Anhedonia and the experience of emotion in individuals with schizophrenia

Research shows that individuals with schizophrenia report symptoms of anhedonia when assessed by interview or questionnaire. However, when presented with emotional stimuli, they report emotional experiences that are similar to those of control participants. The authors hypothesized that deficits in working memory and episodic memory contribute to such discrepancies. They administered measures of working and episodic memory, self-report anhedonia questionnaires, and several types of emotional stimuli to 49 individuals with schizophrenia and 47 control participants. All participants reported experiencing similar amounts of pleasant-unpleasant emotion (valence) in response to stimuli, but individuals with schizophrenia reported experiencing less arousal for negative stimuli. Individuals with schizophrenia also reported greater social and physical anhedonia on a traditional anhedonia questionnaire. Disturbances in working memory moderated the relationship between physical anhedonia and participants' emotional experience of positive stimuli.     

Giving meaning to illness: An investigation of self-defining memories in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients

Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients are often unable to adequately fulfill their established roles due to physical disabilities and cognitive changes, making this chronic illness particularly threatening to personal identity. Twenty-five MS patients and 25 healthy controls were asked to recall five self-defining memories (SDM). Overall characteristics of SDM did not differ between patients and controls; MS patients displayed preserved capacity to draw meaning upon past events. Moreover, almost two-thirds of MS patients mentioned at least one illness related SDM and about 25% of patients’ SDM referred to MS. These memories were experienced as more negative and associated with more tension than other SDM but led toward more positive emotion and less negative emotion over time; they were also more central and more integrated to the personal identity. We concluded that self-challenging events due to MS may trigger both cognitive and emotional processes enabling the integration of illness in patients’ self-representations.     

Emotion and false memory: How goal-irrelevance can be relevant for what people remember

Elaborating on misleading information concerning emotional events can lead people to form false memories. The present experiment compared participants’ susceptibility to false memories when they elaborated on information associated with positive versus negative emotion and pregoal versus postgoal emotion. Pregoal emotion reflects appraisals that goal attainment or failure is anticipated but has not yet occurred (e.g., hope and fear). Postgoal emotion reflects appraisals that goal attainment or failure has already occurred (e.g., happiness and devastation). Participants watched a slideshow depicting an interaction between a couple and were asked to empathise with the protagonist's feelings of hope (positive pregoal), happiness (positive postgoal), fear (negative pregoal), or devastation (negative postgoal); in control conditions, no emotion was mentioned. Participants were then asked to reflect on details of the interaction that had occurred (true) or had not occurred (false), and that were relevant or irrelevant to the protagonist's goal. Irrespective of emotional valence, participants in the pregoal conditions were more susceptible to false memories concerning goal-irrelevant details than were participants in the other conditions. These findings support the view that pregoal emotions narrow attention to information relevant to goal pursuit, increasing susceptibility to false memories for irrelevant information.     

Failure of positive but not negative emotional valence to enhance memory in schizophrenia

Abnormalities in the integration of emotion and cognition have long been considered hallmark characteristics of schizophrenia. Study authors used a well-established emotional memory model from the neuroscience literature to assess the facilitative impact of emotional valence of information on long-term memory consolidation in schizophrenia. Participants with schizophrenia (n=33) indicated somewhat higher levels of emotional intensity in response to emotional images than did healthy (n=28) participants. However, when recognition memory was tested 24 hr later, schizophrenia participants did not show enhancement of memory for positive images as was found in healthy participants. Their memory enhancement for negative images did not differ from that of healthy participants. Correlations between self-reported physical and social anhedonia were significantly inversely correlated with intensity ratings of positive stimuli during the encoding phase for healthy participants but were negligible for schizophrenia participants. These results suggest a failure to adequately integrate positive emotional experience in memory consolidation processes in schizophrenia participants, despite appropriate initial response to positive stimuli, which may contribute to symptoms such as anhedonia by reducing the long-term impact of positive experiences in motivating hedonic behavior in day-to-day life.     

Differential effects of arousal in positive and negative autobiographical memories

Autobiographical memories are characterised by a range of emotions and emotional reactions. Recent research has demonstrated that differences in emotional valence (positive vs. negative emotion) and arousal (the degree of emotional intensity) differentially influence the retrieved memory narrative. Although the mnemonic effects of valence and arousal have both been heavily studied, it is currently unclear whether the effects of emotional arousal are equivalent for positive and negative autobiographical events. In the current study, multilevel models were used to examine differential effects of emotional valence and arousal on the richness of autobiographical memory retrieval both between and within subjects. Thirty-four young adults were asked to retrieve personal autobiographical memories associated with popular musical cues and to rate the valence, arousal and richness of these events. The multilevel analyses identified independent influences of valence and intensity upon retrieval characteristics at the within- and between-subject levels. In addition, the within-subject interactions between valence and arousal highlighted differential effects of arousal for positive and negative memories. These findings have important implications for future studies of emotion and memory, highlighting the importance of considering both valence and arousal when examining the role emotion plays in the richness of memory representation.     

