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PubMed1987

The aprosodias: further functional-anatomical evidence for the organisation of affective language in the right hemisphere.

Fourteen right-handed patients with right hemispheric strokes were examined for disorders of affective language in order to further define the clinical-anatomical correlates of the aprosodias. A bedside evaluation strategy and CT scan mappings were utilised to make these comparisons. There were six patients with motor aprosodia, one with global aprosodia, two with conduction aprosodia, one with sensory aprosodia, one with transcortical sensory aprosodia, one with pure affective deafness and two with normal examinations of affect. Functional-anatomical correlations were consistent with those predicted previously. Recovery of affective language function in selected cases was characterised by improvements in affective-prosodic repetition and/or evolution into other aprosodic subtypes. Our results lend further support to the hypothesis that the organisation of affective language in the right hemisphere mirrors that of propositional language in the left hemisphere.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Alexithymia and negative affect: relationship to cigarette smoking, nicotine dependence, and smoking cessation.

Alexithymia is associated with substance abuse and may interfere with successful psychotherapy. Alexithymia's relation to smoking, nicotine dependence, and smoking cessation therapy is unknown, and potentially overlaps with negative affect. Three studies addressed the relations between alexithymia, negative affect, and smoking. In Study 1, 67 young adult smokers were more depressed than 370 past or never smokers, but no different on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale total or subscale scores. In Study 2, negative affect--but not alexithymia--was related to greater nicotine dependence among 99 chronic smokers. In Study 3, alexithymia tended to predict increased patient participation in cognitive-behavioral therapy for smoking; low nicotine dependence--but neither alexithymia nor negative affect--predicted abstinence from smoking at treatment end. Alexithymia appears to be independent of negative affect and unrelated to cigarette smoking or nicotine dependence, suggesting that the affect regulation deficits in alexithymia play a negligible role in nicotine addiction.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Prevalence of seasonal affective disorder in Alaska.

OBJECTIVE: The goals of this study are to provide estimates of the prevalence of seasonal affective disorder in Alaska, to examine sociodemographic correlates, and to evaluate the relation between seasonal affective disorder and general depression. METHOD: A random sample of 283 residents of Fairbanks who had lived in Alaska for 3 years or more were interviewed with the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D Scale). RESULTS: Twenty-six (9.2%) of the subjects met diagnostic criteria for seasonal affective disorder, one of the highest figures yet reported. These cyclic winter affective disorders occurred more often in women than men (ratio = 3:2) and were less prevalent among residents who were older than 40 years of age. Assessment of depression with the CES-D Scale supported the diagnostic classification of respondents and the differentiation of seasonal affective disorder from other depression. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports the conclusions that seasonal affective disorder is prevalent in northern populations and that sex and age may represent the major risk factors that differentiate it from the general experience of depression in northern communities.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Rates of seasonal affective disorder in children and adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: The authors estimated the frequency of seasonal affective disorder in children and adolescents and examined the relationship of this rate to age and pubertal status. METHOD: A modified version of the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire was distributed to 2,267 students at a middle school and a high school in a suburb of Washington, D.C. A case diagnosis was made if the respondent scored over 18 and also indicated that the change of seasons was at least a "pretty bad" problem. RESULTS: A total of 1,871 questionnaires (82.5%) were returned. Sixty probable cases of seasonal affective disorder (3.3%) were identified among the 1,835 surveys analyzed. Age was directly correlated with the frequency of seasonal affective disorder, and the rate was higher in postpubertal girls. Differences between the subjects with and without identified cases of seasonal affective disorder were seen in the symptom endorsement patterns, particularly for "feel worst," "least energy," "most irritable," and "socialize least." CONCLUSIONS: These pilot data suggest that between 1.7% and 5.5% of 9-19-year-old children may have seasonal affective disorder. Further research is warranted, particularly that which examines the relationship between seasonal affective disorder and puberty.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Winter seasonal affective disorder: a follow-up study of the first 59 patients of the National Institute of Mental Health Seasonal Studies Program.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to characterize the long-term course of patients with seasonal affective disorder. METHOD: The first 59 patients with winter seasonal affective disorder who had entered winter protocols were retrospectively followed up after a mean interval of 8.8 years. Detailed life charts were constructed through use of a semistructured interview and collateral records. RESULTS: The disorder of 25 patients (42%) remained purely seasonal, with regular recurrences of winter depression and no depression or treatment through any summer. The course of illness was complicated by varying degrees of nonseasonal depression in 26 patients (44%). The disorders of eight patients (14%) had fully remitted. Certain features of the group with complicated seasonal affective disorder suggested that they were more severely ill. Twenty-four patients (41%) continued to use light treatment regularly throughout the follow-up period. Light treatment was preferred to medication for winter recurrences, although antidepressants had been used in the winter by most (63%) of the patients who still used lights at follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: The pattern of winter depressions and summer remissions remained fairly persistent over time in this group of patients. The temporal distribution of depressive episodes both within and across individual patients was consistent with the results of several recent follow-up studies of seasonal affective disorder, providing support for the predictive and construct validity of the Rosenthal et al. diagnosis of winter seasonal affective disorder. Light treatment, while remaining a safe and satisfactory treatment for many, may be insufficient for more severely ill patients. The appearance of nonseasonal depressions in patients with winter seasonal affective disorder may be associated with greater severity of illness and less responsiveness to light treatment.

