The fear of other persons' laughter: Poor neuronal protection against social signals of anger and aggression

Learning to be inventive in the face of statistics: A positive reappraisal intervention for statistics anxiety

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The burden of statistics anxiety on students calls for effective interventions. This study investigated whether a cognitive reappraisal training designed to stimulate the generation of positive re-interpretations may yield behavioral changes in anxiety measures and changes in cerebral activation patterns reflecting the activation of approach/avoidance motivational tendencies (frontal EEG alpha asymmetry response).

METHODS

Three groups of female psychology students (n = 45) with statistics anxiety were tested. Two groups received a guided, two-week reappraisal training with either statistics-anxiety or general anxiety situations; the control group received no intervention.

RESULTS

Both training groups significantly increased their amount of positive re-interpretations from pre-to post-test compared to the control group. Increased habitual use of reappraisal in statistics situations and significant EEG changes reflecting more approach-oriented coping with anxiety occurred in the statistics-anxiety training group only. No changes in statistics anxiety and statistics attitudes were observed, suggesting that the training effects, though corroborated through neurophysiological changes, did not sufficiently translate to improving students' deep-rooted anxiety.

LIMITATIONS

Effects, though robust and following the same pattern, were observed in a small sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings delineate a promising expandable approach for helping students' cope with statistics anxiety in a healthier way.

Neurobiological correlates and attenuated positive social intention attribution during laughter perception associated with degree of autistic traits

Laughter plays an important role in group formation, signaling social belongingness by indicating a positive or negative social intention towards the receiver. In adults without autism, the intention of laughter can be correctly differentiated without further contextual information. In autism spectrum disorder (ASD), however, differences in the perception and interpretation of social cues represent a key characteristic of the disorder. Studies suggest that these differences are associated with hypoactivation and altered connectivity among key nodes of the social perception network. How laughter, as a multimodal nonverbal social cue, is perceived and processed neurobiologically in association with autistic traits has not been assessed previously. We investigated differences in social intention attribution, neurobiological activation, and connectivity during audiovisual laughter perception in association with the degree of autistic traits in adults [N = 31, M_age (SD) = 30.7 (10.0) years, n_female = 14]. An attenuated tendency to attribute positive social intention to laughter was found with increasing autistic traits. Neurobiologically, autistic trait scores were associated with decreased activation in the right inferior frontal cortex during laughter perception and with attenuated connectivity between the bilateral fusiform face area with bilateral inferior and lateral frontal, superior temporal, mid-cingulate and inferior parietal cortices. Results support hypoactivity and hypoconnectivity during social cue processing with increasing ASD symptoms between socioemotional face processing nodes and higher-order multimodal processing regions related to emotion identification and attribution of social intention. Furthermore, results reflect the importance of specifically including signals of positive social intention in future studies in ASD.

Enjoying others' distress and indifferent to threat? Changes in prefrontal-posterior coupling during social-emotional processing are linked to malevolent creativity

Malevolent creativity is characterized by malicious interpersonal goals aimed at damaging others. Neurocognitive processing patterns of negative social-emotional signals may explain variance in this disruptive phenomenon. This study examined whether individuals' brain responses to emotional expressions of others are linked to their capacity of malevolent creativity in a psychometric test. State-dependent changes of prefrontal-posterior EEG coherence were recorded while n = 60 participants listened to other people's anger, desperate crying, and laughter. These EEG measures were used to indicate affective dispositions towards emotional absorption (decreased coherence) or detachment (increased coherence) from others' emotional states. Results showed that higher malevolent creativity was reflected in relatively greater increases of EEG coherence during others' expressions of anger, and conversely, relatively greater decreases of EEG coherence during others' desperate crying. This pattern suggests that the generation of creative ideas for malicious, antisocial purposes may be partly attributed to an indifference towards others' aggression and potential retaliation, and partly to finding others' adversity rewarding on a neuronal level, increasing the quantity of ideas and the chances of hurting others. This first study linking malevolent creativity to social-emotional brain functions may offer novel insights into affective dispositions that may help understand individuals' potential for creative destruction.

Understanding and Managing Emotions in Gelotophobia

<p style="text-align: justify;">Gelotophobia is a fear of ridicule, that manifests both as part of anxiety and depressive disorders, and independently. The study finds out whether some features of recognition and control of expression are limited to the area of positive emotions or manifest themselves in the regulation of other emotions with gelotophobia. The results of self-reporting and test methods for assessing the understanding of emotions, as well as direct and indirect measurements of the ability to control emotions, are compared, and an interference effect of alexithymia is controlled. In total 235 subjects took a part (M_age=17,95, SD_age=1,78), among whom 181 female and 54 male students of the humanities answered questionnaires Emotional Intelligence (EI), Ways of coping (WCQ) of Lazarus, Questionnaire of Gelotophobia (GELOPH-15), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), attributional style questionnaire of Seligman) and did tests (Video Test of Lysin and Ovsyannikova, timing of emotion naming). Quantitative comparative analysis, correlation, and regression analysis were used. The results indicate that some characteristic properties of recognition and control of emotions associated with gelotophobia extend to some other emotions (sadness, but not fear and anger). The reduction in recognition and control of emotions in gelotophobia manifests only through self-reporting methods, while tests show minimal differences depending on gelotophobia grade and their derived character. The accuracy of recognition decreases with gelotophobia grade only when the recognition time is limited. The reduction of control manifests only in the rarer use of Avoidance coping, which is associated with a lower evaluation of the ability to control achieving success and avoiding failure by the individual. the conviction of the individual.</p>

