I'm a professor whose primary focus is on student-centered learning. I also do research on creativity, emotion-attention interactions, and mental health.
Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Em... more Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Emotional states contribute to the spatial extent of attentional selection, with the spotlight focused more narrowly during anxious moods and more broadly during happy moods. In addition to visual space, attention can also operate over features, and we show here that mood states may also influence attentional scope in feature space. After anxious or happy mood inductions, participants focused their attention to identify a central target while ignoring flanking items. Flankers were sometimes coloured differently than targets, so focusing attention on target colour should lead to relatively less interference. Compared to happy and neutral moods, when anxious, participants showed reduced interference when colour isolated targets from flankers, but showed more interference when flankers and targets were the same colour. This pattern reveals that the anxious mood caused these individuals to att...
Abstract: Pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) rates have notably increased over the past three decade... more Abstract: Pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) rates have notably increased over the past three decades. Given the significant morbidity and mortality associated with BD, efforts are needed to identify factors useful in earlier detection to help address this serious public health concern. Sleep is particularly important to consider given the sequelae of disrupted sleep on normative functioning and that sleep is included in diagnostic criteria for both Major Depressive and Manic Episodes. Here, we examine one component of sleep—i.e., circadian phase preference with the behavioral construct of morningness/eveningness (M/E). In comparing 30 BD and 45 typically developing control (TDC) participants, ages 7–17 years, on the Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC), no between-group differences emerged. Similar results were found when comparing three groups (BD−ADHD; BD+ADHD; TDC). Consistent with data available on circadian phase preference in adults with BD, however, we found that B...
Introduction Pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) is a complex cyclical illness with episodes of mani... more Introduction Pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) is a complex cyclical illness with episodes of mania and depression, chronic inter-episodic symptoms of mood disturbance due to partial recovery, neurocognitive dysfunction, and a high prevalence of comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) [1]. We examined the functional connectivity of previously-identified resting state networks to investigate intrinsic network abnormalities that may represent PBD pathophysiology.
Behavioral and neuroimaging findings indicate that distinct cognitive and neural processes underl... more Behavioral and neuroimaging findings indicate that distinct cognitive and neural processes underlie solving problems with sudden insight. Moreover, people with less focused attention sometimes perform better on tests of insight and creative problem solving. However, it remains unclear whether different states of attention, within individuals, influence the likelihood of solving problems with insight or with analysis. In this experiment, participants (N = 40) performed a baseline block of verbal problems, then performed one of two visual tasks, each emphasizing a distinct aspect of visual attention, followed by a second block of verbal problems to assess change in performance. After participants engaged in a center-focused flanker task requiring relatively focused visual attention, they reported solving more verbal problems with analytic processing. In contrast, after participants engaged in a rapid object identification task requiring attention to broad space and weak associations, ...
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dis... more UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, Emotional influences on the scope of selective visual attention. by Wegbreit, Ezra Saul ...
OBJECTIVES: It is estimated that 2-4 million women are severely assaulted by partners each year. ... more OBJECTIVES: It is estimated that 2-4 million women are severely assaulted by partners each year. These women report a wide range of abusive acts that can cause mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs), that often result in the shearing and straining of axonal fibers, referred to as diffuse axonal injury (DAI). Surprisingly, almost no research exists on the effects of partner-related brain injury. In an exception, our previous work demonstrated that nearly 75% of battered women sustained partner-related brain injuries, and 50% sustained multiple partner-related brain injuries, the severity of which were associated with partner-abuse severity, cognitive functioning, and psychopathology (Valera & Berenbaum, 2003). Building on these results, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine the relationship between partner-related brain injuries, abnormalities in white matter integrity (possibly resulting from DAI), and cognitive functioning. METHODS: Twenty-two women with a history of bei...