Antidepressive Agents↗
PubMed2006

Neuroticism and affective instability: the same or different?

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to examine the correlates and consequences of two constructs related to affective experience: neuroticism and affective instability. METHOD: One hundred thirty-two patients were assessed at intake for axis I and II symptoms, general personality traits, and specific impairments, including impairments in interpersonal functioning. The data included responses to structured and semistructured interviews, self-reports of interpersonal problems, and reports of interpersonal problems from significant others. Clinical ratings of axis I and II symptoms and of impairment were made by using the LEAD (i.e., longitudinal, expert, all data) consensus approach. Ninety-one of the 132 patients were reassessed at 12-month follow-up. RESULTS: Neuroticism and affective instability manifested varied concurrent relations, with neuroticism being strongly related to an anxious, avoidant style and affective instability related to more externalizing personality styles. Prospectively, neuroticism predicted later symptoms, occupational impairment, and global dysfunction, whereas affective instability predicted romantic impairment. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that neuroticism and affective instability--which are considered core aspects of personality pathology--are related but distinct constructs with unique correlates and different predictive abilities.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Psychiatric resident conceptualizations of mood and affect within the mental status examination.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the ways in which psychiatry residents conceptualize the terms "mood" and "affect," a 14-item questionnaire was sent to residency programs in New York. METHOD: The questions consisted of possible definitions of mood and affect; all questions required a "true" or "false" response. Residents (N=99) were asked how they viewed mood and affect from a temporal perspective (i.e., sustained versus momentary) and in terms of an objective-subjective (or external-internal) dichotomy. RESULTS: There were inconsistencies in the temporal view of mood (said to be sustained by 60.6% and momentary by 50.5%) and affect ("pervasive" by 26.3% and "momentary" by 66.3%). Residents overwhelmingly defined mood as being subjective and internal and affect as being objective and external. CONCLUSIONS: If mood and affect are to be viewed from both perspectives, psychiatrists must infer the enduring internal emotional tone (mood) of a patient over an entire interview.

Affect↗
PubMed2005

Neuropsychological impairment and its neurological correlates in adult offspring with heightened risk for schizophrenia and affective psychosis.

