Check out the recent experience sampling research from February! Articles are organized by topic.
- Adolescent Studies
- Alcohol & Drugs
- Diet & Nutrition
- General Psychological Topics
- Medical Topics
- Physical Activity
- Psychopathy
- Smoking Cessation
- Statistics/Methodology
Adolescent Studies
Sleep duration moderates the association between insula activation and risky decisions under stress in adolescents and adults.
This daily diary study monitored participants’ daily stress and sleep duration; they also had two fMRIs while completing a risky decision-making task each time. Researchers found that more sleep was associated with fewer risks during high stress and longer sleep duration was also associated with better functional coupling between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the attenuated anterior insula.
Alcohol & Drugs
In this experience sampling study, 68 participants recorded their sleep quality, negative affect, positive affect, and craving of prescription drugs for about 9 days. They found that days of lower sleep quality had greater craving; poor sleep quality was associated with lower positive affect, which was associated with greater craving.
For this ten day daily diary study, 77 participants reported their intention to use alcohol and their alcohol consumption. They found that there was a strong positive correlation between self-reported alcohol use and intentions to drink. Additionally, participants high in impulsivity were not found to be more likely to engage in unplanned drinking.
In this EMA study, alcohol use, mood, and coping motives were monitored in 257 young adults for seven days. They found that individuals with high internalizing symptoms felt greater mood benefits while drinking and that alcohol does have an impact on mood in young adults.
This EMA study analyzed aripiprazole and its effect on craving in cocaine relapse prevention. They found that aripiprazole delayed relapse, but reported craving was higher. Additionally, they had the stop the trial because so few participants remained abstinent.
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This study implemented cue-reactivity EMA to monitor alcohol use, cigarette craving, and stress reactivity in adult smokers for two weeks. They found that alcohol use was related to increased cigarette craving and stress reactivity, and alcohol use may increase risk of smoking relapse.
Diet & Nutrition
This ambulatory assessment followed 77 healthy young adults 5 times a day for 4 days. They monitored eating, drinking, and momentary wellbeing. Additionally, a saliva sample was also obtained with each survey. Researchers found that momentary wellbeing improved after the consumption of juice, coffee, and alcohol. Eating a snack also predicted lower fatigue levels.
Contextual factors associated with eating in the absence of hunger among adults with obesity.
For this EMA study, 50 obese adults recorded their eating and relevant environmental, perceptual, and emotional correlates for 2 weeks. They found that about 21% of the eating episodes occurred in the absence of hunger, and 70% of the individuals reported at least one eating in the absence of hunger episode. This suggests that eating in the absence of hunger might be a target for reducing food intake.
In this study, 64 adults reported their snacking behavior and inhibitory control via a Go/No-Go test for seven days. They found that poorer inhibitory control resulted in a 25.67% increased chance of snacking in the following hour, and inhibitory control is a driver of snacking in everyday life.
General Psychological Topics
Effects-Driven Participatory Design: Learning from Sampling Interruptions.
This study used the experience sampling method to analyze participatory design of electronic whiteboards at a Danish hospital. The hospital hoped to reduce the number of phone calls necessary to coordinate work because those phone calls were viewed as unnecessary interruptions. Researchers found that the whiteboards did not substantially reduce the number of phone calls, but they also found that ESM was a good tool for gathering in-situ reflection.
Researchers used experience sampling to study mindfulness as a dynamic process in time and context for this study. Eighty-two adults completed a one month mindfulness-training intervention and responded to prompts about mindfulness, decentering, and emotional experience throughout the programs. They found that participants became more mindful and decentered in daily living and meditative states, while there was also a significant association between mindfulness and decentering.
This study implemented experience sampling to examine the frequency of anger, reliance on social expression of anger, and whether or not those variables predict changes in depression symptoms. They found that a heavy reliance on social expression predicted lower depression symptoms with infrequent anger, but predicted more depression symptoms with frequent anger.
Effort in emotion work and well-being: The role of goal attainment.
This experience sampling study followed 115 employees for 7 days in which they reported their social encounters, regulation of emotion, level of goal attainment, and momentary well-being. They found that after social interactions, regulatory effort predicted lower well-being, goal attainment predicted higher well-being, and goal attainment moderated negative effect of effort.
Now you have my attention: Empathic accuracy pathways in couples and the role of conflict.
This study analyzed three different daily diary studies that assessed two different empathic pathways in couples and their effect on negative moods. They found that there were trends between the different empathic pathways, gender, and conflict, which led them to conclude that studying empathic pathways and processes holds importance and value.
In this daily diary study, the influence of mindfulness, cognitive reappraisal, and emotion suppression on daily negative/positive affect was analyzed. They found that mindfulness was associated with higher PA and lower NA, emotion suppression was associated with lower PA and higher NA, and cognitive reappraisal was only related to PA.
