Improved emotional conflict control triggered by the processing priority of negative emotion.

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Yang, Qian; Wang, Xiangpeng; Yin, Shouhang; Zhao, Xiaoyue; Tan, Jinfeng; Chen, Antao

2016-04-18

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for emotional conflict resolution, and this control mechanism is affected by the emotional valence of distracting stimuli. In the present study, we investigated effects of negative and positive stimuli on emotional conflict control using a face-word Stroop task in combination with functional brain imaging. Emotional conflict was absent in the negative face context, in accordance with the null activation observed in areas regarding emotional face processing (fusiform face area, middle temporal/occipital gyrus). Importantly, these visual areas negatively coupled with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). However, the significant emotional conflict was observed in the positive face context, this effect was accompanied by activation in areas associated with emotional face processing, and the default mode network (DMN), here, DLPFC mainly negatively coupled with DMN, rather than visual areas. These results suggested that the conflict control mechanism exerted differently between negative faces and positive faces, it implemented more efficiently in the negative face condition, whereas it is more devoted to inhibiting internal interference in the positive face condition. This study thus provides a plausible mechanism of emotional conflict resolution that the rapid pathway for negative emotion processing efficiently triggers control mechanisms to preventively resolve emotional conflict.

Improving Understanding of Emotional Speech Acoustic Content

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Tinnemore, Anna

Children with cochlear implants show deficits in identifying emotional intent of utterances without facial or body language cues. A known limitation to cochlear implants is the inability to accurately portray the fundamental frequency contour of speech which carries the majority of information needed to identify emotional intent. Without reliable access to the fundamental frequency, other methods of identifying vocal emotion, if identifiable, could be used to guide therapies for training children with cochlear implants to better identify vocal emotion. The current study analyzed recordings of adults speaking neutral sentences with a set array of emotions in a child-directed and adult-directed manner. The goal was to identify acoustic cues that contribute to emotion identification that may be enhanced in child-directed speech, but are also present in adult-directed speech. Results of this study showed that there were significant differences in the variation of the fundamental frequency, the variation of intensity, and the rate of speech among emotions and between intended audiences.

Food-Induced Emotional Resonance Improves Emotion Recognition

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Pandolfi, Elisa; Sacripante, Riccardo; Cardini, Flavia

2016-01-01

The effect of food substances on emotional states has been widely investigated, showing, for example, that eating chocolate is able to reduce negative mood. Here, for the first time, we have shown that the consumption of specific food substances is not only able to induce particular emotional states, but more importantly, to facilitate recognition of corresponding emotional facial expressions in others. Participants were asked to perform an emotion recognition task before and after eating eit...

Dramatic pretend play games uniquely improve emotional control in young children.

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Goldstein, Thalia R; Lerner, Matthew D

2017-09-15

Pretense is a naturally occurring, apparently universal activity for typically developing children. Yet its function and effects remain unclear. One theorized possibility is that pretense activities, such as dramatic pretend play games, are a possible causal path to improve children's emotional development. Social and emotional skills, particularly emotional control, are critically important for social development, as well as academic performance and later life success. However, the study of such approaches has been criticized for potential bias and lack of rigor, precluding the ability to make strong causal claims. We conducted a randomized, component control (dismantling) trial of dramatic pretend play games with a low-SES group of 4-year-old children (N = 97) to test whether such practice yields generalized improvements in multiple social and emotional outcomes. We found specific effects of dramatic play games only on emotional self-control. Results suggest that dramatic pretend play games involving physicalizing emotional states and traits, pretending to be animals and human characters, and engaging in pretend scenarios in a small group may improve children's emotional control. These findings have implications for the function of pretense and design of interventions to improve emotional control in typical and atypical populations. Further, they provide support for the unique role of dramatic pretend play games for young children, particularly those from low-income backgrounds. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/2GVNcWKRHPk. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

[Significance of emotion-focused concepts to cognitive-behavioral therapy].

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Lammers, C-H

2006-09-01

Emotions are the central process of motivation and play a key role in adaptive behavior in humans. Although cognitive-behavioral therapy stresses the importance of changing both cognition and behavior, there is growing emphasis on direct therapeutic work on emotions and emotional processing, as problematic emotional processes are at the core of nearly all psychic disorders. This type of work is the goal of emotion-focused psychotherapy, which centers on direct change of problematic emotions, especially those which are usually suppressed resp. overregulated by the patient. This paper examines the basic phobic/emotional conflict, the problematic emotional processes arising from this conflict, and the importance to cognitive-behavioral therapy of their potentially integrative role.

Mindfulness meditation improves emotion regulation and reduces drug abuse.

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Tang, Yi-Yuan; Tang, Rongxiang; Posner, Michael I

2016-06-01

The core clinical symptoms of addiction include an enhanced incentive for drug taking (craving), impaired self-control (impulsivity and compulsivity), emotional dysregulation (negative mood) and increased stress reactivity. Symptoms related to impaired self-control involve reduced activity in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), adjacent prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and other brain areas. Behavioral training such as mindfulness meditation can increase the function of control networks including those leading to improved emotion regulation and thus may be a promising approach for the treatment of addiction. In a series of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), we tested whether increased ACC/mPFC activity is related to better self-control abilities in executive functions, emotion regulation and stress response in healthy and addicted populations. After a brief mindfulness training (Integrative Body-Mind Training, IBMT), we used the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Profile of Mood States (POMS) to measure emotion regulation, salivary cortisol for the stress response and fMRI for brain functional and DTI structural changes. Relaxation training was used to serve as an active control. In both smokers and nonsmokers, improved self-control abilities in emotion regulation and stress reduction were found after training and these changes were related to increased ACC/mPFC activity following training. Compared with nonsmokers, smokers showed reduced ACC/mPFC activity in the self-control network before training, and these deficits were ameliorated after training. These results indicate that promoting emotion regulation and improving ACC/mPFC brain activity can help for addiction prevention and treatment. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Microbiome restoration diet improves digestion, cognition and physical and emotional wellbeing.

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Lawrence, Kate; Hyde, Jeannette

2017-01-01

Manipulating gut bacteria in the microbiome, through the use of probiotics and prebiotics, has been found to have an influence on both physical and emotional wellbeing. This study uses a dietary manipulation 'The Gut Makeover' designed to elicit positive changes to the gut bacteria within the microbiome. 21 healthy participants undertook 'The Gut Makeover' for a four week period. Weight and various aspects of health were assessed pre and post intervention using the Functional Medicine Medical Symptoms Questionnaire (MSQ). Paired sample t-tests revealed a significant reduction in self-reported weight at the end of the intervention. Adverse medical symptoms related to digestion, cognition and physical and emotional wellbeing, were also significantly reduced during the course of the dietary intervention. The intervention, designed to manipulate gut bacteria, had a significant impact on digestion, reducing IBS type symptoms in this non-clinical population. There was also a striking reduction in negative symptoms related to cognition, memory and emotional wellbeing, including symptoms of anxiety and depression. Dietary gut microbiome manipulations may have the power to exert positive physical and psychological health benefits, of a similar nature to those reported in studies using pre and probiotics. The small sample size and lack of control over confounding variables means that it will be important to replicate these findings in larger-scale controlled, prospective, clinical trials. This dietary microbiome intervention has the potential to improve physical and emotional wellbeing in the general population but also to be investigated as a treatment option for individuals with conditions as diverse as IBS, anxiety, depression and Alzheimer's disease.

Significance of Coaching in the Context of Emotion Regulation

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Novotná, Ivana; Blahová, Jarmila; Šatanková, Sláva

2017-09-01

Coaching as a form of development has opened new possibilities and broadened the sphere of competence for personal or manager development since 1990s. At the beginning, there was not enough literature related to this topic, but progressively it has been popularized in so much that some authors have released their books in several languages. John Whitmore (2004) warns about the misuse of popularization of a new term (coaching), by using which many managers hide their reluctance against a modification or disability to change something in their traditional managerial style. Emotion regulation is the base for successful leadership, success in work life in general and satisfaction in any relationship. In the paper, the authors focus on the significance of coaching for the personal and professional growth as a systematic method using several strategies of emotion regulation.

Significance of Coaching in the Context of Emotion Regulation

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Novotná Ivana

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Coaching as a form of development has opened new possibilities and broadened the sphere of competence for personal or manager development since 1990s. At the beginning, there was not enough literature related to this topic, but progressively it has been popularized in so much that some authors have released their books in several languages. John Whitmore (2004 warns about the misuse of popularization of a new term (coaching, by using which many managers hide their reluctance against a modification or disability to change something in their traditional managerial style. Emotion regulation is the base for successful leadership, success in work life in general and satisfaction in any relationship. In the paper, the authors focus on the significance of coaching for the personal and professional growth as a systematic method using several strategies of emotion regulation.

Income and Well-Being: Relative Income and Absolute Income Weaken Negative Emotion, but Only Relative Income Improves Positive Emotion.

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Yu, Zonghuo; Chen, Li

2016-01-01

Whether relative income or absolute income could affect subjective well-being has been a bone of contention for years. Life satisfaction and the relative frequency of positive and negative emotions are parts of subjective well-being. According to the prospect theory, hedonic adaptation helps to explain why positive emotion is often so hard to be maintained, and negative emotion wouldn't be easy to be eliminated. So we expect the relationship between income and positive emotion is different from that between income and negative emotion. Given that regional reference is the main comparison mechanism, effects of regional average income on regional average subjective well-being should be potentially zero if only relative income matters. Using multilevel analysis, we tested the hypotheses with a dataset of 30,144 individuals from 162 counties in China. The results suggested that household income at the individual level is associated with life satisfaction, happiness and negative emotions. On the contrary, at a county level, household income is only associated with negative emotion. In other words, happiness and life satisfaction was only associated with relative income, but negative emotion was associated with relative income and absolute income. Without social comparison, income doesn't improve happiness, but it could weaken negative emotion. Therefore, it is possible for economic growth to weaken negative emotion without improving happiness. These findings also contribute to the current debate about the "Esterling paradox."

Growth curves of clients' emotional experience and their association with emotion regulation and symptoms.

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Fisher, Hadar; Atzil-Slonim, Dana; Bar-Kalifa, Eran; Rafaeli, Eshkol; Peri, Tuvia

2017-12-06

Emotional experience during psychotherapy is considered a core mechanism of change. Yet the sheer experience itself may not necessarily be beneficial; instead, the trajectories of emotional experience need to be explored as possible predictors of treatment outcomes. This study investigated whether clients' pre-treatment levels of emotion regulation and symptoms predicted patterns of session-to-session change in emotional experience. We also explored which patterns better predict clients' improvement in emotion regulation and symptoms from pre- to post treatment. One-hundred and seven clients undergoing psychodynamic psychotherapy completed questionnaires on their symptoms and emotion regulation at pre- and post- treatment. They also reported their level of emotional experience at the end of each session. Pre-treatment symptoms and difficulties in emotion regulation predicted greater instability in emotional experience. Higher mean levels of emotional experience during treatment were associated with an improvement in emotion regulation, and greater stability during treatment was associated with improvement in emotion regulation and symptoms. These findings lend weight to the idea that experiencing emotion in the therapeutic environment has significant implications for clients' ability to manage their emotions outside the session. However, emotions experienced in an unstable manner within therapy are associated with poorer outcomes. Clinical and methodological significance of this article: Therapists can benefit from observing the patterns and not only the level of their clients' emotional experiences. The identification of clients' difficulties early in treatment may help therapists guide clients through the delicate process of carefully attending to their emotions.

Socio-emotionally Significant Experience and Children’s Processing of Irrelevant Auditory Stimuli

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Schermerhorn, Alice C.; Bates, John E.; Puce, Aina; Molfese, Dennis L.

2017-01-01

Theory and research indicate considerable influence of socio-emotionally significant experiences on children’s functioning and adaptation. In the current study, we examined neurophysiological correlates of children’s allocation of information processing resources to socio-emotionally significant events, specifically, simulated marital interactions. We presented 9- to 11-year-old children (n = 24; 11 females) with 15 videos of interactions between two actors posing as a married couple. Task-irrelevant brief auditory probes were presented during the videos, and event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited to the auditory probes were measured. As hypothesized, exposure to higher levels of interparental conflict was associated with smaller P1, P2, and N2 ERPs to the probes. This finding is consistent with the idea that children who had been exposed to more interparental conflict attended more to the videos and diverted fewer cognitive resources to processing the probes, thereby producing smaller ERPs to the probes. In addition, smaller N2s were associated with more child behavior problems, suggesting that allocating fewer processing resources to the probes was associated with more problem behavior. Results are discussed in terms of implications of socio-emotionally significant experiences for children’s processing of interpersonal interactions. PMID:27993611

Selecting fillers on emotional appearance improves lineup identification accuracy.

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Flowe, Heather D; Klatt, Thimna; Colloff, Melissa F

2014-12-01

Mock witnesses sometimes report using criminal stereotypes to identify a face from a lineup, a tendency known as criminal face bias. Faces are perceived as criminal-looking if they appear angry. We tested whether matching the emotional appearance of the fillers to an angry suspect can reduce criminal face bias. In Study 1, mock witnesses (n = 226) viewed lineups in which the suspect had an angry, happy, or neutral expression, and we varied whether the fillers matched the expression. An additional group of participants (n = 59) rated the faces on criminal and emotional appearance. As predicted, mock witnesses tended to identify suspects who appeared angrier and more criminal-looking than the fillers. This tendency was reduced when the lineup fillers matched the emotional appearance of the suspect. Study 2 extended the results, testing whether the emotional appearance of the suspect and fillers affects recognition memory. Participants (n = 1,983) studied faces and took a lineup test in which the emotional appearance of the target and fillers was varied between subjects. Discrimination accuracy was enhanced when the fillers matched an angry target's emotional appearance. We conclude that lineup member emotional appearance plays a critical role in the psychology of lineup identification. The fillers should match an angry suspect's emotional appearance to improve lineup identification accuracy. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Orthognathic Surgery Has a Significant Effect on Perceived Personality Traits and Emotional Expressions.

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Mazzaferro, Daniel M; Wes, Ari M; Naran, Sanjay; Pearl, Rebecca; Bartlett, Scott P; Taylor, Jesse A

2017-11-01

The effects of orthognathic surgery go beyond objective cephalometric correction of facial and dental disproportion and malocclusion, respectively. The authors hypothesized that there is tangible improvement following surgery that alters publicly perceived personality traits and emotions. The authors used Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a crowdsourcing tool, to determine how preoperative and postoperative images of orthognathic surgery patients were perceived on six personality traits and six emotional expressions based on posteroanterior and lateral photographs. Blinded respondents provided demographic information and were randomly assigned to one of two sets of 20 photographs (10 subjects before and after surgery). Data on 20 orthognathic surgery patients were collected from 476 individuals. The majority of participants were female (52.6 percent), 18 to 39 years old (67.9 percent), Caucasian (76.6 percent), had some college or technical training or graduated college (72.7 percent), and had an annual income between $20,000 and $99,999 (74.6 percent). A paired t test analysis found that subjects were perceived significantly more favorably after orthognathic surgery in 12 countenance categories: more dominant, trustworthy, friendly, intelligent, attractive, and happy; and also less threatening, angry, surprised, sad, afraid, and disgusted (p surgery than those earning less (p orthognathic surgery, with both perceived personality traits and emotions deemed more favorable. Additional work is needed to better understand the physiologic underpinnings of such findings. Crowdsourcing technology offers a unique opportunity for surgeons to gather data regarding laypeople's perceptions of surgical outcomes in areas such as orthognathic surgery.

How School Climate Influences Teachers' Emotional Exhaustion: The Mediating Role of Emotional Labor.

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Yao, Xiuping; Yao, Meilin; Zong, Xiaoli; Li, Yulan; Li, Xiying; Guo, Fangfang; Cui, Guanyu

2015-10-08

Currently, in China, improving the quality of teachers' emotional labor has become an urgent need for most pre-kindergarten through 12th grade (p-12) schools because the new curriculum reform highlights the role of emotion in teaching. A total of 703 primary and high school teachers in Mainland China were investigated regarding their perceptions of school climate, emotional labor strategy and emotional exhaustion via questionnaires. The findings revealed that the teachers' perceptions of the school climate negatively affected surface acting but positively affected deep acting. Surface acting positively predicted emotional exhaustion, and deep acting had no significant effect on emotional exhaustion. Moreover, emotional labor mediated the relationship between the teachers' perceptions of the school climate and emotional exhaustion. Programs aimed at improving the school climate and the teachers' use of appropriate emotional labor strategies should be implemented in schools in Mainland China.

Rapid improvements in emotion regulation predict intensive treatment outcome for patients with bulimia nervosa and purging disorder.

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MacDonald, Danielle E; Trottier, Kathryn; Olmsted, Marion P

2017-10-01

Rapid and substantial behavior change (RSBC) early in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for eating disorders is the strongest known predictor of treatment outcome. Rapid change in other clinically relevant variables may also be important. This study examined whether rapid change in emotion regulation predicted treatment outcomes, beyond the effects of RSBC. Participants were diagnosed with bulimia nervosa or purging disorder (N = 104) and completed ≥6 weeks of CBT-based intensive treatment. Hierarchical regression models were used to test whether rapid change in emotion regulation variables predicted posttreatment outcomes, defined in three ways: (a) binge/purge abstinence; (b) cognitive eating disorder psychopathology; and (c) depression symptoms. Baseline psychopathology and emotion regulation difficulties and RSBC were controlled for. After controlling for baseline variables and RSBC, rapid improvement in access to emotion regulation strategies made significant unique contributions to the prediction of posttreatment binge/purge abstinence, cognitive psychopathology of eating disorders, and depression symptoms. Individuals with eating disorders who rapidly improve their belief that they can effectively modulate negative emotions are more likely to achieve a variety of good treatment outcomes. This supports the formal inclusion of emotion regulation skills early in CBT, and encouraging patient beliefs that these strategies are helpful. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The significance of emotional intelligence and leadership styles of senior leaders in the South African government

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N. M. G. Mfikwe

2017-01-01

Full Text Available A significant body of research over the past two decades found the emotional intelligence abilities to be associated with a range of important work-related behaviours. The aim of this study was to establish the gender differences and significance of emotional intelligence and leadership styles of senior leaders in the South African government. For this purpose, a sample of 85 senior managers were selected from various government departments in South Africa. The results of the study show that emotional intelligence and leadership styles do relate to one another. However, there were no significant differences in leadership styles and emotional intelligence between male and female respondents. This is due to the fact that the core management criteria and standards used to evaluate the performance of senior managers in government, help build a common sense of good management practice in the public service. Recommendations are made for future applications.

The emotional challenges of conducting in-depth research into significant health issues in health geography: reflections on emotional labour, fieldwork and life course.

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McGarrol, Sarah

2017-12-01

Emotions are increasingly being recognised and integrated into human geography and it has been highlighted that focusing on the 'interrelatedness' of the research process is crucial. By contextualising fieldwork within the life course of the researcher, greater acknowledgement of the 'emotional labour' involved in fieldwork can be highlighted. The author reflects on the 'emotional geographies' of conducting PhD research into significant health issues with participants who had recently suffered a heart attack in Fife, Scotland. This paper reveals emotions involved in this kind of research, drawing on perspectives from participants as well as the researcher. The author also draws attention to, and reflects on, the lack of engagement with researcher's emotional labour within formal academic structures, such as research training and ethics application processes. Reflecting on fieldwork experiences from a distance, the author discusses the influence and impact of her emotional experiences of fieldwork. This paper contributes to work concerned with emotions and fieldwork in geography and asserts that greater importance and value needs to be given to this type of emotion work as embedded and situated within researchers' life courses.

Adolescent self-esteem, emotional learning disabilities, and significant others.

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Peck, D G

1981-01-01

This paper will primarily examine four concepts: emotional learning disabilities, adolescence, self-esteem, and the social-psychological concept of "significant others." Problems of definition will be discussed, with a literature review, and an attempt will be made to integrate all four of the above-mentioned concepts. The emphasis will be in applying a sociological perspective to an educational and growing problem: how do we (sic) educate students with some type of learning disability? What, if any, extra-curricular factors potentially affect in school learning behavior(s) of adolescents?

Students Can Control Their Emotions

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Harati, Saba; Parsa, Nasrin Arian

2014-01-01

As emotional intelligence contributes extensively in people's lives, it can also find some significance in language teaching. From this perspective, it is inevitable for teachers to know how to improve students' emotional intelligence. This paper made an effort to provide procedures to develop emotional intelligence. Although success has various…

The Emotional Resources Group: Provisional outcome data for a pilot six-session emotion regulation programme for secondary care.

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Bacon, Thomas; Doughty, Caitriona; Summers, Andrew; Wiffen, Benjamin; Stanley, Zoe; McAlpine, Susan

2018-06-01

To examine the effectiveness of a new, six-session emotion regulation group intervention designed for the secondary care setting: The Emotional Resources Group (ERG). In this pilot study, participants were recruited by referral from secondary care mental health services. Forty-seven individuals participated in the study. Participants who attended the ERG were compared on measures of emotion regulation, well-being, and self-efficacy, pre- and post-intervention. Intent-to-treat analyses indicated highly statistically significant improvements in measures of emotion regulation, well-being, and self-efficacy, accompanied by large effect sizes. In addition, improvements in emotion regulation produced good rates of both reliable and clinically significant change. The ERG may be an effective, brief intervention to improve emotion regulation in the secondary care setting, worthy of further evaluation. Clinical implications Emotion regulation may be an appropriate treatment target to improve well-being and self-efficacy in a transdiagnostic population. The ERG may be effective as a brief emotion regulation intervention for secondary care mental health settings. Outcomes of the ERG appear to be equivalent to other more intensive group-based emotion regulation interventions. The ERG's tailored design may be responsible for positive outcomes. Limitations There was a small sample size. There was no control group. There was no follow-up data. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

The Implementation of Traditional Games to Improve the Social Emotional Early Childhood

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Putu Indah Lestari

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The aims of this study was to improve the social emotional early childhood through the traditional game. This research was conducted on the children of group B TK Pradnyandari III Kerobokan in the academic year 2016 / 2017. This research used Classroom Action Research design with observation method. The subjects of this study were 22 children of group B1 TK Pradnyandari III Kerobokan consisting of 11 sons and 11 daughters. The object of research is the application of traditional children's games to increase social emotional early childhood. The results og this research as in Cycle I, 14 children (63.64% reached the completeness learning mastery, 8 children (36.36% had not reached. In Cycle II, 20 children (90,91% reached the learning mastery, leaving only 2 children (9,09% had not reached. The implementation of traditional games can enhance children's social emotional skill. Based on the research findings there was an improvement of 27.27% learning mastery of the children from Cycle I to Cycle II. This means that the application of traditional games can improve children's social emotional development. Traditional games can be piloted in other areas of development skill in early childhood education.

Parents Perceive Improvements in Socio-emotional Functioning in Adolescents with ASD Following Social Skills Treatment.

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N Lordo, Danielle; Bertolin, Madison; L Sudikoff, Eliana; Keith, Cierra; Braddock, Barbara; Kaufman, David A S

2017-01-01

The current study examined the effectiveness of a social skills treatment (PEERS) for improving socio-emotional competencies in a sample of high-functioning adolescents with ASD. Neuropsychological and self- and parent-report measures assessing social, emotional, and behavioral functioning were administered before and after treatment. Following social skills treatment, adolescents with ASD exhibited decreased aggression, anxiety, and withdrawal, as well as improvements in emotional responsiveness, adaptability, leadership, and participation in activities of daily living, though no change was found in affect recognition abilities. These findings suggest that PEERS social skills treatment improves particular aspects of emotional, behavioral, and social functioning that may be necessary for developing and maintaining quality peer relationships and remediating social isolation in adolescents with ASD.

Warming the Emotional Climate of the Classroom: Can Teachers’ Social-Emotional Skills Change?

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Shane T. Harvey

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Emotional skills underpin what teachers do. However, relatively few studies have investigated whether these skills can be formally learnt by teachers and the benefits enhancing teachers’ social-emotional skills may have on students. The current research aimed to develop an intervention to improve teachers’ social-emotional skills in the classroom and to assess changes in teachers’ emotional teaching practices and their emotional awareness in the classroom, as well as changes in students’ social-emotional behavior in relation to changes their teachers may have made. Twenty-seven teachers of Year 3-8 (8-13 year old students participated in an emotional skills intervention, which took place over three months. The findings yielded mixed results. In line with predictions, decreases in teachers’ undesirable relating and setting limits were found. However, no relationships between teacher changes and students’ pro-social behavior and emotion were found. However, students of teachers who improved compared to those who did not on observed emotional practices, reported significant differences in their teachers’ leadership, helpfulness/friendliness, understanding, student responsibility/freedom, student admonishing and strictness.

Dissociating emotion-induced blindness and hypervision.

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Bocanegra, Bruno R; Zeelenberg, René

2009-12-01

Previous findings suggest that emotional stimuli sometimes improve (emotion-induced hypervision) and sometimes impair (emotion-induced blindness) the visual perception of subsequent neutral stimuli. We hypothesized that these differential carryover effects might be due to 2 distinct emotional influences in visual processing. On the one hand, emotional stimuli trigger a general enhancement in the efficiency of visual processing that can carry over onto other stimuli. On the other hand, emotional stimuli benefit from a stimulus-specific enhancement in later attentional processing at the expense of competing visual stimuli. We investigated whether detrimental (blindness) and beneficial (hypervision) carryover effects of emotion in perception can be dissociated within a single experimental paradigm. In 2 experiments, we manipulated the temporal competition for attention between an emotional cue word and a subsequent neutral target word by varying cue-target interstimulus interval (ISI) and cue visibility. Interestingly, emotional cues impaired target identification at short ISIs but improved target identification when competition was diminished by either increasing ISI or reducing cue visibility, suggesting that emotional significance of stimuli can improve and impair visual performance through distinct perceptual mechanisms.

Particle swarm optimization based feature enhancement and feature selection for improved emotion recognition in speech and glottal signals.

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Muthusamy, Hariharan; Polat, Kemal; Yaacob, Sazali

2015-01-01

In the recent years, many research works have been published using speech related features for speech emotion recognition, however, recent studies show that there is a strong correlation between emotional states and glottal features. In this work, Mel-frequency cepstralcoefficients (MFCCs), linear predictive cepstral coefficients (LPCCs), perceptual linear predictive (PLP) features, gammatone filter outputs, timbral texture features, stationary wavelet transform based timbral texture features and relative wavelet packet energy and entropy features were extracted from the emotional speech (ES) signals and its glottal waveforms(GW). Particle swarm optimization based clustering (PSOC) and wrapper based particle swarm optimization (WPSO) were proposed to enhance the discerning ability of the features and to select the discriminating features respectively. Three different emotional speech databases were utilized to gauge the proposed method. Extreme learning machine (ELM) was employed to classify the different types of emotions. Different experiments were conducted and the results show that the proposed method significantly improves the speech emotion recognition performance compared to previous works published in the literature.

Susceptibility to emotional contagion for negative emotions improves detection of smile authenticity.

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Manera, Valeria; Grandi, Elisa; Colle, Livia

2013-01-01

A smile is a context-dependent emotional expression. A smiling face can signal the experience of enjoyable emotions, but people can also smile to convince another person that enjoyment is occurring when it is not. For this reason, the ability to discriminate between felt and faked enjoyment expressions is a crucial social skill. Despite its importance, adults show remarkable individual variation in this ability. Revealing the factors responsible for these huge individual differences is a key challenge in this domain. Here we investigated, on a large sample of participants, whether individual differences in smile authenticity recognition are accounted for by differences in the predisposition to experience other people's emotions, i.e., by susceptibility to emotional contagion. Results showed that susceptibility to emotional contagion for negative emotions increased smile authenticity detection, while susceptibility to emotional contagion for positive emotions worsened detection performance, because it leaded to categorize most of the faked smiles as sincere. These findings suggest that susceptibility to emotional contagion plays a key role in complex emotion recognition, and point out the importance of analyzing the tendency to experience other people's positive and negative emotions as separate abilities.

An algorithm of improving speech emotional perception for hearing aid

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Xi, Ji; Liang, Ruiyu; Fei, Xianju

2017-07-01

In this paper, a speech emotion recognition (SER) algorithm was proposed to improve the emotional perception of hearing-impaired people. The algorithm utilizes multiple kernel technology to overcome the drawback of SVM: slow training speed. Firstly, in order to improve the adaptive performance of Gaussian Radial Basis Function (RBF), the parameter determining the nonlinear mapping was optimized on the basis of Kernel target alignment. Then, the obtained Kernel Function was used as the basis kernel of Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) with slack variable that could solve the over-fitting problem. However, the slack variable also brings the error into the result. Therefore, a soft-margin MKL was proposed to balance the margin against the error. Moreover, the relatively iterative algorithm was used to solve the combination coefficients and hyper-plane equations. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can acquire an accuracy of 90% for five kinds of emotions including happiness, sadness, anger, fear and neutral. Compared with KPCA+CCA and PIM-FSVM, the proposed algorithm has the highest accuracy.

Neurologic music therapy improves executive function and emotional adjustment in traumatic brain injury rehabilitation.

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Thaut, Michael H; Gardiner, James C; Holmberg, Dawn; Horwitz, Javan; Kent, Luanne; Andrews, Garrett; Donelan, Beth; McIntosh, Gerald R

2009-07-01

This study examined the immediate effects of neurologic music therapy (NMT) on cognitive functioning and emotional adjustment with brain-injured persons. Four treatment sessions were held, during which participants were given a pre-test, participated in 30 min of NMT that focused on one aspect of rehabilitation (attention, memory, executive function, or emotional adjustment), which was followed by post-testing. Control participants engaged in a pre-test, 30 min of rest, and then a post-test. Treatment participants showed improvement in executive function and overall emotional adjustment, and lessening of depression, sensation seeking, and anxiety. Control participants improved in emotional adjustment and lessening of hostility, but showed decreases in measures of memory, positive affect, and sensation seeking.

Improving patient emotional functioning and psychological morbidity: evaluation of a consultation skills training program for oncologists.

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Girgis, Afaf; Cockburn, Jill; Butow, Phyllis; Bowman, Deborah; Schofield, Penelope; Stojanovski, Elizabeth; D'Este, Catherine; Tattersall, Martin H N; Doran, Christopher; Turner, Jane

2009-12-01

To evaluate whether a consultation skills training (CST) program with oncologists and trainees would improve skills in detecting and responding to patient distress, thereby improving their patients' emotional functioning and reducing psychological distress. Randomized-controlled trial with 29 medical and radiation oncologists from Australia randomized to CST group (n=15) or usual-care group (n=14). The CST consisted of a 1.5-day face-to-face workshop incorporating presentation of principles, a DVD modelling ideal behaviour and role-play practice, and four 1.5h monthly video-conferences. At the CST conclusion, patients of participating doctors were recruited (n=192 in CST group, n=183 in usual-care group), completing telephone surveys at baseline, 1 week and 3 months to assess quality of life, anxiety, depression and unmet psychosocial needs. Despite high patient functioning at baseline, anxiety significantly improved at 1-week follow-up in the CST group, compared to the control group. There were no statistically significant differences in emotional functioning, depression or unmet supportive care need between the groups. Consistent trends for greater improvements were observed in intervention compared to control group patients, suggesting the CST program deserves wider evaluation. Video-conferencing after a short training course may be an effective strategy for delivering CST.

Cognitive control training for emotion-related impulsivity.

Science.gov (United States)

Peckham, Andrew D; Johnson, Sheri L

2018-06-01

Many forms of psychopathology are tied to a heightened tendency to respond impulsively to strong emotions, and this tendency, in turn, is closely tied to problems with cognitive control. The goal of the present study was to test whether a two-week, six-session cognitive control training program is efficacious in reducing emotion-related impulsivity. Participants (N = 52) reporting elevated scores on an emotion-related impulsivity measure completed cognitive control training targeting working memory and response inhibition. A subset of participants were randomized to a waitlist control group. Impulsivity, emotion regulation, and performance on near and far-transfer cognitive tasks were assessed at baseline and after completion of training. Emotion-related impulsivity declined significantly from pre-training to post-training and at two-week follow-up; improvements were not observed in the waitlist control group. A decrease in brooding rumination and an increase in reappraisal were also observed. Participants showed significant improvements on trained versions of the working memory and inhibition tasks as well as improvements on an inhibition transfer task. In sum, these preliminary findings show that cognitive training appears to be well-tolerated for people with significant emotion-driven impulsivity. Results provide preliminary support for the efficacy of cognitive training interventions as a way to reduce emotion-related impulsivity. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cognitive enhancement therapy improves fronto-limbic regulation of emotion in alcohol and/or cannabis misusing schizophrenia: a preliminary study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jessica Ann Wojtalik

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Individuals with schizophrenia who misuse substances are burdened with impairments in emotion regulation. Cognitive Enhancement Therapy (CET may address these problems by enhancing prefrontal brain function. A small sample of outpatients with schizophrenia and alcohol and/or cannabis substance use problems participating in an 18-month randomized trial of CET (n = 10 or usual care (n = 4 completed post-treatment functional neuroimaging using an emotion regulation task. General linear models explored CET effects on brain activity in emotional neurocircuitry. Individuals treated with CET had significantly greater activation in broad regions of the prefrontal cortex, limbic and striatal systems implicated in emotion regulation compared to usual care. Differential activation favoring CET in prefrontal regions and the insula mediated behavioral improvements in emotional processing. Our data lend preliminary support of CET effects on neuroplasticity in fronto-limbic and striatal circuitries which mediate emotion regulation in people with schizophrenia and comorbid substance misuse problems.

Emotional state talk and emotion understanding: a training study with preschool children.

Science.gov (United States)

Gavazzi, Ilaria Grazzani; Ornaghi, Veronica

2011-11-01

ABSTRACTThe present study investigates whether training preschool children in the active use of emotional state talk plays a significant role in bringing about greater understanding of emotion terms and improved emotion comprehension. Participants were 100 preschool children (M=52 months; SD=9·9; range: 35-70 months), randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions. They were pre- and post-tested to assess their language comprehension, metacognitive language comprehension and emotion understanding. Analyses of pre-test data did not show any significant differences between experimental and control groups. During the intervention phase, the children were read stories enriched with emotional lexicon. After listening to the stories, children in the experimental group took part in conversational language games designed to stimulate use of the selected emotional terms. In contrast, the control group children did not take part in any special linguistic activities after the story readings. Analyses revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the understanding of inner state language and in the comprehension of emotion.

Does Professional Development of Preschool Teachers Improve Child Socio-Emotional Outcomes?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Bente; Jensen, Peter; Rasmussen, Astrid Würtz

From 2011 to 2013 a randomized controlled trial has been run in Danish preschools to obtain evidence on improvements of early childhood education by providing training to the preschool teachers. The purpose of the intervention is to improve child socio-emotional outcomes (measured by SDQ...

Coaching to vision versus coaching to improvement needs: a preliminary investigation on the differential impacts of fostering positive and negative emotion during real time executive coaching sessions.

Science.gov (United States)

Howard, Anita R

2015-01-01

Drawing on intentional change theory (ICT; Boyatzis, 2006), this study examined the differential impact of inducing coaching recipients' vision/positive emotion versus improvement needs/negative emotion during real time executive coaching sessions. A core aim of the study was to empirically test two central ICT propositions on the effects of using the coached person's Positive Emotional Attractor (vision/PEA) versus Negative Emotional Attractor (improvement needs/NEA) as the anchoring framework of a onetime, one-on-one coaching session on appraisal of 360° feedback and discussion of possible change goals. Eighteen coaching recipients were randomly assigned to two coaching conditions, the coaching to vision/PEA condition and the coaching to improvement needs/NEA condition. Two main hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis1 predicted that participants in the vision/PEA condition would show higher levels of expressed positive emotion during appraisal of 360° feedback results and discussion of change goals than recipients in the improvement needs/NEA condition. Hypothesis2 predicted that vision/PEA participants would show lower levels of stress immediately after the coaching session than improvement needs/NEA participants. Findings showed that coaching to vision/the PEA fostered significantly lower levels of expressed negative emotion and anger during appraisal of 360° feedback results as compared to coaching to improvements needs/the NEA. Vision-focused coaching also fostered significantly greater exploration of personal passions and future desires, and more positive engagement during 360° feedback appraisal. No significant differences between the two conditions were found in emotional processing during discussion of change goals or levels of stress immediately after the coaching session. Current findings suggest that vision/PEA arousal versus improvement needs/NEA arousal impact the coaching process in quite different ways; that the coach's initial framing of the

Six months methylphenidate treatment improves emotion dysregulation in adolescents with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a prospective study

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Suzer Gamli I

2018-05-01

Full Text Available Ipek Suzer Gamli,1 Aysegul Yolga Tahiroglu2 1Sanliurfa Education and Research Hospital, Eyyubiye, Sanliurfa, Turkey; 2Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department, Cukurova University School of Medicine, Saricam, Adana, Turkey Purpose: Individuals with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD may suffer from emotional dysregulation (ED, although this symptom is not listed among the diagnostic criteria. Methylphenidate (MPH is useful in reducing emotional symptoms in ADHD. The aim of the present study was to determine both psychosocial risk factors and presence of ED in adolescents with ADHD before and after MPH treatment. Participants and methods: Eighty-two patients aged 12–18 years with ADHD were included as participants. The Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children – Present and Lifetime, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS, sociodemographic form, and the Inventory of Statements About Self-Injury were administered. Results were compared before and after 6 months MPH treatment. Results: A significant improvement was detected on DERS for impulsivity (15.9±6.8 initial vs 14.2±6.5 final test, p<0.01 and total score (88.4±23.3 initial vs 82.4±2.7 final test, p<0.05 across all patients taking MPH regardless of subtype and sex. Despite treatment, a significant difference remained for impulsivity, strategies, and total score in patients with comorbid oppositional defiant disorder (ODD compared with those without ODD, but no difference was detected for conduct disorder comorbidity. In patients who self-harm, scores for goals, impulsivity, strategies, clarity, and total score were higher before treatment: furthermore, impulsivity and total score remained high after treatment. In maltreated patients, goals, impulsivity, strategies, and total scores were significantly higher before treatment; however, their symptoms were ameliorated after treatment with MPH. Conclusion: Individuals with

Emotional attachment and emotional availability tele-intervention for adoptive families.

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Megan; Biringen, Zeynep; Meyer-Parsons, Beatrice; Schneider, Abby

2015-01-01

This study evaluated the new online Emotional Attachment and Emotional Availability (EA2) Intervention for use with adoptive families in enhancing parent-child EA, parental perceptions of EA, child attachment behaviors, parent-child emotional attachment, and reducing parent-reported child behavioral problems and parenting-related stress. Participants in this study were adoptive parents and their adopted children ages 1.5 to 5 years old (N = 15 dyads). Participants were placed in an immediate intervention group (IG) or a delayed intervention group (DG) that would receive the 6-week EA2 Tele-Intervention after the IG. Results revealed significant differences in the IG in child behavioral problems, parent-child EA, parental perceptions of EA, and parent-child emotional attachment, improvements not seen in the DG. Analysis of effects of the DG after receiving the EA2 Tele-Intervention revealed significant differences over time also in most of these qualities. © 2015 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.

Artistic misunderstandings: The emotional significance of historical learning in the arts.

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Bullot, Nicolas J; Reber, Rolf

2017-01-01

The Distancing-Embracing model does not have the conceptual resources to explain artistic misunderstandings and the emotional consequences of historical learning in the arts. Specifically, it suggests implausible predictions about emotional distancing caused by art schemata (e.g., misunderstandings of artistic intentions and contexts). These problems show the need for further inquiries into how historical contextualization modulates negative emotions in the arts.

When Emotions Matter: Focusing on Emotion Improves Working Memory Updating in Older Adults

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Natalie Berger

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Research indicates that emotion can affect the ability to monitor and replace content in working memory, an executive function that is usually referred to as updating. However, it is less clear if the effects of emotion on updating vary with its relevance for the task and with age. Here, 25 younger (20–34 years of age and 25 older adults (63–80 years of age performed a 1-back and a 2-back task, in which they responded to younger, middle-aged, and older faces showing neutral, happy or angry expressions. The relevance of emotion for the task was manipulated through instructions to make match/non-match judgments based on the emotion (i.e., emotion was task-relevant or the age (i.e., emotion was task-irrelevant of the face. It was found that only older adults updated emotional faces more readily compared to neutral faces as evidenced by faster RTs on non-match trials. This emotion benefit was observed under low-load conditions (1-back task but not under high-load conditions (2-back task and only if emotion was task-relevant. In contrast, task-irrelevant emotion did not impair updating performance in either age group. These findings suggest that older adults can benefit from task-relevant emotional information to a greater extent than younger adults when sufficient cognitive resources are available. They also highlight that emotional processing can buffer age-related decline in WM tasks that require not only maintenance but also manipulation of material.

Social Cognitive Training Improves Emotional Processing and Reduces Aggressive Attitudes in Ex-combatants

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Trujillo, Sandra; Trujillo, Natalia; Lopez, Jose D.; Gomez, Diana; Valencia, Stella; Rendon, Jorge; Pineda, David A.; Parra, Mario A.

2017-01-01

Emotional processing (EP) is a complex cognitive function necessary to successfully adjust to social environments where we need to interpret and respond to cues that convey threat or reward signals. Ex-combatants have consistently shown atypical EP as well as poor social interactions. Available reintegration programs aim to facilitate the re-adaptation of ex-combatants to their communities. However, they do not incorporate actions to improve EP and to enhance cognitive-emotional regulation. The present study was aimed at evaluating the usefulness of an intervention focused on Social Cognitive Training (SCT), which was designed to equip ex-combatants enrolled in the Social Reintegration Route with EP and social cognition skills. A group of 31 ex-combatants (mean age of 37.2, 29 men) from Colombian illegal armed groups were recruited into this study. Of these, 16 were invited to take part in a SCT and the other continued with the conventional reintegration intervention. Both groups underwent 12 training sessions in a period 12–14 weeks. They were assessed with a comprehensive protocol which included Psychosocial, Behavioral, and Emotion Processing instruments. The scores on these instruments prior to and after the intervention were compared within and between groups. Both groups were matched at baseline. Ex-combatants receiving the SCT experienced significant improvements in EP and a reduction in aggressive attitudes, effects not observed in those continuing the conventional reintegration intervention. This is the first study that achieves such outcomes in such a population using SCT intervention. We discuss the implications of such results toward better social reintegration strategies. PMID:28428767

Emotional experience improves with age : Evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Carstensen, L.L.; Turan, B.; Scheibe, S.; Ram, N.; Ersner-Hershfield, H.; Samanez-Larkin, G.R.; Brooks, K.P.; Nesselroade, J.R.

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N = 184, Wave 1; N =

The Health Significance of Positive Emotions in Adulthood and Later Life

OpenAIRE

Ong, Anthony D.; Mroczek, Daniel K.; Riffin, Catherine

2011-01-01

A growing body of literature supports a link between positive emotions and health in older adults. In this article, we review evidence of the effects of positive emotions on downstream biological processes and meaningful clinical endpoints, such as adult morbidity and mortality. We then present relevant predictions from lifespan theories that suggest changes in cognition and motivation may play an important role in explaining how positive emotions are well maintained in old age, despite perva...

Instructions to mimic improve facial emotion recognition in people with sub-clinical autism traits.

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Lewis, Michael B; Dunn, Emily

2017-11-01

People tend to mimic the facial expression of others. It has been suggested that this helps provide social glue between affiliated people but it could also aid recognition of emotions through embodied cognition. The degree of facial mimicry, however, varies between individuals and is limited in people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). The present study sought to investigate the effect of promoting facial mimicry during a facial-emotion-recognition test. In two experiments, participants without an ASC diagnosis had their autism quotient (AQ) measured. Following a baseline test, they did an emotion-recognition test again but half of the participants were asked to mimic the target face they saw prior to making their responses. Mimicry improved emotion recognition, and further analysis revealed that the largest improvement was for participants who had higher scores on the autism traits. In fact, recognition performance was best overall for people who had high AQ scores but also received the instruction to mimic. Implications for people with ASC are explored.

Prenatal emotion management improves obstetric outcomes: a randomized control study.

