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Family emotional climate, depression, emotional triggering of asthma, and disease severity in pediatric asthma: examination of pathways of effect.

OBJECTIVES: (a) To assess emotional triggering of pediatric asthma and ascertain its contribution to disease morbidity and functional status; (b) to test whether negative family emotional climate (NFEQ) is associated with depressive and/or anxious symptoms and emotional triggering of asthma attacks in the child. METHOD: Children with asthma (N = 272, 56% male, age 7-17) and their primary caregivers answered together an Asthma Trigger Inventory (Ritz, Steptoe, Bobb, Harris, & Edwards, 2006). Children reported on anxious (STAIC) and depressive (CDI) symptoms and on asthma-related quality of life (PAQLQ). Parent(s) reported on their child's internalizing (CBCL-I) and depressive symptoms (CDI-P). A clinician also rated the child's depression using the structured CDRS-R. Asthma diagnosis was confirmed and disease severity rated according to NHLBI guidelines by an asthma clinician. RESULTS: Path analyses indicated that NFEQ was associated with depressive symptoms, which in turn were associated both directly and indirectly (by way of emotional triggering) with disease severity. Comparison of nested models indicated the possibility of differential roles and pathways for anxious versus depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION: Findings elucidate possible pathways of effect by which family emotional climate and child depressive symptoms may influence pediatric asthma disease severity by way of potentiating emotional triggering of asthma.

Adolescent↗

Emotional behavior in acute stroke: the Lausanne emotion in stroke study.

OBJECTIVE: To study emotional behaviors in an acute stroke population. BACKGROUND: Alterations in emotional behavior after stroke have been recently recognized, but little attention has been paid to these changes in the very acute phase of stroke. METHODS: Adult patients presenting with acute stroke were prospectively recruited and studied. We validated the Emotional Behavior Index (EBI), a 38-item scale designed to evaluate behavioral aspects of sadness, aggressiveness, disinhibition, adaptation, passivity, indifference, and denial. Clinical, historical, and imaging (computed tomography/magnetic resonance imaging) data were obtained on each subject through our Stroke Registry. Statistical analysis was performed with both univariate and multivariate tests. RESULTS: Of the 254 patients, 40% showed sadness, 49% passivity, 17% aggressiveness, 53% indifference, 76% disinhibition, 18% lack of adaptation, and 44% denial reactions. Several significant correlations were identified. Sadness was correlated with a personal history of alcohol abuse (r = P < 0.037), female gender (r = P < 0.028), and hemorrhagic nature of the stroke (r = P < 0.063). Aggressiveness was correlated with a personal history of depression (r = P < 0.046) and hemorrhage (r = P < 0.06). Denial was correlated with male gender (r = P < 0.035) and hemorrhagic lesions (r = P < 0.05). Emotional behavior did not correlate with either neurologic impairment or lesion localization, but there was an association between hemorrhage and aggressive behavior (P < 0.001), lack of adaptation (r = P < 0.015), indifference (r = P < 0.018), and denial (r = P < 0.045). CONCLUSIONS: Systematic observations of acute emotional behaviors after stroke suggest that emotional alterations are independent of mood and physical status and should be considered as a separate consequence of stroke.

Acute Disease↗

Reasoning about emotional and neutral materials. Is logic affected by emotion?

In two experiments, we investigated whether people reason differently when they reason about emotional and neutral contents. We gave participants a conditional reasoning task ("If p, then q") and varied the emotionality of the items used as p and q. Participants were asked to draw inferences based on these statements. In Experiment 1, we compared statements including preexisting emotional and neutral words. In Experiment 2, we experimentally manipulated the emotionality of initially neutral words using classical conditioning. In both experiments, emotionality affected participants' responses. They were more likely to draw invalid inferences in response to emotional compared with neutral statements.

Affect↗

Responses to discrimination: the role of emotion and expectations for emotional regulation.

The present study examined the role of emotion in women's perceptions of discrimination and their endorsement of behavioral responses to change the status quo. In an experimental simulation involving a situation of sex discrimination, women (N = 108) were primed to experience a particular emotion (sad, angry, control condition) and were subsequently instructed to either suppress or express (or neither) their emotional responses. Women primed to feel sad and told to suppress their emotions reported the least discrimination, whereas angered women who were permitted to express themselves reported the greatest discrimination. Furthermore, when encouraged to express their emotions, women primed to feel sad were more likely to endorse normative actions to rectify the situation, whereas women induced to feel angry were more likely to endorse collective actions to change the status quo. These findings have implications for the role of emotions and expectations regarding their expression on collective action taking.

