Heightened sensitivity to emotional expressions in generalised anxiety disorder,compared to social anxiety disorder,and controls

Few studies have examined potential differences between social anxiety disorder (SAD) and generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) in the sensitivity to detect emotional expressions. The present study aims to compare the detection of emotional expressions in SAD and GAD. Participants with a primary diagnosis of GAD (n?=?46), SAD (n?=?70), and controls (n?=?118) completed a morph movies task. The task presented faces expressing increasing degrees of emotional intensity, slowly changing from a neutral to a full-intensity happy, sad, or angry expressions. Participants used a slide bar to view the movie frames from left to right, and to stop at the first frame where they perceived an emotion. The frame selected thus indicated the intensity of emotion required to identify the facial expression. Participants with GAD detected the onset of facial emotions at lower intensity of emotion than participants with SAD (p?=?0.002) and controls (p?=?0.039). In a multiple regression analysis controlling for age, race, and depressive symptom severity, lower frame at which the emotion was detected was independently associated and GAD diagnosis (B?=?–5.73, SE?=?1.74, p?相似文献   

A qualitative analysis of the role of emotions in different patterns of long-term weight loss

Objective: To explore participant perspectives of the impact emotions have on weight loss.

Design: A qualitative design gathered data through semi-structured interviews with participants in a weight management programme. The interview addresses the following research questions: (1) how do individuals working to lose weight perceive the impact emotions have on their long-term success, and (2) what strategies do more or less successful participants use to regulate their emotions? Researchers conducted and transcribed the interviews then completed content analysis to create and organise themes.

Results: Two broad themes emerged through the interviews with 21 participants: emotional impact and emotional regulation. Further subthemes captured emotions blocking action toward goals, strategies for regulating emotions (e.g. exercise, food) and the need for new strategies to regulate emotions. Themes were also split in to three groups based on weight outcomes: regainer, moderate success (3–6% loss) and large success (>7% loss). More successful participants, compared to regainers, shared being aware of the impact of their emotions and made efforts to develop healthy regulation strategies.

Conclusions: Emotional awareness and regulation play an important role in participant’s weight management experience. Taking time to build emotional awareness and strategies to manage emotions is important to participants in weight management.     

Longitudinal trajectories of emotions among athletes in sports competitions: Does emotional intelligence matter?

ObjectivesThis research explored whether several subgroups of athletes representing distinct emotional trajectories could be shown to exist within the latent class growth analysis (LCGA) of pleasant and unpleasant sport emotions (anger, anxiety, dejection, excitement, happiness). A secondary aim was to explore whether athletes belonging to distinct emotional trajectories reported distinct scores of trait-emotional intelligence (EI) at time 1 (T1).DesignA longitudinal three-wave measurement design (beginning, middle, and end of a competitive season) was used in the present study.MethodA sample of 460 athletes completed the sport emotion questionnaire across three measurement times and the brief emotional intelligence scale at T1.ResultsResults of LCGAs showed five trajectories for anger, anxiety and happiness, and six trajectories for dejection and excitement. Furthermore, athletes belonging to distinct (adaptive or maladaptive) trajectories reported significantly different scores of EI.ConclusionsLCGA results highlighted the athlete heterogeneity in longitudinal sport emotions. Higher scores of EI were reported by athletes belonging to adaptive emotional trajectories. These results could be used to help coaches and sport psychologists to identify athletes at risk of developing dysfunctional emotional trajectories across the competitive season. Moreover, this study suggested potential benefits of EI-centred interventions to help athletes to experience adaptive emotional trajectories. Finally, these results highlighted that heterogeneity in sport emotions must be accounted for in future research.     

Referrals to chaplains: The role of religion and spirituality in healthcare settings

Given the increasing importance of understanding how healthcare workers interact with the principal person designated to meet patients’ spiritual needs— the chaplain— the current study provides an inter-disciplinary perspective of the role of chaplains (and spirituality) in patients’ emotional, physical, and spiritual health. The study surveyed a randomly selected national sample of hospital directors in four disciplines: medicine (n?=?278), nursing (n?=?230), social services (n?=?229), and pastoral care (n?=?470). Participants rated the importance of referring patients to chaplains for four different areas: pain/depression, anxiety/anger, treatment issues, and loss/death/meaning. Results revealed significant differences in referral patterns for type of hospital, professional discipline, the hospital's religious affiliation, and self-reported spirituality. Results are discussed in relation to historical views of spirituality and religion within the different disciplines.     

