Laugh yourself to sleep: memory consolidation for humorous information

There is extensive evidence that emotional information is better remembered than neutral information across long delays, especially if the delay interval contains an opportunity for sleep. However, as prior studies have focused on memory for negative stimuli, it is unclear whether positive memories benefit from time and sleep as well. To investigate the consolidation of positive memories, the current study examined differences in memory for humorous and non-humorous cartoons. While prior evidence demonstrates that humorous information is preferentially remembered relative to non-humorous information over brief delays, it is unknown whether this benefit lasts across longer delay intervals or whether sleep is important for lasting humor memories to form. Thus, we tested memory for 27 cartoons across 12-h delay periods containing either sleep or wakefulness. Results indicate that humor’s enhancing effect on recall memory is robust across a 12-h delay and that a period of sleep facilitates this effect over wakefulness when cartoons are novel to participants and ranked based on subjective emotional ratings. Further, in accordance with previous studies that reveal diminished emotional reactivity to stimuli following sleep, in a supplemental experiment, we found that sleep reduced subjective ratings of humor, arousal, and positivity of humorous cartoons. These findings provide preliminary evidence that sleep’s impact on negative emotional memory consolidation and emotional reactivity can be extended to positive stimuli as well.     

The physiological and psychological effects of the expression and inhibition of emotion

Previous work has indicated that humor enhances immunity, but the immunological effects of overt crying have not been studied. Thirty-nine women viewed sad and humorous videotapes and either inhibited or expressed overt expressions of laughter and weeping; these were observed and timed. Moods and immunity (S-IgA) were repeatedly measured. The humorous stimulus resulted in improved immunity, regardless of the overt laughter expressed; overt crying was immunosuppressive, whereas the inhibition of weeping in the context of the same sad stimulus was not. Moods were more negative following the sad stimulus and in the expression condition. The results with respect to humor are consistent with previous research; the immunosuppressive effect of overt crying is discussed in the context of various types of crying that may have different effects.     

Humorous stimuli and depression: An examination of Beck's premise

Investigated the premise that an ancillary characteristic of depression is a diminished humor response (N = 40). A 2 × 2 × 2 (High-Low Beck Depression Inventory Scores × Aggressive-Non-aggressive Cartoon × Self-Other Humor Target) design was used. Results indicated that there were no differences between those with higher and lower scores on the Beck in ratings of the cartoons in terms of enjoyment, funniness, or laughter. Additional analyses that used the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist revealed relationships between the affects of anxiety, hostility, and depression, and cartoon type and target. The results raise questions, too, as to the relationship of responses to humorous stimuli and depression.     

Annual Index

Abstract

Previous work has indicated that humor enhances immunity, but the immunological effects of overt crying have not been studied. Thirty-nine women viewed sad and humorous videotapes and either inhibited or expressed overt expressions of laughter and weeping; these were observed and timed. Moods and immunity (S-IgA) were repeatedly measured. The humorous stimulus resulted in improved immunity, regardless of the overt laughter expressed; overt crying was immunosuppressive, whereas the inhibition of weeping in the context of the same sad stimulus was not. Moods were more negative following the sad stimulus and in the expression condition. The results with respect to humor are consistent with previous research; the immunosuppressive effect of overt crying is discussed in the context of various types of crying that may have different effects.     

阈下听觉刺激对大学生情绪的影响

目的考察阈下强度的音乐对大学生情绪的诱发效应,研究听觉通道的阈下知觉对情绪的影响。方法选择两首经典的中国传统音乐作为情绪诱发材料,《春节序曲》表达快乐情感,《二泉映月》表达悲伤情感。音乐通过掩蔽的方式连续重复播放,对53名在校大学生进行情绪诱发,用多导生理仪记录被试在聆听音乐过程中的皮肤电导,分析被试的自主神经反应模式和情绪自评结果。结果情绪诱发前后自身对照t检验表明,"无阈下刺激"与"阈下春节序曲"组被试的皮肤电导有显著差异(t=2.226,P0.05);"无阈下刺激"与"阈下二泉映月"组被试相比得出相同的结果,即两组被试的皮肤电导有显著差异(t=2.269,P0.05);在情绪自评结果上未见显著差异(P0.05)。结论阈下强度的音乐导致被试皮肤电导的显著变化,而情绪自评未见显著差异,说明在阈下音乐的作用下存在"未被主观觉知"的情绪唤起。无论是快乐情感的音乐《春节序曲》还是悲伤情感的音乐《二泉映月》都存在相同的影响效应。     