OBJECTIVE: Schizophrenia is generally considered to be a neurodevelopmental disorder reflected in findings of neuropsychological impairments and neurological abnormality in patients and their relatives. The authors investigated whether neuropsychological impairments are related to neurological abnormality and whether such deficits also characterize risk for affective psychosis. METHOD: In a longitudinal study with a 93% rate of effective follow-up, the authors investigated neuropsychological impairment and its relation to neurological abnormality at a mean age of 22.3 years in 74 offspring of mothers with a history of psychotic disorders (38 offspring with heightened risk for schizophrenia and 36 with risk for affective psychosis) and 88 normal-risk offspring born to mothers with no history of psychosis. RESULTS: Offspring with genetically heightened risk for schizophrenia showed significantly impaired verbal memory, selective attention, and grammatical reasoning, compared with normal-risk offspring. Having impaired verbal memory, attention, and grammatical reasoning functions identified a significantly larger subgroup (16%) among offspring with heightened risk for schizophrenia than among offspring with heightened risk for affective psychosis (0%) and among normal-risk offspring (3%). Multiple neuropsychological functions were significantly related to neurological abnormality in offspring with heightened risk for schizophrenia and in normal-risk offspring but not among offspring with heightened risk for affective psychosis. The extension of schizophrenia and affective psychosis risk groups to include additional offspring of mothers with psychosis-spectrum disorders yielded results similar to those for the core risk groups. CONCLUSIONS: The neurocognitive dysfunction attending heightened risk for schizophrenia is likely based on genetically mediated neurodevelopmental factors, with schizophrenia and affective psychosis belonging to different biological spheres.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Neuropsychological studies of linguistic and affective facial expressions in deaf signers.

For deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL), facial behaviors function in two distinct ways: to convey affect (as with spoken languages) and to mark certain specific grammatical structures (e.g., relative clauses), thus subserving distinctly linguistic functions in ways that are unique to signed languages. The existence of two functionally different classes of facial behaviors raises questions concerning neural control of language and nonlanguage functions. Examining patterns of neural mediation for differential functions of facial expressions, linguistic versus affective, provides a unique perspective on the determinants of hemispheric specialization. This paper presents two studies which explore facial expression production in deaf signers. An experimental paradigm uses chimeric stimuli of ASL linguistic and affective facial expressions (photographs of right vs. left composites of posed expressions) to explore patterns of productive asymmetries in brain-intact signers. A second study examines facial expression production in left and right brain lesioned deaf signers, specifying unique patterns of spared and impaired functions. Both studies show striking differences between affective and linguistic facial expressions. The data indicate that for deaf signing individuals, affective expressions appear to be primarily mediated by the right-hemisphere. In contrast, these studies provide evidence that linguistic facial expressions involve left hemisphere mediation. This represents an important finding, since one and the same muscular system is involved in two functionally distinct types of facial expressions. For hearing persons, the right-hemisphere may be predominant in affective facial expression, but for deaf signers, hemispheric specialization for facial signals is influenced by the purposes those signals serve. Taken together, the data provide important new insights into the determinants of the specialization of the cerebral hemispheres in humans.

Affect↗
PubMed2003

Affect- and self-based models of relationships between daily events and daily well-being.

The present study examined affect- self-based explanatory models of relationships between daily events and daily well-being. Twice a week for up to 10 weeks, participants described the events that occurred each day and provided measures of their daily affect, self-esteem, and depressogenic thinking. Participants also provided trait-level measures of affect, depression, and self-esteem. Measures of daily well-being representing each model covaried jointly and independently with daily negative and positive events. Positive events buffered the effects of negative events on daily self-esteem and daily depressogenic thinking, whereas there was no buffering effect for daily affect. More depressed people were more reactive to positive events, and those higher in trait PA were less reactive to negative events. Buffering effects for self-esteem were pronounced for those with lower trait self-esteem, and buffering effects for daily depressogenic adjustment were now more pronounced for those with higher trait negative affect. The results suggest that affect- and self-based models provide complementary perspectives on relationships between psychological well-being and daily events.

Affect↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The influence of positive affect on clinical problem solving.

This study investigated the influence of positive affect, induced by report of success on an anagram task, on medical decision making among third-year medical students. The subjects were asked to decide which one of six hypothetical patients, each of whom had a solitary pulmonary nodule, was most likely to have lung cancer. They were asked to verbalize their clinical reasoning as they solved the problem. The positive-affect and control groups did not differ in the tendency to make a correct choice, but subjects in the positive-affect condition were significantly earlier in identifying their choices. These subjects were also significantly more likely to go beyond the assigned task, expressing interesting in the cases of the other patients and trying to think about their diagnosis, even though that task was not assigned. The positive-affect subjects also showed evidence of configural or integrative consideration of the material to a reliably greater extent than did control subjects, and there was significantly less evidence of confusion or disorganization in their protocols than in those of controls. These findings are compatible with earlier work suggesting a different organizational process and greater efficiency in decision making among people in whom positive affect had been induced, and with recent work suggesting that positive affect facilitates flexibility and integration in problem solving. They also indicate that these effects may apply to the problem-solving strategies of professionals in clinical problem-solving situations.