Affect↗

Dynamic brain activation during processing of emotional intonation: influence of acoustic parameters, emotional valence, and sex.

Appreciation of the emotional tone of verbal utterances represents an important aspect of social life. It is still unsettled, however, which brain areas mediate processing of intonational information and whether the presumed right-sided superiority depends upon acoustic properties of the speech signal. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to disentangle brain activation associated with (i) extraction of specific acoustic cues and (ii) detection of specific emotional states. Stimulus material comprised pairs of emotionally intonated utterances, exclusively differing either in pitch range or in the length of stressed vowels. Hemodynamic responses showed a dynamic pattern of cerebral activation including sequenced bilateral responses of various cortical and subcortical structures. Activation associated with discrimination of emotional expressiveness predominantly emerged within the right inferior parietal lobule, within the bilateral mesiofrontal cortex and--with an asymmetry toward the right hemisphere--at the level of bilateral dorsolateral frontal cortex. Lateralization did not depend upon acoustic structure or emotional valence of stimuli. These findings might prove helpful in reconciling the controversial previous clinical and experimental data.

Adult↗

Levels of emotional awareness and the degree of right hemispheric dominance in the perception of facial emotion.

To examine correlates of individual differences in the degree of right hemispheric dominance in the perception of facial emotion, 51 medical students completed the Levy Chimeric Faces Test and an independent measure of differentiation and complexity in the processing of emotional information, the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scales. A strong positive correlation was observed between the two measures, especially when variance due to verbal ability was removed and native English speakers only were included. These results suggest that as right hemisphere dominance in the perception of facial emotion increases, the ability to perceive complexity during the processing of emotional information increases.

Adult↗

Conditioning and residual emotionality effects of predator stimuli: some reflections on stress and emotion.

The advantages of using predator-related odor stimuli to study emotional responses in laboratory tests depend on whether such stimuli do elicit a relatively complete pattern of emotionality. This has been confirmed for cat fur/skin odor stimuli, which elicit a range of defensive behaviors in rats that may be reduced by anxiolytic drugs, produce residual anxiety-like behavior in the elevated plus maze and support rapid aversive conditioning to the context in which they were encountered. Although the synthetic fox fecal odor, trimethylthiazoline (TMT), elicits avoidance similar to that seen in response to cat fur/skin odor, this avoidance does not respond to anxiolytic drugs. In addition, TMT does not produce residual anxiety-like behaviors in the elevated plus maze, nor does it support conditioning. As natural cat feces also elicit avoidance but fail to support conditioning, it is possible that the ability of a predator-related odor to serve as an effective unconditioned stimulus (US) relates to its predictive status with reference to the actual presence of the predator. Avoidance per se may reflect that a stimulus is aversive but not necessarily capable of eliciting an emotional response. This view is consonant with findings in a Mouse Defense Test Battery (MDTB) measuring a wide range of defensive responses to predator exposure. A contextual defense measure that may reflect either conditioned or residual but unconditioned emotional responses was almost never reduced by drug effects unless these also reduced risk assessment or defensive threat/attack measures. However, reductions in contextual defense without changes in flight/avoidance measures were much more common. These findings suggest that flight/avoidance, although it obviously may occur as one component of a full pattern of defensive and emotional behaviors, is also somewhat separable from the others. When-as appears to be the case with TMT-it is the major or perhaps only consistent defensive behavior elicited, this may reflect a stimulus that is aversive or noxious but with little ability to predict the presence of threat or danger. That such stimuli fail to support rapid aversive conditioning suggests the need for a reanalysis of the characteristics required for an effective aversive US.

Animals↗

Neurobiology of emotion perception I: The neural basis of normal emotion perception.

There is at present limited understanding of the neurobiological basis of the different processes underlying emotion perception. We have aimed to identify potential neural correlates of three processes suggested by appraisalist theories as important for emotion perception: 1) the identification of the emotional significance of a stimulus; 2) the production of an affective state in response to 1; and 3) the regulation of the affective state. In a critical review, we have examined findings from recent animal, human lesion, and functional neuroimaging studies. Findings from these studies indicate that these processes may be dependent upon the functioning of two neural systems: a ventral system, including the amygdala, insula, ventral striatum, and ventral regions of the anterior cingulate gyrus and prefrontal cortex, predominantly important for processes 1 and 2 and automatic regulation of emotional responses; and a dorsal system, including the hippocampus and dorsal regions of anterior cingulate gyrus and prefrontal cortex, predominantly important for process 3. We suggest that the extent to which a stimulus is identified as emotive and is associated with the production of an affective state may be dependent upon levels of activity within these two neural systems.

