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A wealth of past research has examined the relationship between low physiological arousal and violence or antisocial behavior. Relatively little research; however, has examined the relationship between low physiological arousal and psychopathic traits, with even less having been conducted with juveniles. The current study attempts to fill this gap by evaluating juveniles’ physiological arousal using resting heart rate and their levels of psychopathic traits. Results suggest that there is indeed an inverse relationship between resting heart rate and the affective traits of psychopathy (Uncaring, Callousness, and Unemotionality) as well as Thrill or Sensation Seeking in males. No significant relationship was found in females. Implications of the findings as well as study limitations and future directions are discussed.

There is a strong increase in the use of devices that measure physiological arousal through electrodermal activity (EDA). Although there is a long tradition of studying emotions during learning, researchers have only recently started to use EDA to measure emotions in the context of education and learning. This systematic review aimed to provide insight into how EDA is currently used in these settings. The review aimed to investigate the methodological aspects of EDA measures in educational research and synthesize existing empirical evidence on the relation of physiological arousal, as measured by EDA, with learning outcomes and learning processes. The methodological results pointed to considerable variation in the usage of EDA in educational research and indicated that few implicit standards exist. Results regarding learning revealed inconsistent associations between physiological arousal and learning outcomes, which seem mainly due to underlying methodological differences. Furthermore, EDA frequently fluctuated during different stages of the learning process. Compared to this unimodal approach, multimodal designs provide the potential to better understand these fluctuations at critical moments. Overall, this review signals a clear need for explicit guidelines and standards for EDA processing in educational research in order to build a more profound understanding of the role of physiological arousal during learning.

Interpersonal processes influence our physiological states and associated affect. Physiological arousal dysregulation, a core feature of anxiety disorders, has been identified in children of parents with elevated anxiety. However, little is understood about how parent-infant interpersonal regulatory processes differ when the dyad includes a more anxious parent. We investigated moment-to-moment fluctuations in arousal within parent-infant dyads using miniaturised microphones and autonomic monitors. We continually recorded arousal and vocalisations in infants and parents in naturalistic home settings across day-long data segments. Our results indicated that physiological synchrony across the day was stronger in dyads including more rather than less anxious mothers. Across the whole recording epoch, less anxious mothers showed responsivity that was limited to 'peak' moments in their child's arousal. In contrast, more anxious mothers showed greater reactivity to small-scale fluctuations. Less anxious mothers also showed behaviours akin to 'stress buffering' - downregulating their arousal when the overall arousal level of the dyad was high. These behaviours were absent in more anxious mothers. Our findings have implications for understanding the differential processes of physiological co-regulation in partnerships where a partner is anxious, and for the use of this understanding in informing intervention strategies for dyads needing support for elevated levels of anxiety.

Many affective computing studies have developed automatic emotion recognition models, mostly using emotional images, audio and videos. In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has been also used as a method to elicit emotions in laboratory environments. However, there is still a need to analyse the validity of VR in order to extrapolate the results it produces and to assess the similarities and differences in physiological responses provoked by real and virtual environments. We investigated the cardiovascular oscillations of 60 participants during a free exploration of a real museum and its virtualisation viewed through a head-mounted display. The differences between the heart rate variability features in the high and low arousal stimuli conditions were analysed through statistical hypothesis testing; and automatic arousal recognition models were developed across the real and the virtual conditions using a support vector machine algorithm with recursive feature selection. The subjects’ self-assessments suggested that both museums elicited low and high arousal levels. In addition, the real museum showed differences in terms of cardiovascular responses, differences in vagal activity, while arousal recognition reached 72.92% accuracy. However, we did not find the same arousal-based autonomic nervous system change pattern during the virtual museum exploration. The results showed that, while the direct virtualisation of a real environment might be self-reported as evoking psychological arousal, it does not necessarily evoke the same cardiovascular changes as a real arousing elicitation. These contribute to the understanding of the use of VR in emotion recognition research; future research is needed to study arousal and emotion elicitation in immersive VR.

