Cuing both positive and negative episodic foresight reduces delay discounting but does not affect risk-taking
- Authors: Bulley, Adam , Miloyan, Beyon , Pepper, Gillian , Gullo, Matthew , Henry, Julie , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Vol. 72, no. 8 (2019), p. 1998-2017
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- Description: Humans frequently create mental models of the future, allowing outcomes to be inferred in advance of their occurrence. Recent evidence suggests that imagining positive future events reduces delay discounting (the devaluation of reward with time until its receipt), while imagining negative future events may increase it. Here, using a sample of 297 participants, we experimentally assess the effects of cued episodic simulation of positive and negative future scenarios on decision-making in the context of both delay discounting (monetary choice questionnaire) and risk-taking (balloon-analogue risk task). Participants discounted the future less when cued to imagine positive and negative future scenarios than they did when cued to engage in control neutral imagery. There were no effects of experimental condition on risk-taking. Thus, although these results replicate previous findings suggesting episodic future simulation can reduce delay discounting, they indicate that this effect is not dependent on the valence of the thoughts, and does not generalise to all other forms of impulsive decision-making. We discuss various interpretations of these results, and suggest avenues for further research on the role of prospection in decision-making.
Longitudinal association between social anxiety disorder and incident alcohol use disorder : Results from two national samples of US adults
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Van Doorn, George
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Vol. 54, no. 4 (2019), p. 469-475
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- Description: This study assessed the association between subclinical social fears and a 12-month diagnosis of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) at baseline and the risk of incident Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) at follow-up, compared to those without subclinical social fears and a 12-month diagnosis of SAD. We performed an individual participant meta-analysis based on data from two national longitudinal surveys. Wave 1 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) was conducted in 2001–2002 in a sample of 43,093 adults and Wave 2 was conducted in 2004–2005 in 34,653 of the original respondents. Wave 1 of the National Comorbidity Survey was conducted in 1990–1992 in a sample of 8098 respondents and Wave 2 was conducted in 2001–2002 in 5001 of the original respondents. Binary logistic regression analyses were performed independently in each study and then the effect estimates were combined using random-effects meta-analysis. Neither subclinical social fears nor 12-month SAD at baseline were associated with incident AUD at follow-up. These findings conflict with reports of previous studies that a diagnosis of SAD is a risk factor for AUD in adults, and suggest that subclinical social fears are not associated with differential risk of incident AUD.
Measuring mental time travel : Is the hippocampus really critical for episodic memory and episodic foresight?
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , McFarlane, Kimberley , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Cortex Vol. 117, no. (2019), p. 371-384
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- Description: Mental time travel is an adaptive capacity that enables humans to engage in deliberate, prudent action on the basis of remembering past episodes (episodic memory) and simulating future scenarios (episodic foresight). This capacity has become a popular and rapidly growing topic of interdisciplinary research. Perhaps the most influential and frequently tested neuroscientific hypothesis in this domain is that the hippocampus is a hub in a critical neural network for mental time travel, support for which is now commonly assumed by most researchers in the area. In light of.recent findings revealing limitations with existing measures of episodic foresight, we critically evaluate the available evidence for this hypothesis and find that it is inconclusive. We suggest that this is due in significant part to the exclusive and widespread reliance on noisy verbal measures and discuss this case as an example of a more general issue pertaining to the measurement of episodic foresight. Accordingly, we suggest that an essential focus of future research should concern the development of objective measures that capture capacity differences by requiring people to put foresight not just into words, but into action. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Anxiety disorders and all-cause mortality : Systematic review and meta-analysis
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Bandeen-Roche, Karen , Eaton, William , Goncalves-Bradley, Daniela. C.
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Vol. 51, no. 11 (2016), p. 1467-1475
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- Description: PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies that examined the relationship between anxiety disorders, or clinically significant anxiety symptoms, at baseline and all-cause mortality at follow-up relative to control participants without clinically significant anxiety. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, PsycInfo, and CINAHL were searched through July 2015, along with manual searches of published reviews and forward and backward snowball searches of included studies. Studies were excluded if anxiety was not defined with a standardized instrument, or if participants were followed-up for 1 year or less. The initial search yielded 7901 articles after the removal of duplicates, of which 328 underwent full-text screening. RESULTS: Forty-two estimates from 36 articles were included in the meta-analysis with a total sample of 127,552 participants and over 11,573 deaths. The overall hazard ratio (HR) estimate of mortality in clinically anxious participants relative to controls was 1.09 (95 % CI 1.01-1.16); however, this was reduced after adjusting for publication bias (1.03; 95 % CI 0.95-1.13). There was no evidence of increased mortality risk among anxious participants derived from community samples (0.99; 95 % CI 0.96-1.02) and in studies that adjusted for a diagnosis of depression (1.01; 95 % CI 0.96-1.06). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that positive associations in the literature are attributable to studies in smaller samples, comorbid depression (or other psychiatric conditions) among participants, and possible confounding in medical patient samples followed-up for short durations.
Blood-injection-injury phobia in older adults
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Eaton, William
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Psychogeriatrics Vol. 28, no. 6 (2016), p. 897-902
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- Description: Background: This study aims to (i) estimate the prevalence of blood-injection-injury phobia (BIIP) diagnosed as present at any time during the life prior to the interview, with or without another Specific Phobia diagnosed as present during the 12 months prior to the interview, (ii) characterize types and frequencies of co-occurring fears, (iii) evaluate the association with chronic medical conditions and lifetime psychiatric comorbidity, and (iv) explore medical service use associations in a nationally representative sample of older adults. Methods: A sample of 8,205 older adults, aged 65 years or older, was derived from Wave 1 of the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). Results: The weighted lifetime prevalence of BIIP with and without 12-month Specific Phobia was 0.6% (95% CI: 0.4-0.8) and 4.2% (95% CI: 3.7-4.8), respectively, and these two groups ranked similarly in terms of sociodemographic, health, and psychiatric characteristics. BIIP most frequently co-occurred with other lifetime fears, and was positively associated with hypertension and lifetime history of anxiety and personality disorders after controlling for sociodemographic and psychiatric confounders. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that lifetime BIIP may bear mental and physical health significance in older adults. © 2016 International Psychogeriatric Association.