大学生幽默感现状的调查研究

目的考察大学生幽默感的基本情况。方法采用《大学生幽默感问卷》对278名大学生进行问卷测量。结果大学生的幽默感处在中上水平(幽默感较好的占45.5%,一般的占46.8%);大学生的幽默感不存在性别上的显著差异(F=0.045～4.177,P>0.05);在幽默欣赏维度和幽默感总分存在专业上的显著差异(F=0.233,P<0.05,0.032;P<0.05);在幽默娱乐维度存在年级上的显著差异(F=8.860,P<0.001)。结论大学生的幽默感处在中上水平,且不存在男女生间的显著差异,但在幽默欣赏维度和幽默感总分存在专业上的显著差异,在幽默娱乐维度存在年级上的显著差异。     

The effects of caffeine, dextroamphetamine, and modafinil on humor appreciation during sleep deprivation

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Sleep loss consistently impairs performance on measures of alertness, vigilance, and response speed, but its effects on higher-order executive functions are not well delineated. Similarly, whereas deficits in arousal and vigilance can be temporarily countered by the use of several different stimulant medications, it is not clear how these compounds affect complex cognitive processes in sleep-deprived individuals. DESIGN: We evaluated the effects of double-blind administration of 3 stimulant medications or placebo on the ability to appreciate humor in visual (cartoons) or verbal (headlines) stimuli presented on a computer screen following 49.5 hours of sleep deprivation. SETTING: In-residence sleep-laboratory facility at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-four healthy adults (29 men, 24 women), ranging in age from 18 to 36 years. INTERVENTIONS: Each participant was randomly assigned to 1 of 3 stimulant medication groups, including caffeine, 600 mg, n = 12; modafinil, 400 mg, n = 11; dextroamphetamine, 20 mg, n = 16; or placebo, n = 14. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Humor appreciation for cartoon stimuli was enhanced by modafinil relative to both placebo and caffeine, but there was no effect of any stimulant medication on the appreciation of verbal humor during sleep loss. In contrast, all 3 stimulants improved psychomotor response speed, whereas only caffeine and dextroamphetamine improved ratings of subjective sleepiness. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that, despite similar alerting and vigilance-promoting effects, these 3 compounds have significantly different effects on those highly complex cognitive abilities mediated by the pre-frontal cortex.     

Sense of humor and dimensions of personality

Previous researchers have demonstrated relationships between sense of humor and personality. Most have viewed sense of humor from the perspective of humor appreciation. Others have taken the approach that sense of humor has two factors: appreciation and creativity. Our approach has been to look at sense of humor as made up of creativity and several additional elements. The present study reports on the factor analysis of a Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, as well as correlates of various elements of sense of humor with personality traits assessed by the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule. Relationships by humor scale factors are reported, as are differences between those high and low in sense of humor within a sample of 426 individuals, 18 through 90 years of age.     

Behavioural and neurocognitive responses to sad facial affect are attenuated in patients with mania

BACKGROUND: The processing of facial emotion involves a distributed network of limbic and paralimbic brain structures. Many of these regions are also implicated in the pathophysiology of mood disorders. Behavioural data indicate that depressed subjects show a state-related positive recognition bias for faces displaying negative emotions. There are sparse data to suggest there may be an analogous, state-related negative recognition bias for negative emotions in mania. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the behavioural and neurocognitive correlates of happy and sad facial affect recognition in patients with mania. METHOD: Functional MRI and an explicit facial affect recognition task were used in a case-control design to measure brain activation and associated behavioural response to variable intensity of sad and happy facial expressions in 10 patients with bipolar I mania and 12 healthy comparison subjects. RESULTS: The patients with mania had attenuated subjective rating of the intensity of sad facial expressions, and associated attenuation of activation in the subgenual anterior cingulate and bilateral amygdala, with increased activation in the posterior cingulate and posterior insula. No behavioural or neurocognitive abnormalities were found in response to presentation of happy facial expressions. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with mania showed a specific, mood-congruent, negative bias in sad facial affect recognition, which was associated with an abnormal profile of brain activation in paralimbic regions implicated in affect recognition and mood disorders. Functional imaging of facial emotion recognition may be a useful probe of cortical and subcortical abnormalities in mood disorders.     

Insomnia does not affect heart rate changes when young adults watch humorous films: An exploratory study

Emotional reactivity in insomnia is affected both subjectively and on a physiological level for negative emotional material, but little is known about reactions to positive stimuli. We here investigated whether in younger adult insomnia patients, presentation of short humorous films would lead to heart rate decreases during and after film viewing, as compared to heart rate changes when falling asleep. Investigating 20 participants with DSM‐5‐diagnosed insomnia and 18 participants without insomnia, we found that heart rate decreased when falling asleep, increased when watching humorous films and returned to normal values afterwards for all participants. Film‐related heart rate increases were strongly related to humour ratings of the films. No differences were found between those with and without insomnia on subjective ratings of the films, film‐related heart rate changes or when falling asleep. We conclude that the experience of positive daily life stimuli in younger adults is not affected by insomnia in our study, despite insomnia having a known more profound effect on negative stimuli. Future studies exploring insomnia‐related autonomous nervous system responses combining different neurophysiological modalities should confirm our findings.     

