Beth Fairfield | Università Di Chieti (original) (raw)

Papers by Beth Fairfield

Research paper thumbnail of Fighting apathy in Alzheimer's dementia: A brief emotional-based intervention

Psychiatry research, Jan 11, 2016

Lack of motivation, or apathy, is a clinically significant feature among dementia patients. The c... more Lack of motivation, or apathy, is a clinically significant feature among dementia patients. The current study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a brief emotional shaping intervention developed to reduce apathy and increase willingness-to-do in Alzheimer's Dementia patients. To this end, 26 Alzheimer patients diagnosed with apathy according to the Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES, Marin et al.,1991) and 26 healthy older controls performed an emotional shaping task intended to unconsciously foster willingness-to-do. Participants were randomly assigned to either a positive or a neutral conditioning situation. Results showed how the positively conditioned group was associated with improved willingness-to-do in both patients and controls compared to the neutrally conditioned group. Our findings suggest that unconscious emotional processing can be used to treat apathy symptoms and increase willingness-to-do in Alzheimer's Dementia.

Research paper thumbnail of Reality monitoring and resistance to forgetting under short delay intervals

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Apr 13, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Noradrenergic modulation of emotional memory in aging

Ageing Research Reviews, 2016

Interest in the role of the noradrenergic system in the modulation of emotional memories has rece... more Interest in the role of the noradrenergic system in the modulation of emotional memories has recently increased. This study briefly reviews this timely line of research with a specific focus on aging. After having identified surprisingly few studies that investigated emotional memory in older adults from a neurobiological perspective, we found a significant interaction between noradrenergic activity and emotional memory enhancement in older adults. This pattern of data are explained both in terms of a top-down modulation of behavioral processes (e.g., changes in priority and individual goals) and in terms of greater activity of noradrenergic system during aging. Altogether, both behavioral and genetic variations studies (e.g., Alpha 2 B Adrenoceptor genotype) have shown that healthy older adults are able to circumvent or minimize the experience of negative emotions and stabilize or even enhance positive emotional experiences. Future studies are highly warranted to better clarify the relationship between noradrenaline and emotional memories in the aging brain.

Research paper thumbnail of Source monitoring: The importance of feature binding at encoding

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 09541440601112522, Nov 8, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Facial Emotion Recognition in Bipolar Disorder and Healthy Aging

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2016

Emotional face recognition is impaired in bipolar disorder, but it is not clear whether this is s... more Emotional face recognition is impaired in bipolar disorder, but it is not clear whether this is specific for the illness. Here, we investigated how aging and bipolar disorder influence dynamic emotional face recognition. Twenty older adults, 16 bipolar patients, and 20 control subjects performed a dynamic affective facial recognition task and a subsequent rating task. Participants pressed a key as soon as they were able to discriminate whether the neutral face was assuming a happy or angry facial expression and then rated the intensity of each facial expression. Results showed that older adults recognized happy expressions faster, whereas bipolar patients recognized angry expressions faster. Furthermore, both groups rated emotional faces more intensely than did the control subjects. This study is one of the first to compare how aging and clinical conditions influence emotional facial recognition and underlines the need to consider the role of specific and common factors in emotional face recognition.

Research paper thumbnail of Emotional Meta-Memories: A Review

Brain Sciences, 2015

Emotional meta-memory can be defined as the knowledge people have about the strategies and monito... more Emotional meta-memory can be defined as the knowledge people have about the strategies and monitoring processes that they can use to remember their emotionally charged memories. Although meta-memory per se has been studied in many cognitive laboratories for many years, fewer studies have explicitly focused on meta-memory for emotionally charged or valenced information. In this brief review, we analyzed a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies that used different meta-memory tasks with valenced information in order to foster new research in this direction, especially in terms of commonalities/peculiarities of the emotion and meta-memory interaction. In addition, results further support meta-cognitive models that take emotional factors into account when defining meta-memory per se.