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Jian; Li, He-Jiang; Wang, Jue; Mao, Hong-Jing; Jiang, Wen-Ying; Zhou, Hong; Chen, Shu-Lin

2015-01-01

Negative emotions can cause a number of prenatal problems and disturb obstetric outcomes. We determined the effectiveness of prenatal emotional management on obstetric outcomes in nulliparas. All participants completed the PHQ-9 at the baseline assessment. Then, the participants were randomly assigned to the emotional management (EM) and usual care (UC) groups. The baseline evaluation began at 31 weeks gestation and the participants were followed up to 42 days postpartum. Each subject in the EM group received an extra EM program while the participants in the UC groups received routine prenatal care and education only. The PHQ-9 and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression scale (EPDS) were used for assessment. The EM group had a lower PHQ-9 score at 36 weeks gestation, and 7 and 42 days after delivery (P Prenatal EM intervention could control anxiety and depressive feelings in nulliparas, and improve obstetric outcomes. It may serve as an innovative approach to reduce the cesarean section rate in China.

Clinically significant changes in the emotional condition of relatives of patients with severe traumatic brain injury during sub-acute rehabilitation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Norup, Anne; Kristensen, Karin Spangsberg; Poulsen, Ingrid

2013-01-01

.2% and 58.1% of relatives had scores above cut-off values on the anxiety and depression scales, respectively. On the anxiety scale 69.7% of these experienced a reliable improvement according to the Reliable Change Index (RCI) and 45.5% also obtained CSC, as their end-point was below the cut-off value...... the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) when the patients were admitted to sub-acute rehabilitation and at discharge. Improvement in emotional condition was investigated using the following criteria: (i) statistically reliable improvement; and (ii) clinically significant change (CSC). Results: At admission, 53...... in the patients. Conclusion: Of the relatives who reported scores above cut-off values on the anxiety and depression scales at patient's admission, approximately 40% experienced CSC in anxiety and depression during the patient's rehabilitation. Relatives of patients experiencing improvement during inpatient...

Improving classroom quality with the RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning: proximal and distal outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Hagelskamp, Carolin; Brackett, Marc A; Rivers, Susan E; Salovey, Peter

2013-06-01

The RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning ("RULER") is designed to improve the quality of classroom interactions through professional development and classroom curricula that infuse emotional literacy instruction into teaching-learning interactions. Its theory of change specifies that RULER first shifts the emotional qualities of classrooms, which are then followed, over time, by improvements in classroom organization and instructional support. A 2-year, cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted to test hypotheses derived from this theory. Sixty-two urban schools either integrated RULER into fifth- and sixth-grade English language arts (ELA) classrooms or served as comparison schools, using their standard ELA curriculum only. Results from multilevel modeling with baseline adjustments and structural equation modeling support RULER's theory of change. Compared to classrooms in comparison schools, classrooms in RULER schools exhibited greater emotional support, better classroom organization, and more instructional support at the end of the second year of program delivery. Improvements in classroom organization and instructional support at the end of Year 2 were partially explained by RULER's impacts on classroom emotional support at the end of Year 1. These findings highlight the important contribution of emotional literacy training and development in creating engaging, empowering, and productive learning environments.

An evaluation of rational-emotive imagery as a component of rational-emotive therapy in the treatment of test anxiety.

Science.gov (United States)

Hymen, S P; Warren, R

1978-06-01

This study evaluated the efficacy of rational-emotive imagery as a component of rational-emotive therapy in reduction of college students' test anxiety. 11 volunteers met for 6 1-hr. group treatment sessions over a 3-wk. period. After 2 initial treatment sessions subjects were randomly assigned to groups given either rational-emotive therapy with rational-emotive imagery or rational-emotive therapy without imagery. Contrary to predictions, improvement between groups on self-report and performance measures was nonsignificant. Failure to obtain differences was attributed to similarities in content of treatment sessions and short treatment time. Combined groups reported significant improvement on all dependent measures. Although the study did not yield the predicted benefits of the imagery, results lend further support to the efficacy of rational-emotive therapy procedures in the reduction of test anxiety.

Improving Cross-Day EEG-Based Emotion Classification Using Robust Principal Component Analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuan-Pin Lin

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Constructing a robust emotion-aware analytical framework using non-invasively recorded electroencephalogram (EEG signals has gained intensive attentions nowadays. However, as deploying a laboratory-oriented proof-of-concept study toward real-world applications, researchers are now facing an ecological challenge that the EEG patterns recorded in real life substantially change across days (i.e., day-to-day variability, arguably making the pre-defined predictive model vulnerable to the given EEG signals of a separate day. The present work addressed how to mitigate the inter-day EEG variability of emotional responses with an attempt to facilitate cross-day emotion classification, which was less concerned in the literature. This study proposed a robust principal component analysis (RPCA-based signal filtering strategy and validated its neurophysiological validity and machine-learning practicability on a binary emotion classification task (happiness vs. sadness using a five-day EEG dataset of 12 subjects when participated in a music-listening task. The empirical results showed that the RPCA-decomposed sparse signals (RPCA-S enabled filtering off the background EEG activity that contributed more to the inter-day variability, and predominately captured the EEG oscillations of emotional responses that behaved relatively consistent along days. Through applying a realistic add-day-in classification validation scheme, the RPCA-S progressively exploited more informative features (from 12.67 ± 5.99 to 20.83 ± 7.18 and improved the cross-day binary emotion-classification accuracy (from 58.31 ± 12.33% to 64.03 ± 8.40% as trained the EEG signals from one to four recording days and tested against one unseen subsequent day. The original EEG features (prior to RPCA processing neither achieved the cross-day classification (the accuracy was around chance level nor replicated the encouraging improvement due to the inter-day EEG variability. This result

Attention shaping as a means to improve emotion perception deficits in outpatients with schizophrenia and impaired controls.

Science.gov (United States)

Combs, Dennis R; Chapman, Dustin; Waguspack, Jace; Basso, Michael R; Penn, David L

2011-04-01

Deficits in emotion perception are common in people with schizophrenia and current research has focused on improving these deficits. In our previous research, we demonstrated that directing attention to salient facial features via attention shaping can improve these deficits among inpatients. In this study, we examined the efficacy of an enhanced attention shaping program that contains 192 emotional expressions from which 25 are randomly presented for training. We extended our previous work by using repeated administrations of the shaping intervention and testing its effect in outpatients with schizophrenia and impaired controls. Fifteen participants with schizophrenia and fourteen college student controls with emotion perception deficits were randomly assigned to 1, 3 or 5 sessions of attention shaping. Participants completed 2 outcome measures of emotion perception, the FEIT and BLERT, not presented during the training, and underwent eye tracking at pre and post-tests. All conditions and groups improved, but the largest improvements on the BLERT and FEIT were found for persons assigned to the 5 session condition. Performance on the shaping program was positively correlated with the two outcome measures of emotion perception. There was less support for changes in visual scanning of faces as there was a relative reduction in total scanning time from pre-test to post-test. Results are interpreted in terms of the efficacy of attention shaping as a means to improve emotion perception deficits. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotional Experience Improves With Age: Evidence Based on Over 10 Years of Experience Sampling

Science.gov (United States)

Carstensen, Laura L.; Turan, Bulent; Scheibe, Susanne; Ram, Nilam; Ersner-Hershfield, Hal; Samanez-Larkin, Gregory R.; Brooks, Kathryn P.; Nesselroade, John R.

2012-01-01

Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N = 184, Wave 1; N = 191, Wave 2; N = 178, Wave 3) reported their emotional states at five randomly selected times each day for a one week period. Using a measurement burst design, the one-week sampling procedure was repeated five and then ten years later. Cross-sectional and growth curve analyses indicate that aging is associated with more positive overall emotional well-being, with greater emotional stability and with more complexity (as evidenced by greater co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions). These findings remained robust after accounting for other variables that may be related to emotional experience (personality, verbal fluency, physical health, and demographic variables). Finally, emotional experience predicted mortality; controlling for age, sex, and ethnicity, individuals who experienced relatively more positive than negative emotions in everyday life were more likely to have survived over a 13 year period. Findings are discussed in the theoretical context of socioemotional selectivity theory. PMID:20973600

Can the Use of Background Music Improve the Behaviour and Academic Performance of Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties?

Science.gov (United States)

Hallam, Susan; Price, John

1998-01-01

This study examined effects of providing "mood calming" background music in a special class for children with emotional and behavioral difficulties. Findings indicated a significant improvement in behavior and mathematics performance for all 10 of the children, with effects most noticeable for children with problems related to constant stimulus…

Improving Social Competence through Emotion Knowledge in 2-Year-Old Children: A Pilot Study

Science.gov (United States)

Giménez-Dasí, Marta; Fernández-Sánchez, Marta; Quintanilla, Laura

2015-01-01

Research Findings: The goal of this study was to determine the efficacy of an educational intervention program to improve emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and social competence in 2-year-old Spanish children. This study makes two original contributions because there are no validated education programs for such young children and because it…

Improving emotion recognition systems by embedding cardiorespiratory coupling

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Valenza, Gaetano; Lanatá, Antonio; Scilingo, Enzo Pasquale

2013-01-01

This work aims at showing improved performances of an emotion recognition system embedding information gathered from cardiorespiratory (CR) coupling. Here, we propose a novel methodology able to robustly identify up to 25 regions of a two-dimensional space model, namely the well-known circumplex model of affect (CMA). The novelty of embedding CR coupling information in an autonomic nervous system-based feature space better reveals the sympathetic activations upon emotional stimuli. A CR synchrogram analysis was used to quantify such a coupling in terms of number of heartbeats per respiratory period. Physiological data were gathered from 35 healthy subjects emotionally elicited by means of affective pictures of the international affective picture system database. In this study, we finely detected five levels of arousal and five levels of valence as well as the neutral state, whose combinations were used for identifying 25 different affective states in the CMA plane. We show that the inclusion of the bivariate CR measures in a previously developed system based only on monovariate measures of heart rate variability, respiration dynamics and electrodermal response dramatically increases the recognition accuracy of a quadratic discriminant classifier, obtaining more than 90% of correct classification per class. Finally, we propose a comprehensive description of the CR coupling during sympathetic elicitation adapting an existing theoretical nonlinear model with external driving. The theoretical idea behind this model is that the CR system is comprised of weakly coupled self-sustained oscillators that, when exposed to an external perturbation (i.e. sympathetic activity), becomes synchronized and less sensible to input variations. Given the demonstrated role of the CR coupling, this model can constitute a general tool which is easily embedded in other model-based emotion recognition systems. (paper)

The effectiveness of staff training focused on increasing emotional intelligence and improving interaction between support staff and clients.

Science.gov (United States)

Zijlmans, L J M; Embregts, P J C M; Gerits, L; Bosman, A M T; Derksen, J J L

2015-07-01

Recent research addressed the relationship between staff behaviour and challenging behaviour of individuals with an intellectual disability (ID). Consequently, research on interventions aimed at staff is warranted. The present study focused on the effectiveness of a staff training aimed at emotional intelligence and interactions between staff and clients. The effects of the training on emotional intelligence, coping style and emotions of support staff were investigated. Participants were 214 support staff working within residential settings for individuals with ID and challenging behaviour. The experimental group consisted of 76 staff members, 138 staff members participated in two different control groups. A pre-test, post-test, follow-up control group design was used. Effectiveness was assessed using questionnaires addressing emotional intelligence, coping and emotions. Emotional intelligence of the experimental group changed significantly more than that of the two control groups. The experimental group showed an increase in task-oriented coping, whereas one control group did not. The results with regard to emotions were mixed. Follow-up data revealed that effects within the experimental group were still present four months after the training ended. A staff training aimed at emotional intelligence and staff-client interactions is effective in improving emotional intelligence and coping styles of support staff. However, the need for more research aiming at the relationship between staff characteristics, organisational factors and their mediating role in the effectiveness of staff training is emphasised. © 2014 MENCAP and International Association of the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Parents Perceive Improvements in Socio-Emotional Functioning in Adolescents with ASD Following Social Skills Treatment

Science.gov (United States)

Lordo, Danielle N.; Bertolin, Madison; Sudikoff, Eliana L.; Keith, Cierra; Braddock, Barbara; Kaufman, David A. S.

2017-01-01

The current study examined the effectiveness of a social skills treatment (PEERS) for improving socio-emotional competencies in a sample of high-functioning adolescents with ASD. Neuropsychological and self- and parent-report measures assessing social, emotional, and behavioral functioning were administered before and after treatment. Following…

An Improved Brain-Inspired Emotional Learning Algorithm for Fast Classification

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ying Mei

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Classification is an important task of machine intelligence in the field of information. The artificial neural network (ANN is widely used for classification. However, the traditional ANN shows slow training speed, and it is hard to meet the real-time requirement for large-scale applications. In this paper, an improved brain-inspired emotional learning (BEL algorithm is proposed for fast classification. The BEL algorithm was put forward to mimic the high speed of the emotional learning mechanism in mammalian brain, which has the superior features of fast learning and low computational complexity. To improve the accuracy of BEL in classification, the genetic algorithm (GA is adopted for optimally tuning the weights and biases of amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in the BEL neural network. The combinational algorithm named as GA-BEL has been tested on eight University of California at Irvine (UCI datasets and two well-known databases (Japanese Female Facial Expression, Cohn–Kanade. The comparisons of experiments indicate that the proposed GA-BEL is more accurate than the original BEL algorithm, and it is much faster than the traditional algorithm.

Frontolimbic neural circuit changes in emotional processing and inhibitory control associated with clinical improvement following transference-focused psychotherapy in borderline personality disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Perez, David L; Vago, David R; Pan, Hong; Root, James; Tuescher, Oliver; Fuchs, Benjamin H; Leung, Lorene; Epstein, Jane; Cain, Nicole M; Clarkin, John F; Lenzenweger, Mark F; Kernberg, Otto F; Levy, Kenneth N; Silbersweig, David A; Stern, Emily

2016-01-01

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by self-regulation deficits, including impulsivity and affective lability. Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) is an evidence-based treatment proven to reduce symptoms across multiple cognitive-emotional domains in BPD. This pilot study aimed to investigate neural activation associated with, and predictive of, clinical improvement in emotional and behavioral regulation in BPD following TFP. BPD subjects (n = 10) were scanned pre- and post-TFP treatment using a within-subjects design. A disorder-specific emotional-linguistic go/no-go functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm was used to probe the interaction between negative emotional processing and inhibitory control. Analyses demonstrated significant treatment-related effects with relative increased dorsal prefrontal (dorsal anterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal, and frontopolar cortices) activation, and relative decreased ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampal activation following treatment. Clinical improvement in constraint correlated positively with relative increased left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activation. Clinical improvement in affective lability correlated positively with left posterior-medial orbitofrontal cortex/ventral striatum activation, and negatively with right amygdala/parahippocampal activation. Post-treatment improvements in constraint were predicted by pre-treatment right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex hypoactivation, and pre-treatment left posterior-medial orbitofrontal cortex/ventral striatum hypoactivation predicted improvements in affective lability. These preliminary findings demonstrate potential TFP-associated alterations in frontolimbic circuitry and begin to identify neural mechanisms associated with a psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy. © 2015 The Authors. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences © 2015 Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Emotional Intelligence: Requiring Attention

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Monica Tudor

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This article aims to highlight the need for emotional intelligence. Two methods of measurementare presented in this research, in order to better understand the necessity of a correct result. Theresults of research can lead to recommendations for improving levels of emotional intelligence andare useful for obtaining data to better compare past and present result. The papers presented inthis research are significant for future study of this subject. The first paper presents the evolutionof emotional intelligence in the past two years, more specifically its decrease concerning certaincharacteristics. The second one presents a research on the differences between generations. Thethird one shows a difference in emotional intelligence levels of children from rural versus urbanenvironments and the obstacles that they encounter in their own development.

Unsupervised learning of facial emotion decoding skills.

Science.gov (United States)

Huelle, Jan O; Sack, Benjamin; Broer, Katja; Komlewa, Irina; Anders, Silke

2014-01-01

Research on the mechanisms underlying human facial emotion recognition has long focussed on genetically determined neural algorithms and often neglected the question of how these algorithms might be tuned by social learning. Here we show that facial emotion decoding skills can be significantly and sustainably improved by practice without an external teaching signal. Participants saw video clips of dynamic facial expressions of five different women and were asked to decide which of four possible emotions (anger, disgust, fear, and sadness) was shown in each clip. Although no external information about the correctness of the participant's response or the sender's true affective state was provided, participants showed a significant increase of facial emotion recognition accuracy both within and across two training sessions two days to several weeks apart. We discuss several similarities and differences between the unsupervised improvement of facial decoding skills observed in the current study, unsupervised perceptual learning of simple stimuli described in previous studies and practice effects often observed in cognitive tasks.

From Sound to Significance: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Reactions to Music.

Science.gov (United States)

Juslin, Patrik N; Barradas, Gonçalo; Eerola, Tuomas

2015-01-01

A common approach to studying emotional reactions to music is to attempt to obtain direct links between musical surface features such as tempo and a listener's responses. However, such an analysis ultimately fails to explain why emotions are aroused in the listener. In this article we explore an alternative approach, which aims to account for musical emotions in terms of a set of psychological mechanisms that are activated by different types of information in a musical event. This approach was tested in 4 experiments that manipulated 4 mechanisms (brain stem reflex, contagion, episodic memory, musical expectancy) by selecting existing musical pieces that featured information relevant for each mechanism. The excerpts were played to 60 listeners, who were asked to rate their felt emotions on 15 scales. Skin conductance levels and facial expressions were measured, and listeners reported subjective impressions of relevance to specific mechanisms. Results indicated that the target mechanism conditions evoked emotions largely as predicted by a multimechanism framework and that mostly similar effects occurred across the experiments that included different pieces of music. We conclude that a satisfactory account of musical emotions requires consideration of how musical features and responses are mediated by a range of underlying mechanisms.

Recognition of facial expressions of emotion by adults with intellectual disability: Is there evidence for the emotion specificity hypothesis?

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Scotland, Jennifer L; McKenzie, Karen; Cossar, Jill; Murray, Aja; Michie, Amanda

2016-01-01

This study aimed to evaluate the emotion recognition abilities of adults (n=23) with an intellectual disability (ID) compared with a control group of children (n=23) without ID matched for estimated cognitive ability. The study examined the impact of: task paradigm, stimulus type and preferred processing style (global/local) on accuracy. We found that, after controlling for estimated cognitive ability, the control group performed significantly better than the individuals with ID. This provides some support for the emotion specificity hypothesis. Having a more local processing style did not significantly mediate the relation between having ID and emotion recognition, but did significantly predict emotion recognition ability after controlling for group. This suggests that processing style is related to emotion recognition independently of having ID. The availability of contextual information improved emotion recognition for people with ID when compared with line drawing stimuli, and identifying a target emotion from a choice of two was relatively easier for individuals with ID, compared with the other task paradigms. The results of the study are considered in the context of current theories of emotion recognition deficits in individuals with ID. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotional stability components of human performance problems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wexler, R.H.

1987-01-01

Over half of all significant events that occur in nuclear plants involve human performance problems. There is increasing worldwide recognition that human performance problems have a significant impact on the safety, cost, and efficiency of nuclear plant operations. Emotional stability components have an important direct and indirect impact on human performance problems. This paper examines emotional stability components that are currently incorporated into human performance evaluation systems (HPES) in nuclear plants. It describes HPES programs being developed around the world, the emotional stability components that are currently referred to in these programs, and suggestions for improving HPES programs through a greater understanding of emotion stability components. A review of emotional stability components that may hinder or promote a plant environment that encourages the voluntary reporting and correction of human error is also presented

Can enriching emotional intelligence improve medical students' proactivity and adaptability during OB/GYN clerkships?

Science.gov (United States)

Guseh, Stephanie H; Chen, Xiaodong P; Johnson, Natasha R

2015-12-26

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine our hypothesis that enriching workplace emotional intelligence through resident coaches could improve third-year medical students' adaptability and proactivity on the Obstetrics and Gynecology clerkship. An observational pilot study was conducted in a teaching hospital. Fourteen 3rd year medical students from two cohorts of clerkships were randomly divided into two groups, and equally assigned to trained resident coaches and untrained resident coaches. Data was collected through onsite naturalistic observation of students' adaptability and proactivity in clinical settings using a checklist with a 4-point Likert scale (1=poor to 4=excellent). Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to compare the differences between these two groups. A total of 280 data points were collected through onsite observations conducted by investigators. All (n=14) students' adaptability and proactivity performance significantly improved from an average of 3.04 to 3.45 (p=0.014) over 6-week clerkship. Overall, students with trained resident coaches adapted significantly faster and were more proactive in the obstetrics and gynecology clinical setting than the students with untrained coaches (3.31 vs. 3.24, p=0.019). Findings from our pilot study supported our hypothesis that enriching workplace emotional intelligence knowledge through resident coaches was able to help medical students adapt into obstetrics and gynecology clinical settings faster and become more proactive in learning. Clerkship programs can incorporate the concept of a resident coach in their curriculum to help bridge medical students into clinical settings and to help them engage in self-directed learning throughout the rotation.

The Comparison of Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy Based on Coping Skills and Methadone Maintenance Treatment in Improvement of Emotional Regulation Strategies and Relapse Prevention

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Tahereh Ghorbany

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Purpose: This study compared the effectiveness of group cognitive-behavioral therapy based on coping skills (CBT and methadone maintenance therapy (MMT in improvement of emotional regulation strategies and prevention of relapse. Method: The method of the present study was semi-experimental research design (pre-test-post-test with witness group. For sampling 45 substance abuse people who had referred to addiction treatment centers were selected and assigned to three groups of cognitive behavior therapy, methadone maintenance treatment and witness group randomly. The participants in all three groups completed the emotional intelligence questionnaire before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed by covariance method. Results: The results showed that cognitive-behavior therapy in comparison to methadone maintenance therapy and witness group led to significant improvement of emotional regulation in substance abusers, but there was no significant difference between the methadone maintenance treatment group and control group. Also, the rate of relapse in individuals who assigned to cognitive-behavior therapy group in comparison to methadone maintenance therapy and the witness group was significantly lower, but there was no significant difference between methadone therapy and witness. Conclusion: Cognitive-behavior therapy was an effective treatment that can change the cognitive and behavioral variables related to substance abuse, such as emotional regulation strategies. Thus, results suggested that drug abuse treatment programs must target these mediator variables.

The impact of significant other expressed emotion on patient outcomes in chronic fatigue syndrome.

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Band, Rebecca; Barrowclough, Christine; Wearden, Alison

2014-09-01

Previous literature has identified the importance of interpersonal processes for patient outcomes in chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME), particularly in the context of significant other relationships. The current study investigated expressed emotion (EE), examining the independent effects of critical comments and emotional overinvolvement (EOI) in association with patient outcomes. Fifty-five patients with CFS/ME and their significant others were recruited from specialist CFS/ME services. Significant other EE status was coded from a modified Camberwell Family Interview. Patient outcomes (fatigue severity, disability, and depression) were derived from questionnaire measures. Forty-four patients (80%) completed follow-up questionnaires 6-months after recruitment. Significant other high-EE categorized by both high levels of critical comments and high EOI was predictive of worse fatigue severity at follow-up. High-critical EE was associated with higher levels of patient depressive symptoms longitudinally; depressive symptoms were observed to mediate the relationship between high critical comments and fatigue severity reported at follow-up. There were higher rates of high-EE in parents than in partners, and this was because of higher rates of EOI in parents. Patients with high-EE significant others demonstrated poorer outcomes at follow-up compared with patients in low-EE dyads. One mechanism for this appears to be as a result of increased patient depression. Future research should seek to further clarify whether the role of interpersonal processes in CFS/ME differs across different patient-significant other relationships. The development of significant other-focused treatment interventions may be particularly beneficial for both patients and significant others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Group-based parent-training programmes for improving emotional and behavioural adjustment in children from birth to three years old.

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Barlow, Jane; Smailagic, Nadja; Ferriter, Michael; Bennett, Cathy; Jones, Hannah

2010-03-17

Emotional and behavioural problems in children are common. Research suggests that parenting has an important role to play in helping children to become well-adjusted, and that the first few months and years are especially important. Parenting programmes may have a role to play in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of infants and toddlers. This review is applicable to parents and carers of children up to three years eleven months although some studies included children up to five years old. To:a) establish whether group-based parenting programmes are effective in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of children three years of age or less (i.e. maximum mean age of 3 years 11 months); b) assess the role of parenting programmes in the primary prevention of emotional and behavioural problems. We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Sociofile, Social Science Citation Index, ASSIA, National Research Register (NRR) and ERIC. The searches were originally run in 2000 and then updated in 2007/8. Randomised controlled trials of group-based parenting programmes that had used at least one standardised instrument to measure emotional and behavioural adjustment. The results for each outcome in each study have been presented, with 95% confidence intervals. Where appropriate the results have been combined in a meta-analysis using a random-effects model. Eight studies were included in the review. There were sufficient data from six studies to combine the results in a meta-analysis for parent-reports and from three studies to combine the results for independent assessments of children's behaviour post-intervention. There was in addition, sufficient information from three studies to conduct a meta-analysis of both parent-report and independent follow-up data. Both parent-report (SMD -0.25; CI -0.45 to -0.06), and independent observations (SMD -0.54; CI -0.84 to -0.23) of children's behaviour produce significant results favouring the

Improving Emotion Regulation and Sibling Relationship Quality: The More Fun with Sisters and Brothers Program

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Kennedy, Denise E.; Kramer, Laurie

2008-01-01

We examined the role of emotion regulation (ER) in improving sibling relationship quality (SRQ) by evaluating the More Fun With Sisters and Brothers Program where 4- to 8-year-old siblings from 95 families were taught emotional and social competencies. Parents reported on SRQ and ER, and sibling interactions were observed in homes. SRQ and ER…

Indirect effects of exercise on emotional eating through psychological predictors of weight loss in women.

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Annesi, James J; Mareno, Nicole

2015-12-01

An improved understanding of how weight-loss interventions might be tailored to improve emotional eating is required. This study aimed to assess mediation of the relationship between increased exercise and decreased emotional eating so that behavioral treatments might be optimized. After randomization, women with obesity (N = 108; mean age = 48 years) were assigned to either a previously tested treatment of manual-based self-help for nutrition and exercise plus brief phone follow-ups, or a new protocol of cognitive-behavioral methods of exercise support intended to carry-over psychological improvements to better controlled eating and weight loss. A community-based field setting was incorporated. Validated self-report measures were administered over 6 months. Significant overall improvements in exercise outputs, emotional eating, mood, and self-regulation and self-efficacy for controlled eating were found. The newly developed treatment protocol demonstrated significantly greater improvements in exercise outputs and self-regulation. In a multiple mediation analysis, changes in self-regulation, self-efficacy, and mood significantly mediated the relationship between changes in exercise and emotional eating. Changes in self-efficacy and mood were significant independent mediators. Within follow-up analyses, the substitution of emotional eating subscales that addressed specific moods, and a subscale of self-efficacy for controlled eating that addressed that factor specifically in the presence of negative emotions, yielded results generally consistent with those of the multiple mediation analysis. Results suggested a psychological pathway of exercise's association with emotional eating changes in women with obesity. Guided by the present findings, tailoring exercise support and leveraging it to induce specific psychological improvements might reduce emotional eating and improve weight-management outcomes. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improving Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Self-Efficacy through a Teaching Intervention for University Students

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Pool, Lorraine Dacre; Qualter, Pamela

2012-01-01

Emotional intelligence continues to receive a substantial amount of attention from researchers who argue that it is an important predictor of health, wellbeing and in particular, work-related outcomes. Emotional self-efficacy, which is concerned with beliefs in one's emotional functioning capabilities, has recently been shown to be important in…

Beyond emotional benefits: physical activity and sedentary behaviour affect psychosocial resources through emotions.

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Hogan, Candice L; Catalino, Lahnna I; Mata, Jutta; Fredrickson, Barbara L

2015-01-01

Physical activity is known to improve emotional experiences, and positive emotions have been shown to lead to important life outcomes, including the development of psychosocial resources. In contrast, time spent sedentary may negatively impact emotional experiences and, consequently, erode psychosocial resources. Two studies tested whether activity independently influenced emotions and psychosocial resources, and whether activity indirectly influenced psychosocial resources through emotional experiences. Using cross-sectional (Study 1a) and longitudinal (Study 1b) methods, we found that time spent physically active independently predicted emotions and psychosocial resources. Mediation analyses suggested that emotions may account for the relation between activity and psychosocial resources. The improved emotional experiences associated with physical activity may help individuals build psychosocial resources known to improve mental health. Study 1a provided first indicators to suggest that, in contrast, sedentary behaviour may reduce positive emotions, which could in turn lead to decrements in psychosocial resources.

Effects of the Spock Videogame on Improving Emotional Intelligence in Adolescents

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Cejudo, Javier; Latorre, Sebastián

2015-01-01

Introduction: The aim of the present research is to experimentally assess the effects of a videogame program ("Spock") for improving emotional intelligence (EI) as an ability among a sample of adolescents. Method: The sample was made up of 92 adolescents, aged 17 to 19, who were currently studying the second year of…

Improving emotive communication: verbal, prosodic and kinesic conflictavoidance techniques

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Horst Arndt

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Industrial language programme developers who wish to improve emotive communication and reduce supervisor-worker conflicts can profit from recent research by interactional psychologists, social psychologists and investigators of nonverbal communication. Three emotive aspects of speech are central to conflict-avoidance: levels of assertiveness, interpersonal involvement and emotional intensity. In face-to-face speech these are signalled by various verbal, vocal and kinesic activities. Conflict-avoidance is largely a matter of impression management. A supervisor who wishes to avoid unnecessary conflicts actively maintains a supportive communicative environment. When delivering positive messages he is assertive, interpersonally involved, and more emotional than usual. When delivering negative messages he is relatively nonassertive, impersonal and unemotional. Multimodal techniques for avoiding conflicts in various industrial settings are discussed in the paper. Die samestellers van industriele taalprogramme wat daarna mik om emotiewe kommunikasie te verbeter en om opsiener/werker-konflik te verminder, sal baat vind by resente navorsing deur interaksie-psigoloe, sosiale psigoloe en ondersoekers na nie-verbale kommunikasie. Drie emotiewe aspekte van spraak staan sentraal in die vermyding van konflik: vlakke van selfgelding, interpersoonlike betrokkenheid en emosionele intensiteit. In gesprekke van aangesig tot aangesig word hierdie aspekte oorgedra deur verskeie verbale, vokale en kinestetiese aktiwiteite. Om konflik te vermy hang in 'n groot mate saam met die skep van 'n positiewe indruk. 'n Opsiener wat graag onnodige konflik wil vermy, skep op aktiewe wyse 'n ondersteunende kommunikatiewe omgewing. Wanneer hy positiewe boodskappe oordra, doen hy dit met gesag, hy is interpersoonlik betrokke en meer emosioneel as gewoonlilc Met die oordra van negatiewe boodskappe is hy relatief onaanmatigend, onpersoonlik en onemosioneel. Multi-modale tegnieke vir

The Impact of Counsellor Training on Emotional Intelligence

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Pearson, Anne; Weinberg, Ashley

2017-01-01

This study evaluated the impact of counsellor training on emotional intelligence (EI) in 45 undergraduates and 58 postgraduates. Significant improvements were recorded by students on completion of both programmes, suggesting that these were attributable to training which enhanced intra- and interpersonal aspects of emotional functioning. As a…

Evoked Emotions Predict Food Choice

OpenAIRE

Dalenberg, Jelle R.; Gutjar, Swetlana; ter Horst, Gert J.; de Graaf, Kees; Renken, Remco J.; Jager, Gerry

2014-01-01

In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well ...

Unsupervised learning of facial emotion decoding skills

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Jan Oliver Huelle

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Research on the mechanisms underlying human facial emotion recognition has long focussed on genetically determined neural algorithms and often neglected the question of how these algorithms might be tuned by social learning. Here we show that facial emotion decoding skills can be significantly and sustainably improved by practise without an external teaching signal. Participants saw video clips of dynamic facial expressions of five different women and were asked to decide which of four possible emotions (anger, disgust, fear and sadness was shown in each clip. Although no external information about the correctness of the participant’s response or the sender’s true affective state was provided, participants showed a significant increase of facial emotion recognition accuracy both within and across two training sessions two days to several weeks apart. We discuss several similarities and differences between the unsupervised improvement of facial decoding skills observed in the current study, unsupervised perceptual learning of simple stimuli described in previous studies and practise effects often observed in cognitive tasks.

The Effect of Emotional Focused Intervention on Spousal Emotional Abuse and Marital Satisfaction among Elderly Married Couples: A Randomized Controlled Trial

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Maryam Hazrati

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Background: This study examined the impacts of an Emotional Focused Intervention on emotional abuse behaviors and marital satisfaction among the elderly married couples. Methods: This randomized controlled trial study was carried out in Shiraz-Iran, during September 2013-2014. The elderly couples were invited to join an emotional focused intervention, following the advertisement and announcement on bulletin boards in the elderly day clinic centers and all governmental primary health care centers. Then, 57 couples (114 participants who were eligible for study were assigned in two groups by block randomization (29 in the experimental and 28 in the control group(.The couples in the experimental group received intervention twice a week for four weeks. Each session lasted 90 minutes. The control group didn’t receive any intervention and the subjects were put in the waiting list. The outcome measures were evaluated by Multidimensional Measure of Emotional Abuse Questionnaire (MMEAQ and Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire for Older People (MSQFOP. Repeated measurement ANOVA was used to detect any significant changes between groups in their mean scores of emotional abuse behaviors and marital satisfaction from pre- to post-test, and 3 months after the intervention. Analysis of data was performed using SPSS, version 19, and P≤0.05 was measured as significant. Results: The mean duration of marriage was 39.56±9.64 years. In the experimental group, the abusive behaviors decreased significantly (P<0.001 at times 2 and 3 compared with time 1, and marital satisfaction improved significantly only at time 3 (P<0.001. These differences were not significant in the control group. Conclusion: Emotion-focused couple-based interventions are helpful in reducing the spousal emotional abuse and improving marital satisfaction in among the elderly couples. Trial Registration Number: 2013111715426N1

Music Education Intervention Improves Vocal Emotion Recognition

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Mualem, Orit; Lavidor, Michal

2015-01-01

The current study is an interdisciplinary examination of the interplay among music, language, and emotions. It consisted of two experiments designed to investigate the relationship between musical abilities and vocal emotional recognition. In experiment 1 (N = 24), we compared the influence of two short-term intervention programs--music and…

Can enriching emotional intelligence improve medical students’ proactivity and adaptability during OB/GYN clerkships?

Science.gov (United States)

Guseh, Stephanie H.; Chen, Xiaodong P.

2015-01-01

Objectives The purpose of this pilot study was to examine our hypothesis that enriching workplace emotional intelligence through resident coaches could improve third-year medical students’ adaptability and proactivity on the Obstetrics and Gynecology clerkship. Methods An observational pilot study was conducted in a teaching hospital. Fourteen 3rd year medical students from two cohorts of clerkships were randomly divided into two groups, and equally assigned to trained resident coaches and untrained resident coaches. Data was collected through onsite naturalistic observation of students’ adaptability and proactivity in clinical settings using a checklist with a 4-point Likert scale (1=poor to 4=excellent). Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to compare the differences between these two groups. Results A total of 280 data points were collected through onsite observations conducted by investigators. All (n=14) students’ adaptability and proactivity performance significantly improved from an average of 3.04 to 3.45 (p=0.014) over 6-week clerkship. Overall, students with trained resident coaches adapted significantly faster and were more proactive in the obstetrics and gynecology clinical setting than the students with untrained coaches (3.31 vs. 3.24, p=0.019). Conclusions Findings from our pilot study supported our hypothesis that enriching workplace emotional intelligence knowledge through resident coaches was able to help medical students adapt into obstetrics and gynecology clinical settings faster and become more proactive in learning. Clerkship programs can incorporate the concept of a resident coach in their curriculum to help bridge medical students into clinical settings and to help them engage in self-directed learning throughout the rotation. PMID:26708233

Emotion expression, decision-making and well-being.

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Xiao, Erte

2008-01-01

This chapter discusses the role of emotion expression in decision-making. To understand connections between emotion and decision it is helpful first to differentiate between emotion experience and emotion expression. Understanding how emotion expression influences decision-making is important as a practical matter. However, in contrast to emotion experience, economic research has paid little attention to the significance of emotion expression in decision-making. I review recent studies on emotion expression, paying specific attention to possible connections between emotion expression, punishment, fair economic exchange, and well-being. In contrast to emotions, which are typically difficult to control, I suggest that opportunities for emotion expression can feasibly be manipulated through appropriately designed policies. I further suggest that this approach may have the ability to positively affect well-being and economic outcomes. VALUE OF THE CHAPTER: The chapter provides new perspectives on how policy-makers can benefit by understanding the effect of emotion expression in decision-making. The chapter also suggests future research to improve our understanding of emotion expression.

The role of Trait Emotional Intelligence and social and emotional skills in students’ emotional and behavioural strengths and difficulties: A study of Greek adolescents’ perceptions.

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Maria S. Poulou

2010-11-01

Full Text Available The emergence of the Trait Emotional Intelligence construct shifted the interest in personality research to the investigation of the effect of global personality characteristics on behaviour. A second body of research in applied settings, the Social and Emotional Learning movement, emphasized the cultivation of emotional and social skills for positive relationships in a school environment. In this paper we investigate the role of both personality traits and social and emotional skills, in the occurrence of emotional and behavioural strengths and difficulties, according to adolescent students’ self-perceptions. Five hundred and fifty-nine students from state secondary schools in Greece, aged 12-14 years old, completed The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Adolescent Short Form, The Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters, and The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. It was found that students with higher Trait Emotional Intelligence and stronger social and emotional skills were less likely to present emotional, conduct, hyperactivity and peer difficulties and more likely to present prosocial behaviour. Gender was a significant factor for emotional difficulties and grade for peer difficulties. The paper describes the underlying mechanisms of students’ emotional and behavioural strengths and difficulties, and provides practical implications for educators to improve the quality of students’ lives in schools.

The Effectiveness of the Unified Protocol on Emotional Dysregulation and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Patients with Psychosomatic Disorders

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Mina Mazaheri

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Background: The unified treatment approach (UP is an emotion-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy in which the main object of treatment is emotional processes. The aim of the present research was to examine the effectiveness of The Unified Protocol (UP on emotional dysregulation and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in patients with psychosomatic disorders. Methods: Emotion-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (ECBT, a unified treatment, with 12 weekly group sessions of 2 hours, was presented to 14 patients with psychosomatic complaints at the Subspecialty Center of Psychiatry in Isfahan in 2013. Pre- and post-intervention assessments were done by means of the self-report tests of Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ. Results: Significant reductions in post-test scores of total emotional dysregulation (P < 0.01 as well as the factors of non-acceptance (P < 0.05 and strategy (P < 0.01 were seen, while the other factors (goal, impulse, awareness, and clarity did not change. Moreover, a significant reduction was observed in the catastrophizing strategy score (P < 0.05, in comparison with other cognitive strategies. Conclusion: This pilot study including 14 patients with psychosomatic disorders indicates that the Unified treatment approach is an effective treatment in improvement of emotional dysregulation and in reduction of utilizing maladaptive cognitive strategies.

Effectiveness of a knowledge-contact program in improving nursing students' attitudes and emotional competence in serving people living with HIV/AIDS.

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Yiu, Jessie W; Mak, Winnie W S; Ho, Winnie S; Chui, Ying Yu

2010-07-01

This study compared the effectiveness of an AIDS knowledge-only program (knowledge) with a combined program of AIDS knowledge and contact with people having HIV/AIDS (PHA) (knowledge-contact) in reducing nursing students' stigma and discrimination towards PHA and in enhancing their emotional competence to serve PHA. Eighty-nine nursing students from two universities in Hong Kong were randomly assigned to either the knowledge or the knowledge-contact condition. All participants completed measures of AIDS knowledge, stigmatizing attitudes, fear of contagion, willingness to treat, positive affect, and negative affect at pre-test, post-test, and six-week follow-up. Findings showed that in both groups, significant improvement in AIDS knowledge, stigmatizing attitudes, fear of contagion, willingness to treat, and negative affect were found at post-test. The effects on AIDS knowledge, fear of contagion, willingness to treat, and negative affect were sustained at follow-up for both groups. Intergroup comparisons at post-test showed that the effectiveness of knowledge-contact program was significantly greater than knowledge program in improving stigmatizing attitudes. No significant difference between the two groups was found at follow-up. Findings showed the short-term effect of contact in improving nursing students' attitudes and emotional competence in serving PHA. Implications for research and training of nursing staff were discussed. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Negative Emotions and Suicidal Ideation during Psychosocial Treatments in Older Adults with Major Depression and Cognitive Impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Kiosses, Dimitris N; Gross, James J; Banerjee, Samprit; Duberstein, Paul R; Putrino, David; Alexopoulos, George S

2017-06-01

To examine the relationship of negative emotions with suicidal ideation during 12 weeks of Problem Adaptation Therapy (PATH) versus Supportive Therapy of Cognitively Impaired Older Adults (ST-CI), hypothesizing that improved negative emotions are associated with reduced suicidal ideation, PATH improves negative emotions more than ST-CI, and improved negative emotions, rather than other depression symptoms, predict reduction in suicidal ideation. In a randomized controlled trial of two home-delivered psychosocial interventions, 74 older participants (65-95 years old) with major depressive disorder and cognitive impairment were recruited in collaboration with community agencies. The sample reported less intense feelings than suicidal intention. Interventions and assessments were conducted in participants' homes. PATH focuses on improving emotion regulation, whereas ST-CI focuses on nonspecific therapeutic factors, such as understanding and empathy. Improved negative emotions were measured as improvement in Montgomery Asberg's Depression Rating Scales' (MADRS) observer ratings of sadness, anxiety, guilt, hopelessness, and anhedonia. Suicidal ideation was assessed with the MADRS Suicide Item. MADRS Negative Emotions scores were significantly associated with suicidal ideation during the course of treatment (F [1,165]  = 12.73, p = 0.0005). PATH participants had significantly greater improvement in MADRS emotions than ST-CI participants (treatment group by time: F [1,63.2]  = 7.02, p = 0.0102). Finally, improved negative emotions, between lagged and follow-up interview, significantly predicted reduction in suicidal ideation at follow-up interview (F [1, 96]  = 9.95, p = 0.0022). Findings thatimprovement in negative emotions mediates reduction in suicidal ideation may guide the development of psychosocial interventions for reduction of suicidal ideation (clinicaltrials.gov; NCT00368940). Copyright © 2017 American Association for Geriatric

Effects of cue modality and emotional category on recognition of nonverbal emotional signals in schizophrenia.

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Vogel, Bastian D; Brück, Carolin; Jacob, Heike; Eberle, Mark; Wildgruber, Dirk

2016-07-07

Impaired interpretation of nonverbal emotional cues in patients with schizophrenia has been reported in several studies and a clinical relevance of these deficits for social functioning has been assumed. However, it is unclear to what extent the impairments depend on specific emotions or specific channels of nonverbal communication. Here, the effect of cue modality and emotional categories on accuracy of emotion recognition was evaluated in 21 patients with schizophrenia and compared to a healthy control group (n = 21). To this end, dynamic stimuli comprising speakers of both genders in three different sensory modalities (auditory, visual and audiovisual) and five emotional categories (happy, alluring, neutral, angry and disgusted) were used. Patients with schizophrenia were found to be impaired in emotion recognition in comparison to the control group across all stimuli. Considering specific emotions more severe deficits were revealed in the recognition of alluring stimuli and less severe deficits in the recognition of disgusted stimuli as compared to all other emotions. Regarding cue modality the extent of the impairment in emotional recognition did not significantly differ between auditory and visual cues across all emotional categories. However, patients with schizophrenia showed significantly more severe disturbances for vocal as compared to facial cues when sexual interest is expressed (alluring stimuli), whereas more severe disturbances for facial as compared to vocal cues were observed when happiness or anger is expressed. Our results confirmed that perceptual impairments can be observed for vocal as well as facial cues conveying various social and emotional connotations. The observed differences in severity of impairments with most severe deficits for alluring expressions might be related to specific difficulties in recognizing the complex social emotional information of interpersonal intentions as compared to "basic" emotional states. Therefore

The Effects of Water Insecurity and Emotional Distress on Civic Action for Improved Water Infrastructure in Rural South Africa

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Bulled, Nicola

2015-01-01

The South African constitution ratifies water as a human right. Yet millions of citizens remain disconnected from the national water infrastructure. Drawing on data collected in 2013–2014 from women in northern South Africa, this study explores “water citizenship”—individual civic engagement related to improving water service provision. Literature indicates that water insecurity is associated with emotional distress and that water-related emotional distress influences citizen engagement. I extend these lines of research by assessing the connection that water insecurity and emotional distress may collectively have with civic engagement to improve access to water infrastructure. PMID:26698378

Emotional aging: a discrete emotions perspective.