Aging and motivated cognition: the positivity effect in attention and memory

As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions. Strategic processes in older adults' emotional attention and memory might play a role in this variation with age. Older adults show more emotionally gratifying memory distortion for past choices and autobiographical information than younger adults do. In addition, when shown stimuli that vary in affective valence, positive items account for a larger proportion of older adults' subsequent memories than those of younger adults. This positivity effect in older adults' memories seems to be due to their greater focus on emotion regulation and to be implemented by cognitive control mechanisms that enhance positive and diminish negative information. These findings suggest that both cognitive abilities and motivation contribute to older adults' improved emotion regulation.     

Socioemotional selectivity in older adults: Evidence from the subjective experience of angry memories

Few studies have compared the phenomenological properties of younger and older adults' memories for emotional events. Some studies suggest that younger adults remember negative information more vividly than positive information whereas other studies suggest that positive emotion yields phenomenologically richer memories than negative emotion for both younger and older adults. One problem with previous studies is a tendency to treat emotion as a dichotomous variable. In contrast, emotional richness demands inclusion of assessments beyond just a positive and negative dimension (e.g., assessing specific emotions like anger, fear and happiness). The present study investigated different properties of autobiographical remembering as a function of discrete emotions and age. Thirty-two younger and thirty-one older adults participated by recalling recent and remote memories associated with six emotional categories and completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire for each. Results demonstrated that older adults' angry memories received lower ratings on some phenomenological properties than other emotional memories whereas younger adults' angry memories did not show this same pattern. These results are discussed within the context of socioemotional selectivity theory.     

Narrating emotional events in schizophrenia

Research has indicated that schizophrenia patients report similar amounts of experienced emotion in response to emotional material compared with nonpatients. However, less is known about how schizophrenia patients describe and make sense of their emotional life events. We adopted a narrative approach to investigate schizophrenia patients' renderings of their emotional life experiences. In Study 1, patients' (n=42) positive and negative narratives were similarly personal, tellable, engaged, and appropriate. However, negative narratives were less grammatically clear than positive narratives, and positive narratives were more likely to involve other people than negative narratives. In Study 2, emotional (positive and negative) narratives were less tellable and detached, yet more linear and social compared with neutral narratives for both schizophrenia patients (n=24) and healthy controls (n=19). However, patients' narratives about emotional life events were less appropriate to context and less linear, and patients' narratives, whether emotional or not, were less tellable and more detached compared with controls' narratives. Although schizophrenia patients are capable of recounting life events that trigger different emotions, the telling of these life events is fraught with difficulty.     

不同心理一致感个体压力情境下的情绪特点研究

以46名大学生为被试,利用“九洞仪”创设实验室压力情境,考察不同心理一致感个体压力情境下的情绪反应及恢复特点。结果表明：（1）压力情境下,高、低心理一致感个体的情绪反应存在显著性差异。高心理一致感个体出现较多的积极情绪,低心理一致感个体则以消极情绪体验为主。（2）低心理一致感压力情境诱发出的消极情绪显著多于积极情绪,消极情绪的诱发量较大。（3）压力任务后,高心理一致感个体在情绪恢复量上显著多于低心理一致感个体,心理健康的自我康复力较大。（4）压力任务前后,低心理一致感个体的消极情绪诱发量显著高于恢复量,在消极情绪变化上表现出“诱发多,恢复少”的特点。     

Emotion in Schizophrenia: Old Mystery, New Understanding

Early theories of schizophrenia emphasized emotional features, yet empirical research into the nature of emotion in schizophrenia has only recently been conducted. Drawing from the paradigms developed by emotion researchers and theorists, a number of replicable findings on emotion in schizophrenia have now emerged. Compared with nonpatients, schizophrenia patients exhibit very few outward displays of emotion, yet they exhibit subtle, microexpressive displays. Schizophrenia patients report experiencing strong emotions in response to emotional material, yet they do not often report experiencing strong pleasant emotions in daily living. These emotion disturbances have important social and intervention implications, and they point to a number of important directions for research.     