This future mindfulness study will implement EMA to study 550 university students as they undergo mindfulness training and report well-being, psychological distress, coping, and more. They hope to find whether preventative mindfulness intervention can reduce distress.
Sleep quality in healthy and mood-disordered persons predicts daily life emotional reactivity.
This experience sampling study examined the relationship between impaired sleep quality and emotional reactivity to daily events to see if it was affected by unipolar mood disorders. They found that sleep difficulties were associated with relatively higher negative affect.
This daily diary study analyzed gratitude and anger in the workplace and tested the reasoning that individuals perceive organizations to be humanlike. They found that individuals responded with stable gratitude when they felt support from the organization, while episodic anger was related to daily supervisor interactional justice.
This study implemented descriptive experience sampling to analyze inner experience and its relation to brain activation. They found that this strategy is worthy of further examination and may result in high fidelity.
With a Little Help for Our Thoughts: Making It Easier to Think for Pleasure.
For this experience sampling study, participants rated what they had been thinking about and how easy it was to engage in intentional pleasurable thought. They found that intentional pleasurable thought was cognitively demanding, but thinking aids made it more enjoyable and easier for the participants.
Positive emotion, appraisal, and the role of appraisal overlap in positive emotion co-occurrence.
For this EMA study, various positive emotions and appraisal dimensions were assessed in daily life. They found that positive emotions’ overlap on relevant appraisals predicted their co-occurrence. Overall, they found that appraisals were important for accounting for positive emotions.
Medical Topics
In this EMA study, the impact of omega-3 fatty acid supplements on healthy adults was examined. Two hundred and seventy-two healthy volunteers with low intake levels of omega-3 fatty acids participated in a randomized placebo clinical trial for 18 weeks, while their negative affect and impulsivity were also measured via EMA. They found that moderate-dose supplementation for 18 weeks did not impact impulsive behaviors or affect.
For this EMA study, 310 patients with fibromyalgia answered prompts regarding pain, fatigue, mood, and sleep quality for seven days. They found that prior ratings of mood, pain, and fatigue were significant predictors of current pain, while sleep quality was not a predictor.
This experience sampling study analyzed 180 non-concussed college students for seven days to see how psychological, lifestyle, and situational factors influenced concussion like symptoms in healthy individuals. They found that there were a number of factors in daily life that influenced these symptoms, so doctors need to be careful when they use these symptoms to determine when an athlete is healthy and ready to play again.
Physical Activity
Momentary assessment of physical activity intention-behavior coupling in adults.
In this EMA study, 116 participants wore an accelerometer to track moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and responded to prompts regarding short term physical activity intentions. They found that only 16% engaged in ten minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity after indicating a short-term intention of doing so.
Psychopathy
This study used ambulatory assessment to monitor children with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Compared to a control group of healthy children, researchers found that children with SAD had a higher heart rate and electrodermal activity during the baseline, while they also had stronger cardiac and vascular sympathetic reactivity to moderate physical activation.
The everyday dynamics of rumination and worry: precipitant events and affective consequences.
In this experience sampling study, individuals with Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, co-occurring disorders, and no diagnosis answered prompts for one week regarding rumination, worry, positive/negative affect, and significant events. They found that rumination was susceptible to daily events and predicted decreases in positive affect and increases in negative affect.
This EMA study monitored women with bulimia nervosa and their dissociation, negative affect, and binge eating. They found that negative affect was higher during binge eating when participants had higher levels of average dissociation and when their momentary dissociation was greater than average.
This daily diary study examined the usage of Facebook by high anxiety and high avoidance participants. They found that participants with high avoidance spent more time on Facebook following days of relatively more conflict, while participants high in anxiety reported increased time on Facebook at night regardless of conflict levels.
This study implemented experience sampling methodology to study auditory hallucinations and cardiac autonomic regulation in 40 individuals with schizophrenia. They found that momentary increases in autonomic arousal, shown by decreases in vagal input, predicted increases in ESM-measured auditory hallucination severity.
This study utilized experience sampling to monitor individuals with either first-episode psychosis or an at-risk mental state to see how stress, threat anticipation, and aberrant salience were related to the intensity of psychotic experiences. They found that there were mediators between the effect of stress on psychotic experiences through affective disturbance.
Smoking Cessation
In this EMA literature study, researchers analyzed multiple reviews to see how a smoking cessation app could be designed and implemented most effectively. They found that smokers desire smoking cessation apps, positive affect is related to smoking cessation, short exercises can have enduring positive affect enhancements, and there is a need for novel smoking cessation support.
Statistics/Methodology
This paper discusses how modern assessment methods such as item response theory (IRT), computer adaptive testing (CAT), and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) could be integrated to improve psychological assessment. Reliability, precision, and efficiency are also analyzed.