Research paper thumbnail of Aging and emotional expressions: is there a positivity bias during dynamic emotion recognition?

Frontiers in Psychology, 2015

In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in emotion regulation priorities i... more In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in emotion regulation priorities influence online dynamic emotional facial discrimination. A group of 40 younger and a group of 40 older adults were invited to recognize a positive or negative expression as soon as the expression slowly emerged and subsequently rate it in terms of intensity. Our findings show that older adults recognized happy expressions faster than angry ones, while the direction of emotional expression does not seem to affect younger adults' performance. Furthermore, older adults rated both negative and positive emotional faces as more intense compared to younger controls. This study detects age-related differences with a dynamic online paradigm and suggests that different regulation strategies may shape emotional face recognition.

Research paper thumbnail of Montefinese et al_Affective Norms_Database

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation of the motor cortex on prefrontal cortex activation during a neuromuscular fatigue task: an fNIRS study

Advances in experimental medicine and biology, 2013

This study investigated whether manipulation of motor cortex excitability by transcranial direct ... more This study investigated whether manipulation of motor cortex excitability by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) modulates neuromuscular fatigue and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-derived prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation. Fifteen healthy men (27.7 ± 8.4 years) underwent anodal (2 mA, 10 min) and sham (2 mA, first 30 s only) tDCS delivered to the scalp over the right motor cortex. Subjects initially performed a baseline sustained submaximal (30 % maximal voluntary isometric contraction, MVC) isometric contraction task (SSIT) of the left elbow flexors until task failure, which was followed 50 min later by either an anodal or sham treatment condition, then a subsequent posttreatment SSIT. Endurance time (ET), torque integral (TI), and fNIRS-derived contralateral PFC oxygenated (O2Hb) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin concentration changes were determined at task failure. Results indicated that during the baseline and posttreatment SSIT, there were no signifi...

Research paper thumbnail of This is a Preprint Version of

Research paper thumbnail of Falsi ricordi in schizofrenia? Uno studio sull’inflazione immaginativa

Research paper thumbnail of Commentary: Spacing as the friend of both memory and induction in young and older adults

Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of Deficit di binding nella working memory: uno studio preliminare in pazienti affetti da schizofrenia

Research paper thumbnail of The modulating role of ADRA2B in emotional working memory: Attending the negative but remembering the positive

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 2016

Previous studies found that the ADRA2B gene modulates early perception and attention. Here, we ai... more Previous studies found that the ADRA2B gene modulates early perception and attention. Here, we aimed to examine whether ADRA2B polymorphisms also influence emotional working memory and the willingness to implement behaviors (switching affective intonation) in order to avoid negative information, both considered indexes of cognitive-affective flexibility. We examined genotype data collected from 212 healthy females, 91 ADRA2B carriers and 121 non-carriers, and found that carriers showed a positivity bias in working memory. That is, carriers remembered a higher number of positive words compared to negative and neutral words. In addition, although carriers were more unwilling to switch intonation in order to avoid negative information, they showed better recognition memory for words read with a positive intonation. These findings suggest that deletion variants of ADRA2B may show greater levels of cognitive-affective flexibility compared to non-carriers.

Research paper thumbnail of Where did I put my keys?-a'we'intervention to promote memory in healthy older adults: a controlled pilot study

Research paper thumbnail of Is working memory affective in dementia of alzheimer's type?

Neuroscience Discovery, 2013

The aim of the present study was to examine whether patients with Dementia of Alzheimer's Type (D... more The aim of the present study was to examine whether patients with Dementia of Alzheimer's Type (DAT) show a working memory emotional enhancement effect. Methods: We used an affective version of the working memory operation span test that included negative and positive words as well as neutral ones (as in the classical version). Results: Results showed that while healthy older adults performed better with emotional compared to neutral words, emotional effects were nullified in DAT patients. Conclusions: Altogether, results indicate that DAT patients do not benefit from emotional cues when maintenance and manipulation of information in working memory are required.