Affect↗
PubMed2006

Negative affect as a mediator between body dissatisfaction and extreme weight loss and muscle gain behaviors.

Negative affect has been found to mediate the relationship between body dissatisfaction and bulimia. However, it is unknown if this relationship also applies to disordered eating, excessive exercise and strategies to increase muscle for men or women. The aim of this study was to investigate whether negative and positive affect mediate the relationship between body dissatisfaction, and these body change strategies. Respondents were 93 men and 97 women (age range: 18-25 years), who completed measures of body dissatisfaction, positive and negative affect and body change strategies to lose weight or increase muscles. Body dissatisfaction was associated with strategies to lose weight, dietary restraint and bulimia for both genders. Negative affect mediated the relationship between dissatisfaction with muscles and strategies to lose weight, dietary restraint and bulimia for women only. The results confirm previous findings related to the association between negative affect and disordered eating for women. They also demonstrate the need to further investigate the impact of negative affect on body change strategies, particularly among men, and those strategies related to increasing muscles.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Service providers' reflections on the affective domain and its influence on decision-making about treatments for chronic pain.

OBJECTIVES: This study sought to explore why service providers, working within the complex area of chronic pain, do not believe that the affective domain influences their decision-making about treatments. METHODS: These results were extrapolated from a larger multistage study based on a series of iterative postal questionnaires. Stage 1 of the large study identified, via postal survey, what treatment components service providers identified as 'important'. In stage 2, a constructivist framework was used to develop an iterative Delphi questionnaire to explore service providers' rationale for these choices. Stage 3 also employed a Delphi process and asked participants to reflect on their previous comments. Stages 2 and 3 used postal questionnaires and summary reports from preceding rounds for background information. RESULTS: Most service providers clearly felt that 'affect' and 'self-image' had little influence on their decision-making compared to 'coherence' and 'purposiveness'. This report presents the findings of the Stage 3 questionnaire, in which participants were asked to reflect and comment on this low level of endorsement for the influence of affect and self-image. Seven themes emerged from the coded data: professionalism, self-protection, affect and experience, lack of reflective skills, ethos of altruism, lack of understanding, and model of practice. Analysis of these themes indicates a tension between what service providers feel they should do and what they actually do. DISCUSSION: Service providers felt that affect and self-image had little influence on their decision-making. However, there is growing evidence in the literature to suggest that it is not possible, or preferable, to divorce emotion from the clinical encounter. Chronic illnesses are complex systems that do not respond optimally to linear problem-solving. Access to a wide range of information, including the affective domain, is important for effective decision-making.

Affect↗
PubMed1995

Increased risk of affective disorders in males after second trimester prenatal exposure to the Dutch hunger winter of 1944-45.

BACKGROUND: Prenatal and perinatal factors have been linked to affective disorders. We therefore undertook an exploratory study to determine whether prenatal exposure to severe famine was associated with an increased risk of affective disorders. METHOD: Monthly birth cohorts that were exposed and unexposed to the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-45 were identified. The cumulative incidences of affective psychoses and neurotic depression (ICD-9 criteria) were compared between exposed and unexposed cohorts during each trimester of gestation. RESULTS: The relative risk (RR) of affective psychosis (broad and restricted definitions) among persons exposed to famine during the second trimester was significantly increased (broad: RR (95% confidence interval) = 1.62 (1.19, 2.20); restricted: 1.59 (1.14, 2.21)). Separate analysis by gender showed a significant association among males (broad: 2.26 (1.43, 3.57); restricted: 2.40 (1.49, 3.89), but not females (broad: 1.28 (0.84, 1.94); restricted: 1.17 (0.73, 1.76)). The risk of neurotic depression was not increased after prenatal famine exposure. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest a possible relationship between prenatal famine during the second trimester and affective psychosis, lending plausibility to reports that have associated affective psychoses with prenatal exposures. Further studies of this relationship are warranted.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Darwin and the neural bases of emotion and affective style.

