Søren Risløv Staugaard

Threatening faces and social anxiety: a literature review.

A threatening facial expression is a potent social sign of hostility or dominance. During the past 20 years, photographs of threatening faces have been increasingly included as stimuli in studies with socially anxious participants, based on the hypothesis that a threatening face is especially salient to people with fears of social interaction or negative evaluation. The purpose of this literature review is to systematically evaluate the accumulated research and suggest possible avenues for further research. The main conclusion is that photographs of threatening faces engage a broad range of perceptual processes in socially anxious participants, particularly when exposure times are very short.

Why am I remembering this now? Predicting the occurrence of involuntary (spontaneous) episodic memories

Involuntary episodic memories are memories of events that come to mind spontaneously, that is, with no preceding retrieval attempts. They are common in daily life and observed in a range of clinical disorders in the form of negative, intrusive recollections or flashbacks. However, little is known about their underlying mechanisms. Here we report a series of experiments in which-for the first time-the activation of involuntary memories is controlled and predicted on the basis of manipulations done at encoding. During encoding, participants were presented with pictures of scenes paired with sounds. Both scene and sound could be either unique (derived from a category that was presented only once) or repeated (derived from a category that was presented several times). During retrieval, the participants conducted an attention-demanding sound location task employing sounds from the encoding phase. In addition to the sound location task, they were asked to record all memories that might spontaneously arise during this task. Unique sounds generated most involuntary memories, consistent with the notion of cue overload. Repeated sounds rarely generated involuntary memories, but often yielded memories of repeated scenes in a voluntary (strategic) recall condition. Retrieval times were lower for involuntary than for comparable samples of strategically retrieved memories, suggesting less executive control involved in involuntary recall. Our findings show that it is possible to control the activation of involuntary episodic memories of daily scenes on the basis of well-known mechanisms of associative memory.

Inducing involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using a laboratory paradigm

Although involuntary past and future mental time travel (MTT) has been examined outside the laboratory in diary studies, MTT has primarily been studied in the context of laboratory studies using voluntary construction tasks. In this study, we adapted and extended a paradigm previously used to elicit involuntary and voluntary memories (Schlagman & Kvavilashvili in Memory & Cognition, 36, 920-932, 2008). Our aim was – for the first time – to examine involuntary and voluntary future MTT under controlled laboratory conditions. The involuntary task involved a monotonous task that included potential cues for involuntary MTT. Temporal direction was manipulated between participants whereas retrieval mode was manipulated within participants. We replicated robust past–future differences, such as the future positivity bias. Additionally, we replicated key voluntary-involuntary differences: Involuntary future representations had similar characteristics as involuntary memories in that they were elicited faster, were more specific, and garnered more emotional impact than their voluntary counterparts. We also found that the future and past involuntary MTT led to both positive and negative mood impact, and that the valence of the impact was associated with the emotional valence of the event. This study advances scientific understanding of involuntary future representations in healthy populations and validates a laboratory paradigm that can be flexibly and systematically utilized to explore different characteristics of voluntary and involuntary MTT, which has not been possible within naturalistic paradigms.

Does retrieval intentionality really matter? Similarities and differences between involuntary memories and directly and generatively retrieved voluntary memories

Theories of autobiographical memory distinguish between involuntary and voluntary retrieval as a consequence of conscious intention (i.e., wanting to remember). Another distinction can be made between direct and generative retrieval, which reflects the effort involved (i.e., trying to remember). However, it is unclear how intention and effort interacts. For example, involuntary memories and directly retrieved memories have been used interchangeably in the literature to refer to the same phenomenon of effortless, non-strategic retrieval. More recent theoretical advances suggest that they are separate types of retrieval, one unintentional (involuntary), another intentional and effortless (direct voluntary retrieval), and a third intentional and effortful (generative voluntary retrieval). Whether this also entails differing phenomenological characteristics, such as vividness, rehearsal, or emotional valence, has not been previously investigated. In the current study, participants reported memories in an experimental paradigm designed to elicit voluntary and involuntary memories and rated them on a number of characteristics. If intention affects the retrieval process, then we should expect differences between the characteristics of involuntary and directly retrieved memories. The results imply that retrieval intention seems to differentiate how a memory appears in a persons mind. Furthermore, we argue that these differences in part could result from differences in encoding and consolidation.

Centrality of positive and negative deployment memories predicts posttraumatic growth in danish veterans.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of the present study was to examine theoretically motivated predictors for the development of positive changes following potentially traumatic experiences (i.e., posttraumatic growth). Specifically, we wanted to examine the prediction that memories of highly negative and positive deployment events predict subsequent posttraumatic growth. METHOD A total of 251 Danish soldiers (7% female, mean age 26.4) deployed to forward operating bases in Afghanistan filled out questionnaires before, during, and after deployment. This allowed us to perform prospective as well as cross-sectional analyses of the data. RESULTS The main findings were that the centrality of highly emotional memories from deployment predicted growth alongside openness to experience, combat exposure, and social support. Importantly, the centrality of both positive and negative memories predicted growth equally well. CONCLUSION The perceived importance of both negative and positive events may play an important part in the development of posttraumatic growth.

