Attentional bias (AB) refers to increased attention or salience to certain stimuli. Women who use hormonal contraception only have a greater accuracy and response bias for sad expressions, which...Show moreAttentional bias (AB) refers to increased attention or salience to certain stimuli. Women who use hormonal contraception only have a greater accuracy and response bias for sad expressions, which can be linked to depression symptoms and diagnoses. It was hypothesized that women who use hormonal contraception have a larger AB towards negative emotions in comparison to naturally cycling women. Healthy female volunteers (N=266) participated in an online AB task, the emotional dot-probe task including the facial expressions: neutral, angry, happy, and fearful faces. Additionally, the participants filled in the DASS-21 questionnaire, where this study utilized the depression subscale. AB was quantified as the difference between reaction times to incongruent and congruent trials. A significant AB was found in this online set-up. The naturally cycling women group showed a stronger AB in comparison to the hormonal contraception users. This effect was independent of emotion. Even though no significant effect of depression was found and no correlation between AB and depression was found, there was a trend for the naturally cycling women group to score higher on depressive symptoms, which may contribute to the higher AB in this group. The contradictory results may be clarified by the fact that, compared to naturally cycling women, hormonal contraception users experience less variation in mood during the menstrual cycle and there is less negative mood throughout the menstrual period. By comparing these groups, these findings contribute to increasing evidence of research examining the use of hormonal contraception and the influence it may have on mood.Show less
As previous studies show a positive relationship between present time orientation and psychological well-being, the purpose of the current within-subjects study is to examine whether a present time...Show moreAs previous studies show a positive relationship between present time orientation and psychological well-being, the purpose of the current within-subjects study is to examine whether a present time orientation, and otherwise mindfulness, can be found in word use of suicidal musicians over time. Fewer words referring to the present, compared to the past and the future were expected. Moreover, a decrease in the use of present time words, and an increase in the use of past and future time words, closer to the moment of suicide, was expected. The different means of the time categories were calculated with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used to test for differences in these means. To test for change over time in the time categories, the Kendall’s Tau B correlation coefficients were used. Present time orientation (M = 8.449) had a mean greater than both the mean of past time orientation (M = 2.308) and the future time orientation (M = 1.500). Moreover, future time orientation had a mean greater than past time orientation. I found that these differences were statistically significant. There was a significant decrease in words referring to the past (τb = -.113, p = .005) and a non-significant decrease in words referring to the future (τb = -.071, p = .081). Lastly, there was a significant decrease in words referring to the present (τb = -.153, p < .001). The finding of a decrease in present time, and the finding of less words referring to the future, compared to the past, are in line with previous studies on this topic. It is concluded that fewer words referring to the future, compared to the past and present, and a decrease in present time words over time can be an indication of suicide risk.Show less