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness that can have high costs for youths (<18 year... more Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness that can have high costs for youths (<18 years old) and adults. Relative to healthy controls (HC), individuals with BD often show impaired attention, working memory, executive function, and cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt to changing reward/punishment contingencies). In our study of youths and young adults with BD, we investigated 1) how cognitive flexibility varies developmentally in BD, and 2) whether it is independent of other executive function deficits associated with BD. We measured errors on a reversal-learning task, as well as spatial working memory and other executive function, among participants with BD (N=75) and HC (N=130), 7-27 years old. Regression analyses focused on the effects of diagnosis on reversal-learning errors, controlling for age, gender, IQ, spatial span, and executive function. Similar analyses examined non-reversal errors to rule out general task impairment. Participants with BD, regardless o...
Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Em... more Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Emotional states contribute to the spatial extent of attentional selection, with the spotlight focused more narrowly during anxious moods and more broadly during happy moods. In addition to visual space, attention can also operate over features, and we show here that mood states may also influence attentional scope in feature space. After anxious or happy mood inductions, participants focused their attention to identify a central target while ignoring flanking items. Flankers were sometimes coloured differently than targets, so focusing attention on target colour should lead to relatively less interference. Compared to happy and neutral moods, when anxious, participants showed reduced interference when colour isolated targets from flankers, but showed more interference when flankers and targets were the same colour. This pattern reveals that the anxious mood caused these individuals to attend to the irrelevant feature in both cases, regardless of its benefit or detriment. In contrast, participants showed no effect of colour on interference when happy, suggesting that positive mood did not influence attention in feature space. These mood effects on feature-based attention provide a theoretical bridge between previous findings concerning spatial and conceptual attention.
Bipolar disorder (BD) is among the most impairing psychiatric disorders affecting children and ad... more Bipolar disorder (BD) is among the most impairing psychiatric disorders affecting children and adolescents, despite our best psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments. Cognitive remediation, defined as a behavioral intervention designed to improve cognitive functions so as to reduce psychiatric illness, is an emerging brain-based treatment approach that has thus far not been studied in pediatric BD. The present article reviews the basic principles of cognitive remediation, describes what is known about cognitive remediation in psychiatric disorders, and delineates potential brain/behavior alterations implicated in pediatric BD that might be targets for cognitive remediation. Emerging data show that cognitive remediation may be useful in children and adults with schizophrenia, ADHD, and anxiety disorders, and in adults with BD. Potential targets for cognitive remediation in pediatric BD include face processing, response inhibition, frustration, and cognitive flexibility....
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness with high healthcare costs and poor outcomes. In... more Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness with high healthcare costs and poor outcomes. Increasing numbers of youths are diagnosed with BD, and many adults with BD report that their symptoms started in childhood, suggesting that BD can be a developmental disorder. Studies advancing our understanding of BD have shown alterations in facial emotion recognition both in children and adults with BD compared to healthy comparison (HC) participants, but none have evaluated the development of these deficits. To address this, we examined the effect of age on facial emotion recognition in a sample that included children and adults with confirmed childhood-onset type-I BD, with the adults having been diagnosed and followed since childhood by the Course and Outcome in Bipolar Youth study. Using the Diagnostic Analysis of Non-Verbal Accuracy, we compared facial emotion recognition errors among participants with BD (n = 66; ages 7-26 years) and HC participants (n = 87; ages 7-25 years). Complementary analyses investigated errors for child and adult faces. A significant diagnosis-by-age interaction indicated that younger BD participants performed worse than expected relative to HC participants their own age. The deficits occurred both for child and adult faces and were particularly strong for angry child faces, which were most often mistaken as sad. Our results were not influenced by medications, comorbidities/substance use, or mood state/global functioning. Younger individuals with BD are worse than their peers at this important social skill. This deficit may be an important developmentally salient treatment target - that is, for cognitive remediation to improve BD youths&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; emotion recognition abilities.