Episodic foresight and anxiety : Proximate and ultimate perspectives
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Clinical Psychology Vol. 55, no. 1 (2016), p. 4-22
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- Description: Objective In this paper, we examine the relationship between episodic foresight and anxiety from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that together they confer an advantage for modifying present moment decision-making and behaviour in the light of potential future threats to fitness. Methods We review the body of literature on the role of episodic foresight in anxiety, from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. Results We propose that anxious feelings associated with episodic simulation of possible threat-related future events serve to imbue these simulations with motivational currency. Episodic and semantic details of a future threat may be insufficient for motivating its avoidance, but anxiety associated with a simulation can provoke adaptive threat management. As such, we detail how anxiety triggered by a self-generated, threat-related future simulation prepares the individual to manage that threat (in terms of its likelihood and/or consequences) over greater temporal distances than observed in other animals. We then outline how anxiety subtypes may represent specific mechanisms for predicting and managing particular classes of fitness threats. Conclusions This approach offers an inroad for understanding the nature of characteristic future thinking patterns in anxiety disorders and serves to illustrate the adaptive function of the mechanism from which clinical anxiety deviates. © 2015 The British Psychological Society.
Clinical significance of worry and physical symptoms in late-life generalized anxiety disorder
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Pachana, Nancy
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry Vol. 30, no. 12 (2015), p. 1186-1194
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- Description: Objective Worry is a hallmark feature of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, age-related changes in symptom presentation raise questions about the clinical significance of these symptom clusters in later life. The aim of this study was to explore the relative contribution of worry and physical symptom frequency to clinical significance associated with late-life GAD. Methods A sample of 637 self-reported worriers (aged 65 years and older) was extracted from Wave 1 of the National Epidemiological Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions. Results Consistent with previous findings, we observed reductions in worry frequency and increases in physical symptom frequency with increasing age of participants. Physical symptoms, but not worry symptoms, distinguished older adults with clinical and sub-threshold GAD. Whereas physical symptom count was associated with distress, occupational, and functional disability, worry count was only associated with distress. Conclusions Among self-reported worriers, worry frequency provides limited clinical utility over and above physical symptom frequency. These findings suggest that physical symptom frequency may become an increasingly important feature of GAD in later life. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The effects of declining functional abilities in dementia patients and increases in psychological distress on caregiver burden over a one-year period
- Authors: Razani, Jill , Corona, Roberto , Quilici, Jill , Matevosyan, Adelina , Funes, Cynthia , Larco, Andrea , Miloyan, Beyon , Avila, Justina , Chang, Julia , Goldberg, Hope , Lu, Po
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Clinical Gerontologist Vol. 37, no. 3 (2014), p. 235-252
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- Description: The degree to which changes in caregiver burden over a one-year period can be predicted by functioning of dementia patients and caregiver psychological stress was examined. The Direct Assessment of Functional Status (DAFS) was administered to 44 patients and the Caregiver Burden Inventory and the Brief Symptom Inventory were administered to their next-of-kin caregivers. All patients and caregivers were assessed at baseline and again in approximately one year with the same measures. Hierarchical regression revealed that baseline patient functioning predicted overall changes in caregiver burden, but that increases in psychological symptoms of caregivers such as depression, anxiety, and hostility were the best predictors for specific types of increased caregiver burden, such as social, developmental, or physical burden. These results suggest that interventions should target reduction of particular psychological symptoms in order to reduce caregiver burden over time.
The future is here : A review of foresight systems in anxiety and depression
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Pachana, Nancy , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Cognition and Emotion Vol. 28, no. 5 (2014), p. 795-810
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- Description: Cognitive models of anxiety and depression have long suggested a central role for future-oriented thinking in these disorders. Experimental studies suggest that anxiety and depression are characterised by distinct future-oriented thinking profiles, and that these profiles are markedly different from those of asymptomatic adults. In this paper, we review these profiles and propose two explanatory models marked by two different neurocognitive systems. The Reconstructive Memory Model emphasises a role for emotionally driven learning and retrieval in episodic foresight (i.e., the construction of future-oriented scenarios), and the Valuation Model proposes that an overweighing of risk and uncertainty estimates can be invoked to explain the future-oriented thought patterns. We consider the effectiveness of interventions aimed at altering such thought patterns. We suggest that future research aimed at elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of future-oriented thinking in anxiety and depression can play an important role in advancing development of effective biological and psychosocial interventions for these disorders.
Aspects of attention predict real-world task performance in Alzheimer's Disease
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Razani, Jill , Larco, Andrea , Avila, Justina , Chung, Julia
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Applied Neuropsychology Vol. 20, no. 3 (2013), p. 203-210
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- Description: More research is needed to examine the relationship between specific neuropsychological functions and observation-based daily activity tests in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Fifty-six patients with AD were administered tests of attention and processing speed and an observation-based activities-of-daily-living (ADL) task. Complex shortterm attention capacity best predicted real-world task performance, accounting for several domains of ADL functioning. These results suggest that complex attention requiring working-memory systems, but not simple attention or processing speed, account for moderate portions of variability in daily task performance. These results may aid in understanding the attentional processes required for performing daily activities and can be useful to health care professionals in treatment planning. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.