Emotion processing and regulation in women with morbid obesity who apply for bariatric surgery

Emotional eating, the tendency to eat when experiencing negative affect, is prevalent in morbid obesity and may indicate that ways to deal with emotions are disturbed. Our aim was to compare emotion processing and regulation between 102 women with morbid obesity who apply for bariatric surgery and 102 women from the general population (control group) and to examine in the group with morbid obesity the association of emotion processing and regulation with emotional eating. The group with morbid obesity reported higher scores on difficulty identifying feelings (alexithymia, p?=?0.002) and suppression of emotions (p?=?0.003) than the control group. In the women with morbid obesity, more negative affect and a higher difficulty identifying feelings were correlated with more emotional eating (r?=?0.36 and r?=?0.35, p?<?0.001). Our study suggests that negative emotions and unhealthy emotion processing may play a role in emotional eating, and it indicates the possible relevance of emotion processing and emotional regulation as initiating or perpetuating mechanisms in morbid obesity.     

Interprofessional Education: Psychology Trainee Experiences and Perspectives on Team Skills

Interprofessional education (IPE) is defined as educational activities involving trainees from two or more professions learning about, from, and with each other with the goal of building team-based collaboration skills. The degree to which psychology trainees are involved in IPE is unknown. A national survey was distributed to gather information regarding the nature and prevalence of IPE experiences and psychology trainees’ perceived competence in collaboration skills. Participant responses (n?=?143) are presented overall and by training level. Some respondents reported no IPE activities in their training, especially trainees earlier in their training. Highest rated competencies were in acting with honesty and integrity and developing/maintaining mutual respect and trust of other professions. Lowest rated were in giving feedback to others and managing differences in opinion. More research related to the nature and impact of IPE on psychology trainees is critical.

     

Parent Education in Youth Sport: A Community Case Study of Parents,Coaches, and Administrators

The present community case study was designed to highlight parent, coach, and administrator perceptions of community-based parent education in a youth sport community in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States. Interviews with parents (n?=?12), coaches (n?=?13), and administrators (n?=?11) were interpreted inductively using constructivist thematic analysis. Nine emergent categories are highlighted, including parents’ sport goals for their children, parents’ involvement in youth sport including impacts of involvement on children, and barriers to implementing parent education, as well as potential content for parent education. A proposed sequential framework informing community-based parent education, as well as suggestions for further action, and study limitations are included.     

Experiences of stereotyping among individuals employed in selected South African organisations

This study investigated the effects of stereotypes among individuals working in selected South African organisations. The participants were 336 employees within the following sectors: banking (n?=?40), higher education institutions (n?=?72), mining (n?=?63), municipalities (n?=?24), nursing (n?=?4), police services (n?=?20), schools (n?=?85), and the restaurant industry (n?=?28). Data were collected using open ended interviews, and thematically analysed. The findings indicated that stereotypes influence individuals on three different levels: cognitive, behavioural, and emotional levels. Predominantly, participants reported that they mostly react in a cognitive manner when confronted with stereotypes.     

The feeling of the story: Narrating to regulate anger and sadness

Admonitions to tell one's story in order to feel better reflect the belief that narrative is an effective emotion regulation tool. The present studies evaluate the effectiveness of narrative for regulating sadness and anger, and provide quantitative comparisons of narrative with distraction, reappraisal, and reexposure. The results for sadness (n?=?93) and anger (n?=?89) reveal that narrative is effective at down-regulating negative emotions, particularly when narratives place events in the past tense and include positive emotions. The results suggest that if people tell the “right” kind of story about their experiences, narrative reduces emotional distress linked to those experiences.     

Learning and difficult experiences in graduate training in clinical psychology: A qualitative study of Japanese trainees’ retrospective accounts

This study examined the experiences of Japanese clinical psychology trainees in their graduate school with the aim of identifying factors that might enhance or hinder their learning and professional development. We analyzed the interview data obtained from 17 clinical psychologists using grounded theory approach. Two major category groups were generated: Developing as a Clinician and Difficulties. The primary positive learning experiences in Developing as a Clinician were labeled “Hot Learning,” in which trainees acquired professional knowledge and skills through close interpersonal engagement with clients, peers, faculty, and supervisors. In contrast, Difficulties involved trainees’ negative experiences resulting in feelings of self-doubt and incompetence. These experiences occurred in close but sometimes conflicted interpersonal contexts, where trainees felt evaluated in a manner incommensurate with the support they received. We found that the quality of interpersonal relationships, which provided the context for optimal learning for trainees, was paramount to the definition of positive versus difficult learning experiences. Implications for therapist training, professional development and future research are discussed.     

