Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableModerated Online Social Therapy for Carers of Early Psychosis Clients in Real-World Settings: Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial(JMIR PUBLICATIONS, INC, 2023)BACKGROUND: Family carers of youth recovering from early psychosis experience significant stress; however, access to effective family interventions is poor. Digital interventions provide a promising solution. OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to evaluate across multiple Australian early psychosis services the effectiveness of a novel, web-based early psychosis intervention for carers. METHODS: In this cluster randomized controlled trial conducted across multiple Australian early psychosis services, our digital moderated online social therapy for carers (Altitudes) plus enhanced family treatment as usual (TAU) was compared with TAU alone on the primary outcome of perceived stress and secondary outcomes including mental health symptoms and family variables at the 6-month follow-up. RESULTS: Eighty-six caregivers were randomized and data were available for 74 young people in their care. Our primary hypothesis that carers randomized to Altitudes+TAU would report greater improvements in perceived stress at follow-up compared with carers randomized to TAU alone was not supported, with the TAU alone group showing more improvement. For secondary outcomes, the TAU alone group showed improved mindfulness over time. Regardless of group assignment, we observed improvements in satisfaction with life, quality of life, emotional overinvolvement, and burden of care. In contrast, hair cortisol concentration increased. Post hoc analyses revealed more contact with early psychosis services in the intervention group compared to TAU alone and that improvements in perceived stress and social support were associated with use of the intervention in the Altitudes+TAU group. In this study, 80% (12/15) reported a positive experience with Altitudes and 93% (14/15) would recommend it to others. CONCLUSIONS: Our trial did not show a treatment effect for Altitudes in perceived stress. However, our post hoc analysis indicated that the amount of use of Altitudes related to improvements in stress and social support. Additional design work is indicated to continue users' engagement and to significantly improve outcomes in problem-solving, communication, and self-care. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12617000942358; https://trialsearch.who.int/Trial2.aspx?TrialID=ACTRN12617000942358.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSensory Processing Sensitivity and Reactivity to Daily Events(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2023-08)Sensory processing sensitivity is an individual difference that captures the extent to which people show heightened emotional reactivity to, and increased cognitive processing of, their environment. Although central to its definition, there has been no research examining whether highly sensitive individuals display stronger reactivity to naturally occurring negative and positive events in everyday life. We addressed this gap by carrying out a 21-day online diary study with 239 participants, varying in sensory processing sensitivity, who reported their daily life-satisfaction, affective experiences, and self-esteem along with appraisals of the most negative and positive events of the day. Multilevel analyses demonstrated that individuals higher in sensory processing sensitivity showed greater reactivity to more subjectively intense negative events, but no difference in their reactivity to positive events. These findings provide initial insights into how sensory processing sensitivity manifests in daily emotional reactivity with greater reactivity to negative events in our study.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDynamics of Social Experiences in the Context of Extended Lockdown(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2024-05)Social interaction and loneliness have received much research interest. However, the direction of their relationship is unclear—does social interaction shape loneliness, or does loneliness shape willingness to interact? We explored dynamics of these social experiences under exceptional circumstances: COVID-19 lockdowns, which were necessary for public health but impacted people’s social lives. We investigated the relationship between social interaction and loneliness in and out of lockdown in Australia. We used experience sampling methodology to follow 233 people across 1 week ( Mage=30; 8,495 surveys) in a period that spanned one of the longest lockdowns in the world. Although loneliness did not predict subsequent social interaction, having a social interaction predicted lower subsequent loneliness, particularly in (vs. out of) lockdown. These findings suggest social interactions may limit loneliness, especially during physical isolation. In short, times when we are apart from others may be times we benefit from interacting with them the most.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRe-appraising stressors from a distance: effects of linguistic distancing on cognitive appraisals and emotional responses to interpersonal conflict(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2023-10-03)Reflecting on stressors from a detached perspective - a strategy known as distancing - can facilitate emotional recovery. Researchers have theorised that distancing works by enabling reappraisals of negative events, yet few studies have investigated specifically how distancing impacts stressor appraisals. In this experiment, we investigated how participants' (N = 355) emotional experience and appraisals of an interpersonal conflict differed depending on whether they wrote event-reflections from a linguistically immersed (first-person) or distanced (second/third-person) perspective. Partly replicating previous findings, distanced reflection predicted increases in positive affect, but not reductions in negative affect, relative to immersed reflection. Linguistic distancing also predicted increases in motivational congruence appraisals (i.e. perceived advantageousness of the event), but did not influence other appraisal dimensions. We discuss how linguistic distancing may facilitate emotional recovery by illuminating the benefits of stressful experiences, enabling people to "see the good in the bad".