Mood congruent effects by music on word cognition

Two studies investigated the mood congruent effects of music on word cognition. In both studies, bright or sad music was used in order to induce elated or depressed mood, and subjects were assigned to either the bright or the sad music condition. In Study 1, positive and negative personality trait words and non-words were presented with the music to examine the effect on incidental recall. Thirty-one subjects were asked to judge whether the words were positive or negative as quickly and accurately as possible. In Study 2, 37 subjects were presented with ambiguous personality trait words without and with music to examine how their interpretations of ambiguous stimuli were affected by music. The results showed the mood congruent effects on recall, interpretation, and response time, and these findings agreed with those obtained from other studies of the mood effects on cognition, especially on recall. It was suggested that music induces a certain mood, which influences on cognitive processes of other stimuli.     

Music-induced mood modulates the strength of emotional negativity bias: an ERP study

The present study investigated the effect of music-elicited moods on the subsequent affective processing through a music-primed valence categorization task. Event-related potentials were recorded for positive and negative emotional pictures that were primed by happy or sad music excerpts. The reaction time data revealed longer reaction times (RTs) for pictures following negative versus positive music pieces, irrespective of the valence of the picture. Additionally, positive pictures elicited faster response latencies than negative pictures, irrespective of the valence of the musical prime. Moreover, the main effect of picture valence, and the music by picture valence interaction effect were both significant for P2 amplitudes and for the averaged amplitudes at 500-700ms interval. Negative pictures elicited smaller P2 amplitudes than positive pictures, and the amplitude differences between negative and positive pictures were larger with negative musical primes than with positive musical primes. Similarly, compared to positive pictures, negative pictures elicited more negative deflections during the 500-700ms interval across prime types. The amplitude differences between negative and positive pictures were again larger under negative versus positive music primes at this interval. Therefore, the present study observed a clear emotional negativity bias during either prime condition, and extended the previous findings by showing increased strength of the negative bias under negative mood primes. This suggests that the neural sensitivity of the brain to negative stimuli varies with individuals' mood states, and this bias is particularly intensified by negative mood states.     

Mood congruent memory bias induced by tryptophan depletion

BACKGROUND: Mood congruent memory bias predicts a more superior recall memory of learnt material congruent with the mood state at the time of learning. The present study is the first report of an experimental study in which a biological mood induction was used to test this hypothesis. The influence of acute tryptophan (TRP) depletion, inducing low serotonin neurotransmission and a depression of mood, on memory bias was evaluated in healthy volunteers (16 with and 11 without a family history of major affective disorder). METHODS: Twenty-seven subjects received 100 g of an amino acid mixture with and without TRP according to a placebo-controlled, double-blind, balanced, cross-over design. An affective memory test consisting of a 30-word list with words of positive, neutral, and negative affective valence and a mood questionnaire were assessed at 6 and 24 h following treatment administration. RESULTS: TRP depletion impaired delayed recall of neutral and positive words, but not of negative words. There was no interaction of family history and treatment and there was no post hoc association between the influence of TRP-depletion on mood and on affective memory bias. CONCLUSION: Experimentally induced serotonergic depletion in normal individuals shifts affective memory bias towards negative affective valent verbal stimuli.     

The influence of current mood on affective startle modulation

The affect-modulated startle response is a reliable indicator of the affective processing of stimuli. It may be influenced by trait and state affective variables as well as psychopathological status. The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of the current mood state on startle modulation. Forty-five healthy volunteers viewed affective stimuli while eye blink responses and subjective emotional ratings were assessed. In addition, the current state of mood was assessed, pre and post the experimental procedure. Subjects were divided into those that were in a more positive and those that were in a more negative mood based on a median split. Compared to subjects in a positive mood those in a more negative mood showed significantly reduced startle amplitudes after viewing the negative and neutral stimuli. The results of the present study show that changes in startle responses are not only related to the current state of psychopathology but also to the general affective state of the participants during the assessments.     

Anger experience and the process of calming down

This study investigated the affects and behaviors that accompany and follow anger episodes, and examined the relationship among them, in hope of developing self-regulated and effective methods of controlling anger. With an open-ended questionnaire, 42 anger episodes were collected and categorized. Results suggested that typical anger episodes were instigated by selfishness, insult, coercion, and trouble and a close person such as friends was often the cause and target of anger. Surprise and depression frequently accompanied it, and eight forms of response followed: rationalization, cause searching, aggression, social sharing, displacement to object, mood change, forgetfulness, and rumination. Another questionnaire examined the relationship among these variables, as well as trait anger, perception of malice, and sense of injury, with a sample of 118 undergraduates. Results indicated, first, that sense of injury was heightened by trait anger and malice perception. Second, anger and depression were evoked only by a sense of injury. Finally, while anger without depression evoked aggression, anger with depression led to mood change and forgetfulness.     