Specificity deficit in the recollection of emotional memories in schizophrenia

The influence of emotion on episodic and autobiographical memory in schizophrenia was investigated. Using an experiential approach, the states of awareness accompanying recollection of pictures from the IAPS and of associated autobiographical memories was recorded. Results show that schizophrenia impairs episodic and autobiographical memories in their critical feature: autonoetic awareness, i.e., the type of awareness experienced when mentally reliving events from one's past. Schizophrenia was also associated with a reduction of specific autobiographical memories. The impact of stimulus valence on memory performance was moderated by clinical status. Patients with schizophrenia recognized more positive than negative pictures, and recalled more positive than negative autobiographical memories while controls displayed the opposite pattern. A hypothesis in terms of a fundamental executive deficit underlying these impairments is proposed.     

Self-images and related autobiographical memories in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects sense of identity. While the ability to have a coherent vision of the self (i.e., self-images) relies partly on its reciprocal relationships with autobiographical memories, little is known about how memories ground "self-images" in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls were asked to give six autobiographical memories related to four self-statements they considered essential for defining their identity. Results showed that patients' self-images were more passive than those of controls. Autobiographical memories underlying self-images were less thematically linked to these self-images in patients. We also found evidence of a weakened sense of self and a deficient organization of autobiographical memories grounding the self in schizophrenia. These abnormalities may account for the poor cohesiveness of the self in schizophrenia.     

The effect of cognitive reappraisal on long‐term emotional experience and emotional memory

One's ability to properly regulate emotion is critical to psychological and physical well‐being. Among various strategies to regulate emotion, cognitive reappraisal has been shown to modulate both emotional experience and emotional memory. However, most studies of reappraisal have focused on reappraisal of negative situations, with reappraisal of positive emotion receiving considerably less attention. In addition, the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions to stimuli are typically only assessed either immediately or after a short delay, and it remains unclear whether reappraisal effects persist over longer time periods. We investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotional reactions and long‐term episodic memory for positive and negative stimuli. Men and women viewed emotionally negative, positive, and neutral pictures while they were instructed to either increase, decrease, or maintain the initial emotional reactions elicited by the pictures. Subjective ratings of emotional valence and arousal were assessed during the regulation task and again after 1 week. Memory for the pictures was assessed with free recall. Results indicated that pictures accompanied by instructions to increase emotion were better recalled than pictures reappraised to decrease emotion. Modulation of emotional arousal elicited by stimuli persisted over a week, but this effect was observed only for men. These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal can have long‐lasting effects on emotional reactions to stimuli. However, the sex differences observed for the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions highlight the importance of considering individual differences in the effects of regulation.     

Closure of autobiographical memories: The effects of written recounting from first- or third-person visual perspective

Autobiographical memories are recalled with varying degrees of psychological closure. Closure is a subjective assessment of how far a remembered experience feels resolved, and it has been suggested that one predictor of closure is the amount of emotional detail in the memory. Study 1 examined which aspect of emotional detail is important for closure, and showed that open and closed negative memories were distinguished by ratings of emotion evoked during recall, not by remembered emotion from the time of the event. The recall of open memories was accompanied by more intense, more negative, and less positive emotion than the recall of closed memories. Biased retelling of memories has been shown to influence closure and on the basis of evidence that third-person recall serves a distancing function, Study 2 examined whether instructions to repeatedly recount an open memory from a third-person perspective would increase closure compared with a single or repeated recounting from a first-person perspective. While repeated third-person recounting had the greatest influence on closure, there were also increases in the first-person recounting groups. The results suggest that closure can be increased by reporting memories in written narrative form, particularly if repeatedly expressed from the third-person perspective.     

Closure of autobiographical memories: The effects of written recounting from first- or third-person visual perspective

Autobiographical memories are recalled with varying degrees of psychological closure. Closure is a subjective assessment of how far a remembered experience feels resolved, and it has been suggested that one predictor of closure is the amount of emotional detail in the memory. Study 1 examined which aspect of emotional detail is important for closure, and showed that open and closed negative memories were distinguished by ratings of emotion evoked during recall, not by remembered emotion from the time of the event. The recall of open memories was accompanied by more intense, more negative, and less positive emotion than the recall of closed memories. Biased retelling of memories has been shown to influence closure and on the basis of evidence that third-person recall serves a distancing function, Study 2 examined whether instructions to repeatedly recount an open memory from a third-person perspective would increase closure compared with a single or repeated recounting from a first-person perspective. While repeated third-person recounting had the greatest influence on closure, there were also increases in the first-person recounting groups. The results suggest that closure can be increased by reporting memories in written narrative form, particularly if repeatedly expressed from the third-person perspective.     