Involuntary memories of emotional scenes: the effects of cue discriminability and emotion over time

Involuntary episodic memories come to mind spontaneously--that is, with no preceding retrieval attempts. Such memories are frequent in daily life, in which they are predominantly positive and often triggered by situational features matching distinctive parts of the memory. However, individuals suffering from psychological disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, have stressful, repetitive, and unwanted involuntary memories about negative events in their past. These unwanted recollections are disturbing and debilitating. Although such intrusive involuntary memories are observed across a range of clinical disorders, there is no broadly agreed upon explanation of their underlying mechanisms and no successful experimental simulations of their retrieval. In a series of experiments, we experimentally manipulated the activation of involuntary episodic memories for emotional and neutral scenes and predicted their activation on the basis of manipulations carried out at encoding and retrieval. Our findings suggest that the interplay between cue discriminability at the time of retrieval and emotional arousal at the time of encoding are crucial for explaining intrusive memories following negative events. While cue distinctiveness is important directly following encoding of the scenes, emotional intensity influences retrieval after delays of 24 hr and 1 week. Voluntary remembering follows the same pattern as involuntary remembering. Our results suggest an explanatory model of intrusive involuntary memory for emotional events in clinical disorders.

A randomized controlled trial of the effect of a brief cognitive-behavioral intervention on dental fear

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to examine the effect of a brief cognitive-behavioral intervention for patients with dental fear in a private dental clinic. METHODS Patients presenting with subjectively reported dental fear were randomly assigned to either an immediate intervention (n = 53) or a waiting list (n = 51) group. Both groups received an identical intervention, but delayed by 4-6 weeks in the waiting list group. Participants were asked to fill out two self-report questionnaires of dental fear at pre- and post-intervention, and again at a 2-year follow-up assessment. RESULTS Analysis of variance showed that dental fear was significantly reduced in the immediate intervention group (d = 1.5-2.2), compared with the waiting list group (d = 0.3-0.4). Additionally, all participants showed a significant reduction of dental fear following the brief intervention, and in the subgroup available for follow-up, this effect was maintained after 2 years. CONCLUSIONS This indicates that a brief cognitive-behavioral intervention may be efficacious in helping a significant number of patients with dental fear return to regular dental treatment. Future research should investigate the applicability of a brief cognitive-behavioral intervention in the dental clinic.

Processing of emotional faces in social phobia

Previous research has found that individuals with social phobia differ from controls in their processing of emotional faces. For instance, people with social phobia show increased attention to briefly presented threatening faces. However, when exposure times are increased, the direction of this attentional bias is more unclear. Studies investigating eye movements have found both increased as well as decreased attention to threatening faces in socially anxious participants. The current study investigated eye movements to emotional faces in eight patients with social phobia and 34 controls. Three different tasks with different exposure durations were used, which allowed for an investigation of the time course of attention. At the early time interval, patients showed a complex pattern of both vigilance and avoidance of threatening faces. At the longest time interval, patients avoided the eyes of sad, disgust, and neutral faces more than controls, whereas there were no group differences for angry faces.

The role of negative and positive memories in fear of dental treatment

OBJECTIVES Most young adults transition from childhood dental care to adult dental care without problems. However, a substantial minority leaves childhood dental care with considerable fear of dental treatment. In the present study, we hypothesized that fear of dental treatment in the young adult is influenced by memories of positive and negative childhood experiences with dental care. More specifically, we predicted that the emotional impact, sense of reliving, rehearsal, and belief in the accuracy of a negative treatment memory would be associated with increased dental fear, while positive treatment memories would show the opposite relation. METHODS One hundred thirty-six young adults leaving childhood dental care responded to a online measures of dental fear, the most negative and most positive memory of dental treatment, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. RESULTS Negative memories of events that involved pain and dentist behaviors such as impatience or scolding were frequently described and significantly associated with dental fear and symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Positive memories were more frequent, but did not show a consistent relationship with dental fear. CONCLUSIONS The importance of negative memories suggests an avenue for intervention against dental fear that focuses on restructuring those memories to emphasize positive aspects.

Object Individuation or Object Movement as Attractor? A Replication of the Wide-Screen/Narrow-Screen Study by Means of (a) Standard Looking Time Methodology and (b) Eye Tracking

We report a replication experiment of a mechanized version of the seminal wide-screen/narrow-screen design of Wilcox and Baillargeon (1998) with 9.5-month-old infants (). Two different methodologies were employed simultaneously: (a) the standard looking time paradigm and (b) eye tracking. Across conditions with three different screen sizes, the results from both methodologies revealed a clear and interesting pattern: the looking times increased as a significantly linear function of reduced screen sizes, that is, independently of the number of different objects involved. There was no indication in the data that the infants made use of the featural differences between the different-looking objects involved. The results suggest a simple, novel, and thought-provoking interpretation of the infants’ looking behavior in the wide-screen/narrow-screen design: moving objects are attractors, and the more space left for visible object movement in the visual field, the longer are infants’ looks. Consequently, no cognitive interpretation may be needed.