Therapy Dogs Improve Student Affect but Not Memory

ABSTRACT

While students are increasingly struggling with anxiety and depression, the effects of therapy dogs on student stress has only recently been explored. This study was conducted to investigate whether therapy dogs can improve student affect and to determine if these benefits extend to cognition in the form of enhanced ability to remember information. Forty-four college students were randomly assigned to interact with a therapy dog or not during both learning (session 1) and testing (session 2) in a paired-associates procedure. Arousal, stress, and mood were measured at the beginning and end of each session. As predicted, therapy dogs increased happiness and decreased stress and arousal. However, there was no difference in recognition memory for the paired associates between the therapy dog and control conditions. Mood was a significant predictor of memory, such that decreased happiness in session 2 predicted better recognition performance. These findings indicate that the benefits of therapy dogs are primarily affective and not cognitive.     

Mental illness and well‐being: an affect regulation perspective

Mental health crucially depends upon affective states such as emotions, stress responses, impulses and moods. These states shape how we think, feel and behave. Often, they support adaptive functioning. At other times, however, they can become detrimental to mental health via maladaptive affect generation processes and/or maladaptive affect regulation processes. Here, we present an integrative framework for considering the role of affect generation and regulation in mental illness and well‐being. Our model views affect generation as an iterative cycle of attending to, appraising and responding to situations. It views affect regulation as an iterative series of decisions aimed at altering affect generation. Affect regulation decisions include identifying what, if anything, should be changed about affect, selecting where to intervene in the affect generation cycle, choosing how to implement this intervention, and monitoring the regulation attempt to decide whether to maintain, switch or stop it. Difficulties with these decisions, often arising from biased inputs to them, can contribute to manifestations of mental illness such as clinical symptoms, syndromes and disorders. The model has a number of implications for clinical assessment and treatment. Specifically, it offers a common set of concepts for characterizing different affective states; it highlights interactions between affect generation and affect regulation; it identifies assessment and treatment targets among the component processes of affect regulation; and it is applicable to prevention and treatment of mental illness as well as to promotion and restoration of psychological well‐being.     

Effects of chronotype and time of day on mood responses to CrossFit training

Morningness-eveningness, time of day, and physical exercises have been shown to influence mood states. This study aimed to test whether impact of physical exercise on mood depends on time of day and chronotype. Ninety-four participants (age 32 ± 6 years; 34% females; weekly training volume 4 ± 1 hours) filled the Composite Scale of Morningness and reported their current mood using the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist before and after a 60-min long CrossFit training session which took part in the morning (beginning at 6:30 or 7:45) or in the evening (beginning at 19:30 or 20:45). In this quasi-experiment the measurements were taken by the occasion of the participants’ usual training, in their preferred hours. There were only a few evening-types in the studied sample, while morning and intermediate chronotypes were over-represented. Participation in CrossFit training resulted in mood improvement consisting of increase in energetic arousal (η² = 0.29) and hedonic tone (η² = 0.47) and reduction of tense arousal (η² = 0.14), all significant at p = 0.001. Furthermore, CrossFit training during morning hours boosted mood in the intermediate/evening chronotype group to the levels observed in morning chronotypes (η² = 0.29, p < 0.05, for the three-way interaction effect). We conclude that participation in intense physical exercise, such as CrossFit training, may allow compensation for the negative effects of non-optimal time of day on experienced moods, particularly in the case of neither/evening-types.     

Focus: Addiction: A Feasibility Study of Bilateral Anodal Stimulation of the Prefrontal Cortex Using High-Definition Electrodes in Healthy Participants

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) studies often use one anode to increase cortical excitability in one hemisphere. However, mental processes may involve cortical regions in both hemispheres. This study’s aim was to assess the safety and possible effects on affect and working memory of tDCS using two anodes for bifrontal stimulation. A group of healthy subjects participated in two bifrontal tDCS sessions on two different days, one for real and the other for sham stimulation. They performed a working memory task and reported their affect immediately before and after each tDCS session. Relative to sham, real bifrontal stimulation did not induce significant adverse effects, reduced decrement in vigor-activity during the study session, and did not improve working memory. These preliminary findings suggest that bifrontal anodal stimulation is feasible and safe and may reduce task-related fatigue in healthy participants. Its effects on neuropsychiatric patients deserve further study.     

Morningness–eveningness and performance-based emotional intelligence

The aim of the present article is to determine whether recently shown positive relationships between self-reported emotional intelligence (EI) and morningess preference exist when EI is measured with an ability-based test. In two studies (study 1: N = 206 and study 2: N = 184), we applied two different morningness–eveningness questionnaires and a performance test of EI consisting of four dimensions (perception, understanding, assimilation, managing). The two studies provided similar results indicating that “night owls” have higher EI than “larks”; specifically, evening-oriented subjects showed greater ability in emotion perception and understanding, as compared to morning-oriented individuals. The obtained results were in line with hitherto existing research on chronotype and general intelligence. The results provide further evidence for a cognitive character of ability-based EI and accentuate its different nature when compared to self-reported EI. The main findings are discussed in terms of evolutionary theories of circadian preferences, EI and mental abilities.     