Animals↗

The specificity of infant emotional expression for emotion perception.

Attachment theory emphasizes the role of negative emotional expression in infancy for establishing proximity to and care of the caregiver. According to Lang's biphasic model of emotions protective reflexes (e.g. startle response) are primed if a defensive motivational set is activated. The aim of the study was to examine whether the perception of an infant emotional expression can prime such defensive behavior. The sample consisted of 48 university students. Startle reflex, corrugator and zygomatic EMG activity and subjective ratings of valence and arousal were assessed as a response to presentation of pictures of different emotional valence. Affective startle modulation was obtained when probes were presented during pictures of the International Affective Pictures System replicating previous findings. By contrast, negative infant emotion pictures did not prompt an augmentation of the startle response, although both the subjective ratings and the mimic EMG activity indicated a clear differentiation between negative and positive infant pictures. This pattern of findings was found only in a between-subject design, but not when the two picture sets were presented in the same session, indicating an interference of contrasting content of pictures.

Adult↗

Neural correlates of "hot" and "cold" emotional processing: a multilevel approach to the functional anatomy of emotion.

The neural correlates of two hypothesized emotional processing modes, i.e., schematic and propositional modes, were investigated with positron emission tomography. Nineteen subjects performed an emotional mental imagery task while mentally repeating sentences linked to the meaning of the imagery script. In the schematic conditions, participants repeated metaphoric sentences, whereas in the propositional conditions, the sentences were explicit questions about specific emotional appraisals of the imagery scenario. Five types of emotional scripts were proposed to the subjects (happiness, anger, affection, sadness, and a neutral scenario). The results supported the hypothesized distinction between schematic and propositional emotional processing modes. Specifically, schematic mode was associated with increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex whereas propositional mode was associated with activation of the anterolateral prefrontal cortex. In addition, interaction analyses showed that schematic versus propositional processing of happiness (compared with the neutral scenario) was associated with increased activity in the ventral striatum whereas "schematic anger" was tentatively associated with activation of the ventral pallidum.

Adult↗

Repression of emotionally tagged memories: the architecture of less complex emotions.

We asked subjects to recall memories of events that evoked feelings of anger, sadness, fear, and embarrassment. These memories evoked patterns of dominant and nondominant emotions. The dominant emotions evoked by the recalled events were no less intense for repressors than nonrepressors, but repressors' patterns of nondominant emotions were less intense than those of nonrepressors. The data suggested that for repressors the associative network of negative emotional memories may be more discrete and less complex than that for nonrepressors. This finding was consistent with recent research indicating that negative emotional memories are less accessible for repressors than for nonrepressors. The pattern of multivariate effects suggests that this repressive memorial architecture may serve the motive of isolating fear-associated memories.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Impact of intended emotion intensity on cue utilization and decoding accuracy in vocal expression of emotion.

Actors vocally portrayed happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust with weak and strong emotion intensity while reading brief verbal phrases aloud. The portrayals were recorded and analyzed according to 20 acoustic cues. Listeners decoded each portrayal by using forced-choice or quantitative ratings. The results showed that (a) portrayals with strong emotion intensity yielded higher decoding accuracy than portrayals with weak intensity, (b) listeners were able to decode the intensity of portrayals, (c) portrayals of the same emotion with different intensity yielded different patterns of acoustic cues, and (d) certain acoustic cues (e.g., fundamental frequency, high-frequency energy) were highly predictive of listeners' ratings of emotion intensity. It is argued that lack of control for emotion intensity may account for some of the inconsistencies in cue utilization reported in the literature.

Adult↗

Emotion at work: identifying the emotional climate of night nursing.

This paper introduces the concept of the emotional climate of the workplace and explores how it both shapes and is shaped by the emotions experienced, expressed and redefined by nurses. It extracts emotional aspects of an organizational climate framework developed by Litwin and Stringer and examines these with respect to nurse's experiences. The primary research was carried out at a general hospital NHS Trust in the East Midlands of the UK using a grounded theory methodology. The research methods included semi-structured interviews and observation. The themes identified include many of those found by Litwin and Stringer, others which represent variations upon these, and a new set, which, when combined, identify the emotional climate of the organization. The findings have confirmed that the "experiment" of using a 33-year-old positivistic framework to investigate aspects of qualitative research has enabled a robust contribution to the conceptual area of emotional climate.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being.