Perceptual learning and recognition confusion reveal the underlying relationships among the six basic emotions

The six basic emotions (disgust, anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) have long been considered discrete categories that serve as the primary units of the emotion system. Yet recent evidence indicated underlying connections among them. Here we tested the underlying relationships among the six basic emotions using a perceptual learning procedure. This technique has the potential of causally changing participants’ emotion detection ability. We found that training on detecting a facial expression improved the performance not only on the trained expression but also on other expressions. Such a transfer effect was consistently demonstrated between disgust and anger detection as well as between fear and surprise detection in two experiments (Experiment 1A, n?=?70; Experiment 1B, n?=?42). Notably, training on any of the six emotions could improve happiness detection, while sadness detection could only be improved by training on sadness itself, suggesting the uniqueness of happiness and sadness. In an emotion recognition test using a large sample of Chinese participants (n?=?1748), the confusion between disgust and anger as well as between fear and surprise was further confirmed. Taken together, our study demonstrates that the “basic” emotions share some common psychological components, which might be the more basic units of the emotion system.     

Emotional variability and clarity in depression and social anxiety

Recent research has underscored the importance of elucidating specific patterns of emotion that characterise mental disorders. We examined two emotion traits, emotional variability and emotional clarity, in relation to both categorical (diagnostic interview) and dimensional (self-report) measures of major depressive disorder (MDD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) in women diagnosed with MDD only (n?=?35), SAD only (n?=?31), MDD and SAD (n?=?26) or no psychiatric disorder (n?=?38). Results of the categorical analyses suggest that elevated emotional variability and diminished emotional clarity are transdiagnostic of MDD and SAD. More specifically, emotional variability was elevated for MDD and SAD diagnoses compared to no diagnosis, showing an additive effect for co-occurring MDD and SAD. Similarly diminished levels of emotional clarity characterised all three clinical groups compared to the healthy control group. Dimensional findings suggest that although emotional variability is associated more consistently with depression than with social anxiety, emotional clarity is associated more consistently with social anxiety than with depression. Results are interpreted using a threshold and dose–response framework.     

‘A baptism of fire’: A qualitative investigation of a trainee counsellor's experience at the start of training

Background: Belief in the effectiveness of professional counselling and psychotherapy training is widespread and generally unquestioned. Few studies have attempted to understand the changes experienced by trainees, or identified which aspects of professional training programmes assist them in the process of becoming therapists. Aims: to investigate how a trainee counsellor changes at the start of training, and to identify which aspects of a professional counsellor training programme were helpful in instigating and supporting change. Method: the experience of one trainee counsellor, Margaret, was captured through three semi-structured interviews conducted at the beginning, middle and end of her first term. The data were subjected to systematic qualitative analysis. Findings: Margaret experienced significant change during her first term. Each interview revealed a different phase of her development. The core categories were: becoming something new (week 3); growth in therapeutic confidence (week 6); surviving ‘stressful involvement’ through supervision (week 11). Experiential learning, in particular group supervision, was helpful throughout. The presence of real clients was identified as the main driver for change. Conclusion: The findings were found to be consistent with a number of other studies, which suggest that training is potentially painful because of the emotional demands it places on trainees, particularly at the start of practice. Consequently trainees require opportunities for experiential learning, peer support and supportive supervision to assist them in their development, but most importantly, given that supportive supervision can only minimise the harm of stressful involvement (Orlinsky & Ronnestad, 2005), they need early positive experiences with clients.     

Raising Our Game: The Necessity and Progression of Expertise-Based Training in Applied Sport Psychology

At present, training in applied sport psychology chiefly targets and accelerates professional competence. However, theory and evidence suggests that our clients would experience significant benefit if our training targeted and accelerated professional expertise rather than just competence. Specifically, we argue that expertise-based training can (a) help trainees to go on to break the “thinking ceiling” of competence; (b) foster a more independent, flexible, and creative form of practice; and (c) support a longer term and more practitioner-centered training philosophy. To deliver these benefits, we then conclude by outlining some key principles for the progression of expertise-based training in applied sport psychology.

