Abstracts of the Week

Curated by Ellen Yates

This week’s abstracts explore how emotional signals are processed in the brain, from emojis in digital communication to dissociation and unconscious face perception.

In Scientific Reports, Stoianov et al. (2026) examine how emojis influence visual word recognition. Using behavioral and electrophysiological measures, the authors found that clearly visible positive emojis facilitated responses and modulated early and late neural activity. When conscious awareness of the emojis was suppressed, this positivity advantage disappeared, while negative emojis continued to produce early neural responses. The findings suggest that positive emotional cues depend on conscious awareness to shape behavior, whereas negative cues may influence processing even under limited awareness.
Stoianov, D., Beyersmann, E., Kemp, N., Wegener, S., & Popov, S. (2026). The Impact of Awareness on Affective Emoji Priming in Visual Word Recognition. Scientific Reports, 16:631.

A study by Heekerens et al. (2026) in Clinical Psychological Science revisits a long-standing question in trauma and personality research: whether dissociation functions as a form of emotion regulation. Combining experience-sampling data from daily life with physiological measures during a laboratory stress task, the authors found that dissociation closely tracked moments of negative affect but did not reduce distress or reliably alter physiological responses. These findings challenge the assumption that dissociation serves a regulatory function and instead suggest it may reflect a maladaptive response to distress.
Heekerens, J. B., et al. (2026). Does dissociation have an emotion-regulation function? Evidence from daily life and the laboratory. Clinical Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026251396803

Finally, Ishida and Mori (2026) examine how gaze direction influences unconscious face perception using a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm. Surprisingly, faces with slightly downward gazes were detected more quickly than faces with direct or horizontally averted gazes, although participants were less accurate at identifying the gaze direction. These findings suggest that subtle variations in gaze orientation may shape early visual awareness in ways that are not yet fully understood.
Ishida, M., & Mori, M. (2026). Enhanced awareness of faces with slight downwards gazes in the breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm. Cognitive Processing, 27(1), 83–92.

Together, these papers highlight how emotional signals—whether conveyed through digital symbols, internal psychological states, or subtle facial cues—shape perception, attention, and awareness.

Abstracts of the Week.

This week’s abstracts come from Yakiesha, who has been exploring recent work on emotion regulation and dysregulation, as well as stress in institutional contexts. Below are three papers that caught her attention.

Two recent neuroimaging studies examine how trauma timing and trauma type shape emotion regulation in PTSD.

In Human Brain Mapping, Liu et al. (2025) investigate how the age at trauma onset influences neural activation during flexible emotion regulation. Using fMRI, the authors found that childhood and adulthood trauma were associated with greater activation in regions including the thalamus and frontal cortex, while adolescent trauma showed distinct neural patterns. The findings underscore the importance of trauma timing in shaping both behavioral and neural dimensions of PTSD.
Liu, S., et al. (2025). Trauma Timing and Its Impact on Brain Activation During Flexible Emotion Regulation in PTSD: Insights From Functional MRI. Human Brain Mapping, 46(14), e70346.

In Psychological Medicine, Guo et al. (2025) differentiate between relational (interpersonal) and nonrelational trauma PTSD using the Nested Hierarchical Model of Self. Their findings suggest relational trauma may disrupt top-down self-processing systems, while nonrelational trauma may amplify bottom-up threat detection processes. The study highlights how trauma type may require tailored intervention approaches.
Guo, Y., et al. (2025). Neural mechanisms underlying implicit emotion regulation deficit in relational and nonrelational trauma PTSD. Psychological Medicine, 55, e248.

Shifting from neural mechanisms to institutional stress, Griffiths et al. (2025) take a biometric approach to examining physiological stress in child welfare workers. Across a 72-hour monitoring period, frontline workers averaged nearly 16 hours of physiological stress per day, with limited recovery time. The findings raise important questions about institutional environments and their impact on both professionals and the systems they support.
Griffiths, A., et al. (2025). A New Approach: Using Biometric Technology to Explore the Physiological Stress of Working in Child Welfare. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science, 10(3), 672–681.

Together, these studies reflect growing interest in how trauma and institutional contexts shape emotional and physiological regulation across systems.

Newest Lab Member.

We are excited to welcome Lux to the Trauma & Affective Psychophysiology Lab.

Lux is a junior studying psychology at Eugene Lang College at The New School, with research interests in institutional betrayal and adolescent trauma. She is particularly interested in how failures within protective systems can shape long-term mental health outcomes for young people.

We look forward to her contributions to the lab’s work examining trauma across relational and institutional contexts.

Learn more about Lux and her work on our Team page.