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Kunzmann, Ute; Kappes, Cathleen; Wrosch, Carsten

2014-01-01

Perhaps the most important single finding in the field of emotional aging has been that the overall quality of affective experience steadily improves during adulthood and can be maintained into old age. Recent lifespan developmental theories have provided motivation- and experience-based explanations for this phenomenon. These theories suggest that, as individuals grow older, they become increasingly motivated and able to regulate their emotions, which could result in reduced negativity and enhanced positivity. The objective of this paper is to expand existing theories and empirical research on emotional aging by presenting a discrete emotions perspective. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we focus on a discussion of the literature examining age differences in anger and sadness. These two negative emotions have typically been subsumed under the singular concept of negative affect. From a discrete emotions perspective, however, they are highly distinct and show multidirectional age differences. We propose that such contrasting age differences in specific negative emotions have important implications for our understanding of long-term patterns of affective well-being across the adult lifespan.

Experience-based design for integrating the patient care experience into healthcare improvement: Identifying a set of reliable emotion words.

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Russ, Lauren R; Phillips, Jennifer; Brzozowicz, Keely; Chafetz, Lynne A; Plsek, Paul E; Blackmore, C Craig; Kaplan, Gary S

2013-12-01

Experience-based design is an emerging method used to capture the emotional content of patient and family member healthcare experiences, and can serve as the foundation for patient-centered healthcare improvement. However, a core tool-the experience-based design questionnaire-requires words with consistent emotional meaning. Our objective was to identify and evaluate an emotion word set reliably categorized across the demographic spectrum as expressing positive, negative, or neutral emotions for experience-based design improvement work. We surveyed 407 patients, family members, and healthcare workers in 2011. Participants designated each of 67 potential emotion words as positive, neutral, or negative based on their emotional perception of the word. Overall agreement was assessed using the kappa statistic. Words were selected for retention in the final emotion word set based on 80% simple agreement on classification of meaning across subgroups. The participants were 47.9% (195/407) patients, 19.4% (33/407) family members and 32.7% (133/407) healthcare staff. Overall agreement adjusted for chance was moderate (k=0.55). However, agreement for positive (k=0.69) and negative emotions (k=0.68) was substantially higher, while agreement in the neutral category was low (k=0.11). There were 20 positive, 1 neutral, and 14 negative words retained for the final experience-based design emotion word set. We identified a reliable set of emotion words for experience questionnaires to serve as the foundation for patient-centered, experience-based redesign of healthcare. Incorporation of patient and family member perspectives in healthcare requires reliable tools to capture the emotional content of care touch points. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Emotion-focused group therapy for women with symptoms of bulimia nervosa.

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Wnuk, Susan M; Greenberg, Les; Dolhanty, Joanne

2015-01-01

This study provides outcome pilot data for an outpatient emotion-focused therapy group for 12 women with DSM-IV diagnoses of binge-eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, or eating disorder not otherwise specified. The emotion-focused therapy group involved 16 weekly sessions that targeted problematic emotions connected to eating disorder symptoms. Semi-structured clinical interviews were conducted pre- and post-treatment and self-report questionnaires were administered. From pre- to post-treatment, changes in binge eating and scores on self-report measures were statistically significant. Participants reported a decrease in the frequency of binge episodes, improvements in mood, and improvements in emotion regulation and self-efficacy.

Working memory training improves emotional states of healthy individuals

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Hikaru eTakeuchi

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Working memory (WM capacity is associated with various emotional aspects, including states of depression and stress, reactions to emotional stimuli, and regulatory behaviors. We have previously investigated the effects of WM training (WMT on cognitive functions and brain structures. However, the effects of WMT on emotional states and related neural mechanisms among healthy young adults remain unknown. In the present study, we investigated these effects in young adults who underwent WMT or received no intervention for 4 weeks. Before and after the intervention, subjects completed self-report questionnaires related to their emotional states and underwent scanning sessions in which brain activities related to negative emotions were measured. Compared with controls, subjects who underwent WMT showed reduced anger, fatigue, and depression. Furthermore, WMT reduced activity in the left posterior insula during tasks evoking negative emotion, which was related to anger. It also reduced activity in the left frontoparietal area. These findings show that WMT can reduce negative mood and provide new insight into the clinical applications of WMT, at least among subjects with preclinical-level conditions.

Evoked Emotions Predict Food Choice

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dalenberg, Jelle R.; Gutjar, Swetlana; ter Horst, Gert J.; de Graaf, Kees; Renken, Remco J.; Jager, Gerry

2014-01-01

In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments.

Improvement of emotional healthcare system with stress detection from ECG signal.

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Tivatansakul, S; Ohkura, M

2015-01-01

Our emotional healthcare system is designed to cope with users' negative emotions in daily life. To make the system more intelligent, we integrated emotion recognition by facial expression to provide appropriate services based on user's current emotional state. Our emotion recognition by facial expression has confusion issue to recognize some positive, neutral and negative emotions that make the emotional healthcare system provide a relaxation service even though users don't have negative emotions. Therefore, to increase the effectiveness of the system to provide the relaxation service, we integrate stress detection from ECG signal. The stress detection might be able to address the confusion issue of emotion recognition by facial expression to provide the service. Indeed, our results show that integration of stress detection increases the effectiveness and efficiency of the emotional healthcare system to provide services.

Children's emotion understanding: A meta-analysis of training studies.

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Sprung, Manuel; Münch, Hannah M; Harris, Paul L; Ebesutani, Chad; Hofmann, Stefan G

2015-09-01

In the course of development, children show increased insight and understanding of emotions-both of their own emotions and those of others. However, little is known about the efficacy of training programs aimed at improving children's understanding of emotion. To conduct an effect size analysis of trainings aimed at three aspects of emotion understanding: external aspects (i.e., the recognition of emotional expressions, understanding external causes of emotion, understanding the influence of reminders on present emotions); mental aspects (i.e., understanding desire-based emotions, understanding belief-based emotions, understanding hidden emotions); and reflective aspects (i.e., understanding the regulation of an emotion, understanding mixed emotions, understanding moral emotions). A literature search was conducted using PubMed, PsycInfo, the Cochrane Library, and manual searches. The search identified 19 studies or experiments including a total of 749 children with an average age of 86 months ( S.D .=30.71) from seven different countries. Emotion understanding training procedures are effective for improving external (Hedge's g = 0.62), mental (Hedge's g = 0.31), and reflective (Hedge's g = 0.64) aspects of emotion understanding. These effect sizes were robust and generally unrelated to the number and lengths of training sessions, length of the training period, year of publication, and sample type. However, training setting and social setting moderated the effect of emotion understanding training on the understanding of external aspects of emotion. For the length of training session and social setting, we observed significant moderator effects of training on reflective aspects of emotion. Emotion understanding training may be a promising tool for both preventive intervention and the psychotherapeutic process. However, more well-controlled studies are needed.

Achieving the same for less: improving mood depletes blood glucose for people with poor (but not good) emotion control.

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Niven, Karen; Totterdell, Peter; Miles, Eleanor; Webb, Thomas L; Sheeran, Paschal

2013-01-01

Previous studies have found that acts of self-control like emotion regulation deplete blood glucose levels. The present experiment investigated the hypothesis that the extent to which people's blood glucose levels decline during emotion regulation attempts is influenced by whether they believe themselves to be good or poor at emotion control. We found that although good and poor emotion regulators were equally able to achieve positive and negative moods, the blood glucose of poor emotion regulators was reduced after performing an affect-improving task, whereas the blood glucose of good emotion regulators remained unchanged. As evidence suggests that glucose is a limited energy resource upon which self-control relies, the implication is that good emotion regulators are able to achieve the same positive mood with less cost to their self-regulatory resource. Thus, depletion may not be an inevitable consequence of engaging in emotion regulation.

Are Emotionally Intelligent EFL Teachers More Satisfied Professionally?

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Mohammad Hossein Hekmatzadeh

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Despite the fact that Intelligence Quotient (IQ is an important factor in one’s success in terms of working environment, it is believed that emotional quotient or EQ plays a more important role. With that in mind, this study investigated the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction of English as Foreign Language (EFL teachers who work at private language institutes in Iran/Shiraz. Furthermore, this study tried to answer whether there is a significant difference between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction of Iranian’s EFL teachers in terms of gender.  A 90-item Bar-On questionnaire was used to measure the teachers’ emotional intelligence; also, a modified version of Karavas’s (2010 job satisfaction scale was used to see how satisfied our teachers are with their teaching career. To answer the research question, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient statistical test was run. The results showed that there was a positive and significant correlation between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction of EFL teachers in Iran/Shiraz. Furthermore, the results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in emotional intelligence between EFL male and female teachers, but there was no statistically significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ job satisfaction in terms of gender. Based on our findings, it is suggested that some preparatory courses aiming at enhancing the important psychological traits such as emotional intelligence should be incorporated in educational programs designed for novice teachers so that it will contribute to pedagogical improvement.

Debunking Confabulation: Emotions and the Significance of Empirical Psychology for Kantian Ethics

OpenAIRE

Kleingeld, Pauline; Cohen, Alix

2014-01-01

It is frequently argued that research findings in empirical moral psychology spell trouble for Kantian ethics. Sometimes the charge is merely that Kantianism is mistaken about the role of emotions in human action, but it has also been argued that empirical moral psychology ‘debunks’ Kantian ethics as the product of precisely the emotion-driven processes it fails to acknowledge. In this essay I argue for a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that the ‘debunking’ argument aga...

Emotion regulation mediates age differences in emotions.

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Yeung, Dannii Y; Wong, Carmen K M; Lok, David P P

2011-04-01

This study aimed at testing the proposition of socioemotional selectivity theory whether older people would use more antecedent-focused emotion regulatory strategies like cognitive reappraisal but fewer response-focused strategies like suppression. It also aimed at investigating the mediating role of emotion regulation on the relationship between age and emotions. The sample consisted of 654 younger and older adults aged between 18 and 64. Results showed that age was significantly associated with positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal. No difference was found in negative emotions and suppression between younger and older adults. Cognitive reappraisal partially mediated the effect of age on positive emotions. Findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the underlying mechanism of age variations in emotional experiences.

Emotional Aging: A Discrete Emotions Perspective

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Ute eKunzmann

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Perhaps the most important single finding in the field of emotional aging has been that the overall quality of affective experience steadily improves during adulthood and can be maintained into old age. Recent lifespan developmental theories have provided motivation- and experience-based explanations for this phenomenon. These theories suggest that, as individuals grow older, they become increasingly motivated and able to regulate their emotions, which could result in reduced negativity and enhanced positivity. The objective of this paper is to expand existing theories and empirical research on emotional aging by presenting a discrete emotions perspective. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we focus on a discussion of the literature examining age differences in anger and sadness. These two negative emotions have been subsumed under the singular concept of negative affect. From a discrete emotions perspective, however, they are highly distinct. Sadness is elicited by an irreversible loss and associated with low situational control, high goal adjustment tendencies, and the motivation to search for social support. The experience of anger, by contrast, is typically triggered by other individuals who intentio

Empathy, and its relationship with cognitive and emotional functions in alcohol dependency.

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Erol, Almila; Akyalcin Kirdok, Asusinem; Zorlu, Nabi; Polat, Serap; Mete, Levent

2017-04-01

Empathy can be defined as the ability to understand the other's thoughts and feelings. It contains both cognitive and emotional components. The aim of this study was to investigate the empathy ability of patients with alcohol dependency in association with cognitive and emotional functions, after acute detoxification and during long-term abstinence. Thirty-three alcohol dependent inpatients that completed a detoxification process and stayed abstinent throughout the study, and 33 healthy comparison subjects that matched the patients for age, gender, and education level were included in the study. All the participants were administered the Facial Emotion Identification Test (FEIT), Facial Emotion Discrimination Test (FEDT), Trail Making Test (TMT), Digit Span Test (DST), Auditory Consonant Trigram Test (ACT), and Empathy Quotient Scale (EQS). All the tests were repeated after 3 months of abstinence. At the first evaluation conducted after detoxification, patients performed significantly worse than healthy comparisons in almost all tests. At the second evaluation, which was conducted after 3 months of abstinence, the patients improved significantly in all measures, and no significant differences were detected between the patient and comparison groups. There were significant correlations between the test scores and EQS score. Alcohol dependency has deleterious effects on empathy ability, and cognitive and emotional functions. Those impairments can improve with abstinence. Empathy ability has strong relationships with cognitive and emotional functions.

Promoting adaptive emotion regulation and coping in adolescence: a school-based programme.

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Horn, Andrea B; Pössel, Patrick; Hautzinger, Martin

2011-03-01

Particularly in adolescence, fostering adaptive emotion regulation is an important aim in health promotion. Expressive writing in combination with psycho-education on emotion regulation seems especially appropriate to serve this aim. In this study, school classes were randomly assigned either to a prevention (N = 208) or to a non-treatment control group (N = 151). The prevention group showed significant improvements regarding negative affect, grades, and days absent compared to the control-group. A combination of expressive writing with elements of psycho-education of emotion regulation might be an effective preventive tool, as it seems to improve psychosocial adjustment by establishing functional emotion regulation strategies.

Why and how to improve gifted students’ emotional intelligence?

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Jannet Patti

2011-10-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to study in depth the socio–emotional characteristics of gifted and talented students by analyzing the different works that have focused on the characteristics of such students. To do so, firstly previous studies dealing with the social and emotional characteristics of gifted and talented students will be reviewed. In addition, the concept of emotional intelligence will be explored together with the diverse theoretical perspectives from which it is studied. Finally some proposals and developed programs aimed at educational intervention on emotional recognition, expression, understanding and management will be included. Given the benefits of such programs, their inclusion in any educative curricula is justified, especially for high ability students.

Emotion regulation and substance use frequency in women with substance dependence and borderline personality disorder receiving dialectical behavior therapy.

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Axelrod, Seth R; Perepletchikova, Francheska; Holtzman, Kevin; Sinha, Rajita

2011-01-01

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) identifies emotion dysregulation as central to the dangerous impulsivity of borderline personality disorder (BPD) including substance use disorders, and DBT targets improved emotion regulation as a primary mechanism of change. However, improved emotion regulation with DBT and associations between such improvement and behavioral outcomes such as substance use has not been previously reported. Thus, the goal of this study was to assess for improvement in emotion regulation and to examine the relationship between improvements in the emotion regulation and substance use problems following DBT treatment. Emotion regulation as assessed by the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, depressed mood as assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory, and their associations with substance use frequency were investigated in 27 women with substance dependence and BPD receiving 20 weeks of DBT in an academic community outpatient substance abuse treatment program. Results indicated improved emotion regulation, improved mood, and decreased substance use frequency. Further, emotion regulation improvement, but not improved mood, explained the variance of decreased substance use frequency. This is the first study to demonstrate improved emotion regulation in BPD patients treated with DBT and to show that improved emotion regulation can account for increased behavioral control in BPD patients. SIGNIFICANCE AND FUTURE RESEARCH: Emotion regulation assessment is recommended for future studies to further clarify the etiology and maintenance of disorders associated with emotional dysregulation such as BPD and substance dependence and to further explore emotion regulation as a potential mechanism of change for clinical interventions.

The Analysis on Emotional Education in Vocational School English Teaching

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

兰州职业技术学院 730070

2015-01-01

In the time of advancing quality education, emotion education has been paid more and more attention. English teaching is both language teaching progress and emotional communication progress. Therefore, emotional education is extremely important and indispensable in vocational school classroom teaching. However, the current application of vocational school emotional education in English classroom teaching is still relatively weak. Based on the theory of emotional education, this paper attempts to explore the methods and strategies of applying emotional education in vocational school English classroom teaching. It has important theoretical significance on promoting the comprehensive development of the vocational school students, improving English teaching effect, promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the vocational school education, and enriching and developing the emotional teaching psychology and cognitive psychology theory.

Promoting Social and Emotional Competencies among Young Children in Croatia with Preschool PATHS.

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Josipa Mihic

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Preschool PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies is an evidence-based universal prevention program focused on promoting children’s social and emotional competencies and reducing the likelihood of behaviour problems and negative relationships with peers and teachers. This paper examines changes in the social and emotional competencies of the first children to participate in Preschool PATHS in Croatia. This study included 164 children, ages 3-6, in 12 preschool classrooms in three cities across Croatia, who participated in the classroom-based Preschool PATHS curriculum. At the beginning and end of the preschool year, teachers completed wellvalidated and reliable assessments of social and emotional competencies on each child. Hierarchical linear models revealed statistically significant and substantial improvements in prosocial behaviour, emotion regulation, emotion symptoms, peer problems, relational aggression, conduct problems, and hyperactive-impulsive behaviour. Study findings reveal significant changes in children’s social and emotional competencies during preschool. This time may present a unique opportunity to buttress children’s skills and improve long-term school success through the implementation of a rigorous empiricallyvalidated prevention program such as Preschool PATHS.

Developing emotional intelligence ability in oncology nurses: a clinical rounds approach.

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Codier, Estelle; Freitas, Beth; Muneno, Lynn

2013-01-01

To explore the feasibility and impact of an emotional intelligence ability development program on staff and patient care. A mixed method, pre/post-test design. A tertiary care hospital in urban Honolulu, HI. Rounds took place on a 24-bed inpatient oncology unit. 33 RNs in an oncology unit. After collection of baseline data, the emotional intelligence rounds were conducted in an inpatient oncology nursing unit on all shifts during a 10-month period. Demographic information, emotional intelligence scores, data from rounds, chart reviews of emotional care documentation, and unit-wide satisfaction and safety data. The ability to identify emotions in self and others was demonstrated less frequently than expected in this population. The low test response rate prevented comparison of scores pre- and postintervention. The staff's 94% participation in rounds, the positive (100%) evaluation of rounds, and poststudy improvements in emotional care documentation and emotional care planning suggest a positive effect from the intervention. Additional research is recommended over a longer period of time to evaluate the impact emotional intelligence specifically has on the staff's identification of emotions. Because the intervention involved minimal time and resources, feasibility for continuation of the intervention poststudy was rated "high" by the research team. Research in other disciplines suggests that improvement in emotional intelligence ability in clinical staff nurses may improve retention, performance, and teamwork in nursing, which would be of particular significance in high-risk clinical practice environments. Few research studies have explored development of emotional intelligence abilities in clinical staff nurses. Evidence from this study suggests that interventions in the clinical environment may be used to develop emotional intelligence ability. Impact from such development may be used in the future to not only improve the quality of nursing care, but also

[Emotional Leadership: a survey on the emotional skills expressed by nursing management].

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Spagnuolo, Antonella; De Santis, Marco; Torretta, Claudia; Filippi, Mauro; Talucci, Carlo

2014-01-01

The emotional leadership applied to nursing management is a new topic in the Italian nursing literature, but of great interest internationally. There is a close correlation between nursing leaders with a well-developed emotional intelligence and nurses working well-being. This study investigates knowledge about the emotional leadership and emotional competence in nursing management. The survey was conducted using a questionnaire devised for the purpose, validated and administered to 130 managers, head nurses and nurses in a hospital in Rome. Analysis of data shows a great interest in the subject. 90% of the sample showed that it is essential for managerial roles, be aware and able to manage their own and others' emotions to generate wellbeing at work. Emotional competencies are considered important just as theoretical, technical and social skills to a effective leadership on nursing. This study is one of the first Italian survey on the importance of the development of emotional intelligence in nursing leadership to improve wellbeing at work. Results of the survey should be confirmed by further studies. The emotional skills could be improved in nursing education programs and used as a yardstick for the nursing managers selection.

Understanding emotional transitions: the interpersonal consequences of changing emotions in negotiations.

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Filipowicz, Allan; Barsade, Sigal; Melwani, Shimul

2011-09-01

Research on the interpersonal functions of emotions has focused primarily on steady-state emotion rather than on emotional transitions, the movement between emotion states. The authors examined the influence of emotional transitions on social interactions and found that emotional transitions led to consistently different outcomes than their corresponding steady-state emotions. Across 2 computer-mediated negotiations and a face-to-face negotiation, participants negotiating with partners who displayed a "becoming angry" (happy to angry) emotional transition accepted worse negotiation outcomes yet formed better relational impressions of their partners than participants negotiating with partners who displayed steady-state anger. This relationship was mediated through 2 mechanisms: attributional and emotional contagion processes. The "becoming happy" (angry to happy) emotional transition as compared with steady-state happiness was not significantly related to differences in negotiation outcomes but was significantly related to differences in relational impressions, where perceivers of the "becoming happy" emotional transition gave their partners lower relational impression ratings than perceivers of steady-state happiness. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Improvement of natural image search engines results by emotional filtering

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Patrice Denis

2016-04-01

Full Text Available With the Internet 2.0 era, managing user emotions is a problem that more and more actors are interested in. Historically, the first notions of emotion sharing were expressed and defined with emoticons. They allowed users to show their emotional status to others in an impersonal and emotionless digital world. Now, in the Internet of social media, every day users share lots of content with each other on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and so on. Several new popular web sites like FlickR, Picassa, Pinterest, Instagram or DeviantArt are now specifically based on sharing image content as well as personal emotional status. This kind of information is economically very valuable as it can for instance help commercial companies sell more efficiently. In fact, with this king of emotional information, business can made where companies will better target their customers needs, and/or even sell them more products. Research has been and is still interested in the mining of emotional information from user data since then. In this paper, we focus on the impact of emotions from images that have been collected from search image engines. More specifically our proposition is the creation of a filtering layer applied on the results of such image search engines. Our peculiarity relies in the fact that it is the first attempt from our knowledge to filter image search engines results with an emotional filtering approach.

Emotion Ontology for Context Awareness

OpenAIRE

Berthelon , Franck; Sander , Peter

2013-01-01

International audience; We present an emotion ontology for describing and reasoning on emotion context in order to improve emotion detection based on bodily expression. We incorporate context into the two-factor theory of emotion (bodily reaction plus cognitive input) and demonstrate the importance of context in the emotion experience. In attempting to determine emotion felt by another person, the bodily expresson of their emotion is the only evidence directly available, eg, ''John looks angr...

Meta-analysis of the effects of intranasal oxytocin on interpretation and expression of emotions.

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Leppanen, Jenni; Ng, Kah Wee; Tchanturia, Kate; Treasure, Janet

2017-07-01

Accurate interpretation and appropriate expression of emotions are key aspects of social-cognition. Several mental disorders are characterised by transdiagnostic difficulties in these areas and, recently, there has been increasing interest in exploring the effects of oxytocin on social-emotional functioning. This review consists of 33 studies. Fifteen of the studies included people with autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, frontotemporal dementia, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and opioid and alcohol dependence. We conducted ten meta-analyses examining the effects of intranasal oxytocin on expression of emotions, emotional theory of mind, sensitivity to recognise basic emotions, and recognition of basic emotions. A single dose of intranasal oxytocin significantly improved the recognition of basic emotions, particularly fear, and increased the expression of positive emotions among the healthy individuals. Oxytocin did not significantly influence theory of mind or the expression of negative emotions among the healthy individuals. Finally, intranasal oxytocin did not significantly influence interpretation or expression of emotions among the clinical populations. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Psychosocial predictors of emotional eating and their weight-loss treatment-induced changes in women with obesity.

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Annesi, James J; Mareno, Nicole; McEwen, Kristin

2016-06-01

This study aimed at assessing whether psychosocial predictors of controlled eating and weight loss also predict emotional eating, and how differing weight-loss treatment methods affect those variables. Women with obesity (M = 47.8 ± 7.9 years; BMI = 35.4 ± 3.3 kg/m(2)) were randomized into groups of either phone-supported self-help (Self-Help; n = 50) or in-person contact (Personal Contact; n = 53) intended to increase exercise, improve eating behaviors, and reduce weight over 6 months. A multiple regression analysis indicated that at baseline mood, self-regulating eating, body satisfaction, and eating-related self-efficacy significantly predicted emotional eating (R (2) = 0.35), with mood and self-efficacy as independent predictors. Improvements over 6 months on each psychosocial measure were significantly greater in the Personal Contact group. Changes in mood, self-regulation, body satisfaction, and self-efficacy significantly predicted emotional eating change (R (2) = 0.38), with all variables except self-regulation change being an independent predictor. Decreased emotional eating was significantly associated with weight loss. Findings suggest that weight-loss interventions should target specific psychosocial factors to improve emotional eating. The administration of cognitive-behavioral methods through personal contact might be more beneficial for those improvements than self-help formats.

Emotional Understanding and Color-Emotion Associations in Children Aged 7-8 Years

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Debbie J. Pope

2012-01-01

Full Text Available An understanding of the development of emotional knowledge can help us determine how children perceive and interpret their surroundings and color-emotion associations are one measure of the expression of a child’s emotional interpretations. Emotional understanding and color-emotion associations were examined in a sample of UK school children, aged 7-8 years. Forty primary school children (mean age = 7.38; SD = 0.49 were administered color assessment and emotional understanding tasks, and an expressive vocabulary test. Results identified significant gender differences with girls providing more appropriate and higher quality expressions of emotional understanding than boys. Children were more able to link color to positive rather than negative emotions and significant gender differences in specific color preferences were observed. The implications of adult misinterpretations of color-emotion associations in young children are discussed.

Emotional availability, understanding emotions, and recognition of facial emotions in obese mothers with young children.

Science.gov (United States)

Bergmann, Sarah; von Klitzing, Kai; Keitel-Korndörfer, Anja; Wendt, Verena; Grube, Matthias; Herpertz, Sarah; Schütz, Astrid; Klein, Annette M

2016-01-01

Recent research has identified mother-child relationships of low quality as possible risk factors for childhood obesity. However, it remains open how mothers' own obesity influences the quality of mother-child interaction, and particularly emotional availability (EA). Also unclear is the influence of maternal emotional competencies, i.e. understanding emotions and recognizing facial emotions. This study aimed to (1) investigate differences between obese and normal-weight mothers regarding mother-child EA, maternal understanding emotions and recognition of facial emotions, and (2) explore how maternal emotional competencies and maternal weight interact with each other in predicting EA. A better understanding of these associations could inform strategies of obesity prevention especially in children at risk. We assessed EA, understanding emotions and recognition of facial emotions in 73 obese versus 73 normal-weight mothers, and their children aged 6 to 47 months (Mchild age=24.49, 80 females). Obese mothers showed lower EA and understanding emotions. Mothers' normal weight and their ability to understand emotions were positively associated with EA. The ability to recognize facial emotions was positively associated with EA in obese but not in normal-weight mothers. Maternal weight status indirectly influenced EA through its effect on understanding emotions. Maternal emotional competencies may play an important role for establishing high EA in interaction with the child. Children of obese mothers experience lower EA, which may contribute to overweight development. We suggest including elements that aim to improve maternal emotional competencies and mother-child EA in prevention or intervention programmes targeting childhood obesity. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Face or body? Oxytocin improves perception of emotions from facial expressions in incongruent emotional body context.

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Perry, Anat; Aviezer, Hillel; Goldstein, Pavel; Palgi, Sharon; Klein, Ehud; Shamay-Tsoory, Simone G

2013-11-01

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been repeatedly reported to play an essential role in the regulation of social cognition in humans in general, and specifically in enhancing the recognition of emotions from facial expressions. The later was assessed in different paradigms that rely primarily on isolated and decontextualized emotional faces. However, recent evidence has indicated that the perception of basic facial expressions is not context invariant and can be categorically altered by context, especially body context, at early perceptual levels. Body context has a strong effect on our perception of emotional expressions, especially when the actual target face and the contextually expected face are perceptually similar. To examine whether and how OT affects emotion recognition, we investigated the role of OT in categorizing facial expressions in incongruent body contexts. Our results show that in the combined process of deciphering emotions from facial expressions and from context, OT gives an advantage to the face. This advantage is most evident when the target face and the contextually expected face are perceptually similar. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The automaticity of emotion recognition.

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Tracy, Jessica L; Robins, Richard W

2008-02-01

Evolutionary accounts of emotion typically assume that humans evolved to quickly and efficiently recognize emotion expressions because these expressions convey fitness-enhancing messages. The present research tested this assumption in 2 studies. Specifically, the authors examined (a) how quickly perceivers could recognize expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, happiness, pride, sadness, shame, and surprise; (b) whether accuracy is improved when perceivers deliberate about each expression's meaning (vs. respond as quickly as possible); and (c) whether accurate recognition can occur under cognitive load. Across both studies, perceivers quickly and efficiently (i.e., under cognitive load) recognized most emotion expressions, including the self-conscious emotions of pride, embarrassment, and shame. Deliberation improved accuracy in some cases, but these improvements were relatively small. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the cognitive processes underlying emotion recognition.

The effectiveness of cognitive- behavior therapy on illness representations of multiple-sclerosis and improving their emotional states

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Farhad Hazhir

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Background: Illness representations (based on Leventhal's model are associated with chronic illness outcomes. It has been suggested that targeting these cognitive components improves illness outcomes. Multiple sclerosis is a common disorder between neural and immune systems that creates physical and psychological consequences. There are few pre psychological trails on these patients. The aim of this study was to determine effectiveness of cognitive-behavior therapy on altering illness representations and improving emotional states of the patients.Methods: By using a randomized controlled trial design, among 52 selected patients, 35 volunteers randomly were allocated into intervention and control groups. An extensive interventional cognitive behavior therapy based package was conducted to intervention group in 10 weekly sessions. The control group stayed in waiting list and participated in 5 group meeting sessions. (IPQR and (DASS-42 psychological scales were administered, Leven and T statistical tests were applied for dat analysis.Results: The results showed positive changes in four illness representation components of patients including illness (identity, consequences, coherence and personal control. Associated improvement occurred in depression, anxiety, stress and emotional representations.Conclusion: Mooney and Padeskey's theoretically based cognitive-behavior therapy, is effective on illness representations modification and improving emotional states of the patients. The findings are less similar to Goodman's trial on Systemic Lupus Erythematosus patients and more similar to Petrie's trail on cardiac patients.

Momentary emotion identification in female adolescents with and without anorexia nervosa.

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Kolar, David R; Huss, Michael; Preuss, Hanna M; Jenetzky, Ekkehart; Haynos, Ann F; Bürger, Arne; Hammerle, Florian

2017-09-01

Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) often report difficulties in identifying emotions, which have been mostly studied as an alexithymia trait. In a controlled two-day ecological momentary assessment, we studied the influence of time of day and aversive tension on self-reported momentary emotion identification. Analysis on an aggregated level revealed a significant lower mean emotion identification in the AN group. In a mixed model analysis, the AN group showed lower emotion identification than the control group (HC). Both a general and a group effect of time of day were found, indicating that emotion identification improved during the day in HC, whereas a negligible decrease of the emotion identification over time was observed in the AN group. Age was associated positively with emotion identification in general, but no specific effect on a group level was found. No effect of aversive tension was found. Our results indicate that an improvement during the day might be a natural process of emotion identification, which is hindered in AN. Future research should focus on temporal relations between emotion identification and disordered eating behavior to further evaluate the clinical relevance of emotion identification difficulties in AN. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Improvement of Emotion and Attention Regulation after a 6-Week Training of Focused Meditation: A Randomized Controlled Trial

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Carolina Baptista Menezes

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Self-regulatory trainings can be an effective complementary treatment for mental health disorders. We investigated the effects of a six-week-focused meditation training on emotion and attention regulation in undergraduates randomly allocated to a meditation, a relaxation, or a wait-list control group. Assessment comprised a discrimination task that investigates the relationship between attentional load and emotional processing and self-report measures. For emotion regulation, results showed greater reduction in emotional interference in the low attentional load condition in meditators, particularly compared to relaxation. Only meditators presented a significant association between amount of weekly practice and the reduction in emotion interference in the task and significantly reduced image ratings of negative valence and arousal, perceived anxiety and difficulty during the task, and state and trait-anxiety. For attention regulation, response bias during the task was analyzed through signal detection theory. After training, meditation and relaxation significantly reduced bias in the high attentional load condition. Importantly, there was a dose-response effect on general bias: the lowest in meditation, increasing linearly across relaxation and wait-list. Only meditators reduced omissions in a concentrated attention test. Focused meditation seems to be an effective training for emotion and attention regulation and an alternative for treatments in the mental health context.

Emotion regulation in patients with rheumatic diseases: validity and responsiveness of the Emotional Approach Coping Scale (EAC

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Mowinckel Petter

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Chronic rheumatic diseases are painful conditions which are not entirely controllable and can place high emotional demands on individuals. Increasing evidence has shown that emotion regulation in terms of actively processing and expressing disease-related emotions are likely to promote positive adjustment in patients with chronic diseases. The Emotional Approach Coping Scale (EAC measures active attempts to acknowledge, understand, and express emotions. Although tested in other clinical samples, the EAC has not been validated for patients with rheumatic diseases. This study evaluated the data quality, internal consistency reliability, validity and responsiveness of the Norwegian version of the EAC for this group of patients. Methods 220 patients with different rheumatic diseases were included in a cross-sectional study in which data quality and internal consistency were assessed. Construct validity was assessed through comparisons with the Brief Approach/Avoidance Coping Questionnaire (BACQ and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-20. Responsiveness was tested in a longitudinal pretest-posttest study of two different coping interventions, the Vitality Training Program (VTP and a Self-Management Program (SMP. Results The EAC had low levels of missing data. Results from principal component analysis supported two subscales, Emotional Expression and Emotional Processing, which had high Cronbach's alphas of 0.90 and 0.92, respectively. The EAC had correlations with approach-oriented items in the BACQ in the range 0.17-0.50. The EAC Expression scale had a significant negative correlation with the GHQ-20 of -0.13. As hypothesized, participation in the VTP significantly improved EAC scores, indicating responsiveness to change. Conclusion The EAC is an acceptable and valid instrument for measuring emotional processing and expression in patients with rheumatic diseases. The EAC scales were responsive to change in an intervention

Reconsidering Emotion Dysregulation.

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D'Agostino, Alessandra; Covanti, Serena; Rossi Monti, Mario; Starcevic, Vladan

2017-12-01

This article aims to review the concept of emotion dysregulation, focusing on issues related to its definition, meanings and role in psychiatric disorders. Articles on emotion dysregulation published until May 2016 were identified through electronic database searches. Although there is no agreement about the definition of emotion dysregulation, the following five overlapping, not mutually exclusive dimensions of emotion dysregulation were identified: decreased emotional awareness, inadequate emotional reactivity, intense experience and expression of emotions, emotional rigidity and cognitive reappraisal difficulty. These dimensions characterise a number of psychiatric disorders in various proportions, with borderline personality disorder and eating disorders seemingly more affected than other conditions. The present review contributes to the literature by identifying the key components of emotion dysregulation and by showing how these permeate various forms of psychopathology. It also makes suggestions for improving research endeavours. Better understanding of the various dimensions of emotion dysregulation will have implications for clinical practice. Future research needs to address emotion dysregulation in all its multifaceted complexity so that it becomes clearer what the concept encompasses.

Emotional Communication in Finger Braille

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Yasuhiro Matsuda

2010-01-01

Full Text Available We describe analyses of the features of emotions (neutral, joy, sadness, and anger expressed by Finger Braille interpreters and subsequently examine the effectiveness of emotional expression and emotional communication between people unskilled in Finger Braille. The goal is to develop a Finger Braille system to teach emotional expression and a system to recognize emotion. The results indicate the following features of emotional expression by interpreters. The durations of the code of joy were significantly shorter than the durations of the other emotions, the durations of the code of sadness were significantly longer, and the finger loads of anger were significantly larger. The features of emotional expression by unskilled subjects were very similar to those of the interpreters, and the coincidence ratio of emotional communication was 75.1%. Therefore, it was confirmed that people unskilled in Finger Braille can express and communicate emotions using this communication medium.

Emotional and Spiritual Quotient Approach Improve Biology Education Students’ Acceptance of Evolution Theory

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Darussyamsu, R.; Fadilah, M.; Putri, D. H.

2018-04-01

Emotional and spiritual aspect is one of main factors that influence students’ acceptance of a theory. This study aim to measure university students’ acceptance of evolution by learns evolution using emotional and spiritual quotient (ESQ) approach. This is a quasi-experimental research using one shot case study design with the subject 36 biology educational students at Biology Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Universitas Negeri Padang. Data collected using the MATE instrument by Rutledge and Warden (2000) after the students learn evolution for eight meetings since January until March 2017. The result showed that by learning evolution theory combine with ESQ aspects increase students acceptance from very low become moderate acceptance. It concluded that ESQ aspects can improve students’ acceptance of evolution. Any criteria depend on it are discussed.

Clinicians' recognition and management of emotions during difficult healthcare conversations.

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Martin, Elliott B; Mazzola, Natalia M; Brandano, Jessica; Luff, Donna; Zurakowski, David; Meyer, Elaine C

2015-10-01

To examine the most commonly reported emotions encountered among healthcare practitioners when holding difficult conversations, including frequency and impact on care delivery. Interprofessional learners from a range of experience levels and specialties completed self-report questionnaires prior to simulation-based communication workshops. Clinicians were asked to describe up to three emotions they experienced when having difficult healthcare conversations; subsequent questions used Likert-scales to measure frequency of each emotion, and whether care was affected. 152 participants completed questionnaires, including physicians, nurses, and psychosocial professionals. Most commonly reported emotions were anxiety, sadness, empathy, frustration, and insecurity. There were significant differences in how clinicians perceived these different emotions affecting care. Empathy and anxiety were emotions perceived to influence care more than sadness, frustration, and insecurity. Most clinicians, regardless of clinical experience and discipline, find their emotional state influences the quality of their care delivery. Most clinicians rate themselves as somewhat to quite capable of recognizing and managing their emotions, acknowledging significant room to grow. Further education designed to increase clinicians' recognition of, reflection on, and management of emotion would likely prove helpful in improving their ability to navigate difficult healthcare conversations. Interventions aimed at anxiety management are particularly needed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Significance of Emotional Intelligence on Entrepreneurial Behavior of Instructors (Case study: Iran Technical and vocational Training Organization (TVTO’s Instructors

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Abbas Karimi

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Entrepreneurial characteristics, in fact, are the entrepreneur’s behavioral outputs in different conditions. The behavior, which can be increasingly changed during the times, is a function of acquired and inherent factors. Emotional intelligence as a set of teachable and acquisitive behaviors, can affect the entrepreneurs’ behavioral characteristics. This paper tried to study the relationship between emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial behavioral characteristics among the Iran Technical and vocational Training Organization (TVTO’s Instructors. The statistical sample population in this research is 105 instructors from all over the Iran. Two standardized questionnaires including; Measurement Instrument of Personality characteristics of Iranian’s Entrepreneurs and “Bar- On” Test for assessing the Emotional Intelligence has been used for data collection after testing their validity and reliability. Results from data analysis using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques showed that there is a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial characteristics and emotional intelligence among Iran TVTO’s instructors.

Emotional intelligence, emotional labor, and job satisfaction among physicians in Greece

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Psilopanagioti Aristea

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background There is increasing evidence that psychological constructs, such as emotional intelligence and emotional labor, play an important role in various organizational outcomes in service sector. Recently, in the “emotionally charged” healthcare field, emotional intelligence and emotional labor have both emerged as research tools, rather than just as theoretical concepts, influencing various organizational parameters including job satisfaction. The present study aimed at investigating the relationships, direct and/or indirect, between emotional intelligence, the surface acting component of emotional labor, and job satisfaction in medical staff working in tertiary healthcare. Methods Data were collected from 130 physicians in Greece, who completed a series of self-report questionnaires including: a the Wong Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, which assessed the four dimensions of emotional intelligence, i.e. Self-Emotion Appraisal, Others’ Emotion Appraisal, Use of Emotion, and Regulation of Emotion, b the General Index of Job Satisfaction, and c the Dutch Questionnaire on Emotional Labor (surface acting component. Results Emotional intelligence (Use of Emotion dimension was significantly and positively correlated with job satisfaction (r=.42, p, whereas a significant negative correlation between surface acting and job satisfaction was observed (r=−.39, p. Furthermore, Self-Emotion Appraisal was negatively correlated with surface acting (r=−.20, p. Self-Emotion Appraisal was found to influence job satisfaction both directly and indirectly through surface acting, while this indirect effect was moderated by gender. Apart from its mediating role, surface acting was also a moderator of the emotional intelligence-job satisfaction relationship. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that surface acting could predict job satisfaction over and above emotional intelligence dimensions. Conclusions The results of the present

The effect of background music and song texts on the emotional understanding of children with autism.

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Katagiri, June

2009-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of background music and song texts to teach emotional understanding to children with autism. Participants were 12 students (mean age 11.5 years) with a primary diagnosis of autism who were attending schools in Japan. Each participant was taught four emotions to decode and encode: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear by the counterbalanced treatment-order. The treatment consisted of the four conditions: (a) no contact control (NCC)--no purposeful teaching of the selected emotion, (b) contact control (CC)--teaching the selected emotion using verbal instructions alone, (c) background music (BM)--teaching the selected emotion by verbal instructions with background music representing the emotion, and singing songs (SS)--teaching the selected emotion by singing specially composed songs about the emotion. Participants were given a pretest and a posttest and received 8 individual sessions between these tests. The results indicated that all participants improved significantly in their understanding of the four selected emotions. Background music was significantly more effective than the other three conditions in improving participants' emotional understanding. The findings suggest that background music can be an effective tool to increase emotional understanding in children with autism, which is crucial to their social interactions.

Identifying emotional intelligence skills of Turkish clinical nurses according to sociodemographic and professional variables.

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Kahraman, Nilgün; Hiçdurmaz, Duygu

2016-04-01

This study aimed to identify the emotional intelligence skills of Turkish clinical nurses according to sociodemographic and professional variables. Emotional intelligence is "the ability of a person to comprehend self-emotions, to show empathy towards the feelings of others, and to control self-emotions in a way that enriches life." Nurses with a higher emotional intelligence level offer more efficient and professional care, and they accomplish more in their social and professional lives. We designed a descriptive cross-sectional study. The Introductory Information Form and the Bar-On emotional intelligence Inventory were used to collect data between 20th June and 20th August 2012. The study was conducted with 312 nurses from 37 hospitals located within the borders of the metropolitan municipality in Ankara. There were no significant differences between emotional intelligence scores of the nurses according to demographic variables such as age, gender, marital status, having children. Thus, sociodemographic factors did not appear to be key factors, but some professional variables did. Higher total emotional intelligence scores were observed in those who had 10 years or longer experience, who found oneself successful in professional life, who stated that emotional intelligence is an improvable skill and who previously received self-improvement training. Interpersonal skills were higher in those with a graduate degree and in nurses working in polyclinics and paediatric units. These findings indicate which groups require improvement in emotional intelligence skills and which skills need improvement. Additionally, these results provide knowledge and create awareness about emotional intelligence skills of nurses and the distribution of these skills according to sociodemographic and professional variables. Implementation of emotional intelligence improvement programmes targeting the determined clinical nursing groups by nursing administrations can help the increase in

Evoked emotions predict food choice.

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Dalenberg, Jelle R; Gutjar, Swetlana; Ter Horst, Gert J; de Graaf, Kees; Renken, Remco J; Jager, Gerry

2014-01-01

In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.

Warming the Emotional Climate of the Classroom: Can Teachers' Social-Emotional Skills Change?

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Harvey, Shane T.; Evans, Ian M.; Hill, Rhys V. J.; Henricksen, Annette; Bimler, David

2016-01-01

Emotional skills underpin what teachers do. However, relatively few studies have investigated whether these skills can be formally learnt by teachers and the benefits enhancing teachers' social-emotional skills may have on students. The current research aimed to develop an intervention to improve teachers' social-emotional skills in the classroom…

Development and implementation of an online program to improve how patients communicate emotional concerns to their oncology providers.

