Spiritual and emotional determinants of health

Within our present health care system, there is a growing movement that argues that our perceptions of health and illness are in need of change. This change includes redefining what we mean by health in terms of the whole person—the emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions of our being, as well as the physical. An increasing number of health professionals and social scientists believe our concepts of health and illness must consider all these aspects of life. It is believed that the quality of life may be enhanced by such perceptions of health, which include social and spiritual factors. Using data from the 1985 Akron Area Survey—The Subjective Quality of Life in the Akron Area—this study explores the effects of spiritual well-being and emotional well-being on health satisfaction. Results indicate that emotional and spiritual factors do significantly contribute to the subjective evaluation of health, especially for individuals who are physically limited.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the joint session of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the American Sociological Association, August 20, 1986. The author would like to thank Margaret Poloma, Ph.D., The University of Akron, and Mark Tausig, Ph.D., The University of Akron, for their helpful comments.     

Cognitive determinants of lactate-induced anxiety

The effects of lactate infusion on subjective mood change were studied in two differently instructed groups, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study. Ss who were told that infusions would produce anxiety reported a significant change in the expected direction after lactate but not after glucose. Ss who were told that infusions would produce a state of pleasant excitement showed no change after either infusion. The possible role of cognitive parameters in experimentally-induced anxiety is discussed.     

Cognitive and neural mechanisms of emotional memory

A highly adaptive aspect of human memory is the enhancement of explicit, consciously accessible memory for emotional stimuli. Recent findings from neuroimaging, neuropsychological, drug and neural stimulation studies indicate that emotional stimuli engage specific cognitive and neural mechanisms that enhance explicit memory. Emotional arousal influences memory via factors that act during memory encoding (attention and elaboration) and factors that modulate memory consolidation. Across studies, the amygdala has been consistently implicated as playing a key role in enhancing explicit memory for both pleasant and unpleasant emotional stimuli through modulation of encoding and consolidation processes.     

Cognitive specificity in emotional distress

Cognitive approaches to emotional distress posit that specific cognitive factors are critically linked to the etiology, course, or treatment of dysfunction. Although a number of empirical studies have assessed cognitive factors in emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety, research has yet to assess these variables simultaneously and with identical cognitive measures. Using depression and test anxiety as models of dysfunctional affective states, we examined cognitive specificity on measures of information processing, attributions, automatic thinking, and cognitive interference. Results indicated a pattern of specificity showing several differences and similarities in depression and anxiety. Specifically, "purely" depressed individuals showed evidence of selectively processing depressive information, making dysfunctional attributions, and engaging in more negative automatic thinking. "Purely" anxious individuals, on the other hand, showed evidence of selective anxious information processing and increased cognitive interference. Results are discussed in terms of a taxonomy for classifying depressive and anxious cognition.     

Inherent emotional quality of human speech sounds

During much of the past century, it was widely believed that phonemes—the human speech sounds that constitute words—have no inherent semantic meaning, and that the relationship between a combination of phonemes (a word) and its referent is simply arbitrary. Although recent work has challenged this picture by revealing psychological associations between certain phonemes and particular semantic contents, the precise mechanisms underlying these associations have not been fully elucidated. Here we provide novel evidence that certain phonemes have an inherent, non-arbitrary emotional quality. Moreover, we show that the perceived emotional valence of certain phoneme combinations depends on a specific acoustic feature—namely, the dynamic shift within the phonemes' first two frequency components. These data suggest a phoneme-relevant acoustic property influencing the communication of emotion in humans, and provide further evidence against previously held assumptions regarding the structure of human language. This finding has potential applications for a variety of social, educational, clinical, and marketing contexts.     

Cognitive and emotional aspects of self-regulation in preschoolers

The goal of the present study was to examine the contribution of executive function (EF) and social cognition to individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) in preschool children. Sixty 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were administered a battery of EF tasks, two theory of mind tasks, a measure of verbal ability, and an ER task. In addition, parents completed the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning—Preschool Version (BRIEF-P). Performance on the theory of mind tasks as well as parental ratings of executive function was not related to performance on the ER task. However, a component of EF (i.e., inhibition) approached significance with children's displays of positive behaviors during the ER task. Verbal ability was related to the regulation of positive but not negative emotions. Parental ratings of shifting accounted for a significant amount of variance in parental ratings of ER, even after controlling for verbal ability. The findings are discussed in the context of different conceptualizations of the developmental relation between ER and EF.     