This article presents an overview of ways to think about the brain and emotion and consider the role of evolution and expression in shaping the neural circuitry of affective processing. Issues pertaining to whether there are separate unique neural modules hard-wired for emotion processing or whether affective processing uses more generalized circuitry are considered. Relations between affect and cognition--specifically, memory--are examined from the perspective of overlapping neural systems. The role of individual differences in neural function in affective style are discussed, and the concepts of affective chronometry, or the time course of emotional responding and emotion regulation, are introduced. Finally, the extent to which certain emotional traits can be viewed as trainable skills is considered, and the relevance of work on neural plasticity to the skill framework is addressed. Data from a variety of sources using different types of measures is brought to bear on these questions, including neuroimaging and psychophysiological measures, studies of individuals of different ages ranging from early childhood to old age, studies of nonhuman primates, and observations of patients with localized brain damage. Emotions are viewed as varying in both type and dimension. Honoring brain circuitry in parsing the domain of affects will result in distinctions and differentiations that are not currently incorporated in traditional classification schemes.

Affect↗
PubMed2003

Relation of cognitive appraisal to cardiovascular reactivity, affect, and task engagement.

The relation of primary cognitive appraisals to cardiovascular reactivity, affect, task engagement, and perceived stress was examined in 56 men (ages 18-29). Systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), heart rate, preejection period, stroke index, cardiac index, and total peripheral resistance were assessed at rest and during performance of a computerized mental arithmetic task. Extending on prior investigations, threat and challenge appraisals were assessed independently from one another and from secondary appraisals. Positive and negative affect, task engagement, and levels of perceived stress were also assessed. Results indicated that threat (R2 =.08, p =.01), challenge (R2 =.14, p =.003), and their interaction (R2 =.11, p =.006) independently predicted DBP reactivity; DBP responses were greatest among participants with a high threat/low challenge pattern of appraisal. Threat appraisals predicted greater negative affect (R2 =.32) and perceived stress (R2 =.48), whereas challenge appraisals were related to greater positive affect (R2 =.44) and task engagement (R2 =.40, ps <.0001). Greater positive affect was correlated with increased SBP and DBP reactivity, and greater levels of task engagement with increased DBP response (ps < or = .002). Results suggest that primary cognitive appraisals are more potent predictors of affect and task engagement than cardiovascular reactivity.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed2002

Global affective memory for faces in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Eighteen (9 left, 9 right) epileptic patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and 20 control participants were evaluated. Participants were instructed to make global affective judgments of likeability in a face memory task or to make neutral piecemeal judgments of nose size during the encoding phase of the task. A main effect of better memory after using a global affective versus a neutral piecemeal encoding strategy was found. Patients with right sided abnormality performed more poorly in the global affective encoding condition than patients with left-sided abnormality or than the control participants. No differences were seen among groups for the neutral piecemeal condition. Further, unlike the left TLE patients and the control participants, the right TLE patients did not show better performance when using the global affective encoding strategy over the neutral piecemeal strategy. This is discussed in relation to the literature suggesting an important role for the right hemisphere in global affective processing and memory, as well as the literature indicating an important role for the amygdala in affective memory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Response styles in affect ratings: making a mountain out of a molehill.

Ratings of affect words are the most commonly used method to assess pleasant affect (PA) and unpleasant affect (UA). The reliance on self-reports would be problematic if affect ratings were heavily influenced by response styles. Several recent publications have indeed suggested (a) that the influence of response styles on affect ratings is pervasive, (b) that this influence can be controlled by variations of the response format using multitrait-multimethod models, and (c) the discriminant validity of PA and UA is spurious. In this article, we examined the evidence for these claims. We demonstrate that (a) response styles have a negligible effect on affect ratings, (b) multiple response formats produce the same results as a single response format, and (c) the discriminant validity of PA and UA is not a method artifact. Rather, evidence against discriminant validity is due to the use of inappropriate response formats that respondents interpreted as bipolar scales.

Affect↗