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Substance use disorders are a common and treatable condition among pregnant and parenting people. Social, self, and structural stigma experienced by this group represent a barrier to harm reduction, treatment utilization, and quality of care. We examine features of research dissemination that may generate or uphold stigmatization at every level for pregnant and parenting individuals affected by substance use disorder and their children. We explore stigma reduction practices within the research community that can increase uptake of evidence-based treatment programs and prevent potential harm related to substance use in pregnant and parenting people. The strategies we propose include: (1) address researcher stereotypes, prejudice, and misconceptions about pregnant and parenting people with substance use disorder; (2) engage in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations that engage with researchers who have lived experience in substance use; (3) use community-based approaches and engage community partners, (4) address stigmatizing language in science communication; (5) provide contextualizing information about the social and environmental factors that influence substance use among pregnant and parenting people; and (6) advocate for stigma-reducing policies in research articles and other scholarly products.

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic's wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon-an event that hinges on human-to-human contact-we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger-not weaker-in its wake.

One of the most persistent health disparities is the underutilization of mental health services by people of color. Neither evidence-based treatments (universal focus) nor culturally adapted treatments (group focus) have reduced these disparities. We propose the personal relevance of psychotherapy (PROP) model, which integrates universal, group, and individual dimensions to determine the personal relevance of interventions. A cultural example of personal relevance among people of East Asian ancestry involves "face" (i.e., one's prestige and position in society), which may moderate treatment outcomes. Pragmatic intervention approaches focused on helping individuals cope with specific external problems, compared to managing a "personal" disease, can effectively "restore" face. Thus, social problem-solving interventions may be more personally relevant to many people of East Asian ancestry than are approaches that are internally focused. In addition, we posit that social neuroscience can offer unique opportunities above and beyond self-report measures when assessing the impact of PROP and the personal relevance of interventions for diverse populations. Our preliminary evidence upon testing this hypothesis indicated that among Asian Americans, exposure to problem-solving therapy content elicited significantly greater neural activity in brain areas associated with personal relevance compared to exposure to cognitive-behavioral therapy content. Identifying personally relevant interventions has the potential to reduce mental health disparities by increasing engagement with mental health services for diverse groups. The increased client engagement produced by personally relevant interventions also has the potential to make mental health services more effective for diverse groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The ability to inhibit unwanted responses is critical for effective control of behavior, and inhibition failures can have disastrous consequences in real-world situations. Here, we examined how prior exposure to negative emotional stimuli affects the response-stopping network. Participants performed the stop-signal task, which relies on inhibitory control processes, after they viewed blocks of either negatively emotional or neutral images. In Experiment 1, we found that neural activity was reduced following negative image viewing. When participants were required to inhibit responding after neutral image viewing, we observed activation consistent with previous studies using the stop-signal task. However, when participants were required to inhibit responding after negative image viewing, we observed reductions in the activation of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial frontal cortex, and parietal cortex. Furthermore, analysis of neural connectivity during stop-signal task blocks indicated that across participants, emotion-induced changes in behavioral performance were associated with changes in functional connectivity, such that greater behavioral impairment after negative image viewing was associated with greater weakening of connectivity. In Experiment 2, we collected behavioral data from a larger sample of participants and found that stopping performance was impaired after negative image viewing, as seen in longer stop-signal reaction times. The present results demonstrate that negative emotional events can prospectively disrupt the neural network supporting response inhibition.

