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Starting with evolutionary considerations, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of vocal emotion communication. On the production/encoding side, the effects of the physiological changes accompanying different emotions is described, highlighting the functional aspects of the acoustic patterns that are determined by emotion-antecedent appraisals and the consequent behavioural tendencies. Special efforts are made to examine the stability of the acoustic patterning for different emotions based on the available reports in the literature, with some attention to the underlying phonatory-articulatory mechanisms. A brief excursion examines the acoustic parameters characterizing emotions in singing. Next, the transmission of vocal signals from sender/encoder to receiver/decoder is briefly described and the literature on emotion inference by receivers (vocal emotion recognition) is reviewed. In this context, the use of path models to obtain a comprehensive investigation of the communication process as a whole is discussed and illustrated. The important issue of language and cultural differences in vocal emotion encoding and decoding is considered in the light of recent evidence. The discussion of applied aspects of the acoustic analysis of vocal emotion expression and recognition concludes the chapter. Specific attention is paid to the role of voice analysis in clinical diagnostics, for example in the case of depression, and for the detection of stress.

Language acquisition is a complex process that involves an interaction between learning mechanisms and the input to the child. An important component of infants’ input is infant-directed speech (IDS)—a unique speech register that caregivers use when talking to infants. IDS differs from adult-directed speech (ADS) in a variety of dimensions. This chapter examines empirical research on the acoustic properties of IDS and the role that IDS may play in supporting infant language learning. Taking the discussion of IDS function in language development to the next level, this chapter further discusses the underlying mechanisms of IDS to promote language learning and caregivers’ intentions to use this speech register. Theoretical and practical implications of this body of work are discussed and areas for future research are highlighted.

The acute evaluation and management of concussion are among the most complex and challenging injuries medical practitioners face. The variability in clinical presentation necessitates a systematic approach to the injury evaluation. The evaluation should include a thorough injury history and clinical examination that is supported by objective measures of mental status and motor control. The integration of all information should be used in making the clinical diagnosis.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common, symptomatically heterogeneous, neurodevelopmental disorder. It’s symptoms first appear early in life and evolve as the brain matures and reorganizes over the lifespan. Cognitive dysfunction is a key feature of adult ADHD and typically manifests as a dysregulation of executive control of attention, working memory, inhibitory control, and emotion regulation rather than as a defining deficit in a specific cognitive domain. The heterogeneity of presentation, changing clinical manifestations across development, and variability in functional impairment associated with ADHD contribute to the difficulty of obtaining a “snapshot” diagnosis using a single assessment or representative battery. Careful history-taking of information across raters and settings generally reveals a pattern of symptoms beginning in childhood. Manifested impairment required for diagnosis depends on a variety of supportive or mitigating versus contributory factors. In adulthood, persisted or untreated ADHD may predispose to a variety of other conditions, including low educational and/or academic attainment, decreased earning potential, substance use or abuse, parenting and marital problems, poor health practices, a variety of risky behaviors, and a variety of comorbid Axis I and Axis II psychiatric disorders. High-functioning adults who have not previously come to clinical attention may present for care because of academic underattainment, suboptimal performance in the workplace, or behavioral or mood dysregulation. In addition, ADHD may be discovered as part of a more comprehensive workup of other disorders. A range of psychosocial and psychopharmacological treatments are available; response is often good to excellent once the disorder is properly identified.

Aging trends worldwide raise awareness for the need to understand the impact of cognitive aging on the work lives and productivity of older adults. By confronting actual and perceptual challenges associated with cognitive aging, organizations can better support this vital workforce segment. This chapter describes the effects of aging on select aspects of cognitive functioning, and reviews research from laboratory and on-the-job studies to address how the performance of job tasks and other life activities may be affected. Various cognitive aging dimensions and their implications for job performance are discussed. In addition, methodological concerns and challenges associated with cognitive aging research are described, along with new directions for successful aging among late-career workers.

This chapter examines the role of psychologists in the rehabilitation of older adults. The chapter begins with a review of the changes expected to take place in the population demographics of the United States and its impact on geriatric rehabilitation. The next section highlights core concepts in geriatric rehabilitation, as well as predictors of successful outcome. In the final sections of the chapter, psychologists’ roles within geriatric rehabilitation will be examined, with particular emphasis placed upon assessing cognitive impairment and depression, and specific interventions for treating depression in geriatric rehabilitation patients.

Chronic alcohol consumption has direct effects on the central nervous system and is among the leading causes of cognitive impairment and dementia. Alcohol-related dementia, Wernicke’s encephalopathy, and Korsakoff’s syndrome are among the most common forms of severe alcoholism-related neurological complications that are associated with widespread abnormalities in the brain, as well as impairments of multiple mental and emotional processes. Abnormalities have been consistently reported in association with Wernicke’s encephalopathy and Korsakoff’s syndrome, but alcohol-related dementia remains less well characterized. This chapter reviews the neurological and neuropsychological characteristics of these conditions, associated changes in the brain, potential molecular mechanisms involved, and some of the treatment or rehabilitation options. Future use of evidence-based diagnostic test-selection is advised to assist in refining differential diagnoses.