BackgroundEmotion processing deficits have been identified as a critical transdiagnostic factor that facilitates distress after trauma exposure. Limited skills in identifying and labelling emotional states (i.e. alexithymia) may present on the more automated (less conscious) end of the spectrum of emotional awareness and clarity. Individuals with alexithymia tend to exhibit a disconcordance between subjective experience and autonomic activity (e.g. where high levels of subjective emotional intensity are associated with low physiological arousal), which may exacerbate distress. Although there is a robust link between alexithymia and trauma exposure, no work to date has explored whether alexithymia is associated with emotional response disconcordance among trauma-exposed adults.MethodUsing a validated trauma script paradigm, the present study explored the impact of alexithymia on emotion response concordance [skin conductance (Galvanic Skin Response, GSR) and Total Mood Disturbance (TMD)] among 74 trauma-exposed adults recruited via a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment clinic and student research programme.ResultsUnlike posttraumatic symptom severity, age, sex, participant type and mood (which showed no effect on emotion response concordance), alexithymia was associated with heightened emotion response disconcordance between GSR and TMD [F(1, 37) = 8.93, p = 0.006], with low GSR being associated with high TMD. Observed effects of the trauma script were entirely accounted for by the interaction with alexithymia, such that those with alexithymia showed a negligible association between subjective and physiological states.ConclusionThis finding is paramount as it shows that a large proportion of trauma-exposed adults have a divergent emotion engagement profile.

Increasing efforts toward the prevention of stress-related mental disorders have created a need for unobtrusive real-life monitoring of stress-related symptoms. Wearable devices have emerged as a possible solution to aid in this process, but their use in real-life stress detection has not been systematically investigated. We aimed to determine the utility of ecological momentary assessments (EMA) and physiological arousal measured through wearable devices in detecting ecologically relevant stress states. Using EMA combined with wearable biosensors for ecological physiological assessments (EPA), we investigated the impact of an ecological stressor (ie, a high-stakes examination week) on physiological arousal and affect compared to a control week without examinations in first-year medical and biomedical science students (51/83, 61.4% female). We first used generalized linear mixed-effects models with maximal fitting approaches to investigate the impact of examination periods on subjective stress exposure, mood, and physiological arousal. We then used machine learning models to investigate whether we could use EMA, wearable biosensors, or the combination of both to classify momentary data (ie, beeps) as belonging to examination or control weeks. We tested both individualized models using a leave-one-beep-out approach and group-based models using a leave-one-subject-out approach. During stressful high-stakes examination (versus control) weeks, participants reported increased negative affect and decreased positive affect. Intriguingly, physiological arousal decreased on average during the examination week. Time-resolved analyses revealed peaks in physiological arousal associated with both momentary self-reported stress exposure and self-reported positive affect. Mediation models revealed that the decreased physiological arousal in the examination week was mediated by lower positive affect during the same period. We then used machine learning to show that while individualized EMA outperformed EPA in its ability to classify beeps as originating from examinations or from control weeks (1603/4793, 33.45% and 1648/4565, 36.11% error rates, respectively), a combination of EMA and EPA yields optimal classification (1363/4565, 29.87% error rate). Finally, when comparing individualized models to group-based models, we found that the individualized models significantly outperformed the group-based models across all 3 inputs (EMA, EPA, and the combination). This study underscores the potential of wearable biosensors for stress-related mental health monitoring. However, it emphasizes the necessity of psychological context in interpreting physiological arousal captured by these devices, as arousal can be related to both positive and negative contexts. Moreover, our findings support a personalized approach in which momentary stress is optimally detected when referenced against an individual’s own data.