How aging affects the recognition of emotional speech

To successfully infer a speaker's emotional state, diverse sources of emotional information need to be decoded. The present study explored to what extent emotional speech recognition of 'basic' emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, pleasant surprise, sadness) differs between different sex (male/female) and age (young/middle-aged) groups in a behavioural experiment. Participants were asked to identify the emotional prosody of a sentence as accurately as possible. As a secondary goal, the perceptual findings were examined in relation to acoustic properties of the sentences presented. Findings indicate that emotion recognition rates differ between the different categories tested and that these patterns varied significantly as a function of age, but not of sex.     

Cognitive strategies for controlling emotional contagion

This study examined strategies for limiting susceptibility to “catching” negative emotions from others. Participants watched 3 videos of happy or sad individuals, as though they were therapists interacting with clients. The entire process was videotaped. Emotional contagion was measured by facial affect and self‐reports. Prior to viewing the videos, participants were assigned one of 4 cognitive strategies: (a) empathic imagery; (b) dissociation; (c) reflection; or (d) no instruction (control). Empathic imagery was expected to increase contagion vs. the control, while dissociation and reflection were expected to decrease contagion. Results indicated that only dissociation decreased contagion on both measures.     

Adaptation to time-compressed speech: phonological determinants

Perceptual adaptation to time-compressed speech was analyzed in two experiments. Previous research has suggested that this adaptation phenomenon is language specific and takes place at the phonological level. Moreover, it has been proposed that adaptation should only be observed for languages that are rhythmically similar. This assumption was explored by studying adaptation to different time-compressed languages in Spanish speakers. In Experiment 1, the performances of Spanish-speaking subjects who adapted to Spanish, Italian, French, English, and Japanese were compared. In Experiment 2, subjects from the same population were tested with Greek sentences compressed to two different rates. The results showed adaptation for Spanish, Italian, and Greek and no adaptation for English and Japanese, with French being an intermediate case. To account for the data, we propose that variables other than just the rhythmic properties of the languages, such as the vowel system and/or the lexical stress pattern, must be considered. The Greek data also support the view that phonological, rather than lexical, information is a determining factor in adaptation to compressed speech.     

Cognitive appraisals and emotional experience: Further evidence

Abstract

The present study uses methods derived from Smith and Ellsworth (1985) to investigate the degree to which emotions are associated with distinctive patterns of cognitive appraisal. Subjects described past situations in which they had unambiguously experienced each of eight emotions: guilt. embarrassment, shame. anxiety. anger, hope. joy, and pride. These situations were then rated on each of 10 appraisal scales: unpleasantness. unexpectedness of events from own and from others' perspective, inconsistency of own actions with own and others' behavioural standards, benefit to self and to others, own and others' responsibility for events. and degree to which events were beyond anyone's control. Analysis of these ratings revealed distinctive patterns of appraisal associated with the eight emotions. including discriminable patterns for guilt and shame—emotions that were not distinguished in terms of the appraisal dimensions recovered by Smith and Ellsworth. Thus the present study demonstrates that appraisal dimensions (such as unexpectedness, benefit, and inconsistency with behavioural standards) in addition than those used by Smith and Ellsworth have utility in distinguishing among emotions.     

Memory determinants of response latency to produce speech

In three experiments, subjects were asked to memorize related phrase pairs and then to produce one of these phrases from a cue. In Experiment 1, it was found that both memorization times and response latencies increased with the number of words that differed between the phrases. In Experiment 2 and 3, it was shown that the presence of a strong modifying or semantic relationship between words in one phrase influenced both memorization time and response latency when those same words were contrasted between the two phrases. The implications of the results for models of storage, retrieval, and planning of speech are considered.     

Cognitive and emotional dysfunction after central pontine myelinolysis

The case of a 67-year-old right-handed Chinese man with Central Pontine Myelinolysis [CPM] is described to illustrate the resulting cognitive and emotional disturbances. A comparison of the data in this report with that in published studies suggests that ethnicity does not seem to have much effect on the symptoms of CPM. Possible underlying neural-pathological mechanisms are discussed. This case further substantiates the speculation that the brainstem plays a role in higher cognitive processes and emotional regulation.     

Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a part of the brain's limbic system. Classically, this region has been related to affect, on the basis of lesion studies in humans and in animals. In the late 1980s, neuroimaging research indicated that ACC was active in many studies of cognition. The findings from EEG studies of a focal area of negativity in scalp electrodes following an error response led to the idea that ACC might be the brain's error detection and correction device. In this article, these various findings are reviewed in relation to the idea that ACC is a part of a circuit involved in a form of attention that serves to regulate both cognitive and emotional processing. Neuroimaging studies showing that separate areas of ACC are involved in cognition and emotion are discussed and related to results showing that the error negativity is influenced by affect and motivation. In addition, the development of the emotional and cognitive roles of ACC are discussed, and how the success of this regulation in controlling responses might be correlated with cingulate size. Finally, some theories are considered about how the different subdivisions of ACC might interact with other cortical structures as a part of the circuits involved in the regulation of mental and emotional activity.     

Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech

Three experiments investigated possible acoustic determinants of the infant listening preference for motherese speech found by Fernald 1985. To test the hypothesis that the intonation of motherese speech was sufficient to elicit this preference, it was necessary to eliminate lexical content and to isolate the three major acoustic correlates of intonation: (1) fundamental frequency (F_o), or pitch; (2) amplitude, correlated with loudness; and (3) duration, related to speech rhythm. Three sets of auditory reinforcers were computer-synthesized, derived from the F_o (Experiment 1), amplitude (Experiment 2), and duration (Experiment 3) characteristics of the infant- and adult-directed natural speech samples used by Fernald 1985. Thus, each of these experiments focused on particular prosodic variables in the absence of segmental variation. Twenty 4-month-old infants were tested in an operant auditory preference procedure in each experiment. Infants showed a significant preference for the F_o-patterns of motherese speech, but not for the amplitude or duration patterns of motherese.     

基于手机APP的双维n-back训练的认知与情绪效益

工作记忆训练的训练获益能够迁移至与工作记忆相关的各项基础认知活动中去。基于情绪认知控制与工作记忆之间的密切关联, 本研究设计了一种新型情绪性双维n-back训练, 并且验证利用手机APP搭载训练任务的适用性。结果表明：基于APP的短期双维n-back训练能够使个体在视空间工作记忆任务、活动记忆任务、数字转换任务、Stroop任务上的成绩产生相较控制组更大的进步, 表明训练可以提高个体工作记忆的容量和中央执行功能。然而, 基于不同情绪材料的训练(中性、负性、正性)在各类迁移上差异不大。短期训练无法迁移到情绪Stroop任务中, 即无法产生特异的情绪控制上的效益。双维n-back任务通道单一, 且搭载于手机APP, 拥有较为广阔的应用前景。但将情绪材料单纯地糅合进工作记忆任务中的价值与意义须被进一步考察。     

Cerebral mechanisms for understanding emotional prosody in speech

Hemispheric contributions to the processing of emotional speech prosody were investigated by comparing adults with a focal lesion involving the right (n = 9) or left (n = 11) hemisphere and adults without brain damage (n = 12). Participants listened to semantically anomalous utterances in three conditions (discrimination, identification, and rating) which assessed their recognition of five prosodic emotions under the influence of different task- and response-selection demands. Findings revealed that right- and left-hemispheric lesions were associated with impaired comprehension of prosody, although possibly for distinct reasons: right-hemisphere compromise produced a more pervasive insensitivity to emotive features of prosodic stimuli, whereas left-hemisphere damage yielded greater difficulties interpreting prosodic representations as a code embedded with language content.     

The emotional and reconstructive determinants of emotional memories: An experimental approach to flashbulb memory investigation

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) are vivid and detailed memories of the reception context of a public emotional event. Brown and Kulik (1977) introduced the label FBM to suggest the idea that individuals are able to preserve knowledge of an event in an indiscriminate way, in analogy with a photograph that preserves all details of a scene. Research work on FBMs has primarily been conducted using a naturalistic approach in order to explore the role of the emotional and reconstructive factors on FBM formation and maintenance. Nevertheless, these studies lack a sufficient control on the factors that might intervene in the process of FBM formation. The contribution of the present studies is addressed to experimentally investigating the role of emotional and reconstructive factors on emotionally charged memories, specifically on FBMs. Paralleling FBM findings, the two studies revealed that simply being in an emotional state allows people to remember all available information, such as irrelevant and unrelated details. Furthermore, the resulting memories are affected by reconstructive processes so that they are not as accurate as their richness of details would suggest.