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Porter, Laura S; Pollak, Kathryn I; Farrell, David; Cooper, Meredith; Arnold, Robert M; Jeffreys, Amy S; Tulsky, James A

2015-10-01

Patients often struggle to express their emotional concerns to their oncology providers and may therefore experience unmet needs. This paper describes the development and implementation of an online program that teaches patients how to communicate their emotions to their oncology providers. The intervention was developed by a multidisciplinary team consisting of palliative care physicians, psychologists, and an intervention software developer and included input from patients. It incorporated elements of Social Cognitive Theory and validated cognitive behavioral strategies for communication skills training. Strategies to increase intervention adherence were implemented midway through the study. The intervention consists of four interactive, online modules to teach patients strategies for expressing emotional concerns to their providers and asking for support. In addition to skill-building, the intervention was designed to raise patients' expectations that expressing emotional concerns to providers would be helpful, to enhance their self-efficacy for doing so, and to help them overcome barriers to having these conversations. After implementing strategies to improve adherence, usage rates increased from 47 to 64 %. This intervention addresses an unmet educational need for patients with advanced cancer. Strategies to increase adherence led to improvements in usage rates in this population of older patients. We are currently evaluating the intervention in a randomized clinical trial to determine its efficacy in increasing patient expression of emotional concerns and requests for support. If successful, this intervention could serve as a model for future online patient education programs.

Improving general flexibility with a mind-body approach: a randomized, controlled trial using neuro emotional Technique®.

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Jensen, Anne M; Ramasamy, Adaikalavan; Hall, Michael W

2012-08-01

General flexibility is a key component of health, well-being, and general physical conditioning. Reduced flexibility has both physical and mental/emotional etiologies and can lead to musculoskeletal injuries and athletic underperformance. Few studies have tested the effectiveness of a mind-body therapy on general flexibility. The aim of this study was to investigate if Neuro Emotional Technique® (NET), a mind-body technique shown to be effective in reducing stress, can also improve general flexibility. The sit-and-reach test (SR) score was used as a measure of general flexibility. Forty-five healthy participants were recruited from the general population and assessed for their initial SR score before being randomly allocated to receive (a) two 20-minute sessions of NET (experimental group); (b) two 20-minute sessions of stretching instruction (active control group); or (c) no intervention or instruction (passive control group). After intervention, the participants were reassessed in a similar manner by the same blind assessor. The participants also answered questions about demographics, usual water and caffeine consumption, and activity level, and they completed an anxiety/mood psychometric preintervention and postintervention. The mean (SD) change in the SR score was +3.1 cm (2.5) in the NET group, +1.2 cm (2.3) in the active control group and +1.0 cm (2.6) in the passive control group. Although all the 3 groups showed some improvement, the improvement in the NET group was statistically significant when compared with that of either the passive controls (p = 0.015) or the active controls (p = 0.021). This study suggests that NET could provide an effective treatment in improving general flexibility. A larger study is required to confirm these findings and also to assess longer term effectiveness of this therapy on general flexibility.

When getting angry is smart: emotional preferences and emotional intelligence.

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Ford, Brett Q; Tamir, Maya

2012-08-01

People who prefer to feel useful emotions, even when they are unpleasant to experience, must understand emotions and seek to regulate them in strategic ways. Such people, therefore, may be more emotionally intelligent compared with people who prefer to feel emotions that may not be useful for the context at hand, even if those emotions are pleasant to experience. We tested this hypothesis by measuring emotional intelligence and preferences to feel pleasant and unpleasant emotions in contexts in which they are likely to be useful or not. We found significant positive associations between emotional intelligence and preferences for useful emotions, even when controlling for trait emotional experiences and cognitive intelligence. People who prefer to feel anger when confronting others tend to be higher in emotional intelligence, whereas people who prefer to feel happiness in such contexts tend to be lower in emotional intelligence. Such findings are consistent with the idea that wanting to feel bad may be good at times, and vice versa.

Multimodal emotional state recognition using sequence-dependent deep hierarchical features.

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Barros, Pablo; Jirak, Doreen; Weber, Cornelius; Wermter, Stefan

2015-12-01

Emotional state recognition has become an important topic for human-robot interaction in the past years. By determining emotion expressions, robots can identify important variables of human behavior and use these to communicate in a more human-like fashion and thereby extend the interaction possibilities. Human emotions are multimodal and spontaneous, which makes them hard to be recognized by robots. Each modality has its own restrictions and constraints which, together with the non-structured behavior of spontaneous expressions, create several difficulties for the approaches present in the literature, which are based on several explicit feature extraction techniques and manual modality fusion. Our model uses a hierarchical feature representation to deal with spontaneous emotions, and learns how to integrate multiple modalities for non-verbal emotion recognition, making it suitable to be used in an HRI scenario. Our experiments show that a significant improvement of recognition accuracy is achieved when we use hierarchical features and multimodal information, and our model improves the accuracy of state-of-the-art approaches from 82.5% reported in the literature to 91.3% for a benchmark dataset on spontaneous emotion expressions. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

[Action tendencies of respect-related emotions: Focus on emotion episodes in Japanese university students].

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Muto, Sera

2016-06-01

This study examined the action tendencies of respect-related emotions in Japanese university students. Participants (n = 405) randomly received a questionnaire about one of six respect-related emotions: (a) keiai (respect mingled with mild love); (b) shinsui (idolatry worship, and adoration); (c) ifu (awe mingled with fear); (d) kanshin (admiration); (e) kyotan (wonder); and (f) sonkei (respect proper) and were asked to recall a situation they felt the emotion. Next, they rated how much they felt like doing the respect-related (intrapersonal or interpersonal) actions in the situation. Statistical analysis revealed several action tendencies of respect-related emotions, however, the degree of each differed between the prototypical episodes of the emotions (a)-(e). The action tendency pattern of sonkei was most similar to that of keiai, therefore keiai could be considered as the prototypical feeling of sonkei in university students. Furthermore, almost all the respect-related emotions tended to strongly motivate willingness for self-correction and improvement. These findings suggest that respect-related emotions play an important role in self-improvement and building good relationships with superiors, at least in late adolescence.

The Relationship between Emotional and Esteem Social Support Messages and Health.

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Robinson, James D; Turner, Jeanine W; Tian, Yan; Neustadtl, Alan; Mun, Seong Ki; Levine, Betty

2017-11-28

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the relative contribution of five types of social support to improved patient health. This analysis suggests that emotional and esteem social support messages are associated with improved patient health as measured by a decrease in average blood glucose levels among diabetic patients. In addition, when two system feature variables, two system use variables, two measures of learning, one measure of self-efficacy, and one measure of affect toward their HCP were added to the baseline model, a third significant factor emerged. Perceptions about learning about diabetes from reading the digital messages sent by their HCP also predicted improved patient health. Cognitive-Emotional Theory of Esteem Support Messages suggests a combination of esteem social support and emotional social support messages enhanced our ability to predict improved patient health by change in patient hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) scores. While a nonrandomized prospective study, this investigation provides support for the notion that provider-patient interaction is related to improved patient health and that both emotional and esteem social support messages play a role in that process. Finally, the study suggests some types of social support are and other types are not associated with improved patient health; this is consistent with the optimal matching hypothesis.

Monetary incentives at retrieval promote recognition of involuntarily learned emotional information.

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Yan, Chunping; Li, Yunyun; Zhang, Qin; Cui, Lixia

2018-03-07

Previous studies have suggested that the effects of reward on memory processes are affected by certain factors, but it remains unclear whether the effects of reward at retrieval on recognition processes are influenced by emotion. The event-related potential was used to investigate the combined effect of reward and emotion on memory retrieval and its neural mechanism. The behavioral results indicated that the reward at retrieval improved recognition performance under positive and negative emotional conditions. The event-related potential results indicated that there were significant interactions between the reward and emotion in the average amplitude during recognition, and the significant reward effects from the frontal to parietal brain areas appeared at 130-800 ms for positive pictures and at 190-800 ms for negative pictures, but there were no significant reward effects of neutral pictures; the reward effect of positive items appeared relatively earlier, starting at 130 ms, and that of negative pictures began at 190 ms. These results indicate that monetary incentives at retrieval promote recognition of involuntarily learned emotional information.

Emotion-Specific Priming: Congruence Effects on Affect and Recognition across Negative Emotions.

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Hansen, Christine H.; Shantz, Cynthia A.

1995-01-01

Demonstrated the emotion-specific priming effects of negatively valenced emotions (anger, sadness, and fear) in a divided attention task. Results indicated that a negative emotion displayed by a target that matched the emotion induced by a priming manipulation was significantly stronger than an incongruous priming manipulation and displayed…

Group-based parent training programmes for improving emotional and behavioural adjustment in young children.

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Barlow, Jane; Bergman, Hanna; Kornør, Hege; Wei, Yinghui; Bennett, Cathy

2016-08-01

Emotional and behavioural problems in children are common. Research suggests that parenting has an important role to play in helping children to become well-adjusted, and that the first few months and years are especially important. Parenting programmes may have a role to play in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of infants and toddlers, and this review examined their effectiveness with parents and carers of young children. 1. To establish whether group-based parenting programmes are effective in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of young children (maximum mean age of three years and 11 months); and2. To assess whether parenting programmes are effective in the primary prevention of emotional and behavioural problems. In July 2015 we searched CENTRAL (the Cochrane Library), Ovid MEDLINE, Embase (Ovid), and 10 other databases. We also searched two trial registers and handsearched reference lists of included studies and relevant systematic reviews. Two reviewers independently assessed the records retrieved by the search. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs of group-based parenting programmes that had used at least one standardised instrument to measure emotional and behavioural adjustment in children. One reviewer extracted data and a second reviewer checked the extracted data. We presented the results for each outcome in each study as standardised mean differences (SMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Where appropriate, we combined the results in a meta-analysis using a random-effects model. We used the GRADE (Grades of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) approach to assess the overall quality of the body of evidence for each outcome. We identified 22 RCTs and two quasi-RCTs evaluating the effectiveness of group-based parenting programmes in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of children aged up to three years and 11 months (maximum mean age three years 11 months

Mutual Influence of Reward Anticipation and Emotion on Brain Activity during Memory Retrieval.

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Yan, Chunping; Liu, Fang; Li, Yunyun; Zhang, Qin; Cui, Lixia

2017-01-01

Previous studies on the joint effect of reward motivation and emotion on memory retrieval have obtained inconsistent results. Furthermore, whether and how any such joint effect might vary over time remains unclear too. Accordingly, using the event-related potential (ERP) measurement of high temporal resolution, our study investigates the cognitive and brain mechanisms of monetary reward and emotion affecting the retrieval processes of episodic memory. Twenty undergraduate and graduate students participated in the research, and our study's behavioral results indicated that reward (relative to no reward) and negative emotion (relative to positive and neutral emotion) significantly improved recognition performance. The ERP results showed that there were significant interactions between monetary reward and emotion on memory retrieval, and the reward effects of positive, neutral, and negative memory occurred at varied intervals in mean amplitude. The reward effect of positive memory appeared relatively early, at 260-330 ms after the stimulus onset in the frontal-frontocentral area, at 260-500 ms in the centroparietal-parietal area and at 500-700 ms in the frontocentral area. However, the reward effects of neutral and negative memory occurred relatively later, and that of negative memory appeared at 500-700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal area and that of neutral memory was at 500-700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal-parietal area. Meanwhile, significant FN400 old/new effects were observed in the negative and rewarded positive items, and the old/new effects of negative items appeared earlier at FN400 than positive items. Also, significant late positive component (LPC) old/new effects were found in the positive, negative, and rewarded neutral items. These results suggest that, monetary reward and negative emotion significantly improved recognition performance, and there was a mutual influence between reward and emotion on brain activity during memory

Mutual Influence of Reward Anticipation and Emotion on Brain Activity during Memory Retrieval

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Chunping Yan

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Previous studies on the joint effect of reward motivation and emotion on memory retrieval have obtained inconsistent results. Furthermore, whether and how any such joint effect might vary over time remains unclear too. Accordingly, using the event-related potential (ERP measurement of high temporal resolution, our study investigates the cognitive and brain mechanisms of monetary reward and emotion affecting the retrieval processes of episodic memory. Twenty undergraduate and graduate students participated in the research, and our study’s behavioral results indicated that reward (relative to no reward and negative emotion (relative to positive and neutral emotion significantly improved recognition performance. The ERP results showed that there were significant interactions between monetary reward and emotion on memory retrieval, and the reward effects of positive, neutral, and negative memory occurred at varied intervals in mean amplitude. The reward effect of positive memory appeared relatively early, at 260–330 ms after the stimulus onset in the frontal-frontocentral area, at 260–500 ms in the centroparietal-parietal area and at 500–700 ms in the frontocentral area. However, the reward effects of neutral and negative memory occurred relatively later, and that of negative memory appeared at 500–700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal area and that of neutral memory was at 500–700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal-parietal area. Meanwhile, significant FN400 old/new effects were observed in the negative and rewarded positive items, and the old/new effects of negative items appeared earlier at FN400 than positive items. Also, significant late positive component (LPC old/new effects were found in the positive, negative, and rewarded neutral items. These results suggest that, monetary reward and negative emotion significantly improved recognition performance, and there was a mutual influence between reward and emotion on

Mindfulness training alters emotional memory recall compared to active controls: support for an emotional information processing model of mindfulness

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Doug eRoberts-Wolfe

2012-02-01

Full Text Available Objectives: While mindfulness-based interventions have received widespread application in both clinical and non-clinical populations, the mechanism by which mindfulness meditation improves well-being remains elusive. One possibility is that mindfulness training alters the processing of emotional information, similar to prevailing cognitive models of depression and anxiety. The aim of this study was to investigating the effects of mindfulness training on emotional information processing (i.e. memory biases in relation to both clinical symptomatology and well-being in comparison to active control conditions.Methods: Fifty-eight university students (28 female, age = 20.1 ± 2.7 years participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or experiential practice laboratory format (music. Participants completed an emotional word recall task and self-report questionnaires of well-being and clinical symptoms before and after the 12-week course.Results: Meditators showed greater increases in positive word recall compared to controls F(1, 56 = 6.6, p = .02. The meditation group increased significantly more on measures of well-being [F(1, 56 = 6.6, p = .01], with a marginal decrease in depression and anxiety [(F(1, 56 = 3.0, p = .09] compared to controls. Increased positive word recall was associated with increased psychological well-being [r = 0.31, p = .02] and decreased clinical symptoms [r = -0.29, p = .03].Conclusion: Mindfulness training was associated with greater improvements in processing efficiency for positively valenced stimuli than active control conditions. This change in emotional information processing was associated with improvements in psychological well-being and less depression and anxiety. These data suggest that mindfulness training may improve well-being via changes in emotional information processing.

High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being

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Kahneman, Daniel; Deaton, Angus

2010-01-01

Recent research has begun to distinguish two aspects of subjective well-being. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience—the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant. Life evaluation refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it. We raise the question of whether money buys happiness, separately for these two aspects of well-being. We report an analysis of more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization. We find that emotional well-being (measured by questions about emotional experiences yesterday) and life evaluation (measured by Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale) have different correlates. Income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being. PMID:20823223

High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being.

Science.gov (United States)

Kahneman, Daniel; Deaton, Angus

2010-09-21

Recent research has begun to distinguish two aspects of subjective well-being. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience--the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant. Life evaluation refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it. We raise the question of whether money buys happiness, separately for these two aspects of well-being. We report an analysis of more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization. We find that emotional well-being (measured by questions about emotional experiences yesterday) and life evaluation (measured by Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale) have different correlates. Income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being.

Informational need of emotional stress

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Simonov, P. V.; Frolov, M. V.

According to the informational theory of emotions[1], emotions in humans depend on the power of some need (motivation) and the estimation by the subject of the probability (possibility) of the need staisfaction (the goal achievement). Low probability of need satisfaction leads to negative emotions, actively minimized by the subject. Increased probability of satisfaction, as compared to earlier forecast, generates positive emotions, which the subject tries to maximize, i.e. to enhance, to prolong, to repeat. The informational theory of emotions encompasses their reflective function, the laws of their appearance, the regulatory significance of emotions, and their role in organization of behavior. The level of emotional stress influences the operator's performance. A decrease in the emotional tonus leads to drowsiness, lack of vigilance, missing of significant signals and to slower reactions. An extremely high stress level disorganizes the activity, complicates it with a trend toward incorrect actions and reactions to insignificant signals (false alarms). The neurophysiological mechanisms of the influence of emotions on perceptual activity and operator performance as well as the significance of individuality are discussed.

Destination Memory for Emotional Information in Older Adults

NARCIS (Netherlands)

El Haj, M.; Fasotti, L.; Allain, P.

2015-01-01

Background/Study Context: Destination memory, remembering the destination of the information that one tells, shows significant age-related decline. In the present paper, the authors sought to determine whether destination memory can be improved in older adults using emotional stimuli. This aim was

Subjective experience of emotions and emotional empathy in paranoid schizophrenia.

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Lehmann, Anja; Bahçesular, Katja; Brockmann, Eva-Maria; Biederbick, Sarah-Elisabeth; Dziobek, Isabel; Gallinat, Jürgen; Montag, Christiane

2014-12-30

Unlike the cognitive dimensions, alterations of the affective components of empathy in schizophrenia are less well understood. This study explored cognitive and affective dimensions of empathy in the context of the subjective experience of aspects of emotion processing, including emotion regulation, emotional contagion, and interpersonal distress, in individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls. In addition, the predictive value of these parameters on psychosocial function was investigated. Fifty-five patients with paranoid schizophrenia and 55 healthy controls were investigated using the Multifaceted Empathy Test and Interpersonal Reactivity Index, as well as the Subjective Experience of Emotions and Emotional Contagion Scales. Individuals with schizophrenia showed impairments of cognitive empathy, but maintained emotional empathy. They reported significantly more negative emotional contagion, overwhelming emotions, lack of emotions, and symbolization of emotions by imagination, but less self-control of emotional expression than healthy persons. Besides cognitive empathy, the experience of a higher extent of overwhelming emotions and of less interpersonal distress predicted psychosocial function in patients. People with schizophrenia and healthy controls showed diverging patterns of how cognitive and emotional empathy related to the subjective aspects of emotion processing. It can be assumed that variables of emotion processing are important moderators of empathic abilities in schizophrenia. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotional intelligence, trauma severity, and emotional expression.

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Kao, Min C; Chen, Yung Y

2016-07-01

This study investigated Emotional Intelligence (EI) as a moderator for the association between emotional expression and adaptive trauma processing, as measured by depressive symptoms. Using Pennebaker's written emotional expression paradigm, 105 participants were assigned to either a conventional trauma-writing or religious trauma-writing condition. Depressive symptoms were assessed at baseline and again at one-month post writing. No significant association between EI and religiousness was found at baseline. Results indicated a three-way interaction among EI, trauma severity, and writing condition on depressive symptoms at follow-up. For the religious trauma-writing condition only, there was a significant difference between high- versus low-EI participants who experienced more severe trauma in depressive symptoms at follow-up, such that low-EI participants registered less depressive symptoms than high-EI participants; while there was no significant difference between low versus high EI for participants with less severe trauma. These findings encourage further investigation of the conditions under which religion may be a beneficial factor in trauma adaptation.

Investigation of yoga pranayama and vedic mathematics on mindfulness, aggression and emotion regulation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vasant Venkatraman Shastri

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Background: Competitive examinations, particularly in mathematics, have made emotional stress a major problem for preuniversity students, emotions like aggression toward fellow students and teachers increase. Mindfulness is a quality that reduces both emotional stress and aggression, so increasing mindfulness should be helpful. Aims: To study the effects of Yoga Pranayama (YP and Vedic Mathematics (VM on mindfulness, aggression, and emotion regulation. Methods: Participants were 12th graders attending a preuniversity college in Chikkamagaluru, India, of both genders. Exclusion criteria included major psychological problems. Three classes were arbitrarily assigned to one of three interventions, which consisted of 15 days each of 30 min daily instruction in YP, Group 1, VM, Group 2, or 30 min ordinary class work, Group 3, the control group. Assessments were made using the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, the Nonphysical Aggression Scale from Pittsburgh Youth Study, and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Statistical Analysis Used: SPSS 19.0. Results: Mindfulness, aggression, and negative emotional regulation changed significantly for the YP group, while mindfulness alone improved significantly for the VM group. No group changed on positive emotion regulation. Controls apparently improved on aggression. An interesting post hoc correlation analysis is also reported, among other things directly linking increased mindfulness to decreased aggression. Conclusions: The study showed positive effects of traditional methods of decreasing emotional pressure on students facing preuniversity mathematics examinations. Increasing mindfulness is considered a way of increasing emotion regulation, so the failure of this study to provide evidence for that is of interest.

Emotions and trait emotional intelligence among ultra-endurance runners.

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Lane, Andrew M; Wilson, Mathew

2011-07-01

The aim of this study was to investigate relationships between trait emotional intelligence and emotional state changes over the course of an ultra-endurance foot race covering a route of approximately 175 miles (282 km) and held in set stages over six days. A repeated measures field design that sought to maintain ecological validity was used. Trait emotional intelligence was defined as a relatively stable concept that should predict adaptive emotional states experienced over the duration of the race and therefore associate with pleasant emotions during a 6-stage endurance event. Thirty-four runners completed a self-report measure of trait emotional intelligence before the event started. Participants reported emotional states before and after each of the six races. Repeated measures ANOVA results showed significant variations in emotions over time and a main effect for trait emotional intelligence. Runners high in self-report trait emotional intelligence also reported higher pleasant and lower unpleasant emotions than runners low in trait emotional intelligence. Findings lend support to the notion that trait emotional intelligence associates with adaptive psychological states, suggesting that it may be a key individual difference that explains why some athletes respond to repeated bouts of hard exercise better than others. Future research should test the effectiveness of interventions designed to enhance trait emotional intelligence and examine the attendant impact on emotional responses to intense exercise during multi-stage events. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

When nurse emotional intelligence matters: How transformational leadership influences intent to stay.

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Wang, Lin; Tao, Hong; Bowers, Barbara J; Brown, Roger; Zhang, Yaqing

2018-05-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of staff nurse emotional intelligence between transformational leadership and nurse intent to stay. Nurse intent to stay and transformational leadership are widely recognized as vital components of nurse retention. Staff nurse emotional intelligence that has been confirmed improvable has been recently recognized in the nursing literature as correlated with retention. Yet, the nature of the relationships among these three variables is not known. Cross-sectional data for 535 Chinese nurses were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. Transformational leadership and staff nurse emotional intelligence were significant predictors of nurse intent to stay, accounting for 34.3% of the variance in nurse intent to stay. Staff nurse emotional intelligence partially mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and nurse intent to stay. The findings of the study emphasized the importance of transformational leadership in enhancing nurse emotional intelligence and to provide a deeper understanding of the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between nurse manager's transformational leadership and nurse's intent to stay. Nurse leaders should develop training programmes to improve nursing manager transformational leadership and staff nurse emotional intelligence in the workplace. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Attention and emotion: an ERP analysis of facilitated emotional stimulus processing.

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Schupp, Harald T; Junghöfer, Markus; Weike, Almut I; Hamm, Alfons O

2003-06-11

Recent event-related potential studies observed an early posterior negativity (EPN) reflecting facilitated processing of emotional images. The present study explored if the facilitated processing of emotional pictures is sustained while subjects perform an explicit non-emotional attention task. EEG was recorded from 129 channels while subjects viewed a rapid continuous stream of images containing emotional pictures as well as task-related checkerboard images. As expected, explicit selective attention to target images elicited large P3 waves. Interestingly, emotional stimuli guided stimulus-driven selective encoding as reflected by augmented EPN amplitudes to emotional stimuli, in particular to stimuli of evolutionary significance (erotic contents, mutilations, and threat). These data demonstrate the selective encoding of emotional stimuli while top-down attentional control was directed towards non-emotional target stimuli.

Emotion suppression, emotional eating, and eating behavior among parent-adolescent dyads.

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Ferrer, Rebecca A; Green, Paige A; Oh, April Y; Hennessy, Erin; Dwyer, Laura A

2017-10-01

Emotion suppression may lead to ironic increases in emotional experience. More important, suppression is a transactional process, creating stress and disrupting interactions for the suppressor and those in social interactions with individuals who are suppressing emotion. However, no research has examined the behavioral consequences of emotion suppression in close relationships. We examine the possibility that emotion suppression will predict eating behaviors as a secondary emotion regulatory strategy among 1,556 parent-adolescent dyads (N = 3,112), consistent with evidence suggesting that suppression influences eating at the individual-level. Actor-partner interdependence models and structural equation modeling demonstrate that one's own emotion suppression was associated with emotional eating; greater consumption of hedonic-low nutrient, high energy dense-foods; and lower consumption of fruits and vegetables (actor effects). One's partner's emotion suppression was also independently associated with one's own emotional eating; lower consumption of fruits and vegetables; and greater consumption of hedonic foods (partner effects), although this association was most consistent for adolescents' suppression and parents' eating (compared with the converse). These analyses suggest that dyadic emotion regulatory processes have implications on eating behavior. Moreover, analyses suggest that emotion suppression has potential implications on eating behaviors of others within close relationships with a suppressor, consistent with the notion that emotion regulation is a transactional process. These findings suggest that interventions to improve eating habits of parents and their adolescent children should consider dyadic emotion regulatory processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional competence and extrinsic emotion regulation directed toward an ostracized person.

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Nozaki, Yuki

2015-12-01

Positive interpersonal relationships hinge on individuals' competence in regulating others' emotions as well as their own. Nevertheless, little is known about the relationship between emotional competence and specific interpersonal behaviors. In particular, it is unclear which situations require emotional competence for extrinsic emotion regulation and whether emotionally competent individuals actually attempt to regulate others' emotions. To clarify these issues, the current investigation examined the relationship between emotional competence and extrinsic emotion regulation directed toward an ostracized person. The results of Study 1 (N = 39) indicated that interpersonal emotional competence (competence related to others' emotions) was positively associated with participants' efforts to relieve the ostracized person's sadness. In Study 2 (N = 120), this relationship was moderated by the ostracized person's emotional expression. In particular, participants with high interpersonal emotional competence were more likely to attempt to regulate the sadness of ostracized individuals who expressed neutral affect. In contrast, when the ostracized person expressed sadness, there were no significant relationships between high or low interpersonal emotional competence and extrinsic emotion regulation behavior. These results offer novel insight into how emotionally competent individuals use their competence to benefit others. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Dialectical behavior therapy alters emotion regulation and amygdala activity in patients with borderline personality disorder.

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Goodman, Marianne; Carpenter, David; Tang, Cheuk Y; Goldstein, Kim E; Avedon, Jennifer; Fernandez, Nicolas; Mascitelli, Kathryn A; Blair, Nicholas J; New, Antonia S; Triebwasser, Joseph; Siever, Larry J; Hazlett, Erin A

2014-10-01

Siever and Davis' (1991) psychobiological framework of borderline personality disorder (BPD) identifies affective instability (AI) as a core dimension characterized by prolonged and intense emotional reactivity. Recently, deficient amygdala habituation, defined as a change in response to repeated relative to novel unpleasant pictures within a session, has emerged as a biological correlate of AI in BPD. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), an evidence-based treatment, targets AI by teaching emotion-regulation skills. This study tested the hypothesis that BPD patients would exhibit decreased amygdala activation and improved habituation, as well as improved emotion regulation with standard 12-month DBT. Event-related fMRI was obtained pre- and post-12-months of standard-DBT in unmedicated BPD patients. Healthy controls (HCs) were studied as a benchmark for normal amygdala activity and change over time (n = 11 per diagnostic-group). During each scan, participants viewed an intermixed series of unpleasant, neutral and pleasant pictures presented twice (novel, repeat). Change in emotion regulation was measured with the Difficulty in Emotion Regulation (DERS) scale. fMRI results showed the predicted Group × Time interaction: compared with HCs, BPD patients exhibited decreased amygdala activation with treatment. This post-treatment amygdala reduction in BPD was observed for all three pictures types, but particularly marked in the left hemisphere and during repeated-emotional pictures. Emotion regulation measured with the DERS significantly improved with DBT in BPD patients. Improved amygdala habituation to repeated-unpleasant pictures in patients was associated with improved overall emotional regulation measured by the DERS (total score and emotion regulation strategy use subscale). These findings have promising treatment implications and support the notion that DBT targets amygdala hyperactivity-part of the disturbed neural circuitry underlying emotional dysregulation

Testing the effects of expression, intensity and age on emotional face processing in ASD.

Science.gov (United States)

Luyster, Rhiannon J; Bick, Johanna; Westerlund, Alissa; Nelson, Charles A

2017-06-21

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly show global deficits in the processing of facial emotion, including impairments in emotion recognition and slowed processing of emotional faces. Growing evidence has suggested that these challenges may increase with age, perhaps due to minimal improvement with age in individuals with ASD. In the present study, we explored the role of age, emotion type and emotion intensity in face processing for individuals with and without ASD. Twelve- and 18-22- year-old children with and without ASD participated. No significant diagnostic group differences were observed on behavioral measures of emotion processing for younger versus older individuals with and without ASD. However, there were significant group differences in neural responses to emotional faces. Relative to TD, at 12 years of age and during adulthood, individuals with ASD showed slower N170 to emotional faces. While the TD groups' P1 latency was significantly shorter in adults when compared to 12 year olds, there was no significant age-related difference in P1 latency among individuals with ASD. Findings point to potential differences in the maturation of cortical networks that support visual processing (whether of faces or stimuli more broadly), among individuals with and without ASD between late childhood and adulthood. Finally, associations between ERP amplitudes and behavioral responses on emotion processing tasks suggest possible neural markers for emotional and behavioral deficits among individuals with ASD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The emotional labour of nursing -- Defining and managing emotions in nursing work.

Science.gov (United States)

Gray, Benjamin

2009-02-01

Emotions in health organisations tend to remain tacit and in need of clarification. Often, emotions are made invisible in nursing and reduced to part and parcel of 'women's work' in the domestic sphere. Smith (1992) applied the notion of emotional labour to the study of student nursing, concluding that further research was required. This means investigating what is often seen as a tacit and uncodified skill. A follow-up qualitative study was conducted over a period of twelve months to re-examine the role of the emotional labour of nursing. Data were collected primarily from 16 in-depth and semi-structured interviews with nurses. Key themes elicited at interviews touch upon diverse topics in the emotional labour of nursing. In particular, this article will address nurse definitions of emotional labour; the routine aspects of emotional labour in nursing; traditional and modern images of nursing; and gender and professional barriers that involve emotional labour in health work. This is important in improving nurse training and best practice; investigating clinical settings of nurses' emotional labour; looking at changing techniques of patient consultation; and beginning to explore the potential therapeutic value of emotional labour.

Incidental emotions in moral dilemmas: the influence of emotion regulation.

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Szekely, Raluca D; Miu, Andrei C

2015-01-01

Recent theories have argued that emotions play a central role in moral decision-making and suggested that emotion regulation may be crucial in reducing emotion-linked biases. The present studies focused on the influence of emotional experience and individual differences in emotion regulation on moral choice in dilemmas that pit harming another person against social welfare. During these "harm to save" moral dilemmas, participants experienced mostly fear and sadness but also other emotions such as compassion, guilt, anger, disgust, regret and contempt (Study 1). Fear and disgust were more frequently reported when participants made deontological choices, whereas regret was more frequently reported when participants made utilitarian choices. In addition, habitual reappraisal negatively predicted deontological choices, and this effect was significantly carried through emotional arousal (Study 2). Individual differences in the habitual use of other emotion regulation strategies (i.e., acceptance, rumination and catastrophising) did not influence moral choice. The results of the present studies indicate that negative emotions are commonly experienced during "harm to save" moral dilemmas, and they are associated with a deontological bias. By efficiently reducing emotional arousal, reappraisal can attenuate the emotion-linked deontological bias in moral choice.

EEG classification of emotions using emotion-specific brain functional network.

Science.gov (United States)

Gonuguntla, V; Shafiq, G; Wang, Y; Veluvolu, K C

2015-08-01

The brain functional network perspective forms the basis to relate mechanisms of brain functions. This work analyzes the network mechanisms related to human emotion based on synchronization measure - phase-locking value in EEG to formulate the emotion specific brain functional network. Based on network dissimilarities between emotion and rest tasks, most reactive channel pairs and the reactive band corresponding to emotions are identified. With the identified most reactive pairs, the subject-specific functional network is formed. The identified subject-specific and emotion-specific dynamic network pattern show significant synchrony variation in line with the experiment protocol. The same network pattern are then employed for classification of emotions. With the study conducted on the 4 subjects, an average classification accuracy of 62 % was obtained with the proposed technique.

Moral emotions, conscience, and cognitive dissonance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Breslavs, Gershon M.

2013-12-01

Full Text Available One of the central topics in the studies of O. K. Tikhomirov and his collaborators was the link between cognitive and emotional processes. It is important not only how emotions are involved in the process of the productive performance of thinking tasks but also how cognitive processes mediate the involvement of the emotions in the regulation of activity. The efficacy of this regulation is represented through goal achievement and also through the correction of one’s actions in the case of wrongdoing. Reformation of one’s errors is the best way to improve one’s abilities and skills. In moral philosophy the central instance of this reformation is conscience, which ensures positive or negative self-appraisal of one’s own and others’ actions. Unfortunately, in psychology this concept remains unclear. The goal of this article is to clarify it in the context of the contemporary psychology of emotion. Studies of emotions have shown the significance of appraisal in determining particular feelings. The special role of moral emotions, mainly guilt and shame, in the self-correction of one’s actions is emphasized. According to this model, guilt and shame in particular can represent twinges of conscience in the mind because the cognitive dissonance between our (or others’ actions and values shapes the basis of all these phenomena.

Emotionally intelligent teachers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rosario Cabello

2010-04-01

Full Text Available In this article, we describe the importance of complementing teachers’ training with the learning and development of social and emotional aspects. It is in this way that Emotional Intelligence (EI –understood as a complement of the cognitive development of teachers and students– is to play a role in the educational context. We review Mayer & Salovey’s ability model (1997, some of the programmes of socio-emotional improvement that are also designed for teachers and several activities for the development of teachers’ EI. In addition, we examine the implications for teachers derived from the development of their EI to enhance their capacity to appropriately perceive, understand and manage one’s own emotions and those of others.

Children's understanding of facial expression of emotion: II. Drawing of emotion-faces.

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Missaghi-Lakshman, M; Whissell, C

1991-06-01

67 children from Grades 2, 4, and 7 drew faces representing the emotional expressions of fear, anger, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness. The children themselves and 29 adults later decoded the drawings in an emotion-recognition task. Children were the more accurate decoders, and their accuracy and the accuracy of adults increased significantly for judgments of 7th-grade drawings. The emotions happy and sad were most accurately decoded. There were no significant differences associated with sex. In their drawings, children utilized a symbol system that seems to be based on a highlighting or exaggeration of features of the innately governed facial expression of emotion.

Emotion regulation and emotion coherence: evidence for strategy-specific effects.

Science.gov (United States)

Dan-Glauser, Elise S; Gross, James J

2013-10-01

One of the central tenets of emotion theory is that emotions involve coordinated changes across experiential, behavioral, and physiological response domains. Surprisingly little is known, however, about how the strength of this emotion coherence is altered when people try to regulate their emotions. To address this issue, we recorded experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses while participants watched negative and positive pictures. Cross-correlations were used to quantify emotion coherence. Study 1 tested how two types of suppression (expressive and physiological) influence coherence. Results showed that both strategies decreased the response coherence measured in negative and positive contexts. Study 2 tested how multichannel suppression (simultaneously targeting expressive and physiological responses) and acceptance influence emotion coherence. Results again showed that suppression decreased coherence. By contrast, acceptance was not significantly different from the unregulated condition. These findings help to clarify the nature of emotion response coherence by showing how different forms of emotion regulation may differentially affect it.

Emotion Regulation and Emotion Coherence: Evidence for Strategy-Specific Effects

Science.gov (United States)

Dan-Glauser, Elise S.; Gross, James J.

2014-01-01

One of the central tenets of emotion theory is that emotions involve coordinated changes across experiential, behavioral, and physiological response domains. Surprisingly little is known, however, on how the strength of this emotion coherence is altered when people try to regulate their emotions. To address this issue, we recorded experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses while participants watched negative and positive pictures. Cross-correlations were used to quantify emotion coherence. Study 1 tested how two types of suppression (expressive and physiological) influence coherence. Results showed that both strategies decreased the response coherence measured in negative and positive contexts. Study 2 tested how multi-channel suppression (simultaneously targeting expressive and physiological responses) and acceptance influence emotion coherence. Results again showed that suppression decreased coherence. By contrast, acceptance was not significantly different from the unregulated condition. These findings help to clarify the nature of emotion response coherence by showing how different forms of emotion regulation may differentially affect it. PMID:23731438

Stress improves selective attention towards emotionally neutral left ear stimuli.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoskin, Robert; Hunter, M D; Woodruff, P W R

2014-09-01

Research concerning the impact of psychological stress on visual selective attention has produced mixed results. The current paper describes two experiments which utilise a novel auditory oddball paradigm to test the impact of psychological stress on auditory selective attention. Participants had to report the location of emotionally-neutral auditory stimuli, while ignoring task-irrelevant changes in their content. The results of the first experiment, in which speech stimuli were presented, suggested that stress improves the ability to selectively attend to left, but not right ear stimuli. When this experiment was repeated using tonal stimuli the same result was evident, but only for female participants. Females were also found to experience greater levels of distraction in general across the two experiments. These findings support the goal-shielding theory which suggests that stress improves selective attention by reducing the attentional resources available to process task-irrelevant information. The study also demonstrates, for the first time, that this goal-shielding effect extends to auditory perception. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On the Time Course of Vocal Emotion Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Pell, Marc D.; Kotz, Sonja A.

2011-01-01

How quickly do listeners recognize emotions from a speaker's voice, and does the time course for recognition vary by emotion type? To address these questions, we adapted the auditory gating paradigm to estimate how much vocal information is needed for listeners to categorize five basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness) and neutral utterances produced by male and female speakers of English. Semantically-anomalous pseudo-utterances (e.g., The rivix jolled the silling) conveying each emotion were divided into seven gate intervals according to the number of syllables that listeners heard from sentence onset. Participants (n = 48) judged the emotional meaning of stimuli presented at each gate duration interval, in a successive, blocked presentation format. Analyses looked at how recognition of each emotion evolves as an utterance unfolds and estimated the “identification point” for each emotion. Results showed that anger, sadness, fear, and neutral expressions are recognized more accurately at short gate intervals than happiness, and particularly disgust; however, as speech unfolds, recognition of happiness improves significantly towards the end of the utterance (and fear is recognized more accurately than other emotions). When the gate associated with the emotion identification point of each stimulus was calculated, data indicated that fear (M = 517 ms), sadness (M = 576 ms), and neutral (M = 510 ms) expressions were identified from shorter acoustic events than the other emotions. These data reveal differences in the underlying time course for conscious recognition of basic emotions from vocal expressions, which should be accounted for in studies of emotional speech processing. PMID:22087275

The use of technology in the promotion of children’s emotional intelligence : the multimedia program “Developing Emotional Intelligence”

OpenAIRE

D'Amico, Antonella

2018-01-01

"Developing Emotional Intelligence” is an Italian language multimedia tool created for children between 8 and 12 years of age. The software is based on the four ‘branches’ of model of emotional intelligence proposed by Mayer and Salovey and aims to evaluate and improve abilities in perception of emotions; using emotion to facilitate thought; understanding emotions; and managing emotions. In the software, four characters represent the four branches of emotional intelligence and ...

Novel acoustic features for speech emotion recognition

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

ROH; Yong-Wan; KIM; Dong-Ju; LEE; Woo-Seok; HONG; Kwang-Seok

2009-01-01

This paper focuses on acoustic features that effectively improve the recognition of emotion in human speech.The novel features in this paper are based on spectral-based entropy parameters such as fast Fourier transform(FFT) spectral entropy,delta FFT spectral entropy,Mel-frequency filter bank(MFB) spectral entropy,and Delta MFB spectral entropy.Spectral-based entropy features are simple.They reflect frequency characteristic and changing characteristic in frequency of speech.We implement an emotion rejection module using the probability distribution of recognized-scores and rejected-scores.This reduces the false recognition rate to improve overall performance.Recognized-scores and rejected-scores refer to probabilities of recognized and rejected emotion recognition results,respectively.These scores are first obtained from a pattern recognition procedure.The pattern recognition phase uses the Gaussian mixture model(GMM).We classify the four emotional states as anger,sadness,happiness and neutrality.The proposed method is evaluated using 45 sentences in each emotion for 30 subjects,15 males and 15 females.Experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to the existing emotion recognition methods based on GMM using energy,Zero Crossing Rate(ZCR),linear prediction coefficient(LPC),and pitch parameters.We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.One of the proposed features,combined MFB and delta MFB spectral entropy improves performance approximately 10% compared to the existing feature parameters for speech emotion recognition methods.We demonstrate a 4% performance improvement in the applied emotion rejection with low confidence score.

Novel acoustic features for speech emotion recognition

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

ROH Yong-Wan; KIM Dong-Ju; LEE Woo-Seok; HONG Kwang-Seok

2009-01-01

This paper focuses on acoustic features that effectively improve the recognition of emotion in human speech. The novel features in this paper are based on spectral-based entropy parameters such as fast Fourier transform (FFT) spectral entropy, delta FFT spectral entropy, Mel-frequency filter bank (MFB)spectral entropy, and Delta MFB spectral entropy. Spectral-based entropy features are simple. They reflect frequency characteristic and changing characteristic in frequency of speech. We implement an emotion rejection module using the probability distribution of recognized-scores and rejected-scores.This reduces the false recognition rate to improve overall performance. Recognized-scores and rejected-scores refer to probabilities of recognized and rejected emotion recognition results, respectively.These scores are first obtained from a pattern recognition procedure. The pattern recognition phase uses the Gaussian mixture model (GMM). We classify the four emotional states as anger, sadness,happiness and neutrality. The proposed method is evaluated using 45 sentences in each emotion for 30 subjects, 15 males and 15 females. Experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to the existing emotion recognition methods based on GMM using energy, Zero Crossing Rate (ZCR),linear prediction coefficient (LPC), and pitch parameters. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. One of the proposed features, combined MFB and delta MFB spectral entropy improves performance approximately 10% compared to the existing feature parameters for speech emotion recognition methods. We demonstrate a 4% performance improvement in the applied emotion rejection with low confidence score.

Good to great: using 360-degree feedback to improve physician emotional intelligence.

Science.gov (United States)

Hammerly, Milton E; Harmon, Larry; Schwaitzberg, Steven D

2014-01-01

The past decade has seen intense interest and dramatic change in how hospitals and physician organizations review physician behaviors. The characteristics of successful physicians extend past their technical and cognitive skills. Two of the six core clinical competencies (professionalism and interpersonal/communication skills) endorsed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the American Board of Medical Specialties, and The Joint Commission require physicians to succeed in measures associated with emotional intelligence (EI). Using 360-degree anonymous feedback surveys to screen for improvement opportunities in these two core competencies enables organizations to selectively offer education to further develop physician EI. Incorporating routine use of these tools and interventions into ongoing professional practice evaluation and focused professional practice evaluation processes may be a cost-effective strategy for preventing disruptive behaviors and increasing the likelihood of success when transitioning to an employed practice model. On the basis of a literature review, we determined that physician EI plays a key role in leadership; teamwork; and clinical, financial, and organizational outcomes. This finding has significant implications for healthcare executives seeking to enhance physician alignment and transition to a team-based delivery model.

Emotional intelligence, emotional labor, and job satisfaction among physicians in Greece.

Science.gov (United States)

Psilopanagioti, Aristea; Anagnostopoulos, Fotios; Mourtou, Efstratia; Niakas, Dimitris

2012-12-17

There is increasing evidence that psychological constructs, such as emotional intelligence and emotional labor, play an important role in various organizational outcomes in service sector. Recently, in the "emotionally charged" healthcare field, emotional intelligence and emotional labor have both emerged as research tools, rather than just as theoretical concepts, influencing various organizational parameters including job satisfaction. The present study aimed at investigating the relationships, direct and/or indirect, between emotional intelligence, the surface acting component of emotional labor, and job satisfaction in medical staff working in tertiary healthcare. Data were collected from 130 physicians in Greece, who completed a series of self-report questionnaires including: a) the Wong Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, which assessed the four dimensions of emotional intelligence, i.e. Self-Emotion Appraisal, Others' Emotion Appraisal, Use of Emotion, and Regulation of Emotion, b) the General Index of Job Satisfaction, and c) the Dutch Questionnaire on Emotional Labor (surface acting component). Emotional intelligence (Use of Emotion dimension) was significantly and positively correlated with job satisfaction (r=.42, peffect was moderated by gender. Apart from its mediating role, surface acting was also a moderator of the emotional intelligence-job satisfaction relationship. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that surface acting could predict job satisfaction over and above emotional intelligence dimensions. The results of the present study may contribute to the better understanding of emotion-related parameters that affect the work process with a view to increasing the quality of service in the health sector.