Despite the importance of emotion regulation in education there is a paucity of research examining it in authentic educational contexts. Moreover, emotion measurement continues to be dominated by self-report measures. We address these gaps in the literature by measuring emotion regulation and activation in 37 medical students’ who were solving medical cases using BioWorld, a computer based learning environment. Specifically, we examined students’ habitual use of emotion regulation strategies as well as electrodermal activation (emotional arousal) from skin conductance level (SCL) or skin conductance response (SCR), as well as appraisals of control and value and self-reported emotional responses during a diagnostic reasoning task in Bioworld. Our results revealed that medical students reported significantly higher habitual levels of reappraisal than suppression ER strategies. Higher habitual levels of reappraisal significantly and positively predicted learners’ self-reported pride. On the other hand, higher habitual levels of suppression significantly and positively predicted learners’ self-reported anxiety, shame, and hopelessness. Results also revealed that medical students experienced relatively low SCLs and few SCRs while interacting with Bioworld. Habitual suppression strategies significantly and positively predicted medical students’ SCLs, while SCRs significantly and positively predicted their diagnostic efficiency. Findings also revealed a significant, positive predictive relationship between SCL and shame and anxiety and the inverse relationship between SCL and task value. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Co-regulation of physiological arousal within the caregiver–child dyad precedes later self-regulation within the individual. Despite the importance of unimpaired self-regulatory development for later adjustment outcomes, little is understood about how early co-regulatory processes can become dysregulated during early life. Aspects of caregiver behavior, such as patterns of anxious speech, may be one factor influencing infant arousal dysregulation. To address this, we made day-long, naturalistic biobehavioral recordings in home settings in caregiver–infant dyads using wearable autonomic devices and miniature microphones. We examined the association between arousal, vocalization intensity, and caregiver anxiety. We found that moments of high physiological arousal in infants were more likely to be accompanied by high caregiver arousal when caregivers had high self-reported trait anxiety. Anxious caregivers were also more likely to vocalize intensely at states of high arousal and produce intense vocalizations that occurred in clusters. High-intensity vocalizations were associated with more sustained increases in autonomic arousal for both anxious caregivers and their infants. Findings indicate that caregiver vocal behavior differs in anxious parents, cooccurs with dyadic arousal dysregulation, and could contribute to physiological arousal transmission. Implications for caregiver vocalization as an intervention target are discussed.

The coordination and expression of cultural specific affective cues during speech production in a second language (L2) reflects pragmatic adaptation, which is a critical step toward learning and achieving broader pragmatic competence. Embodied cognition provides a framework for understanding how cognitive and emotional processes shape L2 expression. This study examined how immersive language experience influences pragmatic adaptation through the vocal expression of affect and physiological arousal in Chinese ESL learners. Acoustic analysis and electrodermal activity (EDA) measurements were used to assess affectively valenced word production in speakers with varying levels of immersive English experience. High-immersion speakers exhibited greater pitch, intensity, and duration variation, enhancing emotional expressivity. Low-immersion speakers showed constrained vocal patterns and significantly higher physiological arousal, likely due to increased cognitive demands and anxiety. These findings highlight the impact of L2 proficiency on affective language embodiment and the cognitive challenges faced by L2 learners. This study offers novel insights by considering a pictorial character-based language, broadening our understanding of emotion-language interaction. Findings have implications for second-language education, cross-cultural communication, and bilingual speech therapy.

Prospective longitudinal studies of idiopathic autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have provided insights into early symptoms and predictors of ASD during infancy, well before ASD can be diagnosed at age 2–3 years. However, research on the emergence of ASD in disorders with a known genetic etiology, contextualized in a developmental framework, is currently lacking. Using a biobehavioral multimethod approach, we (a) determined the rate of ASD in N = 51 preschoolers with fragile X syndrome (FXS) using a clinical best estimate (CBE) procedure with differential diagnoses of comorbid psychiatric disorders and (b) investigated trajectories of ASD symptoms and physiological arousal across infancy as predictors of ASD in preschoolers with FXS. ASD was not diagnosed if intellectual ability or psychiatric disorders better accounted for the symptoms. Our results determined that 60.7% of preschoolers with FXS met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fifth edition) (DSM-5) criteria for ASD using the CBE procedure. In addition, 92% of these preschoolers presented with developmental delay and 45.4% also met criteria for psychiatric disorders, either anxiety, ADHD, or both. ASD diagnoses in preschoolers with FXS were predicted by elevated scores on traditional ASD screeners in addition to elevated autonomic arousal and avoidant eye contact from infancy.