Research paper thumbnail of Construct validity and reliability of the adult rejection sensitivity questionnaire: a comparison of three factor models

Depression research and treatment, 2014

Objectives and Methods. The aim of the study was to investigate the construct validity of the ARS... more Objectives and Methods. The aim of the study was to investigate the construct validity of the ARSQ. Methods. The ARSQ and self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and hopelessness were administered to 774 Italian adults, aged 18 to 64 years. Results. Structural equation modeling indicated that the factor structure of the ARSQ can be represented by a bifactor model: a general rejection sensitivity factor and two group factors, expectancy of rejection and rejection anxiety. Reliability of observed scores was not satisfactory: only 44% of variance in observed total scores was due to the common factors. The analyses also indicated different correlates for the general factor and the group factors. Limitations. We administered an Italian version of the ARSQ to a nonclinical sample of adults, so that studies which use clinical populations or the original version of the ARSQ could obtain different results from those presented here. Conclusion. Our results suggest that the construct vali...

Research paper thumbnail of Motivated goal pursuit and working memory: Are there age-related differences?

Motivation and Emotion, 2014

The influence of motivated behaviors linked to achievement goal pursuit on age-related difference... more The influence of motivated behaviors linked to achievement goal pursuit on age-related differences in working memory (WM) has not been extensively investigated. In this study, younger and older participants completed a classical 2-back working memory task that included different types of goal-relevant stimuli. In particular, in Experiment 1 we used euro banknotes as stimuli, whereas in Experiment 2 we used Neapolitan playing cards. In Experiment 3, we directly compared working memory performance for euros and Neapolitan playing cards. We chose stimuli to induce different motivated behaviors linked to the pursuit of achievement goals (e.g., mastery, self-referential vs. performance, normative-based) and to examine their effects on working memory performance. Results showed how older adults were able to recognize target stimuli as well as younger adults when stimuli were goal-relevant. However, Neapolitan playing cards produced a greater number of errors, especially in the older adults. Finally, in Experiment 4, the same pattern of results occurred when motivated behavior was promoted using a dispositional induction technique. Our results show that motivated behaviors evoked by qualitatively diverse achievement goals can modulate WM performance in aging.

Research paper thumbnail of Emotional Working Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease

International Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 2014

A number of recent studies have reported that working memory does not seem to show typical age-re... more A number of recent studies have reported that working memory does not seem to show typical age-related deficits in healthy older adults when emotional information is involved. Differently, studies about the short-term ability to encode and actively manipulate emotional information in dementia of Alzheimer's type are few and have yielded mixed results. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging evidence that points to a complex interaction between emotion modulation and working memory in Alzheimer's. In fact, depending on the function involved, patients may or may not show an emotional benefit in their working memory performance. In addition, this benefit is not always clearly biased (e.g., towards negative or positive information). We interpret this complex pattern of results as a consequence of the interaction between multiple factors including the severity of Alzheimer's disease, the nature of affective stimuli, and type of working memory task.

Research paper thumbnail of Does emotion modulate the efficacy of spaced learning in recognition memory?

Cogent Psychology, 2014

Memory for repeated items improves when presentations are spaced during study. Here, two experime... more Memory for repeated items improves when presentations are spaced during study. Here, two experiments assessed the so-called spacing effect on a yes-no recognition memory task using affective and neutral words. In Experiment 1, a group of participants was asked to orient their attention to semantic features of target words (deep semantic analysis) that were consecutively repeated or spaced, while another group was engaged in a graphemic shallow analysis of words (Experiment 2). The depth of word processing approach was meant to highlight the role of repetition priming mechanisms in the generation of spacing effects. We found that spacing effects occurred for both affective and neutral words (Experiment 1). However, following shallow analysis of words, the spacing effect was reduced for both affective and neutral words (Experiment 2). No differences were detected in terms of positive versus negative words. These results suggest that spaced learning operates when the to-be-remembered material is also affectively charged and that, under certain circumstances, it may enhance recognition memory as affective connotation does.