Alcohol is a psychoactive substance consumed worldwide and directly responsible or at least contributing to the development of diseases such as alcohol use disorder (AUD), cirrhosis, fetal alcohol syndrome, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. The past decades of research have revealed brain structural and functional abnormalities associated with mild to moderate cognitive impairment in recently detoxified AUD patients. Such functional compromise can be detectable even before the development of more chronic and severe neurological complications such as Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS) and alcohol-related dementia (ARD). Excessive alcohol consumption results in impairment in attention, executive functions, memory, visuospatial and motor skills, as well as deficits in metamemory processes, emotion recognition, and theory of mind abilities. As a consequence, early in abstinence, some AUD patients may not be cognitively able to benefit from therapies and could be at risk to relapse because cognitive impairment hampers efficient decision-making, motivation to change, and learning skills, in addition to challenging emotional and interpersonal interactions. This chapter describes the alcohol-related cognitive impairment observed in recently detoxified AUD patients. It then discusses potential cognitive recovery or persistence of these deficits with prolonged abstinence and their clinical implications in terms of treatment and abstinence or relapse. The specificity of the AUD cognitive and motor profile is contrasted with alcohol-related neurological complications (i.e., KS and ARD) and other neurocognitive disorders (i.e., Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia). Finally, structural and functional brain abnormalities as well as their relationship with neuropsychological impairments are presented.

The human voice is a highly regarded tool for conveying and interpreting emotions, essentially to relay one’s intentions while communicating with others. During social discourse, our autonomic nervous system evokes physiological changes within our body, allowing us to project our emotional state through alterations of vocal quality, pitch, frequency, and intensity. Our current understanding of the neural mechanisms involved in processing emotional information has come primarily through studying the neural response to visual stimuli, specifically facial expressions, by means of functional neuroimaging and lesion studies. Recently, there has been a surge of inquiry as to how emotions are perceived and processed via other sensory modalities, most notably, the auditory system. The aim of this chapter is to outline the neural structures that are known to be involved with processing vocal emotional information, and to address and discuss the inconsistencies found in both lesion and neuroimaging studies. Many of these discrepancies can be attributed to differences of experimental design, as the literature continues to expose a complexity to emotional processing that necessitates a number of valid controls.

Familiar voice recognition appeared on the earth 250 million years ago with the advent of frogs. Interestingly, air breathing and vocalization coemerged in the amphibian, as they do as first gesture in the human newborn, suggesting that the larynx was designed to serve these two functions with equal commitment. Establishing a repertory of familiar voices plays a crucial role across biological species, enabling identification of family, friend, and foe in the distance and at night. All voices, familiar and unfamiliar, transmit a cornucopia of data about the speaker, a capability which began simply and has flourished prodigiously in the human to include gender, age, size, sexual preference, socioeconomic and geographical background, mood, emotion, linguistic meanings, pragmatic communication, attitude, and psychiatric state. Considering that vocal information draws on an immense range of human behaviour, one can conclude that it takes a whole brain to produce and perceive a voice pattern.

In sport psychology, the relationship between competitive anxiety and performance has been one of the most debated and researched topics of enquiry. However, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are still unclear, as are the reasons why performance can sometimes be optimal (“clutch” performance) and sometimes far below what should be achieved (“choking”). The current chapter integrates research findings and models from the neuroscience, cognitive psychology, human movement science, and sport performance literature to offer a potential explanatory framework, especially with respect to self-paced, visually guided skills. The mediating role of visual attention is implicated, as it has been proposed to be central to both the top-down control of motor planning and the effects of anxiety on cognitive performance. Contemporary research testing the effects of anxiety on visual attention (particularly the quiet eye) in performance environments, and the efficacy of attentional training programs, are discussed.

Neuropathological examination is a key component in determining accurate diagnoses in both the postmortem and surgical settings. Postmortem analyses are necessary for clinicopathological correlation and for determination of frequent comorbid and subclinical pathologies, and neurosurgical specimens are increasingly important for molecular analysis and diagnosis of tumors, which inform treatment choices and prognosis. Neurodegenerative pathologies involve multiple and distinct brain regions, are age-dependent, and frequently co-occur. Well-developed staging systems have been developed for tau, β-amyloid, and Lewy pathologies and are used to establish threshold criteria for pathological diagnoses. The precise role of a given pathology on cognitive impairment will vary depending on pathological stage, comorbid pathology, and other factors such as cognitive reserve. A complete neuropathological workup for neurodegenerative disease requires the examination of multiple well-preserved regions with histochemical and immunohistochemical techniques optimized for paraffin embedded tissue. On the other hand, modern molecular techniques often require fresh or frozen tissue for accurate quantification of genetic and protein alterations. Overall, performing a complete neuropathological workup for accurate diagnoses and maintaining research quality tissue can be mutually beneficial and complementary processes.