The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions predicts that positive emotions broaden the scopes of attention and cognition, and, by consequence, initiate upward spirals toward increasing emotional well-being. The present study assessed this prediction by testing whether positive affect and broad-minded coping reciprocally and prospectively predict one another. One hundred thirty-eight college students completed self-report measures of affect and coping at two assessment periods 5 weeks apart. As hypothesized, regression analyses showed that initial positive affect, but not negative affect, predicted improved broad-minded coping, and initial broad-minded coping predicted increased positive affect, but not reductions in negative affect. Further mediational analyses showed that positive affect and broad-minded coping serially enhanced one another. These findings provide prospective evidence to support the prediction that positive emotions initiate upward spirals toward enhanced emotional wellbeing. Implications for clinical practice and health promotion are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Emotion and emotion regulation: from another perspective.

An overview of the content of the From Another Perspective collection on emotion and emotion regulation is provided. The lead article identifies fundamental issues of definition and the commentaries represent varying theoretical and methodological perspectives on emotion and emotion regulation. Together, the articles discuss the promises and pitfalls of emotion research and its potential for understanding child development.

Child↗

Facial expression and experience of emotions in psychodynamic interviews with patients suffering from a pain disorder. Indicators of disorders in self- and relationship regulation in the involuntaryfacial expression of emotions.

In clinical practice, it is often difficult to establish a positive relationship with patients suffering from psychogenic pain disorder. The present study addresses this maladaptive relationship pattern that is characterized by a mixture of disappointment and rejection. Facial expressions of emotions of 21 female patients in psychodynamic interviews were analyzed and compared to a control group of 11 healthy subjects. The assumption of a maladaptive relationship pattern is supported by an increase in negative facial expressions, especially contempt, on the side of the patients and the interviewer. These negative emotions indicate a disorder of self- and relationship regulation and are negatively correlated with the level of structural personality organization (as measured by the operationalized psychodynamic diagnostic). They also correlate with the emotional experience of shame and fear and are negatively correlated with the experience of joy. The results demonstrate how maladaptive relationship patterns are implemented at the level of involuntary emotional behavior. They can help to understand and improve the emotional quality of therapeutic relationships.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

In search of the emotional self: an fMRI study using positive and negative emotional words.

OBJECTIVE: The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to define the neural regions mediating self-referential processing of emotional stimuli and to explore how these regions are influenced by the emotional valence of the stimulus. METHOD: Ten healthy subjects were presented with words describing positive and negative personality traits during fMRI scanning in three different conditions. In the self-referential processing condition, subjects judged whether they thought each trait described them. In the other-referential processing condition, subjects judged whether the stimulus described a generally desirable trait. In the letter-recognition control condition, subjects indicated whether the word contained a specific target letter. RESULTS: The self-referential condition induced bilateral activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, whereas the other-referential condition induced activation in lateral prefrontal areas. Activation in the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was unique to the self-referential condition regardless of the valence of the words, although positive words produced a more robust activation than did negative words. In the self-referential condition, differences between the processing of positive and negative words were seen in regions outside the medial frontal cortex, with reductions in the insula, temporal and occipital regions, and inferior parietal regions associated with negative words. CONCLUSIONS: A widely distributed network of brain areas contributes to emotional processing. Among these regions, the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex is one main area mediating self-reference. By providing a personal perspective in the evaluation of emotional stimuli, the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex may mediate cognitive processes, such as those involved in psychotherapy, that guide self-regulation of emotional experience.

Adult↗

Emotional responses to sexual and emotional infidelity: constants and differences across genders, samples, and methods.

In three studies (total N = 619), the authors tested an evolutionary hypothesis: Men are more bothered by sexual than emotional infidelity, whereas the reverse is true of women. More diverse samples (in age) and measures than is typical were used. In Study 1, the authors found across gender, sample, and method that sexual infidelity was associated with anger and blame, but emotional infidelity was associated with hurt feelings. The evolutionary effect was replicated with undergraduates but not with the nonstudent sample. In Study 2, narrative scenarios were used; it was found that nonstudent men and women were more hurt and upset by emotional infidelity but were made angrier by sexual infidelity. In Study 3, using Likert-type scales, scenarios, and a nonstudent sample, it was found that both genders were more upset, hurt, and angrier about sexual than emotional transgressions when rating one kind without hearing the opposite type. The implications for how emotional responses evolved are discussed.

Adolescent↗