Prominent theoretical models and existing data implicate interpersonal factors in the development... more Prominent theoretical models and existing data implicate interpersonal factors in the development and maintenance of suicidal behavior and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). However, no known study has yet used computerized behavioral tasks to objectively assess responses to interpersonal conflict/collaboration among teens engaged in NSSI or having made a suicide attempt. The current study, therefore, compared interpersonal functioning indexed by the Prisoner׳s Dilemma (PD) task among three mutually exclusive groups, adolescents (ages 13-17): engaged in NSSI only without history of a suicide attempt (n=26); who made a suicide attempt without history of NSSI (n=26); and typically developing controls (n=26). Participants also completed the Interpersonal Sensitivity Measure to assess their general sensitivity to/awareness of others׳ behaviors and feelings. No significant between-group differences were found in PD task performance; however, compared to typically developing control participants and those who had made a suicide attempt, the NSSI group reported significantly more stress during the task. Additionally, NSSI participants rated themselves as more interpersonally sensitive compared to both attempters and typically developing controls. Given the lack of knowledge about whether these groups either differentially activate the same circuitry during stressful interpersonal interactions or instead rely on alternative, compensatory circuits, future work using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging is warranted.
Background / Purpose: Cognitive and working memory deficits are persistent and are worsened by em... more Background / Purpose: Cognitive and working memory deficits are persistent and are worsened by emotional challenge in pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD). This is the first study to examine whether adolescents with PBD relative to healthy controls (HC) have altered regional functional connectivity in distributed brain networks that are engaged during working memory for emotional faces.Independent component analysis (ICA) methodology identified two temporally independent and functionally-connected brain networks that were engaged during a 2-back working memory task with angry and neutral faces. Main conclusion: Within an “affect evaluation and regulation network” PBD showed decreased functional connectivity relative to HC in emotion appraisal and regulation regions such as right amygdala, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), bilateral insula, and temporo-parietal regions, and increased functional connectivity in emotion evaluation regions such as the bilateral medial PFC and r...
Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Em... more Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Emotional states contribute to the spatial extent of attentional selection, with the spotlight focused more narrowly during anxious moods and more broadly during happy moods. In addition to visual space, attention can also operate over features, and we show here that mood states may also influence attentional scope in feature space. After anxious or happy mood inductions, participants focused their attention to identify a central target while ignoring flanking items. Flankers were sometimes coloured differently than targets, so focusing attention on target colour should lead to relatively less interference. Compared to happy and neutral moods, when anxious, participants showed reduced interference when colour isolated targets from flankers, but showed more interference when flankers and targets were the same colour. This pattern reveals that the anxious mood caused these individuals to att...
Abstract: Pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) rates have notably increased over the past three decade... more Abstract: Pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) rates have notably increased over the past three decades. Given the significant morbidity and mortality associated with BD, efforts are needed to identify factors useful in earlier detection to help address this serious public health concern. Sleep is particularly important to consider given the sequelae of disrupted sleep on normative functioning and that sleep is included in diagnostic criteria for both Major Depressive and Manic Episodes. Here, we examine one component of sleep—i.e., circadian phase preference with the behavioral construct of morningness/eveningness (M/E). In comparing 30 BD and 45 typically developing control (TDC) participants, ages 7–17 years, on the Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC), no between-group differences emerged. Similar results were found when comparing three groups (BD−ADHD; BD+ADHD; TDC). Consistent with data available on circadian phase preference in adults with BD, however, we found that B...
Introduction Pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) is a complex cyclical illness with episodes of mani... more Introduction Pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) is a complex cyclical illness with episodes of mania and depression, chronic inter-episodic symptoms of mood disturbance due to partial recovery, neurocognitive dysfunction, and a high prevalence of comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) [1]. We examined the functional connectivity of previously-identified resting state networks to investigate intrinsic network abnormalities that may represent PBD pathophysiology.