The Neural Mechanisms of Moral Cognition: A Multiple-Aspect Approach to Moral Judgment and Decision-Making

We critically review themushrooming literature addressing the neuralmechanisms of moral cognition (NMMC), reachingthe following broad conclusions: (1) researchmainly focuses on three inter-relatedcategories: the moral emotions, moral socialcognition, and abstract moral reasoning. (2)Research varies in terms of whether it deploysecologically valid or experimentallysimplified conceptions of moral cognition. Themore ecologically valid the experimentalregime, the broader the brain areas involved.(3) Much of the research depends on simplifyingassumptions about the domain of moral reasoningthat are motivated by the need to makeexperimental progress. This is a valuablebeginning, but as more is understood about theneural mechanisms of decision-making, morerealistic conceptions will need to replace thesimplified conceptions. (4) The neuralcorrelates of real-life moral cognition areunlikely to consist in anything remotely like a``moral module' or a ``morality center.' Moralrepresentations, deliberations and decisionsare probably highly distributed and notconfined to any particular brainsub-system. Discovering the basic neuralprinciples governing planning, judgment anddecision-making will require vastly more basicresearch in neuroscience, but correlatingactivity in certain brain regions withwell-defined psychological conditions helpsguide neural level research. Progress on socialphenomena will also require theoreticalinnovation in understanding the brain'sdistinctly biological form of computationthat is anchored by emotions, needs, drives,and the instinct for survival.     

Mobile Communication in the Public Mind: Insights from Free Associations Related to Mobile Phone Base Stations

The number of people using mobile phones has dramatically increased. At the same time, many people are unsettled about the potential health effects from the electromagnetic fields generated by mobile phone base stations. Research indicates that the risks associated with base stations are perceived differently by experts, laypeople, and base station opponents. Using a free association method, we analyzed these differences in more detail. In our first study, we found no difference between experts and laypeople but a marked distinction in the associations of opponents as opposed to the first two groups. The prevalence of free associations in a large random sample from the general population was explored via correspondence analysis in the second study. People who assign high risks to mobile communication had different, more negative associations in mind (e.g., “senselessness,” “hazard”) compared to people with low risk-perception (e.g., “mast,” “acceptance”). Our research is in line with the assumption that the affect heuristic guides risk and benefit assessments, and highlights the role of affect in risk perception and communication.     

Anticipatory affect: neural correlates and consequences for choice

'Anticipatory affect' refers to emotional states that people experience while anticipating significant outcomes. Historically, technical limitations have made it difficult to determine whether anticipatory affect influences subsequent choice. Recent advances in the spatio-temporal resolution of functional magnetic resonance imaging, however, now allow researchers to visualize changes in neural activity seconds before choice occurs. We review evidence that activation in specific brain circuits changes during anticipation of monetary incentives, that this activation correlates with affective experience and that activity in these circuits may influence subsequent choice. Specifically, an activation likelihood estimate meta-analysis of cued response studies indicates that nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activation increases during gain anticipation relative to loss anticipation, while anterior insula activation increases during both loss and gain anticipation. Additionally, anticipatory NAcc activation correlates with self-reported positive arousal, whereas anterior insula activation correlates with both self-reported negative and positive arousal. Finally, NAcc activation precedes the purchase of desirable products and choice of high-risk gambles, whereas anterior insula activation precedes the rejection of overpriced products and choice of low-risk gambles. Together, these findings support a neurally plausible framework for understanding how anticipatory affect can influence choice.     

Air Pollution from Industry and Traffic: Perceived Risk and Affect in the Moerdijk Region,The Netherlands

The aim of the present study was to compare the perceived risks of air pollution from industry and traffic in the Moerdijk region in The Netherlands, and to identify the demographic and psychometric variables that are associated with these perceived risks. We sent out a questionnaire and risk perceptions were explored using multiple regression models. The results showed that the perceived risks of industrial air pollution were higher than for those of traffic-related air pollution. The perceived risk of industrial air pollution was associated with other variables than that of traffic. For industry, the psychometric variable affect prevailed. For traffic-related air pollution, the demographic variables age and educational level prevailed, although affect was also apparent. Which source was considered as the major source—traffic or industry—depended on a high risk perception of industrial air pollution, and not on variation in risk perception of traffic-related air pollution. These insights can be used as an impetus for the local risk management process in the Moerdijk region. We recommend that local authorities consider risk perception as one of the targets in local risk management strategies as well.