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ItemThe Association Between the Selection and Effectiveness of Emotion-Regulation Strategies and Psychopathological Features: A Daily Life Study(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2023-01-01)Emotion dysregulation is central to psychopathological conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD) and depression. However, the nature of emotion-regulation (ER) difficulties in the daily life of people with BPD or depressive features is still unclear. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to disentangle two different ER subprocesses in daily life, (a) selection of ER strategies and (b) the effectiveness of implementing strategies, in terms of their associations with subsequent emotional experience. We analyzed data from a three-wave, longitudinal, experience-sampling study of young adults with varying levels of psychopathological features ( N = 202). BPD features were uniquely linked to the use but not altered effectiveness of several putatively adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies. Depressive features were uniquely associated with the use of putatively maladaptive strategies. These findings suggest that ER deficits in people with more BPD or depressive features may be primarily located in strategy selection rather than the implementation of those strategies.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEveryday Emotional Functioning in COVID-19 Lockdowns(AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC, 2023-12)Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, policy makers have tried to balance the effectiveness of lockdowns (i.e., stay-at-home orders) with their potential mental health costs. Yet, several years into the pandemic, policy makers lack solid evidence about the toll of lockdowns on daily emotional functioning. Using data from two intensive longitudinal studies conducted in Australia in 2021, we compared the intensity, persistence, and regulation of emotions on days in and out of lockdown. Participants (N = 441, observations = 14,511) completed a 7-day study either entirely in lockdown, entirely out of lockdown, or both in and out of lockdown. We assessed emotions in general (Dataset 1) and in the context of social interactions (Dataset 2). Lockdowns took an emotional toll, but this toll was relatively mild: In lockdown, people experienced slightly more negative and less positive emotion; returned to a mildly negative emotional state more quickly; and used low-effort emotion-regulation strategies (i.e., distraction). There are three interpretations for our findings, which are not mutually exclusive. First, people may be relatively resilient to the emotional challenges posed by repeated lockdowns. Second, lockdowns may not compound the emotional challenges of the pandemic. Third, because we found effects even in a mostly childless and well-educated sample, lockdowns may take a greater emotional toll in samples with less pandemic privilege. Indeed, the high level of pandemic privilege of our sample limits the generalizability of our findings (e.g., to people with caregiving roles). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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ItemDoes prediction error during exposure relate to clinical outcomes in cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder? A study protocol(FRONTIERS MEDIA SA, 2022-11-24)Facing your fears, or exposure therapy, is an effective psychological intervention for anxiety disorders that is often thought to work through fear extinction learning. Fear extinction learning is a type of associative learning where fear reduces through repeated encounters with a feared situation or stimulus in the absence of aversive outcomes. Laboratory research suggests fear extinction learning is driven by threat prediction errors, defined as when fearful predictions do not eventuate. Threat prediction error and its relationship to exposure therapy outcomes haven't been studied enough in actual therapy settings. It remains unclear whether prediction error and extinction learning are central mechanisms of exposure therapy. We are conducting a longitudinal and observational study of how threat prediction error during exposure in social anxiety disorder (SAD) treatment relates to session-by-session symptom change and treatment outcome in addition to exposure surprise and learning outcome. We aim to recruit 65 adults with a primary diagnosis of SAD through an outpatient psychology clinic. Participants will receive 12 sessions of individual manualized cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), adapted from an efficacious group protocol, that includes graded exposure. Exposure processes, including self-report measures of anxiety, threat prediction, threat outcomes, surprise, and learning outcome, will be measured with smartphone-based event-contingent ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) of all behavioral experiments completed during treatment. Clinical outcomes include self-reported social anxiety symptoms and social threat appraisals, at each session, post and 3-months after treatment. Prediction error will be operationalized as the mismatch between the threat prediction and threat outcome. The joint effect of threat prediction and threat outcome on session-by-session symptom change, treatment outcome, exposure surprise, and learning outcome will be explored using multilevel modeling. The present study will help determine whether threat prediction error during exposures in SAD treatment is related to theoretically implied clinical outcomes. This would contribute to the larger research aim of clarifying exposure therapy mechanisms.