Lay Summary: In light of the inconsistencies that still surround professional training in ASP, we discuss the merits that a more expertise-based agenda can bring to practitioners and, most important, our clients. We also discuss ways in which this agenda can be progressed to support an evidence-informed evolution of ASP training systems.     

With crisis comes opportunity: Building ethical competencies in light of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has wide-ranging implications for the field of professional psychology. As clinical practice has rapidly adapted to ensure continuity of care, doctoral students have encountered unique opportunities for ethics-related competency development across practicum training settings. This article discusses the relevant American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Code standards and additional ethical considerations facing trainees as they navigate their foundational clinical experiences and develop as professional psychologists in light of a pandemic.     

Inertia of negative emotions at work: Correlates of inflexible emotion dynamics in the workplace*

Emotional inertia is a central feature of emotion dynamics and it refers to the degree to which emotional states are self-predictive and linger over time, describing their resistance to change. It is related to several indicators of maladjustment, yet there is limited research on its correlates in the workplace, where it may be particularly relevant as emotional experiences deeply influence organizational life. In two experience-sampling studies, we studied temporal dependency of negative emotional states at work in terms of emotional inertia. In a first study (n = 128), we investigated the association between exhaustion, the core dimension of burnout, with inertia of negative emotions. In a second study (n = 116), we aimed to replicate findings from the first study and additionally examined the moderating role of inertia of negative emotions in the relationship between negative emotions at work and counterproductive work behaviour. The findings show that exhaustion is consistently associated with inertia of negative emotions, and that inertia of negative emotions aggravates the relation between negative emotions and workers' counterproductive work behaviour.     

Action Observation and Imagery Training Improve the Ease With Which Athletes Can Generate Imagery

Imagery can improve sport performance, although its efficacy is mediated by the ease with which athletes can generate images. Establishing techniques that improve this imagery ability factor is desirable to enhance the effectiveness of imagery interventions. Twenty-seven club-level female golfers were assigned to imagery, action observation, or physical practice training groups (n = 9). Changes in image generation ease were assessed using the Revised Movement Imagery Questionnaire over an 8-week period. Imagery and action observation training were both effective in improving aspects of imagery ability. Action observation can provide sport psychologists with an effective tool for improving visual imagery ability in athletes.     

Walking versus biofeedback: a comparison of acute interventions for stressed students

Background: High rates of stress-related problems in college students and low utilization of treatment options demonstrate the need for effective stress-reducing interventions that can be self-regulated. This study compared the effect of brief paced-breathing with biofeedback and exercise interventions on heart rate variability, state anxiety and affect. Methods: Students (n?=?32) with high levels of perceived stress completed three 10-min interventions on separate days: paced-breathing with biofeedback (Biofeedback), a self-paced walk (Exercise), and an attention control condition of quiet studying (Quiet Study). Anxiety and affect were measured before (Pre), immediately after (Post0) and 15 mins after (Post15) the intervention. Heart rate variability was measured pre- and post-intervention using electrocardiogram. Results: Biofeedback reduced anxiety more than the exercise condition (Pre to Post0: Biofeedback d?=??0.48, Exercise d?=??0.13). Secondly, Exercise temporarily increased energy (Pre to Post0: d?=?0.67), whereas Biofeedback temporarily increased calmness (Pre to Post0: d?=?0.51). All conditions significantly increased total heart rate variability (p?Conclusions: Biofeedback and Exercise interventions improved emotional states in high-stress college students, but the type of change observed (i.e. energizing, calming or anxiety reducing) depended upon the condition.     

Attention training normalises combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder effects on emotional Stroop performance using lexically matched word lists

We examined two groups of combat veterans, one with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (n?=?27) and another without PTSD (n?=?16), using an emotional Stroop task (EST) with word lists matched across a series of lexical variables (e.g. length, frequency, neighbourhood size, etc.). Participants with PTSD exhibited a strong EST effect (longer colour-naming latencies for combat-relevant words as compared to neutral words). Veterans without PTSD produced no such effect, t?p?>?.37. Participants with PTSD then completed eight sessions of attention training (Attention Control Training or Attention Bias Modification Training) with a dot-probe task utilising threatening and neutral faces. After training, participants—especially those undergoing Attention Control Training—no longer produced longer colour-naming latencies for combat-related words as compared to other words, indicating normalised attention allocation processes after treatment.