Association between schizoid tendencies and aggressive behaviors: mediating and moderating influences in childhood trauma and life events among Chinese adolescents

BACKGROUND

This study investigated an association between schizoid tendencies and aggressive behaviors in Chinese adolescents, and explored the underlying mechanism.

METHODS

The data of 3094 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years were collected from an epidemiological survey in China. All the subjects or their parents completed the Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form, and the Adolescent Self-rating Life Event Checklist (ASLEC).

RESULTS

Relative to the non-schizoid group, adolescents with schizoid tendencies (male or female) showed significantly higher scores for aggressive behaviors, emotional abuse, and ASLEC. Regarding females only, those with schizoid tendencies had significantly higher (lower) scores for physical abuse and emotional neglect (physical neglect). The aggressive behaviors score was predicted by scores for schizoid tendencies (β_male = 0.620, β_female = 0.638, both P < 0.001) and ASLEC (β_male = 0.125, β_female = 0.061, both P < 0.01), and by childhood trauma score (males: emotional neglect [β = 0.045, P = 0.021]; females: emotional abuse and sexual abuse [β = 0.118 and - 0.062, both P < 0.01]). The ASLEC and childhood trauma scores mediated the association between scores for schizoid tendencies and aggressive behaviors, specifically, emotional neglect (emotional abuse and sexual abuse) in males (females). In females, the interaction between scores for childhood trauma and ASLEC affected the aggressive behaviors score (P = 0.023).

CONCLUSIONS

Schizoid tendencies are associated with aggressive behaviors among Chinese adolescents. Recent life events and childhood trauma mediated an association between schizoid tendencies and aggressive behaviors. The interaction between childhood trauma and recent life events affected aggressive behaviors in females. Aggressive behaviors in adolescents may be ameliorated by reducing childhood trauma and life events.

Prefrontal-posterior coupling mediates transitions between emotional states and influences executive functioning

Emotions often result from fluctuating experiences with self-regulation unfolding over time. However, most research has been focused on neural responses to static, affective stimuli. We studied emotion transitions, which correspond to dynamic conditions of varying affective valence or intensities. Functional coupling of prefrontal and posterior cortex (EEG coherence) was recorded during exposure to stable versus changing emotion-eliciting images (static vs. dynamic conditions). Prefrontal-posterior coupling was decreased in the dynamic conditions compared to the static conditions. A decrease in prefrontal-posterior coupling implies less control of the prefrontal cortex over perceptual information, which may allow the brain to become more affected by emotional fluctuations. We also assessed the aftereffect of EEG coherence on executive functioning, utilizing the flanker task. Among individuals reporting higher chronic stress, executive functioning decreased after dynamic conditions. This decrease in executive functioning was mediated by the decrease in prefrontal-posterior coupling in the dynamic conditions. These findings suggest that the strength of prefrontal-posterior coupling is not only related to emotional transitions but also to executive functioning. The deterioration of executive functioning after dynamic emotional processing may reflect the additional cognitive effort required to process dynamic shifts in affective stimuli, and this relationship is exacerbated by chronic stress.

Deficient Letter-Speech Sound Integration Is Associated With Deficits in Reading but Not Spelling

Efficient and automatic integration of letters and speech sounds is assumed to enable fluent word recognition and may in turn also underlie the build-up of high-quality orthographic representations, which are relevant for accurate spelling. While previous research showed that developmental dyslexia is associated with deficient letter-speech sound integration, these studies did not differentiate between subcomponents of literacy skills. In order to investigate whether deficient letter-speech sound integration is associated with deficits in reading and/or spelling, three groups of third graders were recruited: (1) children with combined deficits in reading and spelling (RSD, N = 10); (2) children with isolated spelling deficit (ISD, N = 17); and (3) typically developing children (TD, N = 21). We assessed the neural correlates (EEG) of letter-speech sound integration using a Stroop-like interference paradigm: participants had to decide whether two visually presented letters look identical. In case of non-identical letter pairs, conflict items were the same letter in lower and upper case (e.g., “T t”), while non-conflict items were different letters (e.g., “T k”). In terms of behavioral results, each of the three groups exhibited a comparable amount of conflict-related reaction time (RT) increase, which may be a sign for no general inhibitory deficits. Event-related potentials (ERPs), on the other hand, revealed group-based differences: the amplitudes of the centro-parietal conflict slow potential (cSP) were increased for conflicting items in typical readers as well as the ISD group. Preliminary results suggest that this effect was missing for children with RSD. The results suggest that deficits in automatized letter-speech sound associations are associated with reading deficit, but no impairment was observed in spelling deficit.