Behavioral and neuroimaging findings indicate that distinct cognitive and neural processes underl... more Behavioral and neuroimaging findings indicate that distinct cognitive and neural processes underlie solving problems with sudden insight. Moreover, people with less focused attention sometimes perform better on tests of insight and creative problem solving. However, it remains unclear whether different states of attention, within individuals, influence the likelihood of solving problems with insight or with analysis. In this experiment, participants (N = 40) performed a baseline block of verbal problems, then performed one of two visual tasks, each emphasizing a distinct aspect of visual attention, followed by a second block of verbal problems to assess change in performance. After participants engaged in a center-focused flanker task requiring relatively focused visual attention, they reported solving more verbal problems with analytic processing. In contrast, after participants engaged in a rapid object identification task requiring attention to broad space and weak associations, ...
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dis... more UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, Emotional influences on the scope of selective visual attention. by Wegbreit, Ezra Saul ...
OBJECTIVES: It is estimated that 2-4 million women are severely assaulted by partners each year. ... more OBJECTIVES: It is estimated that 2-4 million women are severely assaulted by partners each year. These women report a wide range of abusive acts that can cause mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs), that often result in the shearing and straining of axonal fibers, referred to as diffuse axonal injury (DAI). Surprisingly, almost no research exists on the effects of partner-related brain injury. In an exception, our previous work demonstrated that nearly 75% of battered women sustained partner-related brain injuries, and 50% sustained multiple partner-related brain injuries, the severity of which were associated with partner-abuse severity, cognitive functioning, and psychopathology (Valera & Berenbaum, 2003). Building on these results, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine the relationship between partner-related brain injuries, abnormalities in white matter integrity (possibly resulting from DAI), and cognitive functioning. METHODS: Twenty-two women with a history of bei...
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness that can have high costs for youths (<18 year... more Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness that can have high costs for youths (<18 years old) and adults. Relative to healthy controls (HC), individuals with BD often show impaired attention, working memory, executive function, and cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt to changing reward/punishment contingencies). In our study of youths and young adults with BD, we investigated 1) how cognitive flexibility varies developmentally in BD, and 2) whether it is independent of other executive function deficits associated with BD. We measured errors on a reversal-learning task, as well as spatial working memory and other executive function, among participants with BD (N=75) and HC (N=130), 7-27 years old. Regression analyses focused on the effects of diagnosis on reversal-learning errors, controlling for age, gender, IQ, spatial span, and executive function. Similar analyses examined non-reversal errors to rule out general task impairment. Participants with BD, regardless o...
Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Em... more Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Emotional states contribute to the spatial extent of attentional selection, with the spotlight focused more narrowly during anxious moods and more broadly during happy moods. In addition to visual space, attention can also operate over features, and we show here that mood states may also influence attentional scope in feature space. After anxious or happy mood inductions, participants focused their attention to identify a central target while ignoring flanking items. Flankers were sometimes coloured differently than targets, so focusing attention on target colour should lead to relatively less interference. Compared to happy and neutral moods, when anxious, participants showed reduced interference when colour isolated targets from flankers, but showed more interference when flankers and targets were the same colour. This pattern reveals that the anxious mood caused these individuals to attend to the irrelevant feature in both cases, regardless of its benefit or detriment. In contrast, participants showed no effect of colour on interference when happy, suggesting that positive mood did not influence attention in feature space. These mood effects on feature-based attention provide a theoretical bridge between previous findings concerning spatial and conceptual attention.
Bipolar disorder (BD) is among the most impairing psychiatric disorders affecting children and ad... more Bipolar disorder (BD) is among the most impairing psychiatric disorders affecting children and adolescents, despite our best psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments. Cognitive remediation, defined as a behavioral intervention designed to improve cognitive functions so as to reduce psychiatric illness, is an emerging brain-based treatment approach that has thus far not been studied in pediatric BD. The present article reviews the basic principles of cognitive remediation, describes what is known about cognitive remediation in psychiatric disorders, and delineates potential brain/behavior alterations implicated in pediatric BD that might be targets for cognitive remediation. Emerging data show that cognitive remediation may be useful in children and adults with schizophrenia, ADHD, and anxiety disorders, and in adults with BD. Potential targets for cognitive remediation in pediatric BD include face processing, response inhibition, frustration, and cognitive flexibility....
