The SOBC network convened on January 10-11, 2018, for the Third Annual Meeting of the SOBC Research Network Steering Committee and External Scientific Panel.
Many SOBC researchers have measured more than one aspect of self-regulation. Johannes Haushofer from Princeton University measured three aspects of self-regulation, including self-efficacy, executive function, and temporal discounting. For more information about Dr. Haushofer’s interesting and ambitious project and measures, see the spotlight interview in this same newsletter. Similarly, Jun Ma and Leanne Williams study self-regulation in three domains: regulation of self-reflection, cognition, and emotion. Within each domain, they measure dysregulation using several approaches. In the case of sad emotion, for example, they measure its dysregulation via passive sampling (e.g., the negative valence of text words), neuroimaging (e.g., co-activation of the brain network of the dorsal anterior cingulate, insula, and amygdala), and measurement of negative affect during affective evocative virtual reality tasks.
Most comprehensively with respect to self-regulation, Lisa Marsch (Dartmouth College) and Russell Poldrack (Stanford University) administered 38 behavioral tasks and 23 self-reported questionnaires to over 500 participants to assess relationships among a wide array of self-regulatory facets. They then apply hierarchical cluster analysis to determine an ontology of self-regulatory abilities. Interestingly, they found that the top-level clusters divided clearly along the lines of self-regulation tasks versus questionnaires, an observation that other SOBC network members echoed with respect to the patterns of correlations emerging from their own datasets.
One interesting question is how researchers should best determine which putative mechanistic targets to try to change. The approach of Willoughby Britton and Eric Loucks from Brown University has been to identify the highest priority targets for mindfulness-based interventions by conducting systematic reviews about similar interventions’ effects in multiple domains, including emotion (e.g., emotion regulation), cognitive (e.g., attentional control), and self (e.g., self-compassion). They then measure each of these targeted constructs with a minimum of at least two assessment levels, such as peripheral physiology, self-report, behavior, or neurobiology.
Several SOBC researchers are attempting to harness the benefits of changing the same aspects of self-regulation but in different populations. Leonard Epstein (SUNY Buffalo) and Warren Bickel (Virginia Tech) aim to reduce temporal discounting by engaging episodic future thinking, thereby increasing people’s orientation toward the future. Similarly, Alison Miller (University of Michigan) also aims to use an episodic future thinking intervention to increase future orientation, but in this case with the goal of improving medical adherence among children. She takes a multi-prolonged approach to measuring self-regulation by obtaining measures from not only the target population of children but also their parents. In addition to established measures, she uses a novel task to measure episodic future thinking in which children are asked to describe in concrete language their feelings about an imagined future event such as details about a positive occurrence three months from now.
Two groups focused instead on primary target domains other than self-regulation. Amy Smith Slep and Richard Heyman (New York University) targeted interpersonal dynamics as their mechanism of behavior change. Although self-regulatory failure likely plays a secondary role in this area, their main aim is to reduce coercive dynamics in dyadic relationships for couples and for parents and their children. For Josh Smyth, David Almeida, and Martin Sliwinski (Penn State University), the domain of stress reactivity and stress resilience is the target of interest. They described three kinds of stress targets, presenting compelling evidence that it is important to consider not only the often-studied magnitude of a stress response (i.e., reactivity) and the rate at which that response decreases over time (i.e., recovery) but also how repeated stressors can add up over days (i.e., stress “pile-up”). They showed evidence that greater pile-up, in particular, is associated with reduced physical activity and poorer sleep quality. As in the domain of interpersonal dynamics, self-regulatory factors (e.g., emotion regulation failure) likely play a substantial role in modulating stress response targets as well.
For good reason, the SOBC network is largely focused on altering self-regulation to influence behaviors. We look forward to reporting on the results of the interventions on these mechanistic targets as SOBC projects progress to the next phase.