Emotional distress and positive and negative memories from military deployment: the influence of PTSD symptoms and time

During military deployment, soldiers are confronted with both negative and positive events. What is remembered and how it affects an individual is influenced by not only the perceived emotion of the event, but also the emotional state of the individual. Here we examined the most negative and most positive deployment memories from a company of 337 soldiers who were deployed together to Afghanistan. We examined how the level of emotional distress of the soldiers and the valence of the memory were related to the emotional intensity, experience of reliving, rehearsal and coherence of the memories, and how the perceived impact of these memories changed over time. We found that soldiers with higher levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were more affected by both their negative and positive memories, compared with soldiers with lower levels of PTSD symptoms. Emotional intensity of the most negative memory increased over time in the group with highest levels of PTSD symptoms, but dropped in the other groups. The present study adds to the literature on emotion and autobiographical memory and how this relationship interacts with an individual’s present level of emotional distress and the passage of time.     

不同依恋风格者情绪调节策略的认知神经特点

情绪调节是依恋研究的重要方面。本文依托Gross的情绪调节理论和相关认知神经证据,阐述了三种依恋风格者的情绪调节特点。焦虑型依恋调节负性情绪时存在注意分配的优势和表达抑制的不足;调节正性情绪时还采用了情景选择和情景修正策略。回避型依恋调节两种效价情绪均使用了表达抑制,调节正性情绪时还使用了认知重评。安全型依恋使用认知重评、注意分配和情景修正策略,效价差异不突出。探讨依恋与情绪调节的关系,有利于改善非安全型依恋的情绪调节能力。     

Spatializing Emotion: No Evidence for a Domain‐General Magnitude System

People implicitly associate different emotions with different locations in left‐right space. Which aspects of emotion do they spatialize, and why? Across many studies people spatialize emotional valence, mapping positive emotions onto their dominant side of space and negative emotions onto their non‐dominant side, consistent with theories of metaphorical mental representation. Yet other results suggest a conflicting mapping of emotional intensity (a.k.a., emotional magnitude), according to which people associate more intense emotions with the right and less intense emotions with the left — regardless of their valence; this pattern has been interpreted as support for a domain‐general system for representing magnitudes. To resolve the apparent contradiction between these mappings, we first tested whether people implicitly map either valence or intensity onto left‐right space, depending on which dimension of emotion they attend to (Experiments 1a, b). When asked to judge emotional valence, participants showed the predicted valence mapping. However, when asked to judge emotional intensity, participants showed no systematic intensity mapping. We then tested an alternative explanation of findings previously interpreted as evidence for an intensity mapping (Experiments 2a, b). These results suggest that previous findings may reflect a left‐right mapping of spatial magnitude (i.e., the size of a salient feature of the stimuli) rather than emotion. People implicitly spatialize emotional valence, but, at present, there is no clear evidence for an implicit lateral mapping of emotional intensity. These findings support metaphor theory and challenge the proposal that mental magnitudes are represented by a domain‐general metric that extends to the domain of emotion.     

服务消费中多次情绪感染对消费者负面情绪的 动态影响机制

在深入剖析情绪感染心理机制的基础上,深入研究了在服务消费中多次情绪感染对消费者负面情绪的动态影响。作者采用实验法,使用真实情景录像作为刺激物,验证了在服务消费中,正向情绪感染和负向情绪感染都是真实存在的,并且服务人员的情绪、语言和行为都会对消费者负面情绪产生持续的动态影响,同时证实了情绪感染敏感度对情绪感染过程产生明显的调节作用。     

Similarities and differences between traumatic and emotional memories: review and directions for future research

The authors review theory and empirical research on the characteristics of memories for traumatic versus emotional events, with the goal of bringing together the cognitive and clinical perspectives on this issue. They consider the most important approaches to the study of traumatic and emotional memory and summarize the results of recent studies that have compared autobiographical recollections of traumatic and nontraumatic emotional experiences (positive and negative), either in nonclinical or clinical samples. Overall, findings from the current empirical literature are inconsistent. Although some researchers have found that traumatic memories are retrieved differently than are emotional memories, others have demonstrated that the phenomenological characteristics of these memory types are highly similar. The authors discuss methodological issues that could help researchers to interpret the inconsistencies found in the empirical findings. Last, they suggest possible directions for future research that may advance researchers' knowledge of memory, trauma, and emotion.