Can enriching emotional intelligence improve medical students? proactivity and adaptability during OB/GYN clerkships?

OpenAIRE

Guseh, Stephanie H.; Chen, Xiaodong P.; Johnson, Natasha R.

2015-01-01

Objectives: The purpose of this pilot study was to examine our hypothesis that enriching workplace emotional intelligence through resident coaches could improve third-year medical students’ adaptability and proactivity on the Obstetrics and Gynecology clerkship. Methods: An observational pilot study was conducted in a teaching hospital. Fourteen 3rd year medical students from two cohorts of clerkships were randomly divided into two groups, and equally assigned to trained resident coaches and ...

The emotionally competent leader.

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Goleman, D

1998-01-01

Aristotle once challenged man "to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way" (The Nicomachean Ethics). Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., a journalist for the New York Times, expands on this statement in his new book, "Emotional Intelligence." He defines emotional intelligence as the ability to rein in emotional impulses, to read another's innermost feelings and to handle relationships and conflict smoothly. This new model of intelligence puts emotions at the center of our aptitudes for living. Goleman asserts that these emotional aptitudes can preserve relationships, protect our health and improve our success at work. The following adaptation from "Emotional Intelligence" (Bantam Books, 1995) offers suggestions to managers and supervisors on how they can create a more cost-effective and healthier workplace for their employees by becoming more aware of their own emotional. intelligence.

Debunking Confabulation : Emotions and the Significance of Empirical Psychology for Kantian Ethics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kleingeld, Pauline; Cohen, Alix

2014-01-01

It is frequently argued that research findings in empirical moral psychology spell trouble for Kantian ethics. Sometimes the charge is merely that Kantianism is mistaken about the role of emotions in human action, but it has also been argued that empirical moral psychology ‘debunks’ Kantian ethics

Parental reactions to children's negative emotions: relationships with emotion regulation in children with an anxiety disorder.

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Hurrell, Katherine E; Hudson, Jennifer L; Schniering, Carolyn A

2015-01-01

Research has demonstrated that parental reactions to children's emotions play a significant role in the development of children's emotion regulation (ER) and adjustment. This study compared parent reactions to children's negative emotions between families of anxious and non-anxious children (aged 7-12) and examined associations between parent reactions and children's ER. Results indicated that children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder had significantly greater difficulty regulating a range of negative emotions and were regarded as more emotionally negative and labile by their parents. Results also suggested that mothers of anxious children espoused less supportive parental emotional styles when responding to their children's negative emotions. Supportive and non-supportive parenting reactions to children's negative emotions related to children's emotion regulation skills, with father's non-supportive parenting showing a unique relationship to children's negativity/lability. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Motivation and emotional intelligence in high school students

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José Domínguez-Alonso

2016-11-01

Full Text Available This study explores the motivational and emotional intelligence level of students in Obligatory Secondary Education, and the relationship between the two essential components of an individual's personality. It has worked from a quantitative methodology with a sample of 500 students from public secondary schools, using the questionnaire motivation and learning strategies (CMEA and Spanish version of the Trait goal-Mood Scale (TMMS-24. The results show a good motivational level in all factors with an adequate perception and understanding emotional regulation (intrinsic goals, tasks value, control beliefs, self-efficacy for performance anxiety and extrinsic goals, with an adequate perception, regulation and understanding emotional. In addition, they denote a positive and significant correlation of both, except in the factors that make emotional intelligence, and they are as follows: anxiety, understanding and regulation. In conclusion, both motivation and emotional intelligence are likely to be trained and improved in the field of education, with a capacity to put in place social skills and make the most of each adolescent.

Gamer emotions in laughter

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

O'Hagan, Minako; Flanagan, Marian

2018-01-01

This study is motivated by the assumption that today’s function-oriented game localisation approach has room for improvement by incorporating an affect-oriented approach. It draws on the concept of “affective framing” in a game with humour as “emotionally competent stimuli”. Laughter as emotion...

How Language Learners Can Improve Their Emotional Functioning: Important Psychological and Psychospiritual Theories

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Oxford, Rebecca L.

2015-01-01

Emotion is "the primary human motive" (MacIntyre, 2002, p. 61). The human brain is an emotional brain, creating relationships among thought, emotion, and motivation in a complex dynamic system (Dörnyei, 2009). Emotion "functions as an amplifier, providing the intensity, urgency, and energy to propel our behavior" in…

EEG-based recognition of video-induced emotions: selecting subject-independent feature set.

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Kortelainen, Jukka; Seppänen, Tapio

2013-01-01

Emotions are fundamental for everyday life affecting our communication, learning, perception, and decision making. Including emotions into the human-computer interaction (HCI) could be seen as a significant step forward offering a great potential for developing advanced future technologies. While the electrical activity of the brain is affected by emotions, offers electroencephalogram (EEG) an interesting channel to improve the HCI. In this paper, the selection of subject-independent feature set for EEG-based emotion recognition is studied. We investigate the effect of different feature sets in classifying person's arousal and valence while watching videos with emotional content. The classification performance is optimized by applying a sequential forward floating search algorithm for feature selection. The best classification rate (65.1% for arousal and 63.0% for valence) is obtained with a feature set containing power spectral features from the frequency band of 1-32 Hz. The proposed approach substantially improves the classification rate reported in the literature. In future, further analysis of the video-induced EEG changes including the topographical differences in the spectral features is needed.

Linking Emotional Labor, Public Service Motivation, and Job Satisfaction: Social Workers in Health Care Settings.

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Roh, Chul-Young; Moon, M Jae; Yang, Seung-Bum; Jung, Kwangho

2016-01-01

This study examines the determinants of emotional laborers'--social workers in health care organizations--job satisfaction and their public service motivation in using a structural equation model and provides empirical evidence regarding what contributes to job satisfaction or burnout in these workers. Among several latent variables, this study confirmed that false face significantly decreases the job satisfaction of social worker and is positively associated with burnout. In addition, commitment to public interest increases social workers' job satisfaction significantly. This study has implications for the management of emotional labor. By educating emotional laborers to reappraise situations to increase their job satisfaction and avoid burnout, reappraisal training and education are expected to result in increases in positive emotions and decreases in negative emotions, and to improve employees' performance in their organizations.

The Role of the Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Schema in Womenn’s Marital Satisfaction

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جعفر حسني

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The present study investigated the role of emotional intelligence and emotional schema in marital satisfaction among women. A sample of 200 married women (100 employed and 100 household women was selected randomly and completed measures of emotional schemas, emotional intelligence, and marital satisfaction. The results of stepwise regression analysis showed that attention and clarity components of emotional intelligence are significant predictors of most marital satisfaction dimensions. Also, blame, agreement, simplistic view of emotions and higher values towards emotional schemas predicted different dimensions of marital satisfaction. Based on the findings it can be concluded that the emotional intelligence and effective emotional schema play a key role in marital satisfaction.

Mindfulness training alters emotional memory recall compared to active controls: support for an emotional information processing model of mindfulness.

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Roberts-Wolfe, Douglas; Sacchet, Matthew D; Hastings, Elizabeth; Roth, Harold; Britton, Willoughby

2012-01-01

While mindfulness-based interventions have received widespread application in both clinical and non-clinical populations, the mechanism by which mindfulness meditation improves well-being remains elusive. One possibility is that mindfulness training alters the processing of emotional information, similar to prevailing cognitive models of depression and anxiety. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of mindfulness training on emotional information processing (i.e., memory) biases in relation to both clinical symptomatology and well-being in comparison to active control conditions. Fifty-eight university students (28 female, age = 20.1 ± 2.7 years) participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or experiential practice laboratory format (music). Participants completed an emotional word recall task and self-report questionnaires of well-being and clinical symptoms before and after the 12-week course. Meditators showed greater increases in positive word recall compared to controls [F(1, 56) = 6.6, p = 0.02]. The meditation group increased significantly more on measures of well-being [F(1, 56) = 6.6, p = 0.01], with a marginal decrease in depression and anxiety [F(1, 56) = 3.0, p = 0.09] compared to controls. Increased positive word recall was associated with increased psychological well-being (r = 0.31, p = 0.02) and decreased clinical symptoms (r = -0.29, p = 0.03). Mindfulness training was associated with greater improvements in processing efficiency for positively valenced stimuli than active control conditions. This change in emotional information processing was associated with improvements in psychological well-being and less depression and anxiety. These data suggest that mindfulness training may improve well-being via changes in emotional information processing. Future research with a fully randomized design will be

Social-Emotional Learning and Academic Achievement

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Meghan P. McCormick

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Social-emotional learning (SEL programs have demonstrated positive effects on children’s social-emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes, as well as classroom climate. Some programs also theorize that program impacts on children’s outcomes will be partially explained by improvements in classroom social processes, namely classroom emotional support and organization. Yet there is little empirical evidence for this hypothesis. Using data from the evaluation of the SEL program INSIGHTS, this article tests whether assignment to INSIGHTS improved low-income kindergarten and first grade students’ math and reading achievement by first enhancing classroom emotional support and organization. Multilevel regression analyses, instrumental variables estimation, and inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW were used to conduct quantitative analyses. Across methods, the impact of INSIGHTS on math and reading achievement in first grade was partially explained by gains in both classroom emotional support and organization. The IPTW method revealed that the program impact on reading achievement in first grade was partially explained through an improvement in classroom organization. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

A Multifaceted Program To Improve Self-Esteem and Social Skills while Reducing Anxiety in Emotionally Handicapped Middle School Students.

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Poirier, Lynn

A practicum was developed to increase self-esteem, to lower anxiety, and to improve social skills in 13 emotionally handicapped (EH) middle school boys. An additional objective was to provide parenting classes which focused on increasing parents' knowledge and skills in improving their children's self esteem. The 8-month multifaceted program…

Parental Meta-Emotion Philosophy and Emotion Coaching in Families of Children and Adolescents with an Anxiety Disorder.

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Hurrell, Katherine E; Houwing, Frances L; Hudson, Jennifer L

2017-04-01

Using a multi-method approach, this study examined differences in parental meta-emotional philosophy (including, parental emotional awareness and emotion coaching) for families with anxiety disordered (AD; n = 74) and non-AD (n = 35) children (aged 7 to 15). Further, it was investigated whether children's emotion regulation (ER) varied across the AD and non-AD groups. Parent(s) were interviewed about their awareness of emotions and emotion coaching; completed a battery of questionnaires that included a measure assessing children's emotion regulation; and engaged in a parent-child discussion task. Results indicated that compared to parents of non-AD youth, parents of AD youth were less aware of their own emotions and their children's emotions, and these results varied by emotion type. Parents of AD youth engaged in significantly less emotion coaching than parents of non-AD youth. AD youth were identified as having significantly greater difficulty regulating their emotions when compared to non-AD youth. Implications for the role of parental meta-emotional philosophy and AD youth's emotion regulation are discussed.

Musical emotions: predicting second-by-second subjective feelings of emotion from low-level psychoacoustic features and physiological measurements.

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Coutinho, Eduardo; Cangelosi, Angelo

2011-08-01

We sustain that the structure of affect elicited by music is largely dependent on dynamic temporal patterns in low-level music structural parameters. In support of this claim, we have previously provided evidence that spatiotemporal dynamics in psychoacoustic features resonate with two psychological dimensions of affect underlying judgments of subjective feelings: arousal and valence. In this article we extend our previous investigations in two aspects. First, we focus on the emotions experienced rather than perceived while listening to music. Second, we evaluate the extent to which peripheral feedback in music can account for the predicted emotional responses, that is, the role of physiological arousal in determining the intensity and valence of musical emotions. Akin to our previous findings, we will show that a significant part of the listeners' reported emotions can be predicted from a set of six psychoacoustic features--loudness, pitch level, pitch contour, tempo, texture, and sharpness. Furthermore, the accuracy of those predictions is improved with the inclusion of physiological cues--skin conductance and heart rate. The interdisciplinary work presented here provides a new methodology to the field of music and emotion research based on the combination of computational and experimental work, which aid the analysis of the emotional responses to music, while offering a platform for the abstract representation of those complex relationships. Future developments may aid specific areas, such as, psychology and music therapy, by providing coherent descriptions of the emotional effects of specific music stimuli. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

Emotional rescue: the role of emotional intelligence and emotional labour on well-being and job-stress among community nurses.

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Karimi, Leila; Leggat, Sandra G; Donohue, Lisa; Farrell, Gerald; Couper, Greta E

2014-01-01

To investigate the extent to which emotional labour and emotional intelligence are associated with well-being and job-stress among a group of Australian community nurses. The moderating role of emotional intelligence was evaluated as a key factor in the rescue of healthcare workers from job-stress, thus increasing job retention. Although emotional labour has been broadly investigated in the literature, the contribution of emotional labour and emotional intelligence to the well-being and experience of job-stress in a community nursing setting requires further exploration. This study used a cross-sectional quantitative research design with data collected from Australian community nurses. Australian community nurses (n = 312) reported on their perceived emotional labour, emotional intelligence and their levels of well-being and job-stress using a paper and pencil survey in 2010. Results from structural equation modelling support the hypothesis that both emotional labour and emotional intelligence have significant effects on nurses' well-being and perceived job-stress. Emotional intelligence plays a moderating role in the experience of job-stress. These findings provide additional evidence for the important effects that emotional labour and emotional intelligence can have on well-being and job-stress among community nurses. The potential benefits of emotional intelligence in the nurses' emotional work have been explored. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Associations between emotional intelligence, depression and suicide risk in nursing students.

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Aradilla-Herrero, Amor; Tomás-Sábado, Joaquín; Gómez-Benito, Juana

2014-04-01

The most important factor which predisposes young people to suicide is depression, although protective factors such as self-esteem, emotional adaptation and social support may reduce the probability of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Several studies have indicated an elevated risk of suicide for health-related professions. Little is known, however, about the relationship between perceived emotional intelligence and suicide risk among nursing students. The main goals were to determine the prevalence of suicide risk in a sample of nursing students, to examine the relationship between suicide risk and perceived emotional intelligence, depression, trait anxiety and self-esteem, and to identify any gender differences in relation to these variables. Cross-sectional study of nursing students (n=93) who completed self-report measures of perceived emotional intelligence (Trait Meta-Mood Scale, which evaluates three dimensions: emotional attention, clarity and repair), suicide risk (Plutchik Suicide Risk Scale), self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale), depression (Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale) and anxiety (Trait scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). Linear regression analysis confirmed that depression and emotional attention are significant predictors of suicidal ideation. Moreover, suicide risk showed a significant negative association with self-esteem and with emotional clarity and repair. Gender differences were only observed in relation to depression, on which women scored significantly higher. Overall, 14% of the students were considered to present a substantial suicide risk. The findings suggest that interventions to prevent suicidal ideation among nursing students should include strategies to detect mood disorders (especially depression) and to improve emotional coping skills. In line with previous research the results indicate that high scores on emotional attention are linked to heightened emotional susceptibility and an increased risk of

Emotional reactions to crime across cultures.

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Matsumoto, David; Hwang, Hyisung C

2015-10-01

Information about the emotions experienced by observers when they witness crimes would have important theoretical and practical implications, but to date no study has broadly assessed such emotional reactions. This study addressed this gap in the literature. Observers in seven countries viewed seven videos portraying actual crimes and rated their emotional reactions to each using 14 emotion scales. Observers reported significantly high levels of negative emotions including anger, contempt, disgust, fear and sadness-related emotions, and anger, contempt and disgust were the most salient emotions experienced by viewers across all countries. Witnesses also reported significantly high levels of positive emotions as well (compared to not feeling the emotion at all), which was unexpected. Country moderated the emotion ratings; post-hoc analyses indicated that masculine-oriented cultures reported less nervousness, surprise, excitement, fear and embarrassment than feminine cultures. © 2014 International Union of Psychological Science.

Origin of Emotion Effects on ERP Correlates of Emotional Word Processing: The Emotion Duality Approach.

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Imbir, Kamil Konrad; Jarymowicz, Maria Teresa; Spustek, Tomasz; Kuś, Rafał; Żygierewicz, Jarosław

2015-01-01

We distinguish two evaluative systems which evoke automatic and reflective emotions. Automatic emotions are direct reactions to stimuli whereas reflective emotions are always based on verbalized (and often abstract) criteria of evaluation. We conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study in which 25 women were required to read and respond to emotional words which engaged either the automatic or reflective system. Stimulus words were emotional (positive or negative) and neutral. We found an effect of valence on an early response with dipolar fronto-occipital topography; positive words evoked a higher amplitude response than negative words. We also found that topographically specific differences in the amplitude of the late positive complex were related to the system involved in processing. Emotional stimuli engaging the automatic system were associated with significantly higher amplitudes in the left-parietal region; the response to neutral words was similar regardless of the system engaged. A different pattern of effects was observed in the central region, neutral stimuli engaging the reflective system evoked a higher amplitudes response whereas there was no system effect for emotional stimuli. These differences could not be reduced to effects of differences between the arousing properties and concreteness of the words used as stimuli.

Measuring emotions during epistemic activities: the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales.

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Pekrun, Reinhard; Vogl, Elisabeth; Muis, Krista R; Sinatra, Gale M

2017-09-01

Measurement instruments assessing multiple emotions during epistemic activities are largely lacking. We describe the construction and validation of the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales, which measure surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, anxiety, frustration, and boredom occurring during epistemic cognitive activities. The instrument was tested in a multinational study of emotions during learning from conflicting texts (N = 438 university students from the United States, Canada, and Germany). The findings document the reliability, internal validity, and external validity of the instrument. A seven-factor model best fit the data, suggesting that epistemically-related emotions should be conceptualised in terms of discrete emotion categories, and the scales showed metric invariance across the North American and German samples. Furthermore, emotion scores changed over time as a function of conflicting task information and related significantly to perceived task value and use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies.

Emotions and leadership. Reasons and impact of emotions in organizational context.

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Siebert-Adzic, Meike

2012-01-01

Emotions as reasons for dissatisfaction, decreasing job performance or physical and mental strain at work are becoming more and more important. Especially psycho-social interactions with conflicts between employees and managers, caused by leadership behavior, as a source of negative emotions are relevant in this context. Which relevance emotions can have in order to influence human behavior and in order to influence work climate will be demonstrated by two qualitative field surveys in the automotive and the energy sector. The study in the energy sector will explain which leadership behavior fosters an improved employee behavior concerning occupational health and safety. A second study in the automotive industry shows that leadership behavior which causes positive emotions is essential for successful teamwork.

Coping and emotional adjustment following traumatic brain injury.

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Anson, Katie; Ponsford, Jennie

2006-01-01

To examine the association between coping style and emotional adjustment following traumatic brain injury. Thirty three individuals who had sustained a traumatic brain injury (mean duration of posttraumatic amnesia = 32 days) between 1(1/2) months and almost 7 years previously. Coping Scale for Adults, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory, and the Sickness Impact Profile. Approximately 50% of the sample reported clinically significant levels of anxiety and depression. Coping characterized by avoidance, worry, wishful thinking, self-blame, and using drugs and alcohol was associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and psychosocial dysfunction and lower levels of self-esteem. Coping characterized by actively working on the problem and using humor and enjoyable activities to manage stress was associated with higher self-esteem. Lower premorbid intelligence (measured via the National Adult Reading Test) and greater self-awareness (measured via the Self-Awareness of Deficits Interview) were associated with an increased rate of maladaptive coping. The strong association between the style of coping used to manage stress and emotional adjustment suggests the possibility that emotional adjustment might be improved by the facilitation of more adaptive coping styles. It is also possible that improving emotional adjustment may increase adaptive coping. The development and evaluation of interventions aimed at facilitating adaptive coping and decreasing emotional distress represent important and potentially fruitful contributions to enhancing long-term outcome following brain injury.

The facilitating effect of positive emotions during an emotional Stroop task.

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Liu, Xingyu; Yang, Yisheng; Jiang, Songxiu; Li, Jie

2018-05-08

Prior research has shown that negative emotions, even though task irrelevant, are capable of delaying a participant's response to the color in which a negative emotional word is presented, a phenomenon known as the 'emotional Stroop effect'. However, relatively little is known about whether positive emotions have a similar or an opposite effect. The current study sets out to confirm the facilitating effect of positive emotions on color naming, which is predicted by Barbara Fredrickson's 'broaden and build' theory. Our results indicate that positive emotions did facilitate such processing in both of the study's experiments. We also found a significant difference in early posterior negativity amplitudes between positive and neutral stimuli, which was related to the 'fast effect'. Overall, the study's findings suggest that positive emotions can be detected quickly and automatically, and that this kind of prioritizing facilitates the ongoing cognitive processing.

Facial emotion recognition, socio-occupational functioning and expressed emotions in schizophrenia versus bipolar disorder.

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Thonse, Umesh; Behere, Rishikesh V; Praharaj, Samir Kumar; Sharma, Podila Sathya Venkata Narasimha

2018-06-01

Facial emotion recognition deficits have been consistently demonstrated in patients with severe mental disorders. Expressed emotion is found to be an important predictor of relapse. However, the relationship between facial emotion recognition abilities and expressed emotions and its influence on socio-occupational functioning in schizophrenia versus bipolar disorder has not been studied. In this study we examined 91 patients with schizophrenia and 71 with bipolar disorder for psychopathology, socio occupational functioning and emotion recognition abilities. Primary caregivers of 62 patients with schizophrenia and 49 with bipolar disorder were assessed on Family Attitude Questionnaire to assess their expressed emotions. Patients of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder performed similarly on the emotion recognition task. Patients with schizophrenia group experienced higher critical comments and had a poorer socio-occupational functioning as compared to patients with bipolar disorder. Poorer socio-occupational functioning in patients with schizophrenia was significantly associated with greater dissatisfaction in their caregivers. In patients with bipolar disorder, poorer emotion recognition scores significantly correlated with poorer adaptive living skills and greater hostility and dissatisfaction in their caregivers. The findings of our study suggest that emotion recognition abilities in patients with bipolar disorder are associated with negative expressed emotions leading to problems in adaptive living skills. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Adolescents' emotional competence is associated with parents' neural sensitivity to emotions.

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Telzer, Eva H; Qu, Yang; Goldenberg, Diane; Fuligni, Andrew J; Galván, Adriana; Lieberman, Matthew D

2014-01-01

An essential component of youths' successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions, including the ability to recognize, identify, and describe one's feelings. Such emotional competence is thought to arise through the parent-child relationship. Yet, the mechanisms by which parents transmit emotional competence to their children are difficult to measure because they are often implicit, idiosyncratic, and not easily articulated by parents or children. In the current study, we used a multifaceted approach that went beyond self-report measures and examined whether parental neural sensitivity to emotions predicted their child's emotional competence. Twenty-two adolescent-parent dyads completed an fMRI scan during which they labeled the emotional expressions of negatively valenced faces. Results indicate that parents who recruited the amygdala, VLPFC, and brain regions involved in mentalizing (i.e., inferring others' emotional states) had adolescent children with greater emotional competence. These results held after controlling for parents' self-reports of emotional expressivity and adolescents' self-reports of the warmth and support of their parent relationships. In addition, adolescents recruited neural regions involved in mentalizing during affect labeling, which significantly mediated the associated between parental neural sensitivity and adolescents' emotional competence, suggesting that youth are modeling or referencing their parents' emotional profiles, thereby contributing to better emotional competence.

Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eva H Telzer

2014-07-01

Full Text Available An essential component of youths’ successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions, including the ability to recognize, identify, and describe one’s feelings. Such emotional competence is thought to arise through the parent-child relationship. Yet, the mechanisms by which parents transmit emotional competence to their children are difficult to measure because they are often implicit, idiosyncratic, and not easily articulated by parents or children. In the current study, we used a multifaceted approach that went beyond self-report measures and examined whether parental neural sensitivity to emotions predicted their child’s emotional competence. Twenty-two adolescent-parent dyads completed an fMRI scan during which they labeled the emotional expressions of negatively valenced faces. Results indicate that parents who recruited the amygdala, VLPFC, and brain regions involved in mentalizing (i.e., inferring others’ emotional states had adolescent children with greater emotional competence. These results held after controlling for parents’ self-reports of emotional expressivity and adolescents’ self-reports of the warmth and support of their parent relationships. In addition, adolescents recruited neural regions involved in mentalizing during affect labeling, which significantly mediated the associated between parental neural sensitivity and adolescents’ emotional competence, suggesting that youth are modeling or referencing their parents’ emotional profiles, thereby contributing to better emotional competence.

Leadership Effects on Student Learning Mediated by Teacher Emotions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jingping Sun

2015-06-01

Full Text Available School leaders’ influence on student achievement is largely indirect. Using systematic review techniques, this paper assesses the impact that leaders have on their students when they focus their improvement efforts on those teacher emotions or dispositions known to have direct effects on teaching and learning in the classroom. Building on an earlier conceptions of how leadership influences student learning and based on a review of research over the last 25 years, this study identifies four distinct teacher emotions which have significant effects on student learning—collective teacher efficacy, teacher commitment, teacher trust in others, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. This review also describes leadership practices likely to foster productive teacher emotions, most such practices reflecting a transformational approach to leadership.

Distinct emotion regulation skills explain psychopathology and problems in social relationships following childhood emotional abuse and neglect.

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Berzenski, Sara R

2018-03-22

Efforts to differentiate between the developmental sequelae of childhood emotional abuse and childhood emotional neglect are critical to both research and practice efforts. As an oft-identified mechanism of the effects of child maltreatment on later adjustment, emotion dysregulation represents a key potential pathway. The present study explored a higher order factor model of specific emotion regulation skills, and the extent to which these skill sets would indicate distinct developmental pathways from unique emotional maltreatment experiences to multidomain adjustment. A sample of 500 ethnoracially diverse college students reported on their experiences. A two-factor model of emotion regulation skills based on subscales of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale was revealed. Significant indirect effects of childhood emotional abuse on psychopathology and problems in social relationships were found through response-focused difficulties in emotion regulation, whereas a significant indirect effect of childhood emotional neglect on problems in social relationships was found through antecedent-focused difficulties in emotion regulation. These results are consistent with theoretical models and empirical evidence suggesting differential effects of childhood emotional abuse and emotional neglect, and provide an important indication for developing targeted interventions focusing on specific higher order emotion dysregulation skill clusters.

Psychological Gender and Emotional Intelligence in Youth Female Soccer Players

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Rutkowska Katarzyna

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Many sports (for instance soccer are stereotypically perceived as a male activity. Even so, more and more women decide to become competitive athletes. Since the theory of sport requires comprehensive explanations and the practice of sport needs clear guidelines, interdisciplinary studies into the nature of sport, including its psychological aspects, are necessary. Analysing the psychological profile of female soccer players, particularly those who are about to become professional athletes, can provide many interesting insights into the specific character of female youth sport and show where improvements can be made in athletic training programmes (especially in mental training. It is therefore important to study psychological gender that determines social behaviours and to analyse female athletes’ emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is defined as a set of emotional competencies that determine the effectiveness of human behaviours. Psychological gender and emotional intelligence have a significant effect on human adaptability and the efficiency of psychosocial functioning. This research was undertaken with the dual purpose of identifying the psychological gender and emotional intelligence of female soccer players. It involved 54 secondary-school girls, some of whom attended a sports class and others played on the Polish national team. The following tools were used to carry out the research: the Gender Assessment Inventory (IPP [This and the other acronyms derive from the Polish language]-developed by Kuczyńska and the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (INTE; created by Jaworowska and Matczak. As shown by the analysis of the results, most female soccer players in the study were androgynous and the level of their emotional intelligence was significantly higher than in other participants. This also seems to point to their significantly greater adaptability. At the same time, the level of emotional intelligence in many players was

Psychological Gender and Emotional Intelligence in Youth Female Soccer Players.

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Rutkowska, Katarzyna; Bergier, Józef

2015-09-29

Many sports (for instance soccer) are stereotypically perceived as a male activity. Even so, more and more women decide to become competitive athletes. Since the theory of sport requires comprehensive explanations and the practice of sport needs clear guidelines, interdisciplinary studies into the nature of sport, including its psychological aspects, are necessary. Analysing the psychological profile of female soccer players, particularly those who are about to become professional athletes, can provide many interesting insights into the specific character of female youth sport and show where improvements can be made in athletic training programmes (especially in mental training). It is therefore important to study psychological gender that determines social behaviours and to analyse female athletes' emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is defined as a set of emotional competencies that determine the effectiveness of human behaviours. Psychological gender and emotional intelligence have a significant effect on human adaptability and the efficiency of psychosocial functioning. This research was undertaken with the dual purpose of identifying the psychological gender and emotional intelligence of female soccer players. It involved 54 secondary-school girls, some of whom attended a sports class and others played on the Polish national team. The following tools were used to carry out the research: the Gender Assessment Inventory (IPP [This and the other acronyms derive from the Polish language]-developed by Kuczyńska) and the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (INTE; created by Jaworowska and Matczak). As shown by the analysis of the results, most female soccer players in the study were androgynous and the level of their emotional intelligence was significantly higher than in other participants. This also seems to point to their significantly greater adaptability. At the same time, the level of emotional intelligence in many players was average or low

Achievement Emotions and Peer Acceptance Get Together in Game Design at School

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Margherita BRONDINO

2014-12-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a game design experience in primary schools, with children creating game design ideas and prototypes. Children were organized in cooperative groups. Game design tasks were organized following gamification principles, with ad-hoc gamified material. Cooperative learning and gamification served to elicit emotions and social inclusion. This paper measures them as follows. It operationalizes social inclusion with peer acceptance in three different social contexts, measured before and after the game design activity. It tracks achievement emotions experienced during game design at school. Then the paper examines the relationships between achievement emotions and peer acceptance. In this manner, it tackles an open problem in the literature concerning the links between emotions and social well-being in a game design experience. Path analyses indicate that, respectively for received choices and mutual friendships, positive emotions played a significant role in improving children’s social relations, and negative emotions were associated with a significant deterioration of social relations, but only for the extra-school leisure context. The paper concludes assessing the study limits and results in relation to game design with and for children.

Emotions as within or between people? Cultural variation in lay theories of emotion expression and inference.

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Uchida, Yukiko; Townsend, Sarah S M; Rose Markus, Hazel; Bergsieker, Hilary B

2009-11-01

Four studies using open-ended and experimental methods test the hypothesis that in Japanese contexts, emotions are understood as between people, whereas in American contexts, emotions are understood as primarily within people. Study 1 analyzed television interviews of Olympic athletes. When asked about their relationships, Japanese athletes used significantly more emotion words than American athletes. This difference was not significant when questions asked directly about athletes' feelings. In Study 2, when describing an athlete's emotional reaction to winning, Japanese participants implicated others more often than American participants. After reading an athlete's self-description, Japanese participants inferred more emotions when the athlete mentioned relationships, whereas American participants inferred more emotions when the athlete focused only on herself (Study 3). Finally, when viewing images of athletes, Japanese participants inferred more emotions for athletes pictured with teammates, whereas American participants inferred more emotions for athletes pictured alone (Studies 4a and 4b).

Effectiveness of a workplace training programme in improving social, communication and emotional skills for adults with autism and intellectual disability in Hong Kong--a pilot study.

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Liu, Karen P Y; Wong, Denys; Chung, Anthony C Y; Kwok, Natalie; Lam, Madeleine K Y; Yuen, Cheri M C; Arblaster, Karen; Kwan, Aldous C S

2013-12-01

This pilot study explored the effectiveness of workplace training programme that aimed to enhance the work-related behaviours in individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities. Fourteen participants with autism and mild to moderate intellectual disability (mean age = 24.6 years) were recruited. The workplace training programme included practices in work context and group educational sessions. A pre-test-post-test design was used with the Work Personality Profile, the Scale of Independent Behaviour Revised and the Observational Emotional Inventory Revised to evaluate the targeted behaviours. Improvement in social and communication skills specific to the workplace was achieved. For emotional control, participants became less confused and had a better self-concept. However, improvement in other general emotional behaviours, such as impulse control, was limited. The results indicated that a structured workplace training programme aimed at improving social, communication and emotional behaviours can be helpful for people with autism and intellectual disability. Further study with a larger sample size and a control group is recommended. The development of specific programme to cater for the emotional control needs at workplace for people with autism is also suggested. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Indirect Self-Destructiveness and Emotional Intelligence.

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Tsirigotis, Konstantinos

2016-06-01

While emotional intelligence may have a favourable influence on the life and psychological and social functioning of the individual, indirect self-destructiveness exerts a rather negative influence. The aim of this study has been to explore possible relations between indirect self-destructiveness and emotional intelligence. A population of 260 individuals (130 females and 130 males) aged 20-30 (mean age of 24.5) was studied by using the Polish version of the chronic self-destructiveness scale and INTE, i.e., the Polish version of the assessing emotions scale. Indirect self-destructiveness has significant correlations with all variables of INTE (overall score, factor I, factor II), and these correlations are negative. The intensity of indirect self-destructiveness differentiates significantly the height of the emotional intelligence and vice versa: the height of the emotional intelligence differentiates significantly the intensity of indirect self-destructiveness. Indirect self-destructiveness has negative correlations with emotional intelligence as well as its components: the ability to recognize emotions and the ability to utilize emotions. The height of emotional intelligence differentiates the intensity of indirect self-destructiveness, and vice versa: the intensity of indirect self-destructiveness differentiates the height of emotional intelligence. It seems advisable to use emotional intelligence in the prophylactic and therapeutic work with persons with various types of disorders, especially with the syndrome of indirect self-destructiveness.

Individual differences in preschoolers' emotion content memory: the role of emotion knowledge.

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Channell, Marie Moore; Barth, Joan M

2013-07-01

This study examined the relation between preschool children's emotion knowledge and their ability to recall emotionally salient information. In total, 42 participants (ages 35-65months) viewed a brief video in which a child played with different toys and expressed one of four basic emotions (happy, sad, angry, or afraid) or a neutral expression in each of 10 vignettes. Children were tested on memory accuracy from the vignettes, and their emotion knowledge was also measured. Results indicated that preschoolers' emotion knowledge was significantly related to memory accuracy for emotion information above and beyond the effect of age or receptive language skills. Tests of a mediation model revealed that emotion knowledge fully mediated the effect of age (or general developmental level) on memory accuracy. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Emotional content enhances true but not false memory for categorized stimuli.

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Choi, Hae-Yoon; Kensinger, Elizabeth A; Rajaram, Suparna

2013-04-01

Past research has shown that emotion enhances true memory, but that emotion can either increase or decrease false memory. Two theoretical possibilities-the distinctiveness of emotional stimuli and the conceptual relatedness of emotional content-have been implicated as being responsible for influencing both true and false memory for emotional content. In the present study, we sought to identify the mechanisms that underlie these mixed findings by equating the thematic relatedness of the study materials across each type of valence used (negative, positive, or neutral). In three experiments, categorically bound stimuli (e.g., funeral, pets, and office items) were used for this purpose. When the encoding task required the processing of thematic relatedness, a significant true-memory enhancement for emotional content emerged in recognition memory, but no emotional boost to false memory (exp. 1). This pattern persisted for true memory with a longer retention interval between study and test (24 h), and false recognition was reduced for emotional items (exp. 2). Finally, better recognition memory for emotional items once again emerged when the encoding task (arousal ratings) required the processing of the emotional aspect of the study items, with no emotional boost to false recognition (EXP. 3). Together, these findings suggest that when emotional and neutral stimuli are equivalently high in thematic relatedness, emotion continues to improve true memory, but it does not override other types of grouping to increase false memory.

Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Parkinson's Disease: An Emotional Mirror Mechanism?

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Ricciardi, Lucia; Visco-Comandini, Federica; Erro, Roberto; Morgante, Francesca; Bologna, Matteo; Fasano, Alfonso; Ricciardi, Diego; Edwards, Mark J; Kilner, James

2017-01-01

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have impairment of facial expressivity (hypomimia) and difficulties in interpreting the emotional facial expressions produced by others, especially for aversive emotions. We aimed to evaluate the ability to produce facial emotional expressions and to recognize facial emotional expressions produced by others in a group of PD patients and a group of healthy participants in order to explore the relationship between these two abilities and any differences between the two groups of participants. Twenty non-demented, non-depressed PD patients and twenty healthy participants (HC) matched for demographic characteristics were studied. The ability of recognizing emotional facial expressions was assessed with the Ekman 60-faces test (Emotion recognition task). Participants were video-recorded while posing facial expressions of 6 primary emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear and anger). The most expressive pictures for each emotion were derived from the videos. Ten healthy raters were asked to look at the pictures displayed on a computer-screen in pseudo-random fashion and to identify the emotional label in a six-forced-choice response format (Emotion expressivity task). Reaction time (RT) and accuracy of responses were recorded. At the end of each trial the participant was asked to rate his/her confidence in his/her perceived accuracy of response. For emotion recognition, PD reported lower score than HC for Ekman total score (pemotions sub-scores happiness, fear, anger, sadness (pfacial emotion expressivity task, PD and HC significantly differed in the total score (p = 0.05) and in the sub-scores for happiness, sadness, anger (all pemotions. There was a significant positive correlation between the emotion facial recognition and expressivity in both groups; the correlation was even stronger when ranking emotions from the best recognized to the worst (R = 0.75, p = 0.004). PD patients showed difficulties in recognizing emotional

Emotionally Handicapped Pupils: Developing Appropriate Educational Programs.

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North Carolina State Dept. of Public Instruction, Raleigh. Div. for Exceptional Children.

The document is designed to assist local school systems as they plan, develop, and improve programs for emotionally handicapped students. Sections cover the following areas: definition of emotionally handicapped students; pre-planninq for emotionally handicapped programs; identification, referral, screening, assessment, and placement; service…

EFFECT OF INTEGRATED YOGA ON EMOTIONAL DIMENSIONS OF THE PARTICIPANTS IN SVYASA

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Sindhu

2016-11-01

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Skill to monitor one’s own and others’ thinking and actions is termed as Emotional intelligence (EI. [1] Psychological dimensions of EI are emotional sensitivity, emotional maturity and emotional competency which motivate participants to recognize, interpret and handle the dynamics of their behavioral pattern. OBJECTIVE: To assess the effect of the Integrat ed Yoga module (IYM on emotional dimensions of the participants in SVYASA. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study includes 40 subjects between 20 - 60years of age selected from health home of Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (SVYASA University, Bang alore for IYM. EQ test developed by Prof N. K. Chadha used to assess the EI was given to all the subjects on admission to S - VYASA. All the subjects of this study participated in IYM for a week . After one week of IYM, same questionnaire was given to partici pants. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Means, standard deviations, Paired t test were used for analyzing the data with the help of SPSS 16. RESULTS: EQ analysis (n=40 showed significant increase ( P <0.05 in emotional quotient and maturity (r=0.403, 0.341 respecti vely, with significant decrease in sensitivity (r=0.482. Competency was also found to be increased, but was not found to be statistically significant. CONCLUSION: The present study suggests that IYM can result in improvement in maturity and competency d imensions of EQ aiding in emotional balance and reasoning

Emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder: effects of emotional information on negative bias.

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Fenske, Sabrina; Lis, Stefanie; Liebke, Lisa; Niedtfeld, Inga; Kirsch, Peter; Mier, Daniela

2015-01-01

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe deficits in social interactions, which might be linked to deficits in emotion recognition. Research on emotion recognition abilities in BPD revealed heterogeneous results, ranging from deficits to heightened sensitivity. The most stable findings point to an impairment in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions as neutral, as well as to a negative bias in emotion recognition; that is the tendency to attribute negative emotions to neutral expressions, or in a broader sense to report a more negative emotion category than depicted. However, it remains unclear which contextual factors influence the occurrence of this negative bias. Previous studies suggest that priming by preceding emotional information and also constrained processing time might augment the emotion recognition deficit in BPD. To test these assumptions, 32 female BPD patients and 31 healthy females, matched for age and education, participated in an emotion recognition study, in which every facial expression was preceded by either a positive, neutral or negative scene. Furthermore, time constraints for processing were varied by presenting the facial expressions with short (100 ms) or long duration (up to 3000 ms) in two separate blocks. BPD patients showed a significant deficit in emotion recognition for neutral and positive facial expression, associated with a significant negative bias. In BPD patients, this emotion recognition deficit was differentially affected by preceding emotional information and time constraints, with a greater influence of emotional information during long face presentations and a greater influence of neutral information during short face presentations. Our results are in line with previous findings supporting the existence of a negative bias in emotion recognition in BPD patients, and provide further insights into biased social perceptions in BPD patients.

An emotional processing writing intervention and heart rate variability: the role of emotional approach.

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Seeley, Saren H; Yanez, Betina; Stanton, Annette L; Hoyt, Michael A

2017-08-01

Expressing and understanding one's own emotional responses to negative events, particularly those that challenge the attainment of important life goals, is thought to confer physiological benefit. Individual preferences and/or abilities in approaching emotions might condition the efficacy of interventions designed to encourage written emotional processing (EP). This study examines the physiological impact (as indexed by heart rate variability (HRV)) of an emotional processing writing (EPW) task as well as the moderating influence of a dispositional preference for coping through emotional approach (EP and emotional expression (EE)), in response to a laboratory stress task designed to challenge an important life goal. Participants (n = 98) were randomly assigned to either EPW or fact control writing (FCW) following the stress task. Regression analyses revealed a significant dispositional EP by condition interaction, such that high EP participants in the EPW condition demonstrated higher HRV after writing compared to low EP participants. No significant main effects of condition or EE coping were observed. These findings suggest that EPW interventions may be best suited for those with preference or ability to process emotions related to a stressor or might require adaptation for those who less often cope through emotional approach.

Fostering Creativity from an Emotional Perspective: Do Teachers Recognise and Handle Students' Emotions?

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Siu, Kin Wai; Wong, Yi Lin

2016-01-01

Emotions have a significant effect on the processes of designing and creative thinking. In an educational context, some emotions may even be detrimental to creativity. To further explore the link between creativity and emotion, a series of interviews were conducted with design and technology (D&T) teachers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing…

Approach to the concept of emotionality. The emotional stereotype of sexism

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Raúl Carretero-Bermejo

2017-07-01

Full Text Available This work has two main objectives: The first one is to understand the emotional stereotype of sexism, or what is the same, to know the expectations and beliefs that sexism shows about what should be the emotional behavior in women and men from this ideological position. The second objective is to propose a first approach and definition of the emotional dimension of sexism within the framework of the theory of Ambivalent Sexism, that we will call emotionality. For the development of this work we have selected a sample of 1608 students located on the four provinces and five Education Faculties from Castilla La Mancha. 1308 participants are those who have fulfilled all the conditions to join the study. The results show that sexism presents a stereotype of emotional management very clear and different for men and women as well as complementary as sexist ideology itself, where women get their highest score in emotional care and its lowest score in emotional regulation. By contrast, men get the highest score in emotional regulation and its lowest score in emotional care. This sexist emotional stereotype is also significantly different, from our results perspective, of the stereotype of study population that has not sexist beliefs. Our results suggest, therefore, the existence of this sexist emotional stereotype and the need to include a new dimension, the emotionality, in the definition of sexism.

Emotion recognition and oxytocin in patients with schizophrenia

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Averbeck, B. B.; Bobin, T.; Evans, S.; Shergill, S. S.

2012-01-01

Background Studies have suggested that patients with schizophrenia are impaired at recognizing emotions. Recently, it has been shown that the neuropeptide oxytocin can have beneficial effects on social behaviors. Method To examine emotion recognition deficits in patients and see whether oxytocin could improve these deficits, we carried out two experiments. In the first experiment we recruited 30 patients with schizophrenia and 29 age- and IQ-matched control subjects, and gave them an emotion recognition task. Following this, we carried out a second experiment in which we recruited 21 patients with schizophrenia for a double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over study of the effects of oxytocin on the same emotion recognition task. Results In the first experiment we found that patients with schizophrenia had a deficit relative to controls in recognizing emotions. In the second experiment we found that administration of oxytocin improved the ability of patients to recognize emotions. The improvement was consistent and occurred for most emotions, and was present whether patients were identifying morphed or non-morphed faces. Conclusions These data add to a growing literature showing beneficial effects of oxytocin on social–behavioral tasks, as well as clinical symptoms. PMID:21835090

Adaptive emotion regulation mediates the relationship between self-compassion and depression in individuals with unipolar depression.

