Multivariate psychological processes have recently been studied, visualized, and analyzed as networks. In this network approach, psychological constructs are represented as complex systems of interacting components. In addition to insightful visualization of dynamics, a network perspective leads to a new way of thinking about the nature of psychological phenomena by offering new tools for studying dynamical processes in psychology. In this article, we explain the rationale of the network approach, the associated methods and visualization, and illustrate it using an empirical example focusing on the relation between the daily fluctuations of emotions and neuroticism. The results suggest that individuals with high levels of neuroticism had a denser emotion network compared with their less neurotic peers. This effect is especially pronounced for the negative emotion network, which is in line with previous studies that found a denser network in depressed subjects than in healthy subjects. In sum, we show how the network approach may offer new tools for studying dynamical processes in psychology.

Emotion differentiation, the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between emotional states, has mainly been studied as a trait. In this research, we examine within-person fluctuations in emotion differentiation and hypothesize that stress is a central factor in predicting these fluctuations. We predict that experiencing stress will result in lower levels of emotion differentiation. Using data from a 3-wave longitudinal experience sampling study, we examined the within-person fluctuations in the level of emotion differentiation across days and months and tested if these fluctuations related to changes in stress levels. On the day-level, we found that differentiation of negative emotions varied significantly within individuals, that high stress levels were associated with lower levels of emotion differentiation, and that stress on 1 day negatively predicted the level of differentiation of negative emotions on a next day (but not vice versa). On the wave-level, we found a concurrent, but not a prospective relationship between stress and emotion differentiation. These results are the first to directly demonstrate the role of stress in predicting fluctuations in emotion differentiation and have implications for our theoretical understanding of emotion differentiation, as well as for interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record

Increased moment-to-moment predictability, or inertia, of negative affect has been identified as an important dynamic marker of psychological maladjustment, and increased vulnerability to depression in particular. However, little is known about the processes underlying emotional inertia. The current article examines how the emotional context, and people's responses to it, are related to emotional inertia. We investigated how individual differences in the inertia of negative affect (NA) are related to individual differences in exposure, reactivity, and recovery from emotional events, in daily life (assessed using experience sampling) as well as in the lab (assessed using an emotional film-clip task), among 200 participants commencing their first year of tertiary education. This dual-method approach allowed us to assess affective responding on different timescales, and in response to standardized as well as idiographic emotional stimuli. Our most consistent finding, across both methods, was that heightened NA inertia is related to decreased NA recovery following negative stimuli, suggesting that higher levels of inertia may be mostly driven by impairments in affect repair following negative events.

Previous research has emphasized the critical role of negative cognitions as a vulnerability factor in predicting depressive symptoms. Here, we argue that processes that function to maintain negative cognitions may serve as a catalyst for the development of depressive symptoms in the context of negative circumstances, and we suggest that poor updating of affective information in working memory is one such process. Thus, we posit that under high levels of stress, individuals with poor affective updating are hindered in changing the negative content in working memory associated with stressful events and, therefore, are more likely to experience increased depressive symptoms over time. To examine this hypothesis, we assessed affective updating ability, stress, and depressive symptoms in 200 students who were entering their first year of tertiary education. We assessed levels of depressive symptoms again both four months and one year later. Under high levels of stress, poor affective updating ability was associated with an increase in depressive symptoms at both four months and one year later. These results demonstrate that affective updating ability is an important cognitive vulnerability factor that interacts with stressful events to accelerate the development of depressive symptoms, and underscore the importance of designing early prevention or intervention approaches for individuals with this cognitive vulnerability.

BackgroundClinical risk factors related to not administering thrombolysis to acute ischemic stroke patients with incidence dyslipidemia is not clear. This issue was investigated in telestroke and non-telestroke settings.MethodsWe analyzed retrospective data collected from a stroke registry to compare exclusion risk factors in the telestroke and non-telestroke. We performed multivariate analysis was performed to identify risk factors that may result in exclusion from rtPA. Variance inflation factors were used to examine multicollinearity and significant interactions between independent variables in the model, while Hosmer-Lemeshow test, Cox & Snell were used to determine the fitness of the regression models.ResultsA greater number of patients with acute ischemic stroke with incidence dyslipidemia were treated in the non-telestroke (285) when compared with the telestroke network (187). Although non-telestroke admitted more patients than the telestroke, the telestroke treated more patients with rtPA (89.30%) and excluded less (10.70%), while the non-telestroke excluded from rtPA (61.40%). In the non-telestroke, age (adjusted OR, 0.965; 95% CI, 0.942–0.99), blood glucose level (adjusted OR, 0.995; 95% CI, 0.99–0.999), international normalized ratio (adjusted OR, 0.154; 95% CI, 0.031–0.78),congestive heart failure(CHF) (adjusted OR, 0.318; 95% CI, 0.109–0.928), previous stroke (adjusted OR, 0.405; 95% CI, 0.2–0.821) and renal insufficiency (adjusted OR, 0.179; 95% CI, 0.035–0.908) were all directly linked to exclusion from rtPA. In the telestroke, only body mass index (adjusted OR, 0.911; 95% CI, 0.832–0.997) significantly excluded acute ischemic stroke patients with incidence dyslipidemia from thrombolysis therapy.ConclusionDespite having more patients with acute ischemic stroke that present incidence dyslipidemia, the non-telestroke patients had more clinical risk factors that excluded more patients from rtPA when compared with telestroke. Future studies should focus on how identified clinical risk factors can be managed to improve the use of rtPA in the non-telestroke setting. Moreover, the optimization of the risk-benefit ratio of rtPA by the telestroke technology can be advanced to the non-telestroke setting to improve the use of thrombolysis therapy.