Anhedonia—a loss of interest and pleasure in previously enjoyable activities—is one of the two cardinal symptoms of depression but has until recently been relatively neglected in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression. One way to better target anhedonia is to identify in the laboratory what psychological mechanisms drive the reduced pleasure experience in depression and then to develop in the clinic novel CBT techniques that address these mechanisms. This chapter reviews evidence evaluating how well classic CBT repairs anhedonia, provides an overview of recent experimental work characterizing anhedonia and exploring anhedonia maintenance mechanisms, and discusses implications for adapting CBT to better repair anhedonia. While the focus is on depression, implications for the transdiagnostic treatment of anhedonia are discussed.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a common, pervasive neurodevelopmental condition characterized by social impairments and restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests. Furthermore, frequently co-occurring physical and mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and epilepsy, contribute to the substantial burden on affected individuals, their family, and society. Consequently, the cost of ASD to society is greater than that of cancer, stroke, and heart disease combined. The cause of ASD is poorly understood, and there are currently no effective pharmacological treatments for its core symptoms. However, significant progress has been made in elucidating the molecular, genetic, neuroanatomical, and neurochemical associates of ASD, potentially paving the way for new treatment approaches.

As a field, behavior genetics has a long and often underappreciated focus on environmental and situational factors. This chapter describes the methodological details and empirical findings of this line of work, as well as what situation research can gain from behavior genetics and vice versa. Genetically informative designs offer tools to quantify the extent to which people actively create their situational experiences as opposed to randomly encountering them, and novel advances in situation research have the potential to clarify the scattered history of environmental variables in behavioral genetics. Current progress in personality psychology will be highlighted. Parallels between behavior genetics and personality work can be found both in terms of mechanisms (e.g., gene-environment correlation and gene × environment interaction contrasting with selection effects and person × situation effects) and explanatory pitfalls. Researchers interested in delineating the pathways from situations to behavior would do well to draw from and build upon work in behavior genetics.

Given the critical role that emotion dysregulation plays in many psychiatric disorders, there is a need to understand the biological underpinnings of emotion regulation deficits. This chapter opens with a brief overview of emotion regulation and constructs that fall under its broad umbrella. Next, it provides a brief primer of behavioral genetic research methods, summarizes existing literature regarding the heritability of emotional dysregulation, provides an overview of molecular genetic research methods, and reviews extant molecular genetic literature on emotion regulation. Finally, the chapter reviews the limitations of existing research and identifies promising areas of future inquiry that may clarify the underlying structure of emotion dysregulation and identify the role of common genetic loci in associations between emotion dysregulation and psychopathology.

We review behavioral and biometrical genetic research aimed at characterizing the nature of the familial aggregation of adolescent substance use and abuse. Twin and adoption studies have shown that genetic factors contribute to individual differences in adolescent substance use phenotypes. These studies have also documented the importance of the shared environment. Biometrical analyses of large samples of twins show that the contributions of genetic and shared environmental factors to substance use phenotypes change markedly between adolescence and early adulthood. The importance of genetic influence increases with age as the importance of shared environmental influences declines. Although only a small number of relevant genetic variants have been identified at this time, they show a similar pattern of increasing association with substance use behavior with age. A major question continues to be how genetic and environmental factors operate jointly to influence the development of complex behavioral phenotypes such as substance use.

Many important aspects of objects and scenes are fundamentally ambiguous in the retinal images. This ambiguity at the input stage to vision poses a fundamental challenge in perceptual organization as the competing interpretations invariably give rise to a bistable behavior in which the two competing percepts alternate over time. The most common approach to studying visual ambiguity is binocular rivalry, in which two different images are presented, one to each eye. Here we review the basic properties of binocular rivalry and discuss its links with perceptual organization. We also address the role of attention and top-down influences on the interpretation of visual ambiguity, as well as recent work highlighting the moderating influence of multisensory context on binocular rivalry.

This chapter reviews bipolar spectrum disorders (bipolar I, bipolar II, bipolar disorder not otherwise specified, and cyclothymic disorder) in childhood and adolescence. The history of the diagnosis in youth, including recent increased public and professional interest, and surrounding controversy is reviewed. Attention is given to prevalence, incidence, similarities and differences in presentation, course, and comorbidities among child, adolescent, and adult bipolar spectrum disorders. Assessment issues are reviewed, including longitudinal and multiinformant perspectives, instruments, strategies, tools, and assessment challenges with youth. Examples of symptom manifestation in youth are provided. Genetic, cognitive, neuroanatomical, psychosocial, and environmental risks for youth bipolar spectrum disorders are discussed. Evidence-based treatments reviewed include commonly prescribed mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics, alternative biological treatments, adjunctive psychotherapies, and complementary and alternative treatments. Finally, future directions for the study, assessment, monitoring, and treatment of youth bipolar spectrum disorders are discussed.