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness with high healthcare costs and poor outcomes. In... more Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental illness with high healthcare costs and poor outcomes. Increasing numbers of youths are diagnosed with BD, and many adults with BD report that their symptoms started in childhood, suggesting that BD can be a developmental disorder. Studies advancing our understanding of BD have shown alterations in facial emotion recognition both in children and adults with BD compared to healthy comparison (HC) participants, but none have evaluated the development of these deficits. To address this, we examined the effect of age on facial emotion recognition in a sample that included children and adults with confirmed childhood-onset type-I BD, with the adults having been diagnosed and followed since childhood by the Course and Outcome in Bipolar Youth study. Using the Diagnostic Analysis of Non-Verbal Accuracy, we compared facial emotion recognition errors among participants with BD (n = 66; ages 7-26 years) and HC participants (n = 87; ages 7-25 years). Complementary analyses investigated errors for child and adult faces. A significant diagnosis-by-age interaction indicated that younger BD participants performed worse than expected relative to HC participants their own age. The deficits occurred both for child and adult faces and were particularly strong for angry child faces, which were most often mistaken as sad. Our results were not influenced by medications, comorbidities/substance use, or mood state/global functioning. Younger individuals with BD are worse than their peers at this important social skill. This deficit may be an important developmentally salient treatment target - that is, for cognitive remediation to improve BD youths&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; emotion recognition abilities.
Prominent theoretical models and existing data implicate interpersonal factors in the development... more Prominent theoretical models and existing data implicate interpersonal factors in the development and maintenance of suicidal behavior and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). However, no known study has yet used computerized behavioral tasks to objectively assess responses to interpersonal conflict/collaboration among teens engaged in NSSI or having made a suicide attempt. The current study, therefore, compared interpersonal functioning indexed by the Prisoner׳s Dilemma (PD) task among three mutually exclusive groups, adolescents (ages 13-17): engaged in NSSI only without history of a suicide attempt (n=26); who made a suicide attempt without history of NSSI (n=26); and typically developing controls (n=26). Participants also completed the Interpersonal Sensitivity Measure to assess their general sensitivity to/awareness of others׳ behaviors and feelings. No significant between-group differences were found in PD task performance; however, compared to typically developing control participants and those who had made a suicide attempt, the NSSI group reported significantly more stress during the task. Additionally, NSSI participants rated themselves as more interpersonally sensitive compared to both attempters and typically developing controls. Given the lack of knowledge about whether these groups either differentially activate the same circuitry during stressful interpersonal interactions or instead rely on alternative, compensatory circuits, future work using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging is warranted.
Background / Purpose: Cognitive and working memory deficits are persistent and are worsened by em... more Background / Purpose: Cognitive and working memory deficits are persistent and are worsened by emotional challenge in pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD). This is the first study to examine whether adolescents with PBD relative to healthy controls (HC) have altered regional functional connectivity in distributed brain networks that are engaged during working memory for emotional faces.Independent component analysis (ICA) methodology identified two temporally independent and functionally-connected brain networks that were engaged during a 2-back working memory task with angry and neutral faces. Main conclusion: Within an “affect evaluation and regulation network” PBD showed decreased functional connectivity relative to HC in emotion appraisal and regulation regions such as right amygdala, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), bilateral insula, and temporo-parietal regions, and increased functional connectivity in emotion evaluation regions such as the bilateral medial PFC and r...
Recent research has suggested that when people are in a positive mood they show reduced attention... more Recent research has suggested that when people are in a positive mood they show reduced attentional selectivity and broadened attentional filters. Rowe, Hirsh, and Anderson (2007) investigated this effect by inducing happy and sad moods with happy or sad music while participants ...
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Papers by Ezra Wegbreit