findings reinforce previous experimental evidence of altered emotional processing among binge drinkers, and extend these results for various emotional contents. They support the hypothesis of a continuum between binge drinking and alcohol-dependence, in which massive emotional impairments have been documented. Indeed, these impairments could be involved in the onset and maintenance of excessive alcohol consumption, notably through the established relationship between emotional deficits and social distress.