Research paper thumbnail of Fighting apathy in Alzheimer's dementia: A brief emotional-based intervention

Psychiatry research, Jan 11, 2016

Lack of motivation, or apathy, is a clinically significant feature among dementia patients. The c... more Lack of motivation, or apathy, is a clinically significant feature among dementia patients. The current study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a brief emotional shaping intervention developed to reduce apathy and increase willingness-to-do in Alzheimer's Dementia patients. To this end, 26 Alzheimer patients diagnosed with apathy according to the Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES, Marin et al.,1991) and 26 healthy older controls performed an emotional shaping task intended to unconsciously foster willingness-to-do. Participants were randomly assigned to either a positive or a neutral conditioning situation. Results showed how the positively conditioned group was associated with improved willingness-to-do in both patients and controls compared to the neutrally conditioned group. Our findings suggest that unconscious emotional processing can be used to treat apathy symptoms and increase willingness-to-do in Alzheimer's Dementia.

Research paper thumbnail of Reality monitoring and resistance to forgetting under short delay intervals

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Apr 13, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Noradrenergic modulation of emotional memory in aging

Ageing Research Reviews, 2016

Interest in the role of the noradrenergic system in the modulation of emotional memories has rece... more Interest in the role of the noradrenergic system in the modulation of emotional memories has recently increased. This study briefly reviews this timely line of research with a specific focus on aging. After having identified surprisingly few studies that investigated emotional memory in older adults from a neurobiological perspective, we found a significant interaction between noradrenergic activity and emotional memory enhancement in older adults. This pattern of data are explained both in terms of a top-down modulation of behavioral processes (e.g., changes in priority and individual goals) and in terms of greater activity of noradrenergic system during aging. Altogether, both behavioral and genetic variations studies (e.g., Alpha 2 B Adrenoceptor genotype) have shown that healthy older adults are able to circumvent or minimize the experience of negative emotions and stabilize or even enhance positive emotional experiences. Future studies are highly warranted to better clarify the relationship between noradrenaline and emotional memories in the aging brain.

Research paper thumbnail of Source monitoring: The importance of feature binding at encoding

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 09541440601112522, Nov 8, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Facial Emotion Recognition in Bipolar Disorder and Healthy Aging

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2016

Emotional face recognition is impaired in bipolar disorder, but it is not clear whether this is s... more Emotional face recognition is impaired in bipolar disorder, but it is not clear whether this is specific for the illness. Here, we investigated how aging and bipolar disorder influence dynamic emotional face recognition. Twenty older adults, 16 bipolar patients, and 20 control subjects performed a dynamic affective facial recognition task and a subsequent rating task. Participants pressed a key as soon as they were able to discriminate whether the neutral face was assuming a happy or angry facial expression and then rated the intensity of each facial expression. Results showed that older adults recognized happy expressions faster, whereas bipolar patients recognized angry expressions faster. Furthermore, both groups rated emotional faces more intensely than did the control subjects. This study is one of the first to compare how aging and clinical conditions influence emotional facial recognition and underlines the need to consider the role of specific and common factors in emotional face recognition.

Research paper thumbnail of Emotional Meta-Memories: A Review

Brain Sciences, 2015

Emotional meta-memory can be defined as the knowledge people have about the strategies and monito... more Emotional meta-memory can be defined as the knowledge people have about the strategies and monitoring processes that they can use to remember their emotionally charged memories. Although meta-memory per se has been studied in many cognitive laboratories for many years, fewer studies have explicitly focused on meta-memory for emotionally charged or valenced information. In this brief review, we analyzed a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies that used different meta-memory tasks with valenced information in order to foster new research in this direction, especially in terms of commonalities/peculiarities of the emotion and meta-memory interaction. In addition, results further support meta-cognitive models that take emotional factors into account when defining meta-memory per se.

Research paper thumbnail of Aging and emotional expressions: is there a positivity bias during dynamic emotion recognition?