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ItemInelastic scattering of electrons in water from first principles: cross sections and inelastic mean free path for use in Monte Carlo track-structure simulations of biological damage(ROYAL SOC, 2022-05-18)Modelling the inelastic scattering of electrons in water is fundamental, given their crucial role in biological damage. In Monte Carlo track-structure (MC-TS) codes used to assess biological damage, the energy loss function (ELF), from which cross sections are extracted, is derived from different semi-empirical optical models. Only recently have first ab initio results for the ELF and cross sections in water become available. For benchmarking purpose, in this work, we present ab initio linear-response time-dependent density functional theory calculations of the ELF of liquid water. We calculated the inelastic scattering cross sections, inelastic mean free paths, and electronic stopping power and compared our results with recent calculations and experimental data showing a good agreement. In addition, we provide an in-depth analysis of the contributions of different molecular orbitals, species and orbital angular momenta to the total ELF. Moreover, we present single-differential cross sections computed for each molecular orbital channel, which should prove useful for MC-TS simulations.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableNegative Emotion and Nonacceptance of Emotion in Daily Life(AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC, 2022-08)Nonacceptance of emotion is consistently linked with increased levels of psychopathology and diminished well-being. Research has found that negative emotion and nonacceptance of emotion are positively associated cross-sectionally but has yet to directly investigate temporal associations between these constructs. Given that negative emotions are frequently the target of negative thoughts and other emotions, and that acceptance of emotion is associated with prospective decreases in negative emotion, we hypothesized that the temporal relation between negative emotion and nonacceptance of emotion is bidirectional. The present study examined the association between these variables during people's daily lives using an experience sampling methodology. Multilevel modeling was used for all analyses, including hierarchical generalized linear modeling and log-normal hurdle modeling. A total of 187 women from the United States and Australia reported negative emotion and nonacceptance of emotion 14 times a day for 5 days. Negative emotion and nonacceptance of emotion were positively associated contemporaneously. Across time, nonacceptance of emotion was prospectively and positively associated with the intensity of negative emotion independent of immediately prior negative emotion, and negative emotion intensity was prospectively and positively associated with nonacceptance of emotion independent of immediately prior nonacceptance. Results support a bidirectional model of negative emotion and nonacceptance of emotion wherein each variable predicts increases in the other across time. Our findings elucidate how individuals fall into maladaptive emotional patterns that are difficult to break and could possibly pave the way to the development and maintenance of psychopathology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEmotion Regulation in Everyday Life: Mapping Global Self-Reports to Daily Processes(AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC, 2023-03)Recent theory conceptualizes emotion regulation as occurring across three stages: (a) identifying the need to regulate, (b) selecting a strategy, and (c) implementing that strategy to modify emotions. Yet, measurement of emotion regulation has not kept pace with these theoretical advances. In particular, widely used global self-report questionnaires are often assumed to index people's typical strategy selection tendencies. However, it is unclear how well global self-reports capture individual differences in strategy selection and/or whether they may also index other emotion regulation stages. To address this issue, we examined how global self-report measures correspond with the three stages of emotion regulation as modeled using daily life data. We analyzed data from nine daily diary and experience sampling studies (total N = 1,097), in which participants provided daily and global self-reports of cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and rumination. We found only weak-to-moderate correlations between global self-reports and average daily self-reports of each regulation strategy (indexing strategy selection). Global self-reports also correlated with individual differences in the degree to which (a) preceding affect experience predicted regulation strategies (representing the identification stage), and (b) regulation strategies predicted subsequent changes in affective experience (representing the implementation stage). Our findings suggest that global self-report measures of reappraisal, suppression, and rumination may not strongly and uniquely correlate with individual differences in daily selection of these strategies. Moreover, global self-report measures may also index individual differences in the perceived need to regulate, and the affective consequences of regulation in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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