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Diedrich, Alice; Burger, Julian; Kirchner, Mareike; Berking, Matthias

2017-09-01

To identify the mechanisms involved in the association between self-compassion and depression, we examined whether adaptive emotion regulation would mediate the relationship between self-compassion and depression in individuals with unipolar depression. Furthermore, we explored which specific emotion regulation skills would be most important in this relationship. Sixty-nine individuals with unipolar depression were assessed with the Self-Compassion Scale and the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire at baseline and with the Beck Depression Inventory-II 1 week later. The results showed that successful application of emotion regulation skills mediates the association between self-compassion and depression. Among eight specific emotion regulation skills, only the ability to tolerate negative emotions was identified as a significant mediator in the self-compassion-depression relationship. These findings provide preliminary evidence that systematically fostering self-compassion might help depressed individuals cope with their symptoms by enhancing their abilities to tolerate undesired emotions. Systematically fostering self-compassion through specific compassion-focused interventions might facilitate a reduction in depressive symptoms by improving the person's emotion regulation abilities, especially by improving his or her ability to tolerate negative emotions. Hence, compassion-focused interventions might be particularly promising in depressed patients with a tendency to avoid negative emotions and deficits in tolerating them. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Neural pathways in 'emotional approach' as experiential emotion regulation strategy.

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Vandekerckhove, M; Van Hecke, W; Quirin, M; De Mey, J

2018-02-15

Current research on emotion shows an increasing interest in the neuronal correlates of emotion regulation (ER). While previous research on ER has focused on gray matter correlates, this study represents the first exploratory study on white matter integrity and brain networks of ER. Responding to the gap between cognitive and affective approaches of ER, pertaining to some of the daily emotional stressors, the present study investigates a complementary experiential approach such as 'Emotional approach' or the tendency to affectively acknowledge, understand and express emotional experience (cf. Stanton et al., 2000). Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI-MRI) measures of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) evaluated dispositional ER in a group of 21 women with (1) a 'high emotional approach' (HEA) (N = 11) and (2) a 'low emotional approach' (LEA) (N= 10). HEA exhibited more FA of the cingulum supporting emotion processing and regulation, whereas LEA showed a higher FA in the right corticospinal tracts supporting automatic action tendencies and, together with a higher FA in the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), cognitive control tasks and monitoring of emotion. LEA also correlated with a significant increase in MD in the body (p. = 0.05) and in the splenium of the corpus callosum (CC). A higher FA in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (IFL) may indicate higher visual- affective integration within emotion processing, whereas more MD in the body and splenium of the CC may decrease the interhemispheric integration of emotional information within emotion processing and regulation. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

FILTWAM and Voice Emotion Recognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bahreini, Kiavash; Nadolski, Rob; Westera, Wim

2014-01-01

This paper introduces the voice emotion recognition part of our framework for improving learning through webcams and microphones (FILTWAM). This framework enables multimodal emotion recognition of learners during game-based learning. The main goal of this study is to validate the use of microphone

Emotional aspects of bronchial asthma in Indian patients: Evaluation of an interventional strategy

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Behera D

2006-01-01

Full Text Available In order to improve the self care abilities of the patients with bronchial asthma a ′Self Care Manual′ (a Booklet of 26 pages on bronchial asthma was prepared. An interview schedule was developed to evaluate the usefulness of the manual. The validity and reliability of both these instruments were established. Five hundred and twenty three diagnosed patients of bronchial asthma (260 in the study group to whom the self care manual was given and 263 controls to whom no specific instructions were given were included in the study. Emotions like ′tension′, ′excessive laughter′, ′sadness′, ′happiness′ and ′anger′ etc. that triggered the symptoms were studied. The effect of self care manual on other emotions (FNx01a total of 8 items like ′anxiety due to the disease′, ′tension of taking medicine′ and ′fear of death′ etc. was also studied. Both groups were followed up at 2 weeks, 6 months and 1 year while the same interview schedule was administered on each visit. It was observed that the emotion scores decreased significantly in both the groups (8.08±5.5, 5.89±4.88, 1.44±4.63 and 1.19±4.01 in the study patients, whereas 8.50±6.30, 7.88±6.21, 7.35±6.03 and 5.97±5.81 in the controls at 0 weeks, 2 weeks, 6 months and 1 year respectively. The emotion scores were significantly less in the study group as compared to controls (unpaired ′t′ = 3.57, 8.52 and 7.67 at 2 weeks, 6 months and 1 year respectively (p< 0.001 Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that the odds ratio of study group patients showing significant improvement in emotion scores was 3.34 (95% CI, 1.78-6.25 and 4.26 (95% CI, 2.34-7.63 at 6 months and 1 year respectively as compared to controls. We concluded that patient education (self care manual in the form of a booklet made significant improvement in the emotions in patients with bronchial asthma.

Emotional maltreatment and disordered eating in adolescents: testing the mediating role of emotion regulation.

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Mills, Pamela; Newman, Emily Frances; Cossar, Jill; Murray, George

2015-01-01

The present study aimed to determine if emotion regulation mediates the relationship between emotional maltreatment and disordered eating behavior in adolescents. Participants were 222 secondary school pupils (aged 14-18 years) from a state high school in the UK. Standardized questionnaire measures were used to gather self-report data on emotional abuse and emotional neglect, functional and dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies and disordered eating behavior. Results showed that disordered eating was associated with emotional abuse, dysfunctional emotion regulation and being female. Multiple mediation analysis found an indirect relationship between emotional abuse and disordered eating through dysfunctional emotion regulation. Interestingly, emotional neglect predicted lower levels of functional emotion regulation. The findings support previous research showing emotion regulation to mediate the relationship between childhood abuse and disordered eating in adults and a differential effect of abuse and neglect on emotion regulation. Longitudinal studies are required to confirm the direction of relationships; however these data suggest that dysfunctional emotion regulation is a significant variable in the development of disordered eating and may be a useful target for intervention. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

How clients "change emotion with emotion": A programme of research on emotional processing.

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Pascual-Leone, Antonio

2018-03-01

This paper reviews a body of research that has examined Pascual-Leone and Greenberg's sequential model of emotional processing or used its accompanying measure (the Classification of Affective Meaning States). Research from 24 studies using a plurality of methods examined process-outcome relationships from micro to macro levels of observation and builds support for emotional transformation as a possible causal mechanism of change in psychotherapy. A pooled sample of 310 clinical and 130 sub-clinical cases have been studied, reflecting the process of 7 different treatment approaches in addressing over 5 different presenting clinical problems (including depression, anxiety, relational trauma, and personality disorders). The initial findings on this model support the hypothesis that emotional transformation occurs in specific canonical sequences and these show large effects in the prediction of positive treatment outcomes. This model is the first in the field of psychotherapy to show how non-linear temporal patterns of moment-by-moment process relate to the unfolding of increasingly larger changes to create good psychotherapy treatment outcomes. Finally, clinical application of the model is also considered as a template for case formulations focused on emotion. Clinical or methodological significance of this article: This review article examines research on a specific model of emotional processing. (i) Experiencing certain key emotions during psychotherapy seems to predict good treatment outcomes, at both the session and treatment levels. (ii) There is also evidence to suggest that these productive emotional experiences unfold in an ordered pattern. Moreover, (iii) support for this way of understanding emotional processing comes from a number of very different treatment approaches and for several kinds of major disorders.

Emotion regulation in schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy

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Eva Fassbinder

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Schema therapy (ST and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT have both shown to be effective treatment methods especially for borderline personality disorder. Both, ST and DBT, have their roots in cognitive behavioral therapy and aim at helping patient to deal with emotional dysregulation. However, there are major differences in the terminology, explanatory models and techniques used in the both methods. This article gives an overview of the major therapeutic techniques used in ST and DBT with respect to emotion regulation and systematically puts them in the context of James Gross’ process model of emotion regulation. Similarities and differences of the two methods are highlighted and illustrated with a case example. A core difference of the two approaches is that DBT directly focusses on the acquisition of emotion regulation skills, whereas ST does seldom address emotion regulation directly. All DBT-modules (mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness are intended to improve emotion regulation skills and patients are encouraged to train these skills on a regular basis. DBT assumes that improved skills and skills use will result in better emotion regulation. In ST problems in emotion regulation are seen as a consequence of adverse early experiences (e.g. lack of safe attachment, childhood abuse or emotional neglect. These negative experiences have led to unprocessed psychological traumas and fear of emotions and result in attempts to avoid emotions and dysfunctional meta-cognitive schemas about the meaning of emotions. ST assumes that when these underlying problems are addressed, emotion regulation improves. Major ST techniques for trauma processing, emotional avoidance and dysregulation are limited reparenting, empathic confrontation and experiential techniques like chair dialogues and imagery rescripting.

Emotion Regulation in Schema Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy

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Fassbinder, Eva; Schweiger, Ulrich; Martius, Desiree; Brand-de Wilde, Odette; Arntz, Arnoud

2016-01-01

Schema therapy (ST) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) have both shown to be effective treatment methods especially for borderline personality disorder. Both, ST and DBT, have their roots in cognitive behavioral therapy and aim at helping patient to deal with emotional dysregulation. However, there are major differences in the terminology, explanatory models and techniques used in the both methods. This article gives an overview of the major therapeutic techniques used in ST and DBT with respect to emotion regulation and systematically puts them in the context of James Gross' process model of emotion regulation. Similarities and differences of the two methods are highlighted and illustrated with a case example. A core difference of the two approaches is that DBT directly focusses on the acquisition of emotion regulation skills, whereas ST does seldom address emotion regulation directly. All DBT-modules (mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness) are intended to improve emotion regulation skills and patients are encouraged to train these skills on a regular basis. DBT assumes that improved skills and skills use will result in better emotion regulation. In ST problems in emotion regulation are seen as a consequence of adverse early experiences (e.g., lack of safe attachment, childhood abuse or emotional neglect). These negative experiences have led to unprocessed psychological traumas and fear of emotions and result in attempts to avoid emotions and dysfunctional meta-cognitive schemas about the meaning of emotions. ST assumes that when these underlying problems are addressed, emotion regulation improves. Major ST techniques for trauma processing, emotional avoidance and dysregulation are limited reparenting, empathic confrontation and experiential techniques like chair dialogs and imagery rescripting. PMID:27683567

The cultural construction of emotions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mesquita, B.; Boiger, M.; De Leersnyder, J.

A large body of anthropological and psychological research on emotions has yielded significant evidence that emotional experience is culturally constructed: people more commonly experience those emotions that help them to be a good and typical person in their culture. Moreover, experiencing these

Relationship Between Emotions, Emotion Regulation, and Well-Being of Professional Caregivers of People With Dementia.

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Bassal, Catherine; Czellar, Judith; Kaiser, Susanne; Dan-Glauser, Elise S

2016-05-01

So far, limited research has been carried out to better understand the interplay between the emotions, the use of emotion regulation strategies, and the well-being of professional caregivers of People with Dementia (PwD). This pilot study (N = 43 professional caregivers) aimed to (1) describe the type and frequency of emotions experienced at work; (2) analyze the associations between experienced emotions, emotion regulation strategies, and well-being; and (3) test whether the use of specific emotion regulation strategies moderates the relationship between experienced emotions and emotional exhaustion. In the challenging context of professionally caring for PwD, results suggest that (1) caregivers experience positive emotions more frequently than negative emotions; (2) caregivers using relatively inappropriate regulation strategies are more likely to experience negative emotions, less likely to experience positive emotions, and have poorer physical and mental health; and (3) expressive suppression significantly moderates the relationship between positive experienced emotions and emotional exhaustion. © The Author(s) 2015.

Gender and the capacity to identify facial emotional expressions

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Carolina Baptista Menezes

Full Text Available Recognizing emotional expressions is enabled by a fundamental sociocognitive mechanism of human nature. This study compared 114 women and 104 men on the identification of basic emotions on a recognition task that used culturally adapted and validated faces to the Brazilian context. It was also investigated whether gender differences on emotion recognition would vary according to different exposure times. Women were generally better at detecting facial expressions, but an interaction suggested that the female superiority was particularly observed for anger, disgust, and surprise; results did not change according to age or time exposure. However, regardless of sex, total accuracy improved as presentation times increased, but only fear and anger significantly differed between the presentation times. Hence, in addition to the support of the evolutionary hypothesis of the female superiority in detecting facial expressions of emotions, recognition of facial expressions also depend on the time available to correctly identify an expression.

Adaptation to emotional conflict: evidence from a novel face emotion paradigm.

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Clayson, Peter E; Larson, Michael J

2013-01-01

The preponderance of research on trial-by-trial recruitment of affective control (e.g., conflict adaptation) relies on stimuli wherein lexical word information conflicts with facial affective stimulus properties (e.g., the face-Stroop paradigm where an emotional word is overlaid on a facial expression). Several studies, however, indicate different neural time course and properties for processing of affective lexical stimuli versus affective facial stimuli. The current investigation used a novel task to examine control processes implemented following conflicting emotional stimuli with conflict-inducing affective face stimuli in the absence of affective words. Forty-one individuals completed a task wherein the affective-valence of the eyes and mouth were either congruent (happy eyes, happy mouth) or incongruent (happy eyes, angry mouth) while high-density event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. There was a significant congruency effect and significant conflict adaptation effects for error rates. Although response times (RTs) showed a significant congruency effect, the effect of previous-trial congruency on current-trial RTs was only present for current congruent trials. Temporospatial principal components analysis showed a P3-like ERP source localized using FieldTrip software to the medial cingulate gyrus that was smaller on incongruent than congruent trials and was significantly influenced by the recruitment of control processes following previous-trial emotional conflict (i.e., there was significant conflict adaptation in the ERPs). Results show that a face-only paradigm may be sufficient to elicit emotional conflict and suggest a system for rapidly detecting conflicting emotional stimuli and subsequently adjusting control resources, similar to cognitive conflict detection processes, when using conflicting facial expressions without words.

Adaptation to emotional conflict: evidence from a novel face emotion paradigm.

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Peter E Clayson

Full Text Available The preponderance of research on trial-by-trial recruitment of affective control (e.g., conflict adaptation relies on stimuli wherein lexical word information conflicts with facial affective stimulus properties (e.g., the face-Stroop paradigm where an emotional word is overlaid on a facial expression. Several studies, however, indicate different neural time course and properties for processing of affective lexical stimuli versus affective facial stimuli. The current investigation used a novel task to examine control processes implemented following conflicting emotional stimuli with conflict-inducing affective face stimuli in the absence of affective words. Forty-one individuals completed a task wherein the affective-valence of the eyes and mouth were either congruent (happy eyes, happy mouth or incongruent (happy eyes, angry mouth while high-density event-related potentials (ERPs were recorded. There was a significant congruency effect and significant conflict adaptation effects for error rates. Although response times (RTs showed a significant congruency effect, the effect of previous-trial congruency on current-trial RTs was only present for current congruent trials. Temporospatial principal components analysis showed a P3-like ERP source localized using FieldTrip software to the medial cingulate gyrus that was smaller on incongruent than congruent trials and was significantly influenced by the recruitment of control processes following previous-trial emotional conflict (i.e., there was significant conflict adaptation in the ERPs. Results show that a face-only paradigm may be sufficient to elicit emotional conflict and suggest a system for rapidly detecting conflicting emotional stimuli and subsequently adjusting control resources, similar to cognitive conflict detection processes, when using conflicting facial expressions without words.

Language and emotions: emotional Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

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Perlovsky, Leonid

2009-01-01

An emotional version of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that differences in language emotionalities influence differences among cultures no less than conceptual differences. Conceptual contents of languages and cultures to significant extent are determined by words and their semantic differences; these could be borrowed among languages and exchanged among cultures. Emotional differences, as suggested in the paper, are related to grammar and mostly cannot be borrowed. The paper considers conceptual and emotional mechanisms of language along with their role in the mind and cultural evolution. Language evolution from primordial undifferentiated animal cries is discussed: while conceptual contents increase, emotional reduced. Neural mechanisms of these processes are suggested as well as their mathematical models: the knowledge instinct, the dual model connecting language and cognition, neural modeling fields. Mathematical results are related to cognitive science, linguistics, and psychology. Experimental evidence and theoretical arguments are discussed. Dynamics of the hierarchy-heterarchy of human minds and cultures is formulated using mean-field approach and approximate equations are obtained. The knowledge instinct operating in the mind heterarchy leads to mechanisms of differentiation and synthesis determining ontological development and cultural evolution. These mathematical models identify three types of cultures: "conceptual" pragmatic cultures in which emotionality of language is reduced and differentiation overtakes synthesis resulting in fast evolution at the price of uncertainty of values, self doubts, and internal crises; "traditional-emotional" cultures where differentiation lags behind synthesis, resulting in cultural stability at the price of stagnation; and "multi-cultural" societies combining fast cultural evolution and stability. Unsolved problems and future theoretical and experimental directions are discussed.

[Development and effects of emotional intelligence program for undergraduate nursing students: mixed methods research].

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Lee, Oi Sun; Gu, Mee Ock

2014-12-01

This study was conducted to develop and test the effects of an emotional intelligence program for undergraduate nursing students. The study design was a mixed method research. Participants were 36 nursing students (intervention group: 17, control group: 19). The emotional intelligence program was provided for 4 weeks (8 sessions, 20 hours). Data were collected between August 6 and October 4, 2013. Quantitative data were analyzed using Chi-square, Fisher's exact test, t-test, repeated measure ANOVA, and paired t-test with SPSS/WIN 18.0. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Quantitative results showed that emotional intelligence, communication skills, resilience, stress coping strategy, and clinical competence were significantly better in the experimental group compared to the control group. According to the qualitative results, the nursing students experienced improvement in emotional intelligence, interpersonal relationships, and empowerment, as well as a reduction in clinical practice stress after participation in the emotional intelligence program. Study findings indicate that the emotional intelligence program for undergraduate nursing students is effective and can be recommended as an intervention for improving the clinical competence of undergraduate students in a nursing curriculum.

Development and validation of the Emotional Self-Awareness Questionnaire: a measure of emotional intelligence.

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Killian, Kyle D

2012-07-01

This study examined the psychometric characteristics of the Emotional Self-Awareness Questionnaire (ESQ), a self-report measure of emotional intelligence. The ESQ, Emotional Intelligence Scale, and measures of alexithymia, positive negative affect, personality, cognitive ability, life satisfaction, and leadership aspirations were administered to 1,406 undergraduate psychology students. The ESQ was reduced from 118 to 60 items via factor and reliability analyses, retaining 11 subscales and a normal score distribution with a reliability of .92. The ESQ had significant positive correlations with the Emotional Intelligence Test and positive affect, significant negative correlations with alexithymia and negative affect, and an insignificant correlation with cognitive ability. The ESQ accounted for 35% of the variance in life satisfaction over and above the Big Five, cognitive ability, and self-esteem, and demonstrated incremental validity in explaining GPA and leadership aspirations. The significance of emotional intelligence as a unique contributor to psychological well-being and performance, and applications for the ESQ in assessment and outcome research in couple and family therapy are discussed. © 2011 American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale: a cognitive-developmental measure of emotion.

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Lane, R D; Quinlan, D M; Schwartz, G E; Walker, P A; Zeitlin, S B

1990-01-01

The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) is based on a new cognitive-developmental model of emotional experience. The scale poses evocative interpersonal situations and elicits descriptions of the emotional responses of self and others which are scored using specific structural criteria. Forty undergraduates (20 of each sex) were tested. Interrater reliability and intratest homogeneity of the LEAS were strong. The LEAS was significantly correlated with two measures of maturity: the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT) of Ego Development, and the Parental Descriptions Scale-a cognitive-developmental measure of object representation. In addition, the LEAS correlated positively with openness to experience and emotional range but not with measures of specific emotions, repression or the number of words used in the LEAS responses. These findings suggest that it is the level of emotion, not the specific quality of emotion, that is tapped by the LEAS.

Neural activity during emotion recognition after combined cognitive plus social-cognitive training in schizophrenia

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Hooker, Christine I.; Bruce, Lori; Fisher, Melissa; Verosky, Sara C.; Miyakawa, Asako; Vinogradov, Sophia

2012-01-01

Cognitive remediation training has been shown to improve both cognitive and social-cognitive deficits in people with schizophrenia, but the mechanisms that support this behavioral improvement are largely unknown. One hypothesis is that intensive behavioral training in cognition and/or social-cognition restores the underlying neural mechanisms that support targeted skills. However, there is little research on the neural effects of cognitive remediation training. This study investigated whether a 50 hour (10-week) remediation intervention which included both cognitive and social-cognitive training would influence neural function in regions that support social-cognition. Twenty-two stable, outpatient schizophrenia participants were randomized to a treatment condition consisting of auditory-based cognitive training (AT) [Brain Fitness Program/auditory module ~60 minutes/day] plus social-cognition training (SCT) which was focused on emotion recognition [~5–15 minutes per day] or a placebo condition of non-specific computer games (CG) for an equal amount of time. Pre and post intervention assessments included an fMRI task of positive and negative facial emotion recognition, and standard behavioral assessments of cognition, emotion processing, and functional outcome. There were no significant intervention-related improvements in general cognition or functional outcome. FMRI results showed the predicted group-by-time interaction. Specifically, in comparison to CG, AT+SCT participants had a greater pre-to-post intervention increase in postcentral gyrus activity during emotion recognition of both positive and negative emotions. Furthermore, among all participants, the increase in postcentral gyrus activity predicted behavioral improvement on a standardized test of emotion processing (MSCEIT: Perceiving Emotions). Results indicate that combined cognition and social-cognition training impacts neural mechanisms that support social-cognition skills. PMID:22695257

Beware Emotional Maltreatment

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King, Margaret A.; Janson, Gregory R.

2011-01-01

Emotional maltreatment is a less visible form of abuse that frequently occurs in schools, but is often ignored or dismissed as an acceptable form of discipline or sanctioned classroom-management practice. The impact of emotional maltreatment on children is significant and impacts personality development, relationships, and learning. Principals, as…

Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Parkinson’s Disease: An Emotional Mirror Mechanism?

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Ricciardi, Lucia; Visco-Comandini, Federica; Erro, Roberto; Morgante, Francesca; Bologna, Matteo; Fasano, Alfonso; Ricciardi, Diego; Edwards, Mark J.; Kilner, James

2017-01-01

Background and aim Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients have impairment of facial expressivity (hypomimia) and difficulties in interpreting the emotional facial expressions produced by others, especially for aversive emotions. We aimed to evaluate the ability to produce facial emotional expressions and to recognize facial emotional expressions produced by others in a group of PD patients and a group of healthy participants in order to explore the relationship between these two abilities and any differences between the two groups of participants. Methods Twenty non-demented, non-depressed PD patients and twenty healthy participants (HC) matched for demographic characteristics were studied. The ability of recognizing emotional facial expressions was assessed with the Ekman 60-faces test (Emotion recognition task). Participants were video-recorded while posing facial expressions of 6 primary emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear and anger). The most expressive pictures for each emotion were derived from the videos. Ten healthy raters were asked to look at the pictures displayed on a computer-screen in pseudo-random fashion and to identify the emotional label in a six-forced-choice response format (Emotion expressivity task). Reaction time (RT) and accuracy of responses were recorded. At the end of each trial the participant was asked to rate his/her confidence in his/her perceived accuracy of response. Results For emotion recognition, PD reported lower score than HC for Ekman total score (pemotions sub-scores happiness, fear, anger, sadness (pfacial emotion expressivity task, PD and HC significantly differed in the total score (p = 0.05) and in the sub-scores for happiness, sadness, anger (all pemotions. There was a significant positive correlation between the emotion facial recognition and expressivity in both groups; the correlation was even stronger when ranking emotions from the best recognized to the worst (R = 0.75, p = 0.004). Conclusions PD

Reactions to a Partner-Assisted Emotional Disclosure Intervention: Direct Observation and Self-Report of Patient and Partner Communication

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Porter, Laura S.; Baucom, Donald H.; Keefe, Francis J.; Patterson, Emily S.

2012-01-01

Partner-assisted emotional disclosure is a couple-based intervention designed to help patients disclose cancer-related concerns to their spouses-partners. We previously found that, compared with an education/support control condition, partner-assisted emotional disclosure led to significant improvements in relationship quality and intimacy for…

Emotions, narratives, and ethical mindfulness.

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Guillemin, Marilys; Gillam, Lynn

2015-06-01

Clinical care is laden with emotions, from the perspectives of both clinicians and patients. It is important that emotions are addressed in health professions curricula to ensure that clinicians are humane healers as well as technical experts. Emotions have a valuable and generative role in health professional ethics education.The authors have previously described a narrative ethics pedagogy, the aim of which is to develop ethical mindfulness. Ethical mindfulness is a state of being that acknowledges everyday ethics and ethically important moments as significant in clinical care, with the aim of enabling ethical clinical practice. Using a sample narrative, the authors extend this concept to examine five features of ethical mindfulness as they relate to emotions: (1) being sensitized to emotions in everyday practice, (2) acknowledging and understanding the ways in which emotions are significant in practice, (3) being able to articulate the emotions at play during ethically important moments, (4) being reflexive and acknowledging both the generative aspects and the limitations of emotions, and (5) being courageous.The process of writing and engaging with narratives can lead to ethical mindfulness, including the capacity to understand and work with emotions. Strategies for productively incorporating emotions in narrative ethics teaching are described. This can be a challenging domain within medical education for both educators and health care students and thus needs to be addressed sensitively and responsibly. The potential benefit of educating health professionals in a way which addresses emotionality in an ethical framework makes the challenges worthwhile.

Emotion-Induced Trade-Offs in Spatiotemporal Vision

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Bocanegra, Bruno R.; Zeelenberg, Rene

2011-01-01

It is generally assumed that emotion facilitates human vision in order to promote adaptive responses to a potential threat in the environment. Surprisingly, we recently found that emotion in some cases impairs the perception of elementary visual features (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009b). Here, we demonstrate that emotion improves fast temporal…

Emotional collectives: How groups shape emotions and emotions shape groups.

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van Kleef, Gerben A; Fischer, Agneta H

2016-01-01

Group settings are epicentres of emotional activity. Yet, the role of emotions in groups is poorly understood. How do group-level phenomena shape group members' emotional experience and expression? How are emotional expressions recognised, interpreted and shared in group settings? And how do such expressions influence the emotions, cognitions and behaviours of fellow group members and outside observers? To answer these and other questions, we draw on relevant theoretical perspectives (e.g., intergroup emotions theory, social appraisal theory and emotions as social information theory) and recent empirical findings regarding the role of emotions in groups. We organise our review according to two overarching themes: how groups shape emotions and how emotions shape groups. We show how novel empirical approaches break important new ground in uncovering the role of emotions in groups. Research on emotional collectives is thriving and constitutes a key to understanding the social nature of emotions.

Improving game bot behaviours through timed emotional intelligence

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Acampora, G.; Loia, V.; Vitiello, A.

2012-01-01

The video game industry is a very active economic sector focusing on the design and development of entertainment applications. In this sector, different enterprises compete to design innovative video games that exploit physical and emotional capabilities of video gamers in order to achieve high

Is emotion recognition the only problem in ADHD? effects of pharmacotherapy on face and emotion recognition in children with ADHD.

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Demirci, Esra; Erdogan, Ayten

2016-12-01

The objectives of this study were to evaluate both face and emotion recognition, to detect differences among attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) subgroups, to identify effects of the gender and to assess the effects of methylphenidate and atomoxetine treatment on both face and emotion recognition in patients with ADHD. The study sample consisted of 41 male, 29 female patients, 8-15 years of age, who were diagnosed as having combined type ADHD (N = 26), hyperactive/impulsive type ADHD (N = 21) or inattentive type ADHD (N = 23) but had not previously used any medication for ADHD and 35 male, 25 female healthy individuals. Long-acting methylphenidate (OROS-MPH) was prescribed to 38 patients, whereas atomoxetine was prescribed to 32 patients. The reading the mind in the eyes test (RMET) and Benton face recognition test (BFRT) were applied to all participants before and after treatment. The patients with ADHD had a significantly lower number of correct answers in child and adolescent RMET and in BFRT than the healthy controls. Among the ADHD subtypes, the hyperactive/impulsive subtype had a lower number of correct answers in the RMET than the inattentive subtypes, and the hyperactive/impulsive subtype had a lower number of correct answers in short and long form of BFRT than the combined and inattentive subtypes. Male and female patients with ADHD did not differ significantly with respect to the number of correct answers on the RMET and BFRT. The patients showed significant improvement in RMET and BFRT after treatment with OROS-MPH or atomoxetine. Patients with ADHD have difficulties in face recognition as well as emotion recognition. Both OROS-MPH and atomoxetine affect emotion recognition. However, further studies on the face and emotion recognition are needed in ADHD.

Emotion Recognition from EEG Signals Using Multidimensional Information in EMD Domain.

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Zhuang, Ning; Zeng, Ying; Tong, Li; Zhang, Chi; Zhang, Hanming; Yan, Bin

2017-01-01

This paper introduces a method for feature extraction and emotion recognition based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD). By using EMD, EEG signals are decomposed into Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) automatically. Multidimensional information of IMF is utilized as features, the first difference of time series, the first difference of phase, and the normalized energy. The performance of the proposed method is verified on a publicly available emotional database. The results show that the three features are effective for emotion recognition. The role of each IMF is inquired and we find that high frequency component IMF1 has significant effect on different emotional states detection. The informative electrodes based on EMD strategy are analyzed. In addition, the classification accuracy of the proposed method is compared with several classical techniques, including fractal dimension (FD), sample entropy, differential entropy, and discrete wavelet transform (DWT). Experiment results on DEAP datasets demonstrate that our method can improve emotion recognition performance.

Electroencephalography Based Fusion Two-Dimensional (2D-Convolution Neural Networks (CNN Model for Emotion Recognition System

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Yea-Hoon Kwon

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to improve human emotional classification accuracy using a convolution neural networks (CNN model and to suggest an overall method to classify emotion based on multimodal data. We improved classification performance by combining electroencephalogram (EEG and galvanic skin response (GSR signals. GSR signals are preprocessed using by the zero-crossing rate. Sufficient EEG feature extraction can be obtained through CNN. Therefore, we propose a suitable CNN model for feature extraction by tuning hyper parameters in convolution filters. The EEG signal is preprocessed prior to convolution by a wavelet transform while considering time and frequency simultaneously. We use a database for emotion analysis using the physiological signals open dataset to verify the proposed process, achieving 73.4% accuracy, showing significant performance improvement over the current best practice models.

The Change in Facial Emotion Recognition Ability in Inpatients with Treatment Resistant Schizophrenia After Electroconvulsive Therapy.

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Dalkıran, Mihriban; Tasdemir, Akif; Salihoglu, Tamer; Emul, Murat; Duran, Alaattin; Ugur, Mufit; Yavuz, Ruhi

2017-09-01

People with schizophrenia have impairments in emotion recognition along with other social cognitive deficits. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the immediate benefits of ECT on facial emotion recognition ability. Thirty-two treatment resistant patients with schizophrenia who have been indicated for ECT enrolled in the study. Facial emotion stimuli were a set of 56 photographs that depicted seven basic emotions: sadness, anger, happiness, disgust, surprise, fear, and neutral faces. The average age of the participants was 33.4 ± 10.5 years. The rate of recognizing the disgusted facial expression increased significantly after ECT (p facial expressions (p > 0.05). After the ECT, the time period of responding to the fear and happy facial expressions were significantly shorter (p Facial emotion recognition ability is an important social cognitive skill for social harmony, proper relation and living independently. At least, the ECT sessions do not seem to affect facial emotion recognition ability negatively and seem to improve identifying disgusted facial emotion which is related with dopamine enriched regions in brain.

Emotional competence and online game use in adolescents.

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Seo, Mia; Kang, Hee Sun; Chae, Sun-Mi

2012-12-01

The purpose of this study was to explore the relations between emotional competence and online game use in adolescents. This study is a cross-sectional descriptive survey using a convenience sample. The participants were 2199 adolescents in South Korea. Online game use and emotional competence including positive emotion, emotional expression, and emotional intelligence were measured. The study results indicated that emotional competence was negatively correlated with excessive online game use. All variables of emotional competence were significantly lower in high-risk users compared with general users. In addition, female adolescents were rated significantly higher in emotional competence among general users, but there were no significant gender differences among high-risk users. The results of our study imply that high-risk game users have lower levels of emotional intelligence than general users do. The results of this study suggest that emotion is an important factor to which practitioners in psychomedical fields and nursing should pay attention. Therefore, nurses in schools and communities should regularly screen the emotions of adolescents who habitually play online games and develop a program to enhance emotional competence associated with online games.

Effectiveness emotion focused therapy approach on cognitive emotion regulation on emotional breakdown girl students

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Zeynab Karaminezhad

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Background : Love Trauma refers to a state of frustration and humiliation felt by the person who is rejected by his/her beloved. The present study was aimed at studying the effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Approach for cognitive emotion regulation of female university students who experienced Love Trauma. Materials and Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental research including a pre-test, a post-test, and a follow-up test with the control group. The statistical population included all female students of Ahvaz universities who had experienced Love Trauma in 2014-2015. The total number of participants was 22, out of which 11 participants (who showed willingness were chosen for the experimental group. The remaining 11 participants were placed in the control group. The Love Trauma Inventory and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire were used as the instruments of the research. All participants answered both questionnaires. Then the members of experimental group received the treatment intervention during eight personal 60-minute sessions held twice a week. After that, both groups answered CERQ again. One month after the experiment, the follow-up test was conducted for both groups. The collected data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and Multivariable Analyze of Covariance (MANCOVA. Results: The findings indicated that the Emotion-Focused Approach in the post-test and follow-up test has provoked more positive strategies for cognitive emotion regulation in the experimental group in comparison with the control group Conclusion: Since love and other feelings associated with Love Trauma are classified under the category of emotions, the Emotionally-Focused Therapy can have a significant influence on the cognitive emotion regulation of female students suffering from Love Trauma.

rTMS on left prefrontal cortex contributes to memories for positive emotional cues: a comparison between pictures and words.

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Balconi, M; Cobelli, C

2015-02-26

The present research explored the cortical correlates of emotional memories in response to words and pictures. Subjects' performance (Accuracy Index, AI; response times, RTs; RTs/AI) was considered when a repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) was applied on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LDLPFC). Specifically, the role of LDLPFC was tested by performing a memory task, in which old (previously encoded targets) and new (previously not encoded distractors) emotional pictures/words had to be recognized. Valence (positive vs. negative) and arousing power (high vs. low) of stimuli were also modulated. Moreover, subjective evaluation of emotional stimuli in terms of valence/arousal was explored. We found significant performance improving (higher AI, reduced RTs, improved general performance) in response to rTMS. This "better recognition effect" was only related to specific emotional features, that is positive high arousal pictures or words. Moreover no significant differences were found between stimulus categories. A direct relationship was also observed between subjective evaluation of emotional cues and memory performance when rTMS was applied to LDLPFC. Supported by valence and approach model of emotions, we supposed that a left lateralized prefrontal system may induce a better recognition of positive high arousal words, and that evaluation of emotional cue is related to prefrontal activation, affecting the recognition memories of emotions. Copyright © 2014 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Positive emotion, appraisal, and the role of appraisal overlap in positive emotion co-occurrence.

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Tong, Eddie M W; Jia, Lile

2017-02-01

Appraisal research has traditionally focused on negative emotions but has not addressed issues concerning the relationships between several positive emotions and appraisals in daily life and the extent to which co-occurrence of positive emotions can be explained by overlap in appraisals. Driven by a priori hypotheses on appraisal-emotion relationships, this study investigated 12 positive emotions and 13 appraisal dimensions using Ecological Momentary Assessment. The results provide strong evidence that positive emotions and appraisals correlate significantly in daily life. Importantly, we found that the positive emotions' overlap on theoretically relevant, as compared to irrelevant, appraisals was stronger and more predictive of their co-occurrence. Furthermore, appraisal overlap on theoretically relevant appraisals predicted the co-occurrence of positive emotions even when the appraisal of pleasantness was excluded, indicating that positive emotions do not co-occur just by virtue of their shared valence. Our findings affirmed and refined the appraisal profiles of positive emotions and underscore the importance of appraisals in accounting for the commonality and differences among positive emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Dissociation in Rating Negative Facial Emotions between Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia and Major Depressive Disorder.

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Chiu, Isabelle; Piguet, Olivier; Diehl-Schmid, Janine; Riedl, Lina; Beck, Johannes; Leyhe, Thomas; Holsboer-Trachsler, Edith; Berres, Manfred; Monsch, Andreas U; Sollberger, Marc

2016-11-01

Features of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) such as executive dysfunction, apathy, and impaired empathic abilities are also observed in major depressive disorder (MDD). This may contribute to the reason why early stage bvFTD is often misdiagnosed as MDD. New assessment tools are thus needed to improve early diagnosis of bvFTD. Although emotion processing is affected in bvFTD and MDD, growing evidence indicates that the pattern of emotion processing deficits varies between the two disorders. As such, emotion processing paradigms have substantial potentials to distinguish bvFTD from MDD. The current study compared 25 patients with bvFTD, 21 patients with MDD, 21 patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia, and 31 healthy participants on a novel facial emotion intensity rating task. Stimuli comprised morphed faces from the Ekman and Friesen stimulus set containing faces of each sex with two different degrees of emotion intensity for each of the six basic emotions. Analyses of covariance uncovered a significant dissociation between bvFTD and MDD patients in rating the intensity of negative emotions overall (i.e., bvFTD patients underrated negative emotions overall, whereas MDD patients overrated negative emotions overall compared with healthy participants). In contrast, AD dementia patients rated negative emotions similarly to healthy participants, suggesting no impact of cognitive deficits on rating facial emotions. By strongly differentiating bvFTD and MDDpatients through negative facial emotions, this sensitive and short rating task might help improve the early diagnosis of bvFTD. Copyright © 2016 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. All rights reserved.

The effects of atomoxetine on emotional control in adults with ADHD: An integrated analysis of multicenter studies.

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Asherson, P; Stes, S; Nilsson Markhed, M; Berggren, L; Svanborg, P; Kutzelnigg, A; Deberdt, W

2015-06-01

To investigate the effects of atomoxetine on emotional control in adults with ADHD. We performed an integrated analysis using individual patient data pooled from three Eli Lilly-sponsored studies. An integrated analysis can be viewed as a meta-analysis of individual patient-level data, rather than study-level summary data. Two populations were identified: a large sample of patients with pre-treatment baseline data (the "overall population"; n=2846); and a subset of these patients with placebo-controlled efficacy data from baseline to 10 or 12 weeks after initiating treatment (the "placebo-controlled population"; n=829). At baseline, in the overall population, ∼50% of ADHD patients had BRIEF-AS (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult Version Self-Report) Emotional control subscores between 21 and 30, compared with ∼10% of normative subjects in the BRIEF-A manual. At endpoint, in the placebo-controlled population, atomoxetine led to a small (effect size 0.19) but significant (P=0.013) treatment effect for emotional control. The effect size was 0.32 in patients with BRIEF-AS Emotional control scores>20 at baseline. Improvements in emotional control correlated with improvements in the core ADHD symptoms and quality-of-life. As deficient emotional control is associated with impaired social, educational and occupational functioning over and above that explained by core ADHD symptoms alone, improvements in emotional control may be clinically relevant. At baseline, adults with ADHD were more likely to have impaired emotional control than normative subjects. In the adult ADHD patients, atomoxetine treatment was associated with improvements in emotional control, as well as in core ADHD symptoms and quality-of-life. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.

Emotion processing in the criminal psychopath: the role of attention in emotion-facilitated memory.

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Glass, Samantha J; Newman, Joseph P

2009-02-01

The response modulation hypothesis specifies that low-anxious psychopathic individuals have difficulty processing information outside their primary attentional focus. To evaluate the applicability of this model to affective processing, the authors had 239 offenders, classified with the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003) and the Welsh Anxiety Scale (G. Welsh, 1956), perform 1 of 3 emotion memory tasks that examined the effects of emotion on memory for primary and contextual information. Regardless of anxiety level, psychopathic and control offenders demonstrated a significant and comparable memory bias for emotional over neutral words in the primary conditions. However, psychopathic individuals showed significantly less memory bias than did controls in the contextual conditions. Results indicate that the impact of emotion on memory is moderated by attentional factors.

Brain circuitries involved in semantic interference by demands of emotional and non-emotional distractors.

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Natalia Chechko

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Previous studies have indicated that the processes leading to the resolution of emotional and non-emotional interference conflicts are unrelated, involving separate networks. It is also known that conflict resolution itself suggests a considerable overlap of the networks. Our study is an attempt to examine how these findings may be related. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI to study neural responses of 24 healthy subjects to emotional and non-emotional conflict paradigms involving the presentation of congruent and incongruent word-face pairs based on semantic incompatibility between targets and distractors. In the emotional task, the behavioral interference conflict was greater (compared to the non-emotional task and was paralleled by involvement of the extrastriate visual and posterodorsal medial frontal cortices. In both tasks, we also observed a common network including the dorsal anterior cingulate, the supplemental motor area, the anterior insula and the inferior prefrontal cortex, indicating that these brain structures are markers of experienced conflict. However, the emotional task involved conflict-triggered networks to a considerably higher degree. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings indicate that responses to emotional and non-emotional distractors involve the same systems, which are capable of flexible adjustments based on conflict demands. The function of systems related to conflict resolution is likely to be adjusted on the basis of an evaluation process that primarily involves the extrastriate visual cortex, with target playing a significant role.

Is boundary extension emotionally selective?

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Ménétrier, Emmanuelle; Didierjean, André; Vieillard, Sandrine

2013-01-01

When they have to memorize a picture, people usually build a memory trace including more extensive boundaries than the original picture, a phenomenon known as boundary extension or BE. This article looks at whether the emotion category expressed (i.e., happiness, pleasure, irritation, or anger) by actors in short films could have an influence on the BE effect. The results showed that positively valenced emotions (happiness, pleasure) led to an extension effect, while the negatively valenced ones (anger, irritation) did not produce any significant memory distortion. The arousal dimension of emotions had no significant effect on BE. The current results were discussed in the light of previous studies on the links between BE and emotions.

Effects of music interventions on emotional States and running performance.

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Lane, Andrew M; Davis, Paul A; Devonport, Tracey J

2011-01-01

The present study compared the effects of two different music interventions on changes in emotional states before and during running, and also explored effects of music interventions upon performance outcome. Volunteer participants (n = 65) who regularly listened to music when running registered online to participate in a three-stage study. Participants attempted to attain a personally important running goal to establish baseline performance. Thereafter, participants were randomly assigned to either a self-selected music group or an Audiofuel music group. Audiofuel produce pieces of music designed to assist synchronous running. The self-selected music group followed guidelines for selecting motivating playlists. In both experimental groups, participants used the Brunel Music Rating Inventory-2 (BMRI-2) to facilitate selection of motivational music. Participants again completed the BMRI-2 post- intervention to assess the motivational qualities of Audiofuel music or the music they selected for use during the study. Results revealed no significant differences between self-selected music and Audiofuel music on all variables analyzed. Participants in both music groups reported increased pleasant emotions and decreased unpleasant emotions following intervention. Significant performance improvements were demonstrated post-intervention with participants reporting a belief that emotional states related to performance. Further analysis indicated that enhanced performance was significantly greater among participants reporting music to be motivational as indicated by high scores on the BMRI-2. Findings suggest that both individual athletes and practitioners should consider using the BMRI-2 when selecting music for running. Key pointsListening to music with a high motivational quotient as indicated by scores on the BMRI-2 was associated with enhanced running performance and meta-emotional beliefs that emotions experienced during running helped performance.Beliefs on the

The Effects of the Literal Meaning of Emotional Phrases on the Identification of Vocal Emotions.

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Shigeno, Sumi

2018-02-01

This study investigates the discrepancy between the literal emotional content of speech and emotional tone in the identification of speakers' vocal emotions in both the listeners' native language (Japanese), and in an unfamiliar language (random-spliced Japanese). Both experiments involve a "congruent condition," in which the emotion contained in the literal meaning of speech (words and phrases) was compatible with vocal emotion, and an "incongruent condition," in which these forms of emotional information were discordant. Results for Japanese indicated that performance in identifying emotions did not differ significantly between the congruent and incongruent conditions. However, the results for random-spliced Japanese indicated that vocal emotion was correctly identified more often in the congruent than in the incongruent condition. The different results for Japanese and random-spliced Japanese suggested that the literal meaning of emotional phrases influences the listener's perception of the speaker's emotion, and that Japanese participants could infer speakers' intended emotions in the incongruent condition.