Frontiers in Psychology, 2015

In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in emotion regulation priorities i... more In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in emotion regulation priorities influence online dynamic emotional facial discrimination. A group of 40 younger and a group of 40 older adults were invited to recognize a positive or negative expression as soon as the expression slowly emerged and subsequently rate it in terms of intensity. Our findings show that older adults recognized happy expressions faster than angry ones, while the direction of emotional expression does not seem to affect younger adults' performance. Furthermore, older adults rated both negative and positive emotional faces as more intense compared to younger controls. This study detects age-related differences with a dynamic online paradigm and suggests that different regulation strategies may shape emotional face recognition.

Research paper thumbnail of Montefinese et al_Affective Norms_Database

Research paper thumbnail of Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation of the motor cortex on prefrontal cortex activation during a neuromuscular fatigue task: an fNIRS study

Advances in experimental medicine and biology, 2013

This study investigated whether manipulation of motor cortex excitability by transcranial direct ... more This study investigated whether manipulation of motor cortex excitability by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) modulates neuromuscular fatigue and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-derived prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation. Fifteen healthy men (27.7 ± 8.4 years) underwent anodal (2 mA, 10 min) and sham (2 mA, first 30 s only) tDCS delivered to the scalp over the right motor cortex. Subjects initially performed a baseline sustained submaximal (30 % maximal voluntary isometric contraction, MVC) isometric contraction task (SSIT) of the left elbow flexors until task failure, which was followed 50 min later by either an anodal or sham treatment condition, then a subsequent posttreatment SSIT. Endurance time (ET), torque integral (TI), and fNIRS-derived contralateral PFC oxygenated (O2Hb) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin concentration changes were determined at task failure. Results indicated that during the baseline and posttreatment SSIT, there were no signifi...

Research paper thumbnail of This is a Preprint Version of

Research paper thumbnail of Falsi ricordi in schizofrenia? Uno studio sull’inflazione immaginativa

Research paper thumbnail of Commentary: Spacing as the friend of both memory and induction in young and older adults

Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of Deficit di binding nella working memory: uno studio preliminare in pazienti affetti da schizofrenia

Research paper thumbnail of The modulating role of ADRA2B in emotional working memory: Attending the negative but remembering the positive

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 2016

Previous studies found that the ADRA2B gene modulates early perception and attention. Here, we ai... more Previous studies found that the ADRA2B gene modulates early perception and attention. Here, we aimed to examine whether ADRA2B polymorphisms also influence emotional working memory and the willingness to implement behaviors (switching affective intonation) in order to avoid negative information, both considered indexes of cognitive-affective flexibility. We examined genotype data collected from 212 healthy females, 91 ADRA2B carriers and 121 non-carriers, and found that carriers showed a positivity bias in working memory. That is, carriers remembered a higher number of positive words compared to negative and neutral words. In addition, although carriers were more unwilling to switch intonation in order to avoid negative information, they showed better recognition memory for words read with a positive intonation. These findings suggest that deletion variants of ADRA2B may show greater levels of cognitive-affective flexibility compared to non-carriers.

Research paper thumbnail of Where did I put my keys?-a'we'intervention to promote memory in healthy older adults: a controlled pilot study

Research paper thumbnail of Is working memory affective in dementia of alzheimer's type?

Neuroscience Discovery, 2013

The aim of the present study was to examine whether patients with Dementia of Alzheimer's Type (D... more The aim of the present study was to examine whether patients with Dementia of Alzheimer's Type (DAT) show a working memory emotional enhancement effect. Methods: We used an affective version of the working memory operation span test that included negative and positive words as well as neutral ones (as in the classical version). Results: Results showed that while healthy older adults performed better with emotional compared to neutral words, emotional effects were nullified in DAT patients. Conclusions: Altogether, results indicate that DAT patients do not benefit from emotional cues when maintenance and manipulation of information in working memory are required.