ObjectiveResearch on eating relies on various indices (e.g., stable, momentary, neural) to accurately reflect food-related reactivity (e.g., disinhibition) and regulation (e.g., restraint) outside the laboratory. The degree to which they differentially predict real-world consumption remains unclear. Further, the predictive validity of these indices might vary depending on whether an individual is actively restricting intake.MethodsWe assessed food craving reactivity and regulation in 46 healthy participants (30 women, 18-30 years) using standard measurements in three modalities: a) self-reported (stable) traits using surveys popular in the eating literature, and b) momentary craving ratings and c) neural activation using aggregated functional magnetic resonance imaging data gathered during a food reactivity-and-regulation task. We then used these data to predict variance in real-world consumption of craved energy-dense "target" foods across 2 weeks among normal-weight participants randomly assigned to restrict or monitor target food intake.ResultsThe predictive validity of four indices varied significantly by restriction. When participants were not restricting intake, momentary (B = 0.21, standard error [SE] = 0.05) and neural (B = 0.08, SE = 0.04) reactivity positively predicted consumption, and stable (B = -0.22, SE = 0.05) and momentary (B = -0.24, SE = 0.05) regulation negatively predicted consumption. When restricting, stable (B = 0.36, SE = 0.12) and neural (B = 0.51, SE = 0.12) regulation positively predicted consumption.ConclusionsCommonly-used indices of regulation and reactivity differentially relate to an ecologically-valid eating measurement, depending on the presence of restriction goals, and thus have strong implications for predicting real-world behaviors.

Craving of unhealthy food is a common target of self-regulation, but the neural systems underlying this process are understudied. In this study, participants used cognitive reappraisal to regulate their desire to consume idiosyncratically craved or not craved energy-dense foods, and neural activity during regulation was compared with each other and with the activity during passive viewing of energy-dense foods. Regulation of both food types elicited activation in classic top-down self-regulation regions including the dorsolateral prefrontal, inferior frontal, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices. This main effect of regulation was qualified by an interaction, such that activation in these regions was significantly greater during reappraisal of craved (versus not craved) foods and several regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal, inferior frontal, medial frontal, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices, were uniquely active during regulation of personally craved foods. Body mass index significantly negatively correlated with regulation-related activation in the right dorsolateral PFC, thalamus, and bilateral dorsal ACC and with activity in nucleus accumbens during passive viewing of craved (vs. neutral, low-energy density) foods. These results suggest that several of the brain regions involved in the self-regulation of food craving are similar to other kinds of affective self-regulation and that others are sensitive to the self-relevance of the regulation target.

The human reward system is sensitive to both social (e.g., validation) and non-social rewards (e.g., money) and is likely integral for relationship development and reputation building. However, data is sparse on the question of whether implicit social reward processing meaningfully contributes to explicit social representations such as trust and attachment security in pre-existing relationships. This event-related fMRI experiment examined reward system prediction-error activity in response to a potent social reward-social validation-and this activity's relation to both attachment security and trust in the context of real romantic relationships. During the experiment, participants' expectations for their romantic partners' positive regard of them were confirmed (validated) or violated, in either positive or negative directions. Primary analyses were conducted using predefined regions of interest, the locations of which were taken from previously published research. Results indicate that activity for mid-brain and striatal reward system regions of interest was modulated by social reward expectation violation in ways consistent with prior research on reward prediction-error. Additionally, activity in the striatum during viewing of disconfirmatory information was associated with both increases in post-scan reports of attachment anxiety and decreases in post-scan trust, a finding that follows directly from representational models of attachment and trust.

Goal attainment relies in part on one's ability to maintain a cognitive representation of the desired goal (goal maintenance), monitor the current state vis-à-vis the targeted end state and remain vigilant for lapses in progress (performance monitoring), and inhibit counter-goal behaviors (response inhibition). Because neurocognitive studies have typically examined these three processes in isolation from one another, little is known regarding if and how they interact during goal pursuit. However, these processes frequently co-occur during online, real-world goal pursuit. The present study employed a novel task to investigate how goal maintenance, performance monitoring, and response inhibition interact with one another. We identified functional activations distinct to each of the processes that correspond to results of prior investigations. In addition, we report interactive effects between response inhibition and goal maintenance in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and between performance monitoring and goal maintenance in the superior frontal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus. Implications for studying the neural systems of in situ goals include the need for both experimental designs that distinguish between process, but also more complex, realistic tasks to begin to map interactions among these neurocognitive processes and how they are altered by the presence or absence of one another.