Adolescent Deliberate Self-Harm: Linkages to Emotion Regulation and Family Emotional Climate

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Sim, Leslie; Adrian, Molly; Zeman, Janice; Cassano, Michael; Friedrich, William N.

2009-01-01

Parents' responses to their children's emotional expressivity have been shown to significantly influence children's subsequent psychosocial functioning. This study hypothesized that adolescents' deliberate self-harm (DSH) may be an outcome associated with poor emotion regulation as well as an invalidating family environment. The mediational role…

Yoga therapy for promoting emotional sensitivity in University students.

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Ganpat, Tikhe Sham; Dash, Sasmita; Ramarao, Nagendra Hongasandra

2014-01-01

Students need emotional intelligence (EI) for their better academic excellence. There are three important psychological dimensions of EI: Emotional sensitivity (ES), emotional maturity (EM) and emotional competency (EC), which motivate students to recognize truthfully, interpret honestly and handle tactfully the dynamics of their behavioral pattern. The study was designed to assess ES in the students undergoing yoga therapy program in the form of yoga instructor's course (YIC) module. One hundred and eighty four YIC students with 25.77 ± 4.85 years of mean age participated in this study of 21 days duration (a single group pre-post design). The ES data was collected before (pre) and after (post) YIC module using Emotional Quotient test developed by Dr Dalip Singh and Dr N K Chadha. Means, standard deviations, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used for analyzing the data with the help of SPSS 16. The data analysis showed 3.63% significant increase (P < 0.01) in ES. The present study suggests that YIC module can result in improvement of ES among university students, thus paving the way for their academic success. Additional well-designed studies are needed before a strong recommendation can be made.

Emotional intelligence in nursing students

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MAASOUMEH BARKHORDARI

2013-04-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Emotion is fundamental to nursing practice and Emotional Intelligence is considered as an important characteristic of nurses that can affect the quality of their work including clinical decision-making, critical thinking, evidence and knowledge use in practice, etc. The aim of this research was to assess and compare Emotional Intelligence between freshman and senior baccalaureate nursing students at Islamic Azad University of Yazd. Methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional study was performed on a sample of 87 freshmen and senior baccalaureate nursing students at Islamic Azad University of Yazd. The data was collected, using a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of two parts; demographic information and the Baron Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i. The data were analyzed through both descriptive and inferential statistics (t-test, and ANOVA. Results: The mean score of emotional intelligence for the freshmen was 282.37±27.93 and for the senior students 289.64±21.13. No significant difference was found between the freshmen and senior students’ score patterns. Conclusion: The findings showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the freshmen and senior students’ scores. However, as emotional intelligence can have a significant role in what one does. So this quality should be given more importance in nursing education.

Emotional intelligence of mental health nurses.

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van Dusseldorp, Loes R L C; van Meijel, Berno K G; Derksen, Jan J L

2011-02-01

The aim of this study is to gain insight into the level of emotional intelligence of mental health nurses in the Netherlands. The focus in research on emotional intelligence to date has been on a variety of professionals. However, little is known about emotional intelligence in mental health nurses. The emotional intelligence of 98 Dutch nurses caring for psychiatric patients is reported. Data were collected with the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory within a cross-sectional research design. The mean level of emotional intelligence of this sample of professionals is statistically significant higher than the emotional intelligence of the general population. Female nurses score significantly higher than men on the subscales Empathy, Social Responsibility, Interpersonal Relationship, Emotional Self-awareness, Self-Actualisation and Assertiveness. No correlations are found between years of experience and age on the one hand and emotional intelligence on the other hand. The results of this study show that nurses in psychiatric care indeed score above average in the emotional intelligence required to cope with the amount of emotional labour involved in daily mental health practice. The ascertained large range in emotional intelligence scores among the mental health nurses challenges us to investigate possible implications which higher or lower emotional intelligence levels may have on the quality of care. For instance, a possible relation between the level of emotional intelligence and the quality of the therapeutic nurse-patient relationship or the relation between the level of emotional intelligence and the manner of coping with situations characterised by a great amount of emotional labour (such as caring for patients who self-harm or are suicidal). © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Strength Is in Numbers: Can Concordant Artificial Listeners Improve Prediction of Emotion from Speech?

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Martinelli, Eugenio; Mencattini, Arianna; Daprati, Elena; Di Natale, Corrado

2016-01-01

Humans can communicate their emotions by modulating facial expressions or the tone of their voice. Albeit numerous applications exist that enable machines to read facial emotions and recognize the content of verbal messages, methods for speech emotion recognition are still in their infancy. Yet, fast and reliable applications for emotion recognition are the obvious advancement of present 'intelligent personal assistants', and may have countless applications in diagnostics, rehabilitation and research. Taking inspiration from the dynamics of human group decision-making, we devised a novel speech emotion recognition system that applies, for the first time, a semi-supervised prediction model based on consensus. Three tests were carried out to compare this algorithm with traditional approaches. Labeling performances relative to a public database of spontaneous speeches are reported. The novel system appears to be fast, robust and less computationally demanding than traditional methods, allowing for easier implementation in portable voice-analyzers (as used in rehabilitation, research, industry, etc.) and for applications in the research domain (such as real-time pairing of stimuli to participants' emotional state, selective/differential data collection based on emotional content, etc.).

Neural activity during emotion recognition after combined cognitive plus social cognitive training in schizophrenia.

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Hooker, Christine I; Bruce, Lori; Fisher, Melissa; Verosky, Sara C; Miyakawa, Asako; Vinogradov, Sophia

2012-08-01

Cognitive remediation training has been shown to improve both cognitive and social cognitive deficits in people with schizophrenia, but the mechanisms that support this behavioral improvement are largely unknown. One hypothesis is that intensive behavioral training in cognition and/or social cognition restores the underlying neural mechanisms that support targeted skills. However, there is little research on the neural effects of cognitive remediation training. This study investigated whether a 50 h (10-week) remediation intervention which included both cognitive and social cognitive training would influence neural function in regions that support social cognition. Twenty-two stable, outpatient schizophrenia participants were randomized to a treatment condition consisting of auditory-based cognitive training (AT) [Brain Fitness Program/auditory module ~60 min/day] plus social cognition training (SCT) which was focused on emotion recognition [~5-15 min per day] or a placebo condition of non-specific computer games (CG) for an equal amount of time. Pre and post intervention assessments included an fMRI task of positive and negative facial emotion recognition, and standard behavioral assessments of cognition, emotion processing, and functional outcome. There were no significant intervention-related improvements in general cognition or functional outcome. fMRI results showed the predicted group-by-time interaction. Specifically, in comparison to CG, AT+SCT participants had a greater pre-to-post intervention increase in postcentral gyrus activity during emotion recognition of both positive and negative emotions. Furthermore, among all participants, the increase in postcentral gyrus activity predicted behavioral improvement on a standardized test of emotion processing (MSCEIT: Perceiving Emotions). Results indicate that combined cognition and social cognition training impacts neural mechanisms that support social cognition skills. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All

Investigating the effect of emotional intelligence education on baccalaureate nursing students' emotional intelligence scores.

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Orak, Roohangiz Jamshidi; Farahani, Mansoureh Ashghali; Kelishami, Fatemeh Ghofrani; Seyedfatemi, Naima; Banihashemi, Sara; Havaei, Farinaz

2016-09-01

Nursing students, particularly at the time of entering clinical education, experience a great deal of stress and emotion typically related to their educational and clinical competence. Emotional intelligence is known to be one of the required skills to effectively cope with such feelings. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of training on first-year nursing students' levels of emotional intelligence. This was a quasi-experiment study in which 69 first-year nursing students affiliated with Tehran University of Medical Sciences were assigned to either the control or the experimental groups. The study intervention included of an emotional intelligence educational program offered in eight two-hour sessions for eight subsequent weeks. In total, 66 students completed the study. The study groups did not differ significantly in terms of emotional intelligence scores before and after educational program. Although the educational program did not have an effect on students' emotional intelligence scores, this study finding can be explained. Limited time for exercising the acquired knowledge and skills may explain the non-significant findings. Moreover, our participants were exclusively first-year students who had no clinical experience and hence, might have felt no real need to learn emotional intelligence skills. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Eating pathology, emotion regulation, and emotional overeating in obese adults with Binge Eating Disorder.

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Gianini, Loren M; White, Marney A; Masheb, Robin M

2013-08-01

The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship among emotional regulation, emotional overeating, and general eating pathology in a treatment seeking sample of adults with Binge Eating Disorder (BED). The sample was composed of 326 adults (248 women, 78 men) who were obese and met DSM-IV-TR criteria for BED. Prior to treatment, participants completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Emotional Overeating Questionnaire (EOQ), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q) as part of a larger assessment battery. A series of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that difficulties with emotion regulation accounted for unique variance in both emotional overeating and general eating pathology above and beyond sex and negative affect. Emotion regulation may play a significant role in the maintenance of emotional overeating and eating pathology in obese adults with BED. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Adolescents and Young Adults After Cancer Treatment: Effects on Quality of Life, Emotional Distress, and Cognitive Vulnerability.

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Van der Gucht, Katleen; Takano, Keisuke; Labarque, Veerle; Vandenabeele, Karen; Nolf, Nathalie; Kuylen, Sanne; Cosyns, Veerle; Van Broeck, Nady; Kuppens, Peter; Raes, Filip

2017-06-01

Adolescent and young adult cancer (AYAC) survivors show an elevated risk of distress. Targeted psychosocial interventions for this distinct population are needed. This study examined the potential efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) to alleviate emotional distress and improve quality of life (QoL) in AYAC survivors. Participants were 16 AYAC survivors, aged 14-24, who had completed acute medical treatment. A two-baseline (8 and 1 week before the intervention), post- (1 week after the intervention) and 3 months follow-up within-subjects design was used. Each participant completed two baseline assessments, followed by an 8-week MBI. The primary outcome variables were emotional distress and QoL. Secondary outcomes were cognitive vulnerability factors and mindfulness skills. Multilevel modeling showed (1) a significant reduction in emotional distress and improvement in QoL at 3 months of follow-up, (2) a significant reduction in negative attitudes toward self (i.e., a cognitive vulnerability factor), and (3) a significant improvement in mindfulness skills. MBI is a promising approach that is used to treat emotional distress and to improve QoL in AYAC survivors. Further research using randomized controlled trials is needed to generalize these findings. Trial registration information: www.trialregister.nl ; NTR4358.

Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia.

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Daini, Roberta; Comparetti, Chiara M; Ricciardelli, Paola

2014-01-01

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have shown that facial recognition and emotional expressions are dissociable. However, it is unknown if a single system supports the processing of emotional and non-emotional facial expressions. We aimed to understand if individuals with impairment in face recognition from birth (congenital prosopagnosia, CP) can use non-emotional facial expressions to recognize a face as an already seen one, and thus, process this facial dimension independently from features (which are impaired in CP), and basic emotional expressions. To this end, we carried out a behavioral study in which we compared the performance of 6 CP individuals to that of typical development individuals, using upright and inverted faces. Four avatar faces with a neutral expression were presented in the initial phase. The target faces presented in the recognition phase, in which a recognition task was requested (2AFC paradigm), could be identical (neutral) to those of the initial phase or present biologically plausible changes to features, non-emotional expressions, or emotional expressions. After this task, a second task was performed, in which the participants had to detect whether or not the recognized face exactly matched the study face or showed any difference. The results confirmed the CPs' impairment in the configural processing of the invariant aspects of the face, but also showed a spared configural processing of non-emotional facial expression (task 1). Interestingly and unlike the non-emotional expressions, the configural processing of emotional expressions was compromised in CPs and did not improve their change detection ability (task 2). These new results have theoretical implications for face perception models since they suggest that, at least in CPs, non-emotional expressions are processed configurally, can be dissociated from other facial dimensions, and may serve as a compensatory strategy to achieve face recognition.

'Isn't it ironic?' Beliefs about the unacceptability of emotions and emotional suppression relate to worse outcomes in fibromyalgia.

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Bowers, Hannah; Wroe, Abigail L; Pincus, Tamar

2017-05-01

Beliefs about the unacceptability of experiencing and expressing emotions have been found to be related to worse outcomes in people with persistent physical symptoms. The current study tested mediation models regarding emotional suppression, beliefs about emotions, support-seeking and global impact in fibromyalgia. One hundred eighty-two participants took part in an online questionnaire testing potential mechanisms of this relationship using mediation analysis. The model tested emotional suppression and affective distress as serial mediators of the relationship between beliefs about emotions and global impact. In parallel paths, two forms of support-seeking were tested (personal/emotional and symptom-related support-seeking) as mediators. Emotional suppression and affective distress significantly serially mediated the relationship between beliefs about emotions and global impact. Neither support-seeking variable significantly mediated this relationship. Results indicate a potential mechanism through which beliefs about emotions and global impact might relate which might provide a theoretical basis for future research on treatments for fibromyalgia.

EMOTIONS IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

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Popa Mirela

2013-07-01

organization. Employees should be encouraged to express their emotions in order to avoid tense situations. Even though tensions may occur, they must be managed effectively because, as we all know, avoiding a war does not mean peace, just as avoiding unnecessary inconveniences does not always equal pleasure. The improvement of emotional behavior represents a competitive edge in business activities for any organization. The main target of this undertaking is to provide a certain perspective on emotion; to be more specific, we are concerned with discovering the circumstances and causes that trigger off emotions in organizational environments. Theoretical approaches conveyed in this article may be perceived as a call to mindfulness and to the managers\\\\\\' awareness as to the importance of improving the emotional climate of the workplace.

Madam Secretary, Help Us Improve Social-Emotional Learning

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Elias, Maurice J.; Nayman, Samuel J.; Duffell, Joan C.; Kim, Sarah A.

2017-01-01

Considering the key role of social-emotional and character development (SECD) competencies in college, career, and life success--and considering that many of those competencies are teachable--there is no excuse for failing to incorporate them systematically into our education system. That would be the equivalent of depriving children of oxygen.…

Emotion

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Choi, Sukwoo

It was widely accepted that emotion such as fear, anger and pleasure could not be studied using a modern scientific tools. During the very early periods of emotion researches, psychologists, but not biologist, dominated in studying emotion and its disorders. Intuitively, one may think that emotion arises from brain first and then bodily responses follow. For example, we are sad first, and then cry. However, groups of psychologists suggested a proposal that our feeling follows bodily responses; that is, we feel sad because we cry! This proposal seems counterintuitive but became a popular hypothesis for emotion. Another example for this hypothesis is as follows. When you accidentally confront a large bear in a mountain, what would be your responses?; you may feel terrified first, and then run, or you may run first, and then feel terrified later on. In fact, the latter explanation is correct! You feel fear after you run (even because you run?). Or, you can imagine that you date with your girl friend who you love so much. Your heart must be beating fast and your body temperature must be elevated! In this situation, if you take a very cold bath, what would you expect? Your hot feeling is usually calmed down after this cold bath; that is, you feel hot because your heart and bodily temperature change. While some evidence supported this hypothesis, others do not. In the case of patients whose cervical vertebrae were severed with an accident, they still retained significant amount of emotion (feelings!) in some cases (but other patients lost most of emotional experience). In addition, one can imagine that there would be a specific set of physical responses for specific emotion if the original hypothesis is correct (e.g. fasten heart beating and redden face for anger etc.). However, some psychologists failed to find any specific set of physical responses for specific emotion, though others insisted that there existed such specific responses. Based on these controversial

Recovery from emotion recognition impairment after temporal lobectomy

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Francesca eBenuzzi

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE can be associated with emotion recognition impairment that can be particularly severe in patients with early onset seizures (1-3. Whereas there is growing evidence that memory and language can improve in seizure-free patients after anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL (4, the effects of surgery on emotional processing are still unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI to investigate short-term reorganization of networks engaged in facial emotion recognition in MTLE patients. Behavioral and fMRI data were collected from six patients before and after ATL. During the fMRI scan, patients were asked to make a gender decision on fearful and neutral faces. Behavioral data demonstrated that two patients with early-onset right MTLE were impaired in fear recognition while fMRI results showed they lacked specific activations for fearful faces. Post-ATL behavioral data showed improved emotion recognition ability, while fMRI demonstrated the recruitment of a functional network for fearful face processing. Our results suggest that ATL elicited brain plasticity mechanisms allowing behavioral and fMRI improvement in emotion recognition.

Diligence and Emotion

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schram Vejlby, Anna

2016-01-01

Wealthy ladies knitting provide a recurrent motif of Danish middle-class portraiture of the first half of the nineteenth century. This article explores the cultural and social significance of these images, and how they represent the central values of the Danish Golden Age (c.1810–1850). Since kni...... emotionally invested tokens of love. As a key marker of homemade love, the emotional warmth of these Golden Age portraits was carried by knitting as a textile symbol of emotion....... knitting was an essential skill for all women, this motif has traditionally been explained as part of the realist turn in Danish art. This article takes a new approach by arguing that the knitting carries an emotional value which has yet to be discussed by scholars. Displaying socially appropriate emotions...... was one way in which the middle classes distinguished themselves from the aristocracy and lower classes. On the one hand, sitters remained calm and collected and therefore rational. On the other, they needed to show emotional warmth, which was an obligatory marker of a good citizen. In order to balance...

Influence of oxytocin on emotion recognition from body language: A randomized placebo-controlled trial.

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Bernaerts, Sylvie; Berra, Emmely; Wenderoth, Nicole; Alaerts, Kaat

2016-10-01

The neuropeptide 'oxytocin' (OT) is known to play a pivotal role in a variety of complex social behaviors by promoting a prosocial attitude and interpersonal bonding. One mechanism by which OT is hypothesized to promote prosocial behavior is by enhancing the processing of socially relevant information from the environment. With the present study, we explored to what extent OT can alter the 'reading' of emotional body language as presented by impoverished biological motion point light displays (PLDs). To do so, a double-blind between-subjects randomized placebo-controlled trial was conducted, assessing performance on a bodily emotion recognition task in healthy adult males before and after a single-dose of intranasal OT (24 IU). Overall, a single-dose of OT administration had a significant effect of medium size on emotion recognition from body language. OT-induced improvements in emotion recognition were not differentially modulated by the emotional valence of the presented stimuli (positive versus negative) and also, the overall tendency to label an observed emotional state as 'happy' (positive) or 'angry' (negative) was not modified by the administration of OT. Albeit moderate, the present findings of OT-induced improvements in bodily emotion recognition from whole-body PLD provide further support for a link between OT and the processing of socio-communicative cues originating from the body of others. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Emotion Expression of Robot with Personality

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Xue Hu

2013-01-01

Full Text Available A robot emotional expression model based on Hidden Markov Model (HMM is built to enable robots which have different personalities to response in a more satisfactory emotional level. Gross emotion regulation theory and Five Factors Model (FFM which are the theoretical basis are firstly described. And then the importance of the personality effect on the emotion expression process is proposed, and how to make the effect quantization is discussed. After that, the algorithm of HMM is used to describe the process of emotional state transition and expression, and the performance transferring probability affected by personality is calculated. At last, the algorithm model is simulated and applied in a robot platform. The results prove that the emotional expression model can acquire humanlike expressions and improve the human-computer interaction.

Emotional Intelligence in medical practice

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Abu Hasan Sarkar

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive, express, understand and regulate one’s inner emotions and the emotions of others. It is considered to be a ‘must have’ competence in the workplace. Several scientific studies have proven that the application of emotional intelligence is effective in improving the teaching-learning process and that it leads to organizational growth; however, only limited work has been carried out to assess its effectiveness in the practice of medicine, especially in India. Various scales have been developed to measure emotional intelligence but they are not universally applicable because emotional intelligence depends upon culture and personal background among other factors. In recent years in India, conflicts between patients and doctors have had serious, sometimes fatal, consequences for the physician. Behavior, when faced with a potential conflict-like situation, depends to a great extent on the emotional intelligence of the physician. Emotional intelligence of medical students and medical professionals can be honed through exposure to the medical humanities which are known to promote patient-centered care. Building better physician-patient relationships might help in averting doctor-patient conflict.

Service with a smile: do emotional intelligence, gender, and autonomy moderate the emotional labor process?

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Johnson, Hazel-Anne M; Spector, Paul E

2007-10-01

This survey study of 176 participants from eight customer service organizations investigated how individual factors moderate the impact of emotional labor strategies on employee well-being. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that gender and autonomy were significant moderators of the relationships between emotional labor strategies and the personal outcomes of emotional exhaustion, affective well-being, and job satisfaction. Females were more likely to experience negative consequences when engaging in surface acting. Autonomy served to alleviate negative outcomes for individuals who used emotional labor strategies often. Contrary to our hypotheses, emotional intelligence did not moderate the relationship between the emotional labor strategies and personal outcomes. Results demonstrated how the emotional labor process can influence employee well-being. (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.

Can we link emotional eating with the emotion regulation skills of adolescents?

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Vandewalle, Julie; Moens, Ellen; Beyers, Wim; Braet, Caroline

2016-07-01

A recent cross-sectional study showed that maternal rejection is associated with emotional eating of obese youngsters seeking treatment, and that this relation is mediated by maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) of the youngsters. We wanted to build on this study and investigate the relation between parental rejection, maladaptive ER and emotional eating in a community sample using longitudinal data. Participants were 81 youngsters between the ages of 10 and 16 years. Participants completed questionnaires assessing maternal and paternal rejection, ER strategies and emotional eating, at two time moments (M = 71 days between time moments). Latent change models were used to estimate level and change of each variable. Results showed that the levels of maternal rejection, maladaptive ER and emotional eating were related. The indirect effect of the level of maternal rejection on the level of emotional eating through the level of maladaptive ER was marginally significant. On average, maternal rejection showed no change over time, whereas the other variables decreased. The changes in the variables were not related. The findings highlight the importance of assessing the emotional bond between mother and youngster and the ER of youngsters with an emotional eating style.

Empirically Valid Strategies to Improve Social and Emotional Competence of Preschool Children

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McCabe, Paul C.; Altamura, Michelle

2011-01-01

Research over the past few decades has highlighted the importance of social and emotional competence in preschool children on later academic, social, and psychological outcomes. Children who are socially and emotionally competent have increased socialization opportunities with peers, develop more friends, have better relationships with their…

Emotional and organizational supports for preschoolers' emotion regulation: Relations with school adjustment.

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Bailey, Craig S; Denham, Susanne A; Curby, Timothy W; Bassett, Hideko H

2016-03-01

Preschool teachers, like parents, support children in ways that promote the regulation capacities that drive school adjustment, especially for children struggling to succeed in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to explore the emotionally and organizationally supportive classroom processes that contribute to the development of children's emotion regulation and executive control. Emotion regulation and executive control were assessed in 312 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children. The 44 teachers of these children completed questionnaires asking about 3 components of children's school adjustment: Positive/Engaged, Independent/Motivated, and Prosocial/Connected. Observations of classroom emotional and organizational supports were conducted. Results of multilevel models indicated emotion regulation was significantly associated with the Positive/Engaged school adjustment component, but only when teachers' emotional and organizational supports were taken into account. Children with lower levels of emotion regulation, who were also in less supportive classrooms, had the lowest scores on the Positive/Engaged component. Children's executive control was associated with the Independent/Motivated and Prosocial/Connected components independently of teacher effects. In general, moderate support was found for the notion that teachers' supports can be particularly helpful for children struggling to regulate their emotions to be better adjusted to school. Children's emotionally salient classroom behaviors, and teachers' emotion scaffolding, are discussed. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Art museum-based intervention to promote emotional well-being and improve quality of life in people with dementia: The ARTEMIS project.

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Schall, Arthur; Tesky, Valentina A; Adams, Ann-Katrin; Pantel, Johannes

2017-01-01

ARTEMIS (ART Encounters: Museum Intervention Study) is an art-based intervention designed especially for people with dementia and their care partners that involves a combination of museum visits and artistic activity. This paper reports the results of a randomized wait-list controlled study on the influence of the ARTEMIS intervention on the emotional state, well-being, and quality of life of dementia patients. People with mild-to-moderate dementia (n = 44) and their care partners (n = 44) visited the Frankfurt Städel Museum once a week on six pre-arranged occasions. The intervention consisted of six different guided art tours (60 minutes), followed by art-making in the studio (60 minutes). Independent museum visits served as a control condition. A mixed-methods design was used to assess several outcomes including cognitive status, emotional well-being, self-rated aspects of quality of life, and subjective evaluations by informal caregivers. In a pre-post-assessment, we found significant improvements in participants' self-rated quality of life (t = -3.15, p life in people with dementia. This promising psychosocial approach deserves further attention in future studies and consideration in community-based dementia care programs.

Strength Is in Numbers: Can Concordant Artificial Listeners Improve Prediction of Emotion from Speech?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eugenio Martinelli

Full Text Available Humans can communicate their emotions by modulating facial expressions or the tone of their voice. Albeit numerous applications exist that enable machines to read facial emotions and recognize the content of verbal messages, methods for speech emotion recognition are still in their infancy. Yet, fast and reliable applications for emotion recognition are the obvious advancement of present 'intelligent personal assistants', and may have countless applications in diagnostics, rehabilitation and research. Taking inspiration from the dynamics of human group decision-making, we devised a novel speech emotion recognition system that applies, for the first time, a semi-supervised prediction model based on consensus. Three tests were carried out to compare this algorithm with traditional approaches. Labeling performances relative to a public database of spontaneous speeches are reported. The novel system appears to be fast, robust and less computationally demanding than traditional methods, allowing for easier implementation in portable voice-analyzers (as used in rehabilitation, research, industry, etc. and for applications in the research domain (such as real-time pairing of stimuli to participants' emotional state, selective/differential data collection based on emotional content, etc..

Effect of music therapy with emotional-approach coping on preprocedural anxiety in cardiac catheterization: a randomized controlled trial.

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Ghetti, Claire M

2013-01-01

Individuals undergoing cardiac catheterization are likely to experience elevated anxiety periprocedurally, with highest anxiety levels occurring immediately prior to the procedure. Elevated anxiety has the potential to negatively impact these individuals psychologically and physiologically in ways that may influence the subsequent procedure. This study evaluated the use of music therapy, with a specific emphasis on emotional-approach coping, immediately prior to cardiac catheterization to impact periprocedural outcomes. The randomized, pretest/posttest control group design consisted of two experimental groups--the Music Therapy with Emotional-Approach Coping group [MT/EAC] (n = 13), and a talk-based Emotional-Approach Coping group (n = 14), compared with a standard care Control group (n = 10). MT/EAC led to improved positive affective states in adults awaiting elective cardiac catheterization, whereas a talk-based emphasis on emotional-approach coping or standard care did not. All groups demonstrated a significant overall decrease in negative affect. The MT/EAC group demonstrated a statistically significant, but not clinically significant, increase in systolic blood pressure most likely due to active engagement in music making. The MT/EAC group trended toward shortest procedure length and least amount of anxiolytic required during the procedure, while the EAC group trended toward least amount of analgesic required during the procedure, but these differences were not statistically significant. Actively engaging in a session of music therapy with an emphasis on emotional-approach coping can improve the well-being of adults awaiting cardiac catheterization procedures.

Significant improvement in the thermal annealing process of optical resonators

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Salzenstein, Patrice; Zarubin, Mikhail

2017-05-01

Thermal annealing performed during process improves the quality of the roughness of optical resonators reducing stresses at the periphery of their surface thus allowing higher Q-factors. After a preliminary realization, the design of the oven and the electronic method were significantly improved thanks to nichrome resistant alloy wires and chopped basalt fibers for thermal isolation during the annealing process. Q-factors can then be improved.

Emotional clarity and attention to emotions in cognitive behavioral group therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction for social anxiety disorder.

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Butler, Rachel M; Boden, Matthew T; Olino, Thomas M; Morrison, Amanda S; Goldin, Philippe R; Gross, James J; Heimberg, Richard G

2018-04-01

We examined (1) differences between controls and patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) in emotional clarity and attention to emotions; (2) changes in emotional clarity and attention to emotions associated with cognitive-behavioral group therapy (CBGT), mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), or a waitlist (WL) condition; and (3) whether emotional clarity and attention to emotions moderated changes in social anxiety across treatment. Participants were healthy controls (n = 37) and patients with SAD (n = 108) who were assigned to CBGT, MBSR, or WL in a randomized controlled trial. At pretreatment, posttreatment, and 12-month follow-up, patients with SAD completed measures of social anxiety, emotional clarity, and attention to emotions. Controls completed measures at baseline only. At pretreatment, patients with SAD had lower levels of emotional clarity than controls. Emotional clarity increased significantly among patients receiving CBGT, and changes were maintained at 12-month follow-up. Emotional clarity at posttreatment did not differ between CBGT and MBSR or between MBSR and WL. Changes in emotional clarity predicted changes in social anxiety, but emotional clarity did not moderate treatment outcome. Analyses of attention to emotions were not significant. Implications for the role of emotional clarity in the treatment of SAD are discussed. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cognitive and Emotion Regulation Change Processes in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder.

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O'Toole, Mia S; Mennin, Douglas S; Hougaard, Esben; Zachariae, Robert; Rosenberg, Nicole K

2015-01-01

The objective of the study was to investigate variables, derived from both cognitive and emotion regulation conceptualizations of social anxiety disorder (SAD), as possible change processes in cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for SAD. Several proposed change processes were investigated: estimated probability, estimated cost, safety behaviours, acceptance of emotions, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Participants were 50 patients with SAD, receiving a standard manualized CBT program, conducted in groups or individually. All variables were measured pre-therapy, mid-therapy and post-therapy. Lower level mediation models revealed that while a change in most process measures significantly predicted clinical improvement, only changes in estimated probability and cost and acceptance of emotions showed significant indirect effects of CBT for SAD. The results are in accordance with previous studies supporting the mediating role of changes in cognitive distortions in CBT for SAD. In addition, acceptance of emotions may also be a critical component to clinical improvement in SAD during CBT, although more research is needed on which elements of acceptance are most helpful for individuals with SAD. The study's lack of a control condition limits any conclusion regarding the specificity of the findings to CBT. Change in estimated probability and cost, and acceptance of emotions showed an indirect effect of CBT for SAD. Cognitive distortions appear relevant to target with cognitive restructuring techniques. Finding acceptance to have an indirect effect could be interpreted as support for contemporary CBT approaches that include acceptance-based strategies. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Omega-3 fatty acid therapy dose-dependently and significantly decreased triglycerides and improved flow-mediated dilation, however, did not significantly improve insulin sensitivity in patients with hypertriglyceridemia.

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Oh, Pyung Chun; Koh, Kwang Kon; Sakuma, Ichiro; Lim, Soo; Lee, Yonghee; Lee, Seungik; Lee, Kyounghoon; Han, Seung Hwan; Shin, Eak Kyun

2014-10-20

Experimental studies demonstrate that higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids (n-3 FA) improves insulin sensitivity, however, we reported that n-3 FA 2g therapy, most commonly used dosage did not significantly improve insulin sensitivity despite reducing triglycerides by 21% in patients. Therefore, we investigated the effects of different dosages of n-3 FA in patients with hypertriglyceridemia. This was a randomized, single-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel study. Age, sex, and body mass index were matched among groups. All patients were recommended to maintain a low fat diet. Forty-four patients (about 18 had metabolic syndrome/type 2 diabetes mellitus) in each group were given placebo, n-3 FA 1 (O1), 2 (O2), or 4 g (O4), respectively daily for 2 months. n-3 FA therapy dose-dependently and significantly decreased triglycerides and triglycerides/HDL cholesterol and improved flow-mediated dilation, compared with placebo (by ANOVA). However, each n-3 FA therapy did not significantly decrease high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and fibrinogen, compared with placebo. O1 significantly increased insulin levels and decreased insulin sensitivity (determined by QUICKI) and O2 significantly decreased plasma adiponectin levels relative to baseline measurements. Of note, when compared with placebo, each n-3 FA therapy did not significantly change insulin, glucose, adiponectin, glycated hemoglobin levels and insulin sensitivity (by ANOVA). We observed similar results in a subgroup of patients with the metabolic syndrome. n-3 FA therapy dose-dependently and significantly decreased triglycerides and improved flow-mediated dilation. Nonetheless, n-3 FA therapy did not significantly improve acute-phase reactants and insulin sensitivity in patients with hypertriglyceridemia, regardless of dosages. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Emotional Intelligence in Learners with Attention Deficit Disorder

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Wootton, Carol Anne; Roets, H. E.

2013-01-01

This study was undertaken to analyse and evaluate the nature and quality of emotional intelligence in learners with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and to investigate whether their emotional intelligence was enhanced, and whether the symptoms and behaviour of these learners improved, after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence.…

Positive schizotypy scores correlate with left visual field interference for negatively valenced emotional words: A lateralized emotional Stroop study.

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Van Strien, Jan W; Van Kampen, Dirk

2009-10-30

Fourteen men scoring high and 14 men scoring low on a positive schizotypy scale participated in a lateralized emotional Stroop task. Vocal reaction times for color naming of neutral, positive and negative emotional words were recorded. Across participants, the color naming of neutral and emotional words was slightly faster to right than to left visual field presentations. In men with high scores on positive schizotypy, the presentation of negative words to the left visual field (right hemisphere) resulted in significant affective interference with color naming, which was significantly larger than in men with low scores. Correlational analysis also showed that positive schizotypy was significantly associated with emotional interference in response to LVF negative words. The outcome is discussed in terms of right hemispheric engagement in negative emotions in high positive schizotypic men.

Textual emotion recognition for enhancing enterprise computing

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Quan, Changqin; Ren, Fuji

2016-05-01

The growing interest in affective computing (AC) brings a lot of valuable research topics that can meet different application demands in enterprise systems. The present study explores a sub area of AC techniques - textual emotion recognition for enhancing enterprise computing. Multi-label emotion recognition in text is able to provide a more comprehensive understanding of emotions than single label emotion recognition. A representation of 'emotion state in text' is proposed to encompass the multidimensional emotions in text. It ensures the description in a formal way of the configurations of basic emotions as well as of the relations between them. Our method allows recognition of the emotions for the words bear indirect emotions, emotion ambiguity and multiple emotions. We further investigate the effect of word order for emotional expression by comparing the performances of bag-of-words model and sequence model for multi-label sentence emotion recognition. The experiments show that the classification results under sequence model are better than under bag-of-words model. And homogeneous Markov model showed promising results of multi-label sentence emotion recognition. This emotion recognition system is able to provide a convenient way to acquire valuable emotion information and to improve enterprise competitive ability in many aspects.

SINGLE-CASE INVESTIGATION OF AN EMOTION-FOCUSED THERAPY GROUP FOR ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

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Adèle Lafrance Robinson

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Emotion-focused therapy (EFT is an evidence-based treatment for depression and trauma and has shown promise for other presentations including anxiety. Minimal research exists investigating the outcomes of emotion-focused therapy in a group setting. The current research presents a mixed-method single-case study of one client’s experiences and outcomes following a nine-week EFT group for depression and anxiety. Weekly measures of session-feelings evaluations were collected. Follow-up measures, including a qualitative interview, were administered one year post-treatment. Pre-, post-, and follow-up measures assessed depression, anxiety, and emotional regulation. Results showed clinically significant improvements in anxiety, depression, and emotional regulation over time. Indirect and direct evidence of client change were detected. Five super-ordinate themes with sub-themes emerged from the qualitative analysis.

Family emotional expressiveness and family structure

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Čotar-Konrad Sonja

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The present paper scrutinizes the relationship between family emotional expressiveness (i.e., the tendency to express dominant and/or submissive positive and negative emotions and components of family structure as proposed in Olson’s Circumplex model (i.e., cohesion and flexibility, family communication, and satisfaction in families with adolescents. The study was conducted on a sample of 514 Slovenian adolescents, who filled out two questionnaires: the Slovenian version of Family Emotional Expressiveness - FEQ and FACES IV. The results revealed that all four basic dimensions of family functioning were significantly associated with higher/more frequent expressions of positive submissive emotions, as well as with lower/less frequent expressions of negative dominant emotions. Moreover, expressions of negative submissive emotions explained a small, but significant amount of variance in three out of four family functioning variables (satisfaction, flexibility, and communication. The importance of particular aspects of emotional expressiveness for family cohesion, flexibility, communication, and satisfaction is discussed, and the relevance of present findings for family counselling is outlined.

The multiplicity of emotions

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Hans-Rudiger Pfister

2008-01-01

Full Text Available A four-fold classification of emotions with respect to their functions in decision making is proposed. It is argued that emotions are not homogenous concerning their role in decision making, but that four distinct functions can be distinguished concerning emotional phenomena. One function is to provide information about pleasure and pain for preference construction, a second function is to enable rapid choices under time pressure, a third function is to focus attention on relevant aspects of a decision problem, and a fourth function is to generate commitment concerning morally and socially significant decisions. The pertinent literature on the relationship between emotion and decision making is reviewed, and it is concluded that most approaches fit into the proposed framework. We argue that a precise conceptualization of emotional phenomena is required to advance our understanding of the complex role of emotions in decision making.

Contemplative/emotion training reduces negative emotional behavior and promotes prosocial responses.

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Kemeny, Margaret E; Foltz, Carol; Cavanagh, James F; Cullen, Margaret; Giese-Davis, Janine; Jennings, Patricia; Rosenberg, Erika L; Gillath, Omri; Shaver, Phillip R; Wallace, B Alan; Ekman, Paul

2012-04-01

Contemplative practices are believed to alleviate psychological problems, cultivate prosocial behavior and promote self-awareness. In addition, psychological science has developed tools and models for understanding the mind and promoting well-being. Additional effort is needed to combine frameworks and techniques from these traditions to improve emotional experience and socioemotional behavior. An 8-week intensive (42 hr) meditation/emotion regulation training intervention was designed by experts in contemplative traditions and emotion science to reduce "destructive enactment of emotions" and enhance prosocial responses. Participants were 82 healthy female schoolteachers who were randomly assigned to a training group or a wait-list control group, and assessed preassessment, postassessment, and 5 months after training completion. Assessments included self-reports and experimental tasks to capture changes in emotional behavior. The training group reported reduced trait negative affect, rumination, depression, and anxiety, and increased trait positive affect and mindfulness compared to the control group. On a series of behavioral tasks, the training increased recognition of emotions in others (Micro-Expression Training Tool), protected trainees from some of the psychophysiological effects of an experimental threat to self (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST), appeared to activate cognitive networks associated with compassion (lexical decision procedure), and affected hostile behavior in the Marital Interaction Task. Most effects at postassessment that were examined at follow-up were maintained (excluding positive affect, TSST rumination, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia recovery). Findings suggest that increased awareness of mental processes can influence emotional behavior, and they support the benefit of integrating contemplative theories/practices with psychological models and methods of emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Auditory Emotional Cues Enhance Visual Perception

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Zeelenberg, Rene; Bocanegra, Bruno R.

2010-01-01

Recent studies show that emotional stimuli impair performance to subsequently presented neutral stimuli. Here we show a cross-modal perceptual enhancement caused by emotional cues. Auditory cue words were followed by a visually presented neutral target word. Two-alternative forced-choice identification of the visual target was improved by…

The effects of psychotherapy treatment on outcome in bulimia nervosa: Examining indirect effects through emotion regulation, self-directed behavior, and self-discrepancy within the mediation model.

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Peterson, Carol B; Berg, Kelly C; Crosby, Ross D; Lavender, Jason M; Accurso, Erin C; Ciao, Anna C; Smith, Tracey L; Klein, Marjorie; Mitchell, James E; Crow, Scott J; Wonderlich, Stephen A

2017-06-01

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the indirect effects of Integrative Cognitive-Affective Therapy (ICAT-BN) and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy-Enhanced (CBT-E) on bulimia nervosa (BN) treatment outcome through three hypothesized maintenance variables: emotion regulation, self-directed behavior, and self-discrepancy. Eighty adults with BN were randomized to 21 sessions of ICAT-BN or CBT-E. A regression-based bootstrapping approach was used to test the indirect effects of treatment on outcome at end of treatment through emotion regulation and self-directed behavior measured at mid-treatment, as well as the indirect effects of treatment at follow-up through emotion regulation, self-directed behavior, and self-discrepancy measured at end of treatment. No significant differences in outcome between treatment conditions were observed, and no significant direct or indirect effects were found. Examination of the individual paths within the indirect effects models revealed comparable treatment effects. Across treatments, improvements in emotion regulation and self-directed behavior between baseline and mid-treatment predicted improvements in global eating disorder scores but not binge eating and purging frequency at end of treatment. Baseline to end of treatment improvements in emotion regulation and self-directed behavior also predicted improvements in global eating disorder scores at follow-up. Baseline to end of treatment improvements in emotion regulation predicted improvements in binge eating and baseline to end of treatment increases in positive self-directed behavior predicted improvements in purging at follow-up. These findings suggest that emotion regulation and self-directed behavior are important treatment targets and that ICAT-BN and CBT-E are comparable in modifying these psychological processes among individuals with BN. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Predicting weight status stability and change from fifth grade to eighth grade: the significant role of adolescents' social-emotional well-being.

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Chang, Yiting; Gable, Sara

2013-04-01

The primary objective of this study was to predict weight status stability and change across the transition to adolescence using parent reports of child and household routines and teacher and child self-reports of social-emotional development. Data were from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a nationally representative sample of children who entered kindergarten during 1998-1999 and were followed through eighth grade. At fifth grade, parents reported on child and household routines and the study child and his/her primary classroom teacher reported on the child's social-emotional functioning. At fifth and eighth grade, children were directly weighed and measured at school. Nine mutually-exclusive weight trajectory groups were created to capture stability or change in weight status from fifth to eighth grade: (1) stable obese (ObeSta); (2) obese to overweight (ObePos1); (3) obese to healthy (ObePos2); (4) stable overweight (OverSta); (5) overweight to healthy (OverPos); (6) overweight to obese (OverNeg); (7) stable healthy (HelSta); (8) healthy to overweight (HelNeg1); and (9) healthy to obese (HelNeg2). Except for breakfast consumption at home, school-provided lunches, nighttime sleep duration, household and child routines did not predict stability or change in weight status. Instead, weight status trajectory across the transition to adolescence was significantly predicted by measures of social-emotional functioning at fifth grade. Assessing children's social-emotional well-being in addition to their lifestyle routines during the transition to adolescence is a noteworthy direction for adolescent obesity prevention and intervention. Copyright © 2013 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Emotional Intelligence: A Theoretical Framework for Individual Differences in Affective Forecasting

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Hoerger, Michael; Chapman, Benjamin P.; Epstein, Ronald M.; Duberstein, Paul R.

2011-01-01

Only recently have researchers begun to examine individual differences in affective forecasting. The present investigation was designed to make a theoretical contribution to this emerging literature by examining the role of emotional intelligence in affective forecasting. Emotional intelligence was hypothesized to be associated with affective forecasting accuracy, memory for emotional reactions, and subsequent improvement on an affective forecasting task involving emotionally-evocative pictures. Results from two studies (N = 511) supported our hypotheses. Emotional intelligence was associated with accuracy in predicting, encoding, and consolidating emotional reactions. Furthermore, emotional intelligence was associated with greater improvement on a second affective forecasting task, with the relationship explained by basic memory processes. Implications for future research on basic and applied decision making are discussed. PMID:22251053

Understanding Mixed Emotions: Paradigms and Measures

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Kreibig, Sylvia D.; Gross, James J.

2017-01-01

In this review, we examine the paradigms and measures available for experimentally studying mixed emotions in the laboratory. For eliciting mixed emotions, we describe a mixed emotions film library that allows for the repeated elicitation of a specific homogeneous mixed emotional state and appropriately matched pure positive, pure negative, and neutral emotional states. For assessing mixed emotions, we consider subjective and objective measures that fall into univariate, bivariate, and multivariate measurement categories. As paradigms and measures for objectively studying mixed emotions are still in their early stages, we conclude by outlining future directions that focus on the reliability, temporal dynamics, and response coherence of mixed emotions paradigms and measures. This research will build a strong foundation for future studies and significantly advance our understanding of mixed emotions. PMID:28804752

High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being

OpenAIRE

Kahneman, Daniel; Deaton, Angus

2010-01-01

Recent research has begun to distinguish two aspects of subjective well-being. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience—the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant. Life evaluation refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it. We raise the question of whether money buys happiness, separately for these two aspects of we...