Development and validation of a multidimensional sense of humor scale

Personal sense of humor has been recognized as a coping mechanism. Sense of humor as a construct, however, is multidimensional. Existing efforts to assess overall sense of humor are, for a number of reasons, deficient. The present study reports the development and factor analysis of a new Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale that may be useful in a variety of research and clinical applications.     

The Subjective Experience of PASAT Testing: Does the PASAT Induce Negative Mood?

The present study investigated the relationship between mood and attentional testing in 80 college students. Participants were randomly assigned to a sad, anxious, or positive mood induction procedure, or to a neutral procedure. Following mood induction, sad and anxious groups reported significantly more negative affect than the positive and neutral groups. Following completion of the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT), no group differences were found. Sad and anxious groups retained their elevated negative mood states, whereas positive and neutral mood groups showed significant increases in negative mood states. These results are consistent with clinical reports that the PASAT is a stressful test. PASAT performance was essentially similar across groups, with the only significant difference found between the sad and control conditions at the 1.2-sec rate of presentation. Results raise the question to what extent participants' subjective experience of the PASAT may interfere with their performance on the task.     

Infants' neutral facial expressions elicit the strongest initial attentional bias in adults: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Recent studies that used adult faces as the baseline have revealed that attentional bias toward infant faces is the strongest for neutral expressions than for happy and sad expressions. However, the time course of the strongest attentional bias toward infant neutral expressions is unclear. To clarify this time course, we combined a behavioral dot-probe task with electrophysiological event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure adults' responses to infant and adult faces with happy, neutral, and sad expressions derived from the same face. The results indicated that compared with the corresponding expressions in adult faces, attentional bias toward infant faces with various expressions resulted in different patterns during rapid and prolonged attention stages. In particular, first, neutral expressions in infant faces elicited greater behavioral attentional bias and P1 responses than happy and sad ones did. Second, sad expressions in infant faces elicited greater N170 responses than neutral and happy ones did; notably, sad expressions elicited greater N170 responses in the left hemisphere in women than in men. Third, late positive potential (LPP) responses were greater for infant faces than for adult faces under each expression condition. Thus, we propose a three-stage model of attentional allocation patterns that reveals the time course of attentional bias toward infant faces with various expressions. This model highlights the prominent role of neutral facial expressions in the attentional bias toward infant faces.     

To what extent do oral contraceptives influence mood and affect?

Background: Studies examining the effects of oral contraceptives (OCs) on mood, affect, and affect variability are reviewed. Methods: MEDLINE and PsycLIT data bases were examined to identify studies that compared OC users with nonusers using daily ratings of mood, affect, or affect variability. Results: Compared to non-users, OC users experience less variability in affect across the entire menstrual cycle, and less negative affect during menstruation (i.e. withdrawal bleeding). In women with OC-related negative mood and affect change, potential mediators of the relation between OCs and mood or affect were identified: a history of depression, psychiatric symptoms, dysmenorrhea, and premenstrual mood symptoms prior to OC use; a history of pregnancy-related mood symptoms; a family history of OC-related mood complaints; being in the postpartum period; and age. Furthermore, a lower ratio of progesterone to estrogen is associated with more negative mood change in women with a history of premenstrual emotional symptoms, higher progesterone to estrogen ratios are associated with increased negative mood effects in women without such a history, and monophasic OCs have a greater stabilizing effect on mood than triphasic OCs. Limitations: The ‘survivor effect’, psychological factors, and indirect pharmacological effects (e.g. weight gain) have not yet been systematically investigated. Furthermore, most studies have examined only negative mood or affect, as opposed to both positive and negative affect and affect variability; and few affect studies have assessed potential mediators of OC-related affect change. Conclusions: While the only consistent OC-related mood effects experienced by most women are beneficial, a subgroup of women do experience negative mood change. Future research must focus on expounding the individual difference and OC-related risk factors for negative mood change.     

Negative bias on self-referent processing in depression: focused on mood congruent effects

The purpose of this study was to investigate negative bias on self-referent processing in depression, focused on the mood congruent effects in a natural depressed state and an experimentally induced transient depressed mood state. In Experiment 1, autobiographical memories and self-relevant ratings of personality trait words were examined in a natural depressed state or non-depressed state, which were measured by Beck Depression Inventory. Results revealed the mood congruent effects on both tasks. In Experiment 2, the same tasks as Experiment 1 were conducted in a transient depressed mood state or non-depressed mood state, which were induced through listening music. Unlike Experiment 1, there were no effects in both tasks, and a positive bias was observed in both mood states. It was suggested that transient mood state did not bias self-referent processing in depression, and Beck's schema hypothesis was supported.