Research paper thumbnail of Construct validity and reliability of the adult rejection sensitivity questionnaire: a comparison of three factor models

Depression research and treatment, 2014

Objectives and Methods. The aim of the study was to investigate the construct validity of the ARS... more Objectives and Methods. The aim of the study was to investigate the construct validity of the ARSQ. Methods. The ARSQ and self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and hopelessness were administered to 774 Italian adults, aged 18 to 64 years. Results. Structural equation modeling indicated that the factor structure of the ARSQ can be represented by a bifactor model: a general rejection sensitivity factor and two group factors, expectancy of rejection and rejection anxiety. Reliability of observed scores was not satisfactory: only 44% of variance in observed total scores was due to the common factors. The analyses also indicated different correlates for the general factor and the group factors. Limitations. We administered an Italian version of the ARSQ to a nonclinical sample of adults, so that studies which use clinical populations or the original version of the ARSQ could obtain different results from those presented here. Conclusion. Our results suggest that the construct vali...

Research paper thumbnail of Motivated goal pursuit and working memory: Are there age-related differences?

Motivation and Emotion, 2014

The influence of motivated behaviors linked to achievement goal pursuit on age-related difference... more The influence of motivated behaviors linked to achievement goal pursuit on age-related differences in working memory (WM) has not been extensively investigated. In this study, younger and older participants completed a classical 2-back working memory task that included different types of goal-relevant stimuli. In particular, in Experiment 1 we used euro banknotes as stimuli, whereas in Experiment 2 we used Neapolitan playing cards. In Experiment 3, we directly compared working memory performance for euros and Neapolitan playing cards. We chose stimuli to induce different motivated behaviors linked to the pursuit of achievement goals (e.g., mastery, self-referential vs. performance, normative-based) and to examine their effects on working memory performance. Results showed how older adults were able to recognize target stimuli as well as younger adults when stimuli were goal-relevant. However, Neapolitan playing cards produced a greater number of errors, especially in the older adults. Finally, in Experiment 4, the same pattern of results occurred when motivated behavior was promoted using a dispositional induction technique. Our results show that motivated behaviors evoked by qualitatively diverse achievement goals can modulate WM performance in aging.

Research paper thumbnail of Emotional Working Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease

International Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 2014

A number of recent studies have reported that working memory does not seem to show typical age-re... more A number of recent studies have reported that working memory does not seem to show typical age-related deficits in healthy older adults when emotional information is involved. Differently, studies about the short-term ability to encode and actively manipulate emotional information in dementia of Alzheimer's type are few and have yielded mixed results. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging evidence that points to a complex interaction between emotion modulation and working memory in Alzheimer's. In fact, depending on the function involved, patients may or may not show an emotional benefit in their working memory performance. In addition, this benefit is not always clearly biased (e.g., towards negative or positive information). We interpret this complex pattern of results as a consequence of the interaction between multiple factors including the severity of Alzheimer's disease, the nature of affective stimuli, and type of working memory task.

Research paper thumbnail of Does emotion modulate the efficacy of spaced learning in recognition memory?

Cogent Psychology, 2014

Memory for repeated items improves when presentations are spaced during study. Here, two experime... more Memory for repeated items improves when presentations are spaced during study. Here, two experiments assessed the so-called spacing effect on a yes-no recognition memory task using affective and neutral words. In Experiment 1, a group of participants was asked to orient their attention to semantic features of target words (deep semantic analysis) that were consecutively repeated or spaced, while another group was engaged in a graphemic shallow analysis of words (Experiment 2). The depth of word processing approach was meant to highlight the role of repetition priming mechanisms in the generation of spacing effects. We found that spacing effects occurred for both affective and neutral words (Experiment 1). However, following shallow analysis of words, the spacing effect was reduced for both affective and neutral words (Experiment 2). No differences were detected in terms of positive versus negative words. These results suggest that spaced learning operates when the to-be-remembered material is also affectively charged and that, under certain circumstances, it may enhance recognition memory as affective connotation does.