Laughter as a social rejection cue: Influence of prior explicit experience of social rejection on cardiac signs of "freezing"

The study aimed at investigating the immediate cardiac effect of the sudden perception of other people's laughter after experimentally manipulating healthy participants' proneness to experience laughter as a cue of social threat. We expected that participants would show cardiac signs of freezing (i.e., sustained heart rate deceleration immediately after perception of the laughter) after prior social rejection but not or less so after prior acceptance, due to an increased bias to perceive the ambiguous social signal as a cue of social threat and rejection after rejection had been primed. Contrary to expectations, the perception of other people's laughter elicited a decelerative (freezing) response regardless of whether it was preceded by the experience of social rejection or acceptance. The response was prolonged in participants who had been accepted beforehand compared to those who had been rejected. The findings indicate that, given a relevant social context, other people's laughter can be a powerful cue of social threat and rejection also in healthy individuals. Prolonged heart rate deceleration after an ambiguous social signal may facilitate the processing of significant social information in the socially threatening situation. The study adds to the literature rendering the course of the immediate transient heart rate response a useful tool in social rejection research. Additionally, the findings suggested that in some cases the further progress of transient heart rate changes in more extended time-windows (about 30 s) may provide additional relevant information about the processing of social cues.

The fear of being laughed at as additional diagnostic criterion in social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality disorder?

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is the most common anxiety disorder and has considerable negative impact on social functioning, quality of life, and career progression of those affected. Gelotophobia (the fear of being laughed at) shares many similarities and has therefore been proposed as a subtype of SAD. This hypothesis has, however, never been tested in a clinical sample. Thus, the relationship between gelotophobia, SAD and avoidant personality disorder (APD) was investigated by examining a sample of 133 participants (64 psychiatric patients and 69 healthy controls matched for age and sex) using the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition) and an established rating instrument for gelotophobia (GELOPH<15>). As expected, gelotophobia scores and the number of gelotophobic individuals were significantly higher among patients with SAD (n = 22) and APD (n = 12) compared to healthy controls and other psychiatric patients. Furthermore, gelotophobia scores were highest in patients suffering from both SAD and APD. In fact, all patients suffering from both disorders were also suffering from gelotophobia. As explained in the discussion, the observed data did not suggest that gelotophobia is a subtype of SAD. The findings rather imply that the fear of being laughed at is a symptom characteristic for both SAD and APD. Based on that, gelotophobia may prove to be a valuable additional diagnostic criterion for SAD and APD and the present results also contribute to the ongoing debate on the relationship between SAD and APD.

The Use of Bright and Dark Types of Humour is Rooted in the Brain

The ways in which humour can be used are related to the manifold interpersonal functions humour can serve, some of which are positive, and some negative. In the present study, phasic changes in the functional coupling of prefrontal and posterior cortex (EEG coherence) during other people’s auditory displays of happy and sad mood were recorded to predict people’s typical use of humour in social interactions. Greater use of benevolent humour, the intentions of which are in keeping with the characteristics of “laughing-with” humour, was associated with greater decreases of prefrontal-posterior coupling during the processing of happy laughter. More loose prefrontal-posterior coupling indicates loosening of control of the prefrontal cortex over the incoming perceptual information, thereby opening up the perceptual gate and allowing the brain to become more affected by the social-emotional signals. Greater use of humour styles linked to malicious intentions of “laughing-at” humour was associated with responses indicating a wider opened perceptual gate during the processing of other people’s crying. The findings are consistent with the idea that typical humour styles develop in line with the rewarding values of their outcomes (e.g., interaction partners are happy or hurt), which in turn are defined through the individuals’ latent interpersonal goals.

White-Matter Structural Connectivity Underlying Human Laughter-Related Traits Processing

Most research into the neural mechanisms of humor has not explicitly focused on the association between emotion and humor on the brain white matter networks mediating this connection. However, this connection is especially salient in gelotophobia (the fear of being laughed at), which is regarded as the presentation of humorlessness, and two related traits, gelotophilia (the enjoyment of being laughed at) and katagelasticism (the enjoyment of laughing at others). Here, we explored whether the topological properties of white matter networks can account for the individual differences in the laughter-related traits of 31 healthy adults. We observed a significant negative correlation between gelotophobia scores and the clustering coefficient, local efficiency and global efficiency, but a positive association between gelotophobia scores and path length in the brain's white matter network. Moreover, the current study revealed that with increasing individual fear of being laughed at, the linking efficiencies in superior frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex, parahippocampal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus decreased. However, there were no significant correlations between either gelotophilia or katagelasticism scores or the topological properties of the brain white matter network. These findings suggest that the fear of being laughed at is directly related to the level of local and global information processing of the brain network, which might provide new insights into the neural mechanisms of the humor information processing.