Emotion models for textual emotion classification

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Bruna, O.; Avetisyan, H.; Holub, J.

2016-11-01

This paper deals with textual emotion classification which gained attention in recent years. Emotion classification is used in user experience, product evaluation, national security, and tutoring applications. It attempts to detect the emotional content in the input text and based on different approaches establish what kind of emotional content is present, if any. Textual emotion classification is the most difficult to handle, since it relies mainly on linguistic resources and it introduces many challenges to assignment of text to emotion represented by a proper model. A crucial part of each emotion detector is emotion model. Focus of this paper is to introduce emotion models used for classification. Categorical and dimensional models of emotion are explained and some more advanced approaches are mentioned.

Beliefs about emotions mediate the relationship between emotional suppression and quality of life in irritable bowel syndrome.

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Bowers, Hannah; Wroe, Abigail

2016-01-01

Cross-sectional and experimental research has demonstrated an association between emotional suppression and IBS. However, the relationship is not well understood. To examine the relationships between emotional suppression, we compare the measures of beliefs about emotions and quality of life in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) with healthy controls. Online questionnaires measured beliefs about emotions, emotional suppression and IBS-related quality of life in participants with (n = 87) and without (n = 37) IBS. Mediation analyses and group comparisons were used to explore the role of emotional suppression and beliefs about emotions in this sample. IBS participants held significantly more beliefs about the unacceptability of emotions compared to healthy controls despite no differences in emotional suppression. The relationship between beliefs about emotions and quality of life was not mediated by emotional suppression. However, the relationship between emotional suppression and quality of life was mediated by beliefs about emotions. The findings suggest a role of beliefs about emotions and emotional suppression in IBS, where emotional suppression may relate to changes in beliefs about emotions and consequently quality of life. This is discussed in relation to the cognitive-behavioural model of medically unexplained symptoms.

Korean Emotional Laborers' Job Stressors and Relievers: Focus on Work Conditions and Emotional Labor Properties.

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Lee, Garam

2015-12-01

The present study aims to investigate job stressors and stress relievers for Korean emotional laborers, specifically focusing on the effects of work conditions and emotional labor properties. Emotional laborers are asked to hide or distort their real emotions in their interaction with clients. They are exposed to high levels of stress in the emotional labor process, which leads to serious mental health risks including burnout, depression, and even suicide impulse. Exploring job stressors and relieving factors would be the first step in seeking alternatives to protect emotional laborers from those mental health risks. Using the third wave data of Korean Working Conditions Survey, logistic regression analysis was conducted for two purposes: to examine the relations of emotional labor and stress, and to find out job stressors and relievers for emotional laborers. The chances of stress arousal are 3.5 times higher for emotional laborers; emotional laborers experience double risk-burden for stress arousal. In addition to general job stressors, emotional laborers need to bear burdens related to emotional labor properties. The effect of social support at the workplace is not significant for stress relief, unlike common assumptions, whereas subjective satisfaction (wage satisfaction and work-life balance) is proven to have relieving effects on emotional laborers' job stress. From the results, the importance of a balanced understanding of emotional labor for establishing effective policies for emotional laborer protection is stressed.

Intelligibility of emotional speech in younger and older adults.

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Dupuis, Kate; Pichora-Fuller, M Kathleen

2014-01-01

emotion, listener age group, and condition on the accuracy of word recognition in noise. Stimuli spoken in a fearful voice were the most intelligible, while those spoken in a sad voice were the least intelligible. Overall, word recognition accuracy was poorer for older than younger adults, but there was no main effect of talker, and the pattern of the effects of different emotions on intelligibility did not differ significantly across age groups. Acoustical analyses helped elucidate the effect of emotion and some intertalker differences. Finally, all participants performed better when emotions were blocked. For both groups, performance improved over repeated presentations of each emotion in both blocked and mixed conditions. These results are the first to demonstrate a relationship between vocal emotion and word recognition accuracy in noise for younger and older listeners. In particular, the enhancement of intelligibility by emotion is greatest for words spoken to portray fear and presented heterogeneously with other emotions. Fear may have a specialized role in orienting attention to words heard in noise. This finding may be an auditory counterpart to the enhanced detection of threat information in visual displays. The effect of vocal emotion on word recognition accuracy is preserved in older listeners with good audiograms and both age groups benefit from blocking and the repetition of emotions.

How group-based emotions are shaped by collective emotions: evidence for emotional transfer and emotional burden.

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Goldenberg, Amit; Saguy, Tamar; Halperin, Eran

2014-10-01

Extensive research has established the pivotal role that group-based emotions play in shaping intergroup processes. The underlying implicit assumption in previous work has been that these emotions reflect what the rest of the group feels (i.e., collective emotions). However, one can experience an emotion in the name of her or his group, which is inconsistent with what the collective feels. The current research investigated this phenomenon of emotional nonconformity. Particularly, we proposed that when a certain emotional reaction is perceived as appropriate, but the collective is perceived as not experiencing this emotion, people would experience stronger levels of group-based emotion, placing their emotional experience farther away from that of the collective. We provided evidence for this process across 2 different emotions: group-based guilt and group-based anger (Studies 1 and 2) and across different intergroup contexts (Israeli-Palestinian relations in Israel, and Black-White relations in the United States). In Studies 3 and 4, we demonstrate that this process is moderated by the perceived appropriateness of the collective emotional response. Studies 4 and 5 further provided evidence for the mechanisms underlying this effect, pointing to a process of emotional burden (i.e., feeling responsible for carrying the emotion in the name of the group) and of emotional transfer (i.e., transferring negative feelings one has toward the ingroup, toward the event itself). This work brings to light processes that were yet to be studied regarding the relationship between group members, their perception of their group, and the emotional processes that connect them. 2014 APA, all rights reserved

The Effects of Gender Differences in Patients with Depression on Their Emotional Working Memory and Emotional Experience

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Mi Li

2015-01-01

Full Text Available A large amount of research has been conducted on the effects of sex hormones on gender differences in patients with depression, yet research on cognitive differences between male and female patients with depression is insufficient. This study uses emotion pictures to investigate the differences of the emotional working memory ability and emotional experience in male and female patients with depression. Despite identifying that the working memory of patients with depression is impaired, our study found no significant gender differences in emotional working memory. Moreover, the research results revealed that memory effects of mood congruence are produced in both men and women, which may explain why the depression state can be maintained. Furthermore, female patients have more emotional experiences than male patients, which is particularly significant in terms of negative emotional experiences. This result provides cognitive evidence to explain why women suffer from longer terms of depression, are more susceptible to relapse, and can more easily suffer from major depressive disorder in the future.

Significant Improvement of Catalytic Efficiencies in Ionic Liquids

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Song, Choong Eui; Yoon, Mi Young; Choi, Doo Seong

2005-01-01

The use of ionic liquids as reaction media can confer many advantages upon catalytic reactions over reactions in organic solvents. In ionic liquids, catalysts having polar or ionic character can easily be immobilized without additional structural modification and thus the ionic solutions containing the catalyst can easily be separated from the reagents and reaction products, and then, be reused. More interestingly, switching from an organic solvent to an ionic liquid often results in a significant improvement in catalytic performance (e.g., rate acceleration, (enantio)selectivity improvement and an increase in catalyst stability). In this review, some recent interesting results which can nicely demonstrate these positive 'ionic liquid effect' on catalysis are discussed

Emotion-Focused Family Therapy for Eating Disorders Across the Lifespan: A Pilot Study of a 2-Day Transdiagnostic Intervention for Parents.

Science.gov (United States)

Lafrance Robinson, Adèle; Dolhanty, Joanne; Stillar, Amanda; Henderson, Katherine; Mayman, Shari

2016-01-01

Emotion-focused family therapy is a transdiagnostic approach that affords parents and caregivers a significant role in their loved one's recovery from an eating disorder. A 2-day intervention was developed on the basis of emotion-focused family therapy principles and delivered to 33 parents of adolescent and adult children. Data were collected pre- and post-intervention. Through education and skills practice, parents were taught strategies with respect to meal support and symptom interruption as well as emotion coaching. Parents were also supported to identify and work through their own emotional blocks that could interfere with their supportive efforts. Analyses revealed a significant increase in parental self-efficacy, a positive shift in parents' attitudes regarding their role as emotion coach and a reduction in the fears associated with their involvement in treatment, including a decrease in self-blame. Overall, this broad-based, low-cost intervention shows promise, and future research is warranted. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A low-cost, intensive emotion-focused family therapy intervention shows promise for parents of individuals with an eating disorder, regardless of their loved one's age, symptom profile or involvement in treatment. Working with parents' emotions and emotional reactions to their child's struggles has the potential to improve supportive efforts. An emotion-focused family therapy intervention for parents yields high satisfaction rates, improves parental self-efficacy and reduces fears regarding their involvement, including self-blame. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Emotional dysfunction in avoidant compared to borderline personality disorder: a study of affect consciousness.

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Johansen, Merete Selsbakk; Normann-Eide, Eivind; Normann-Eide, Tone; Wilberg, Theresa

2013-12-01

Knowledge of emotional dysfunction in patients with avoidant personality disorder (APD) is much needed. The present study examined affect consciousness (AC) in patients with APD compared to borderline personality disorder (BPD). AC, defined as capacity to perceive, reflect on, tolerate, and express emotional experiences, is assumed to be central to structure-building in personality. The study tested the hypotheses that patients with APD have lower general AC and lower AC for pleasant affects compared to BPD. Fifty-nine patients, 26 with APD and 33 with BPD were rated on several aspects of AC using the specialized AC interview. The structured interview SCID-II was applied for diagnostic evaluations. The APD group had significantly lower levels of global AC and conceptual expressivity compared to the BPD group. Among 11 specific affects the APD group had significantly lower AC for interest and contempt. Emotional dysfunction is an important feature of APD and the findings indicate that psychotherapies for APD patients should focus on emotional experiences, aiming to improve emotional awareness, tolerance, and expressivity. The notion of a general avoidance of positive emotions in APD needs further exploration, including a possible dysfunction in the evolutionary based neuro-affective Seeking system. © 2013 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Emotional intelligence levels in baccalaureate-prepared early career registered nurses

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Glenda S Reemts

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Objective: The increasing complexity of the healthcare environment calls for increasing emotional intelligence (EI competence in nurses. This study assessed the EI competence of 164 baccalaureate nursing alumni who graduated during the years 2007-2010 from three Benedictine institutions located in the Midwestern United States to see if there was growth of EI with experience as a registered nurse (RN, and to determine if age, gender, grade point average (GPA, and years of total healthcare work experience prior to graduation predicted EI. Methods: Participants completed the web-based Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT and a demographic survey. Results: Findings indicated 79.4% of participants were competent or higher on the MSCEIT total EI score. Percentages of nurses scoring in the competent or higher range on each of the four branch scores of perceiving, using, understanding and managing emotions were 80.6%, 72.7%, 84.2%, and 84.9% respectively. There were no significant differences on EI scores between graduates with 1-2 years compared to 3-5 years of experience as a RN. Results of a linear stepwise regression indicated being female was a significant predictor on the MSCEIT total EI score (P = 0.015 and using emotions branch (P = 0.047. Findings also indicated GPA (P < 0.001 and being female (P = 0.023 were significant predictors of EI on the understanding emotions branch. Conclusions: The findings indicate there is work to be done to improve the EI competence of nursing graduates. Continued research on the topic of EI and nursing is needed to build the knowledge base on how to promote positive patient outcomes.

Temporal pattern of emotions and cognitive load during simulation training and debriefing.

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Fraser, Kristin; McLaughlin, Kevin

2018-04-24

In the simulated clinical environment, there is a perceived benefit to the emotional activation experienced by learners; however, potential harm of excessive and/or negative emotions has also been hypothesized. An improved understanding of the emotional experiences of learners during each phase of the simulation session will inform instructional design. In this observational study, we asked 174 first-year medical students about their emotional state upon arrival to the simulation lab (t1). They were then trained on a standard simulation scenario, after which they rated their emotional state and perceived cognitive load (t2). After debriefing, we then asked them to again rate their emotions and cognitive load (t3). Students reported that their experience of tranquility (a positive and low-arousal state) dropped from pre-scenario (t1) to post-scenario (t2), and returned to baseline levels after debriefing (t3), from 0.69 (0.87) to 0.14 (0.78) to 0.62 (0.78). Post scenario cognitive load was rated to be moderately high at 6.62 (1.12) and scores increased after debriefing to 6.90 (1.05) d = 0.26, p Cognitive load was associated with the simultaneous measures of emotions at both t2 and t3. Participant emotions are significantly altered through the experience of medical simulation and emotions are associated with subjective ratings of cognitive load.

EFFECTS OF MUSIC INTERVENTIONS ON EMOTIONAL STATES AND RUNNING PERFORMANCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew M. Lane

2011-06-01

Full Text Available The present study compared the effects of two different music interventions on changes in emotional states before and during running, and also explored effects of music interventions upon performance outcome. Volunteer participants (n = 65 who regularly listened to music when running registered online to participate in a three-stage study. Participants attempted to attain a personally important running goal to establish baseline performance. Thereafter, participants were randomly assigned to either a self-selected music group or an Audiofuel music group. Audiofuel produce pieces of music designed to assist synchronous running. The self-selected music group followed guidelines for selecting motivating playlists. In both experimental groups, participants used the Brunel Music Rating Inventory-2 (BMRI-2 to facilitate selection of motivational music. Participants again completed the BMRI-2 post- intervention to assess the motivational qualities of Audiofuel music or the music they selected for use during the study. Results revealed no significant differences between self-selected music and Audiofuel music on all variables analyzed. Participants in both music groups reported increased pleasant emotions and decreased unpleasant emotions following intervention. Significant performance improvements were demonstrated post-intervention with participants reporting a belief that emotional states related to performance. Further analysis indicated that enhanced performance was significantly greater among participants reporting music to be motivational as indicated by high scores on the BMRI-2. Findings suggest that both individual athletes and practitioners should consider using the BMRI-2 when selecting music for running

Identification of Individuals with Serious Emotional Disturbance Using the Draw a Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance.

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McNeish, Timothy J.; Naglieri, Jack A.

1993-01-01

Regular education students (n=81) and students with serious emotional disturbance (n=81,) were matched on age (7-13), gender, race, and intelligence. They completed drawings which were scored using the "Draw a Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance." Students with emotional disturbance scored significantly higher than did…

The impact of emotion on perception: bias or enhanced processing?

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Zeelenberg, René; Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan; Rotteveel, Mark

2006-04-01

Recent studies have shown that emotionally significant stimuli are often better identified than neutral stimuli. It is not clear, however, whether these results are due to enhanced perceptual processing or to a bias favoring the identification of emotionally significant stimuli over neutral stimuli. The present study used a two-alternative forced-choice perceptual identification task to disentangle the effects of bias and enhanced processing. We found that emotionally significant targets were better identified than neutral targets. In contrast, the emotional significance of the foil alternative had no effect on performance. The present results support the hypothesis that perceptual encoding of emotionally significant stimuli is enhanced.

The mediating effect of emotional intelligence between emotional labour, job stress, burnout and nurses' turnover intention.

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Hong, Eunyoung; Lee, Young Sook

2016-12-01

This study was designed to construct and test the structural equation modelling on nurses' turnover intention including emotional labour, job stress, emotional intelligence and burnout in order to identify the mediating effect of emotional intelligence between those variables. Emotional labour, job stress and burnout increase turnover intention of nurses. However, emotional intelligence is negatively correlated with emotional labour and reduces job stress, burnout and turnover intention. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the goodness of fit of the hypothetical model of nurses' turnover intention. Research data were collected via questionnaires from 4 to 22 August 2014 and analysed using SPSS version 18.0 and AMOS version 20.0. The model fit indices for the hypothetical model were suitable for recommended. Emotional intelligence has decreasing effect on turnover intention through burnout, although its direct effect on turnover intention is not significant. Emotional intelligence has mediation effect between emotional labour and burnout. This study's results suggest that increasing emotional intelligence might critically decrease nurses' turnover intention by reducing the effect of emotional labour on burnout. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

[Emotional valence of words in schizophrenia].

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Jalenques, I; Enjolras, J; Izaute, M

2013-06-01

reflected the more neutral emotional valences collected. The results suggested that the emotional valences for the negative words were significantly greater in the patients than is observed in the collected norms (Ppositive words was significantly lower in the patients than in the collected norms (Pwords differed significantly in terms of evaluated emotional valence between patients and young adults. Despite their overall emotional impairments, the patients with schizophrenia had a very similar perception of word valence as controls. This result suggests that the emotional perception of most emotional words is preserved. This research provides data important to consider during rehabilitation. Moreover, this study will make it possible to select stimuli for use in future studies of emotion in patients. Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.

Emotional Laour in Teaching Secondary Physical Education

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Ye Hoon Lee

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Background: Teaching physical education is an emotion-laden context which requires physical education teachers to engage in emotional labor in order to foster their well-being, as well as student’s outcomes. Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictability of emotional labour strategies on job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion among secondary physical education teachers in South Korea. Specifically, the four forms of emotional labour (i.e., surface acting, deep acting, genuine positive expression, and genuine negative expression were hypothesized to have different influences on job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Method: A total of 225 full-time physical education teachers were invited to participate in the paper-pencil survey. The questionnaires contained items measuring the four forms of emotional labour, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction which had been modified to fit the physical education setting. Results: The results indicated that surface acting, genuine positive expression, and genuine expression was significantly associated with emotional exhaustion whereas only genuine positive expression was significantly associated with job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Finally, emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between surface acting and job satisfaction, genuine positive expression and job satisfaction, and genuine negative expression and job satisfaction. Conclusion: These results suggest that emotional labour plays a critical role on physical education teachers’ well-being and job attitude.  Keywords: emotional regulation, physical education teacher, genuine expression, Asian culture, surface acting

Training directionally selective motion pathways can significantly improve reading efficiency

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Lawton, Teri

2004-06-01

This study examined whether perceptual learning at early levels of visual processing would facilitate learning at higher levels of processing. This was examined by determining whether training the motion pathways by practicing leftright movement discrimination, as found previously, would improve the reading skills of inefficient readers significantly more than another computer game, a word discrimination game, or the reading program offered by the school. This controlled validation study found that practicing left-right movement discrimination 5-10 minutes twice a week (rapidly) for 15 weeks doubled reading fluency, and significantly improved all reading skills by more than one grade level, whereas inefficient readers in the control groups barely improved on these reading skills. In contrast to previous studies of perceptual learning, these experiments show that perceptual learning of direction discrimination significantly improved reading skills determined at higher levels of cognitive processing, thereby being generalized to a new task. The deficits in reading performance and attentional focus experienced by the person who struggles when reading are suggested to result from an information overload, resulting from timing deficits in the direction-selectivity network proposed by Russell De Valois et al. (2000), that following practice on direction discrimination goes away. This study found that practicing direction discrimination rapidly transitions the inefficient 7-year-old reader to an efficient reader.

Fronto-Limbic Brain Dysfunction during the Regulation of Emotion in Schizophrenia.

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Shaun M Eack

Full Text Available Schizophrenia is characterized by significant and widespread impairments in the regulation of emotion. Evidence is only recently emerging regarding the neural basis of these emotion regulation impairments, and few studies have focused on the regulation of emotion during effortful cognitive processing. To examine the neural correlates of deficits in effortful emotion regulation, schizophrenia outpatients (N = 20 and age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers (N = 20 completed an emotional faces n-back task to assess the voluntary attentional control subprocess of emotion regulation during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Behavioral measures of emotional intelligence and emotion perception were administered to examine brain-behavior relationships with emotion processing outcomes. Results indicated that patients with schizophrenia demonstrated significantly greater activation in the bilateral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal, and right orbitofrontal cortices during the effortful regulation of positive emotional stimuli, and reduced activity in these same regions when regulating negative emotional information. The opposite pattern of results was observed in healthy individuals. Greater fronto-striatal response to positive emotional distractors was significantly associated with deficits in facial emotion recognition. These findings indicate that abnormalities in striatal and prefrontal cortical systems may be related to deficits in the effortful emotion regulatory process of attentional control in schizophrenia, and may significantly contribute to emotion processing deficits in the disorder.

Emotion Comprehension: The Impact of Nonverbal Intelligence

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Albanese, Ottavia; De Stasio, Simona; Di Chiacchio, Carlo; Fiorilli, Caterina; Pons, Francisco

2010-01-01

A substantial body of research has established that emotion understanding develops throughout early childhood and has identified three hierarchical developmental phases: external, mental, and reflexive. The authors analyzed nonverbal intelligence and its effect on children's improvement of emotion understanding and hypothesized that cognitive…

Studying emotion induced by music through a crowdsourcing game

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Aljanaki, A.; Wiering, F.; Veltkamp, R.C.

One of the major reasons why people find music so enjoyable is its emotional impact. Creating emotion-based playlists is a natural way of organizing music. The usability of online music streaming services could be greatly improved by developing emotion-based access methods, and automatic music

Differential Effects of Emotion-Focused Therapy and Psychoeducation in Facilitating Forgiveness and Letting Go of Emotional Injuries

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Greenberg, Leslie J.; Warwar, Serine H.; Malcolm, Wanda M.

2008-01-01

This study compared the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy (EFT) involving gestalt empty-chair dialogue in the treatment of individuals who were emotionally injured by a significant other with therapy in a psychoeducation group designed to deal with these injuries. In addition, this study examined aspects of the emotional process of…

Differential emotional processing in concrete and abstract words.

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Yao, Bo; Keitel, Anne; Bruce, Gillian; Scott, Graham G; O'Donnell, Patrick J; Sereno, Sara C

2018-02-12

Emotion (positive and negative) words are typically recognized faster than neutral words. Recent research suggests that emotional valence, while often treated as a unitary semantic property, may be differentially represented in concrete and abstract words. Studies that have explicitly examined the interaction of emotion and concreteness, however, have demonstrated inconsistent patterns of results. Moreover, these findings may be limited as certain key lexical variables (e.g., familiarity, age of acquisition) were not taken into account. We investigated the emotion-concreteness interaction in a large-scale, highly controlled lexical decision experiment. A 3 (Emotion: negative, neutral, positive) × 2 (Concreteness: abstract, concrete) design was used, with 45 items per condition and 127 participants. We found a significant interaction between emotion and concreteness. Although positive and negative valenced words were recognized faster than neutral words, this emotion advantage was significantly larger in concrete than in abstract words. We explored potential contributions of participant alexithymia level and item imageability to this interactive pattern. We found that only word imageability significantly modulated the emotion-concreteness interaction. While both concrete and abstract emotion words are advantageously processed relative to comparable neutral words, the mechanisms of this facilitation are paradoxically more dependent on imageability in abstract words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Comparison of Emotional Maturity in Boys adolescents with Down Syndrome(Research in Normal and Exceptional Schools

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sahel Hemmati

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Objective: This research is compromised emotional maturity in boys’ adolescents with Down syndrome (12-18 years that study in formal and exceptional schools. Materials & Methods: At first 15 boy’s students with DS that study in formal school matched with 15 students in Exceptional school (IQ, , age, family education and socioeconomic state were same . Then EMS (Emotional Maturity Scale was tested by researchers. Results: Adolescents with DS in formal schools are significantly different and have better scale in emotional maturity and their fields. (P<0.001 Conclusion: Emotional maturity in adolescents with DS in formal schools is positive and better than peers in Exceptional classs This result is helpful for improvement integrated education system. .

Ability-versus skill-based assessment of emotional intelligence.

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Bradberry, Travis R; Su, Lac D

2006-01-01

Emotional intelligence has received an intense amount of attention in leadership circles during the last decade and continuing debate exists concerning the best method for measuring this construct. This study analyzed leader emotional intelligence scores, measured via skill and ability methodologies, against leader job performance. Two hundred twelve employees from three organizations participated in this study. Scores on the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal, a skill-based assessment, were positively, though not significantly, correlated with scores on the MSCEIT, an ability-based assessment of emotional intelligence. Scores on the MSCEIT did not have a significant relationship with job performance in this study, whereas, scores on the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal had a strong link to leader job performance. The four subcomponents of the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal were examined against job performance. Relationship management was a stronger predictor of leader job performance than the other three subcomponents. Social awareness was the single emotional intelligence skill that did not have a significant link to leader job performance. Factor analyses yielded a two-component model of emotional intelligence encompassing personal and social competence, rather than confirmation of a four-part taxonomy.

Emotional Self-Efficacy, Emotional Empathy and Emotional Approach Coping as Sources of Happiness

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Tarık Totan

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Among the many variables affecting happiness, there are those that arise from emotional factors. In this study, the hypothesis stating that happiness is affected by emotional self-efficacy, emotional empathy and emotional approach coping has been examined using the path model. A total of 334 university students participated in this study, 229 of whom were females and 105 being males. Oxford Happiness Questionnaire-Short Form, Emotional Self-efficacy Scale, Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale, The Emotional Approach Coping Scale and personal information form have been used as data acquisition tools. As a result of path analysis, it was determined that the predicted path from emotional empathy to emotional approach coping was insignificant and thus it was taken out of the model. According to the modified path model, it was determined that there is a positive relationship between emotional self- efficacy and emotional empathy, that emotional self-efficacy positively affects emotional approach coping and happiness, that emotional empathy also positively affects happiness and that emotional approach coping also positively affects happiness.

Emotion introspection and regulation in depression.

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Herwig, Uwe; Opialla, Sarah; Cattapan, Katja; Wetter, Thomas C; Jäncke, Lutz; Brühl, Annette B

2018-07-30

Depressed patients suffer from an impairment to voluntarily influence and regulate their unpleasant emotional state. Strengthening the mental ability to interfere with dysfunctional emotion processing may be beneficial in treating depression. According to models of emotion processing this may be done by successful down-regulation of enhanced amygdala activity. We investigated short periods of intentional emotion-introspection compared with cognitive self-reflection as two domains of self-awareness in terms of effects on emotion regulation. Thirty depressed patients performed twelve second periods of emotion-introspection, self-reflection and a neutral condition during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We analyzed brain activation in the patients with depression by means of whole brain, region of interest and connectivity analyses. Amygdala activity decreased during emotion-introspection relative to self-reflection and to the neutral condition, whereby left amygdala was inversely activated relative to the left insula. Insula activity itself was correlated with medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation. In conclusion, depressed patients are able to down-regulate amygdala activity by emotion-introspection. This may be interpreted as well-working emotion regulation supposedly induced by PFC connections mediated via insula. The finding supports the application of emotion-introspection, a mindfulness-related process, in a clinical setting as an element of psychotherapy to train and improve emotion regulation. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Neural correlates of experienced moral emotion: an fMRI investigation of emotion in response to prejudice feedback.

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Fourie, Melike M; Thomas, Kevin G F; Amodio, David M; Warton, Christopher M R; Meintjes, Ernesta M

2014-01-01

Guilt, shame, and embarrassment are quintessential moral emotions with important regulatory functions for the individual and society. Moral emotions are, however, difficult to study with neuroimaging methods because their elicitation is more intricate than that of basic emotions. Here, using functional MRI (fMRI), we employed a novel social prejudice paradigm to examine specific brain regions associated with real-time moral emotion, focusing on guilt and related moral-negative emotions. The paradigm induced intense moral-negative emotion (primarily guilt) in 22 low-prejudice individuals through preprogrammed feedback indicating implicit prejudice against Black and disabled people. fMRI data indicated that this experience of moral-negative emotion was associated with increased activity in anterior paralimbic structures, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and anterior insula, in addition to areas associated with mentalizing, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus. Of significance was prominent conflict-related activity in the supragenual ACC, which is consistent with theories proposing an association between acute guilt and behavioral inhibition. Finally, a significant negative association between self-reported guilt and neural activity in the pregenual ACC suggested a role of self-regulatory processes in response to moral-negative affect. These findings are consistent with the multifaceted self-regulatory functions of moral-negative emotions in social behavior.

An Investigation into Emotional Intelligence, Foreign Language Anxiety and Empathy through a Cognitive-Affective Course in an EFL Context

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Rouhani, Ali

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Emotional intelligence, as concerned with how an individual recognizes and regulates his or her emotions, has been in limelight quite recently. The present study seeks to fill a small gap in the literature on emotional intelligence, together with foreign language anxiety and empathy. To this end, short literary readings are used in a cognitive-affective reading-based course to see how emotional intelligence, foreign language anxiety and empathy are affected. Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2002 Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT, Cooper's (1996/1997 EQ-Map, Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope's (1986 Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Test (FLCAS and Caruso and Mayer's (1998 Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (MDEES were administered to 70 Iranian EFL undergraduate students in a pretest posttest quasi-experimental design. MANOVA and ANCOVA were conducted. The results revealed that the cognitive-affective reading-based course in which literary readings were used significantly improved the subjects' emotional intelligence scores from the MSCEIT measure as well as empathy (MDEES scores, but significantly decreased their foreign language anxiety (FLCAS scores. The pedagogical implications for learners, teachers, educators and materials developers are presented.

Speaker emotion recognition: from classical classifiers to deep neural networks

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Mezghani, Eya; Charfeddine, Maha; Nicolas, Henri; Ben Amar, Chokri

2018-04-01

Speaker emotion recognition is considered among the most challenging tasks in recent years. In fact, automatic systems for security, medicine or education can be improved when considering the speech affective state. In this paper, a twofold approach for speech emotion classification is proposed. At the first side, a relevant set of features is adopted, and then at the second one, numerous supervised training techniques, involving classic methods as well as deep learning, are experimented. Experimental results indicate that deep architecture can improve classification performance on two affective databases, the Berlin Dataset of Emotional Speech and the SAVEE Dataset Surrey Audio-Visual Expressed Emotion.

Emotional intelligence: a primer for practitioners in human communication disorders.

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Taylor, Brian

2005-05-01

Emerging research clearly shows a link between emotions and the overall productivity of the participants in any service organization or business. The ability to understand one's own emotions and the emotions of others, and to express feelings in a proactive manner, is referred to as "emotional intelligence." The purpose of this article is to introduce the essential components of emotional intelligence and provide practical strategies for improving one's own emotional intelligence and that of colleagues, staff, or clients.

Dealing with emotions when the ability to cry is hampered: emotion processing and regulation in patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome.

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van Leeuwen, Ninke; Bossema, Ercolie R; van Middendorp, Henriët; Kruize, Aike A; Bootsma, Hendrika; Bijlsma, Johannes W J; Geenen, Rinie

2012-01-01

The hampered ability to cry in patients with Sjögren's syndrome may affect their ways of dealing with emotions. The aim of this study was to examine differences in emotion processing and regulation between people with and without Sjögren's syndrome and correlations of emotion processing and regulation with mental well-being. In 300 patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome and 100 demographically matched control participants (mean age 56.8 years, 93% female), emotion processing (affect intensity and alexithymia, i.e. difficulty identifying and describing feelings), emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal, suppression and expression of emotions), and mental well-being were assessed. Criteria for clinical alexithymia applied to 22% of the patients and 12% of the control participants; patients had significantly more difficulty identifying feelings than control participants. No other significant differences in emotion processing and emotion regulation were found. In patients, the emotion processing styles affect intensity and alexithymia (0.32emotion regulation strategy suppression of emotions (r=0.13) significantly correlated with worse mental well-being, which is about similar to control participants. Processing and regulating emotions in patients with Sjögren's syndrome does not deviate from normal with one exception: a relatively large number of patients is alexithymic. As in the general population, in patients with Sjögren's syndrome the more intense and deficient processing and regulation of emotions is associated with worse mental well-being. This study indicates that, except for selected patients, processing and regulation of emotions is not a key therapeutic issue for the majority of patients with Sjögren's syndrome.

The jingle and jangle of emotion assessment: Imprecise measurement, casual scale usage, and conceptual fuzziness in emotion research.

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Weidman, Aaron C; Steckler, Conor M; Tracy, Jessica L

2017-03-01

Although affective science has seen an explosion of interest in measuring subjectively experienced distinct emotional states, most existing self-report measures tap broad affect dimensions and dispositional emotional tendencies, rather than momentary distinct emotions. This raises the question of how emotion researchers are measuring momentary distinct emotions in their studies. To address this question, we reviewed the self-report measurement practices regularly used for the purpose of assessing momentary distinct emotions, by coding these practices as observed in a representative sample of articles published in Emotion from 2001-2011 (n = 467 articles; 751 studies; 356 measurement instances). This quantitative review produced several noteworthy findings. First, researchers assess many purportedly distinct emotions (n = 65), a number that differs substantially from previously developed emotion taxonomies. Second, researchers frequently use scales that were not systematically developed, and that include items also used to measure at least 1 other emotion on a separate scale in a separate study. Third, the majority of scales used include only a single item, and had unknown reliability. Together, these tactics may create ambiguity regarding which emotions are being measured in empirical studies, and conceptual inconsistency among measures of purportedly identical emotions across studies. We discuss the implications of these problematic practices, and conclude with recommendations for how the field might improve the way it measures emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

The four key characteristics of interpersonal emotion regulation.

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Niven, Karen

2017-10-01

Emotion researchers are increasingly interested in processes by which people influence others' feelings. Although one such process, interpersonal emotion regulation, has received particular attention in recent years, there remains confusion about exactly how to define this process. The present article aims to distinguish interpersonal emotion regulation from other, related processes by outlining its four key characteristics. Specifically, interpersonal emotion regulation is presented as a process of (i) regulation, that (ii) has an affective target, (iii) is deliberate, and (iv) has a social target. Considering these characteristics raises questions for future research concerning factors that may influence the process of interpersonal emotion regulation, why interpersonal emotion regulation sometimes fails, and whether interventions can improve people's use of interpersonal emotion regulation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotional awareness and delusions in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.

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D'Antonio, Emily; Kahn, Jennifer; McKelvey, Jennifer; Berenbaum, Howard; Serper, Mark R

2015-02-01

Emotion plays a significant role in schizophrenia. Emotional awareness (i.e., attention to and clarity of emotions) is associated with a wide range of outcomes. Given that individuals with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder differ in the significance of their mood symptoms, the present research examined whether the association between emotional awareness and delusions differs for these two groups of patients. Emotional awareness (i.e., attention to and clarity of emotions) was measured with self-report in a sample of 44 individuals diagnosed with either schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Clinical ratings of delusions were made using the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms. For the sample as a whole, individuals with higher levels of attention to emotion tended to have more severe delusions. In addition, diagnostic group significantly moderated the relation between emotional clarity and delusions. Conclusions regarding causality cannot be drawn due to the cross-sectional design. Replication is particularly important given the small sample sizes. The present research indicates that emotional awareness is associated with delusions. The results raise the possibility that the emotional factors that contribute to delusional beliefs among individuals with schizophrenia differ in at least some ways from the emotional factors that contribute to delusional beliefs among individuals with schizoaffective disorder. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Emotional intelligence score and performance of dental undergraduates.

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Hasegawa, Yuh; Ninomiya, Kazunori; Fujii, Kazuyuki; Sekimoto, Tsuneo

2016-09-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and undergraduate dental students' ability to deal with different situations of communication in a clinical dentistry practical training course of communication skills. Fourth-year students in 2012 and in 2013 at the Nippon Dental University School of Life Dentistry at Niigata participated in the survey. The total number of participating students was 129 (88 males and 41 females). The students were asked to complete the Japanese version of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test in communication skills. Female students tended to have significantly higher EI score than males. The EI score in the group with high-grade academic performers was higher than in the low-grade group. The influence of EI on academic performance appeared to be mainly due to the students' ability to accurately perceiving emotions and to their ability to understand emotional issues. The importance of EI may also lie in its ability to parse out personality factors from more changeable aspects of a person's behavior. Although further studies are required, we believe that dental educators need to assume the responsibility to help students develop their emotional competencies that they will need to prosper in their chosen careers. In our conclusion, dental educators should support low achievers to increase their levels of self-confidence instead of concentrating mainly on improving their technical skill and academic performance. This may lead to upgrading their skills for managing emotions and to changing their learning approach.

EMOTIONS AND REASONING IN MORAL DECISION MAKING

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V. V. Nadurak

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Purpose of the research is the study of relationship between emotional and rational factors in moral decisions making. Methodology. The work is primarily based on the analysis and synthesis of the main empirical studies of the problem, each of which uses the methods of those sciences in which they were conducted (neurosciences. Originality. In general, the process of moral decision making cannot be described by a single simple model that would see only emotional or rational factor in foundation of this process. Moral decision making is characterized by different types of interaction between emotions and rational considerations. The influence of emotional and rational factors on moral decision is nonlinear: moral decision, which person makes, isn’t proportional to those emotions that preceded it and isn't unambiguously determined by them, because rational reasoning and contextual factors can significantly change it. Similarly, the reasoning that precede the decision is not necessarily reflected in the decision, because it can be significantly corrected by those emotions that accompany it. Conclusions. The process of moral decision making involves complex, heterogeneous interaction between emotional and rational factors. There are three main types of such interaction: first, the reasoning serves to rationalize prior emotional response; second, there are cases when reasoning precedes emotional reactions and determines it; third, interaction between these factors is characterized by cyclic causality (emotion impacts reasoning, which in turn impacts emotions. The influence of emotions or rational reasoning on moral decision is nonlinear.

Speech emotion recognition methods: A literature review

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Basharirad, Babak; Moradhaseli, Mohammadreza

2017-10-01

Recently, attention of the emotional speech signals research has been boosted in human machine interfaces due to availability of high computation capability. There are many systems proposed in the literature to identify the emotional state through speech. Selection of suitable feature sets, design of a proper classifications methods and prepare an appropriate dataset are the main key issues of speech emotion recognition systems. This paper critically analyzed the current available approaches of speech emotion recognition methods based on the three evaluating parameters (feature set, classification of features, accurately usage). In addition, this paper also evaluates the performance and limitations of available methods. Furthermore, it highlights the current promising direction for improvement of speech emotion recognition systems.

Corrective interpersonal experience in psychodrama group therapy: a comprehensive process analysis of significant therapeutic events.

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McVea, Charmaine S; Gow, Kathryn; Lowe, Roger

2011-07-01

This study investigated the process of resolving painful emotional experience during psychodrama group therapy, by examining significant therapeutic events within seven psychodrama enactments. A comprehensive process analysis of four resolved and three not-resolved cases identified five meta-processes which were linked to in-session resolution. One was a readiness to engage in the therapeutic process, which was influenced by client characteristics and the client's experience of the group; and four were therapeutic events: (1) re-experiencing with insight; (2) activating resourcefulness; (3) social atom repair with emotional release; and (4) integration. A corrective interpersonal experience (social atom repair) healed the sense of fragmentation and interpersonal disconnection associated with unresolved emotional pain, and emotional release was therapeutically helpful when located within the enactment of this new role relationship. Protagonists who experienced resolution reported important improvements in interpersonal functioning and sense of self which they attributed to this experience.

A Pilot Study Examining a Computer-Based Intervention to Improve Recognition and Understanding of Emotions in Young Children with Communication and Social Deficits.

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Romero, Neri L

2017-06-01

A common social impairment in individuals with ASD is difficulty interpreting and or predicting emotions of others. To date, several interventions targeting teaching emotion recognition and understanding have been utilized both by researchers and practitioners. The results suggest that teaching emotion recognition is possible, but that the results do not generalize to non-instructional contexts. This study sought to replicate earlier findings of a positive impact of teaching emotion recognition using a computer-based intervention and to extend it by testing for generalization on live models in the classroom setting. Two boys and one girl, four to eight years in age, educated in self-contained classrooms for students with communication and social skills deficits, participated in this study. A multiple probe across participants design was utilized. Measures of emotion recognition and understanding were assessed at baseline, intervention, and one month post-intervention to determine maintenance effects. Social validity was assessed through parent and teacher questionnaires. All participants showed improvements in measures assessing their recognition of emotions in faces, generalized knowledge to live models, and maintained gains one month post intervention. These preliminary results are encouraging and should be utilized to inform a group design, in order to test efficacy with a larger population. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotionally conditioning the target-speech voice enhances recognition of the target speech under "cocktail-party" listening conditions.

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Lu, Lingxi; Bao, Xiaohan; Chen, Jing; Qu, Tianshu; Wu, Xihong; Li, Liang

2018-05-01

Under a noisy "cocktail-party" listening condition with multiple people talking, listeners can use various perceptual/cognitive unmasking cues to improve recognition of the target speech against informational speech-on-speech masking. One potential unmasking cue is the emotion expressed in a speech voice, by means of certain acoustical features. However, it was unclear whether emotionally conditioning a target-speech voice that has none of the typical acoustical features of emotions (i.e., an emotionally neutral voice) can be used by listeners for enhancing target-speech recognition under speech-on-speech masking conditions. In this study we examined the recognition of target speech against a two-talker speech masker both before and after the emotionally neutral target voice was paired with a loud female screaming sound that has a marked negative emotional valence. The results showed that recognition of the target speech (especially the first keyword in a target sentence) was significantly improved by emotionally conditioning the target speaker's voice. Moreover, the emotional unmasking effect was independent of the unmasking effect of the perceived spatial separation between the target speech and the masker. Also, (skin conductance) electrodermal responses became stronger after emotional learning when the target speech and masker were perceptually co-located, suggesting an increase of listening efforts when the target speech was informationally masked. These results indicate that emotionally conditioning the target speaker's voice does not change the acoustical parameters of the target-speech stimuli, but the emotionally conditioned vocal features can be used as cues for unmasking target speech.

Beyond Emotion Regulation: Emotion Utilization and Adaptive Functioning

OpenAIRE

Izard, Carroll; Stark, Kevin; Trentacosta, Christopher; Schultz, David

2008-01-01

Recent research indicates that emotionality, emotion information processing, emotion knowledge, and discrete emotion experiences may influence and interact with emotion utilization, that is, the effective use of the inherently adaptive and motivational functions of emotions. Strategies individuals learn for emotion modulation and emotion utilization become stabilized in emerging affective-cognitive structures, or emotion schemas. In these emotion schemas, the feeling/motivational component of...

Selective Attention to Emotion in the Aging Brain

Science.gov (United States)

Samanez-Larkin, Gregory R.; Robertson, Elaine R.; Mikels, Joseph A.; Carstensen, Laura L.; Gotlib, Ian H.

2009-01-01

A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improves across the adult life span. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that this pattern of findings reflects the prioritization of emotional goals. Given that goal-directed behavior requires attentional control, the present study was designed to investigate age differences in selective attention to emotional lexical stimuli under conditions of emotional interference. Both neural and behavioral measures were obtained during an experiment in which participants completed a flanker task that required them to make categorical judgments about emotional and non-emotional stimuli. Older adults showed interference in both the behavioral and neural measures on control trials, but not on emotion trials. Although older adults typically show relatively high levels of interference and reduced cognitive control during non-emotional tasks, they appear to be able successfully to reduce interference during emotional tasks. PMID:19739908

Negative incidental emotions augment fairness sensitivity.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Cuizhen; Chai, Jing Wen; Yu, Rongjun

2016-04-22

Previous studies have shown that task-unrelated emotions induced incidentally exert carryover effects on individuals' subsequent decisions in financial negotiations. However, the specificity of these emotion effects are not clear. In three experiments, we systematically investigated the role of seven transiently induced basic emotions (disgust, sadness, anger, fear, happiness, surprise and neutral) on rejection of unfair offers using the ultimatum game. We found that all negative emotions (disgust, sadness, anger and fear), but not happiness or surprise, significantly increased rejection rates, suggesting that the effect of incidental negative emotions on fairness is not specific to the type of negative emotion. Our findings highlight the role of fleeting emotions in biasing decision-making processes and suggest that all incidental negative emotions exert similar effects on fairness sensitivity, possibly by potentiating attention towards negative aspects of the situation.

Do emergency nurses have enough emotional intelligence?

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Codier, Estelle; Codier, David

2015-06-01

A significant body of research suggests there is a correlation between measured emotional intelligence (EI) abilities and performance in nursing. The four critical elements of EI, namely the abilities to identify emotions correctly in self and others, using emotions to support reasoning, understanding emotions and managing emotions, apply to emergency care settings and are important for safe patient care, teamwork, retention and burnout prevention. This article describes 'emotional labour' and the importance of EI abilities for emergency nurses, and suggests that such abilities should be considered core competencies for the profession.