Decrease of Relatives' High Levels of Expressed Emotion in Schizophrenic Disorders

Abstract

The family emotional atmosphere, Expressed Emotion, was assessed with the Swedish version of the Camberwell Family Interview, before and after a six-session multifamily education programme. The intervention provided illness-related knowledge and emotional support to relatives of patients with schizophrenic disorders. Relatives' high level of EE decreased significantly. Mainly responsible for the decrease was a reduction in the number of critical remarks, while emotional overinvolvement decreased non-significantly. The findings indicate that high levels of Expressed Emotion in relatives of patients suffering from long-standing schizophrenic disorders may decrease over a relatively short span of time.     

Development of Children's Awareness of Their Own Thoughts

Adults attach special value to objects that link to notable people or events—authentic objects. We examined children's monetary evaluation of authentic objects, focusing on four kinds: celebrity possessions (e.g., Harry Potter's glasses), original creations (e.g., the very first teddy bear), personal possessions (e.g., your grandfather's baseball glove), and merely old items (e.g., an old chair). Children ages 4 to 12 years old and adults (N = 151) were asked how much people would pay for authentic and control objects. Young children consistently placed greater monetary value on celebrity possessions than on original creations, even when adults judged the two kinds of items to be equivalent. These results suggest that contact with a special individual may be the foundation for the value placed on authentic objects.     

Factorial Validity of the Personality Adjective Checklist in a Dutch-Speaking Sample

We examined the factorial structure of the Dutch version of the Personality Adjective Checklist (PACL–D) in a Belgian sample of 3,012 community-dwelling adults. Exploratory factor analyses revealed a 5-factor structure (Neurotic, Aggressive/Dominant, Introverted vs. Extraverted, Conscientious, and Cooperative), that showed considerable overlap with 3 of the Big Five factors (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness). Moreover, the 5-factor structure closely resembled the structure found in the original American PACL and was equivalent across gender and age.     

Relatives' Perceptions of Their Interactional Behavior with a Schizop/hrenic Family Member

Relatives' (N = 77 ) perceptions of their recent interactional behavior with a schizophrenic family member (N = 51 ), as measured by an adjective checklist, were compared with outside observer ratings of the relatives' Affective Style (AS) and the patients' Coping Style (CS) during a family interaction task. Results indicated that, overall, the relatives in the present sample perceived their own interactional behavior toward the patient, as well as the patients' behavior toward them, in a way that paralleled their affective behavior as assessed by outside raters. Moreover, the relatives' rated their relationship with the patient in a fashion that was more predictive of the observed interactional behavior of both the relatives and the patients than were the outside observers' ratings of the relatives' Expressed Emotion (EE) measured either at the patients' index hospitalization (using the Camberwell Family Interview, CFI-EE) or during the post-discharge period (assessed with a brief Five-Minute Speech Sample method, FMSS-EE).     

Difficulties in Interpersonal Emotion Regulation: Initial Development and Validation of a Self-Report Measure

Recent attention has focused on the role of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) in the development and maintenance of a range of forms of psychopathology, including anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder (BPD). Despite the relevance of IER in psychopathology, few measures exist to characterize patterns of maladaptive IER. Our aim was to (1) develop a measure of maladaptive IER, (2) begin to explore the factor structure of this new measure, the difficulties in interpersonal regulation of emotions (DIRE), and (3) examine its association with symptoms of psychopathology. In Study 1, 853 Mechanical Turk workers completed the DIRE and measures of psychopathology symptoms. We identified two factors each in the IER and intrapersonal emotion regulation scales. In Study 2, 142 undergraduate students completed the DIRE and daily measures of emotion regulation and coping for 14 days. Preliminary findings suggest that the DIRE has adequate internal consistency and construct and predictive validity. This measure has the potential to supplement future efforts in assessing IER in psychopathology.     

Assuming a Position: Women and Men as Moral Critics in Their Own War Zone

In their search for an authentic moral self, women and men may at some time in their lives assume a position of resistance. Men are most likely to assume this position in the sphere of war. It is not clear, however, where or when women would be expected to assume such a position or what the nature of that position might be, and how far it could be likened to that of the resisting man. This paper explores the idea that choosing to be a single mother can be a position by and from which women can voice their moral criticism. Such position is comparable to the (known and well-studied) position taken by men who show their moral criticism by refusing to participate in a specific battle during a morally controversial war. The paper begins with an examination of the philosophical and psychological concepts of separate and connected moral positions available to resisting men and women in the spheres of war and family. The conclusions are based on data from two samples of resisters in the spheres of war and the family: 36 soldiers (30 years old on average) who decided to take a stand as selective conscientious objectors (SCOs) during a morally controversial war and 50 (biologically) mature single women (over age 30) who chose to become pregnant and to remain unwed mothers. The conceptual and methodological questions regarding this comparison are discussed.     

Psychometric Properties of the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire for Children in a French-Speaking Population

In this study, we investigated the psychometric properties of the French version of the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ30; Rieffe et al., 2008). The EAQ30 was administered to 707 French-speaking children aged 8 to 16 years old. The original 6-factor structure was replicated in our data. The internal consistency coefficients of the EAQ30 subscales were satisfactory. We found small significant differences for gender and age. Regarding convergent validity, we found positive correlations between EAQ30 scores and emotional intelligence and negative correlations between EAQ30 scores and alexithymia. There was preliminary evidence of discriminant validity, with EAQ30 scores being weakly related to school performance, and concurrent validity, with EAQ30 scores being negatively related to somatic complaints, depression, and anxiety. Finally, except for 1 dimension, EAQ30 scores were not susceptible to social desirability. Although some weaknesses of the scale remain to be addressed, these findings support the use of the EAQ30 for research and clinical purposes.     

Integrity of Literature on Expressed Emotion and Relapse in Patients with Schizophrenia Verified by a p‐Curve Analysis

There is growing concern that much published research may have questionable validity due to phenomena such as publication bias and p‐hacking. Within the psychiatric literature, the construct of expressed emotion (EE) is widely assumed to be a reliable predictor of relapse across a range of mental illnesses. EE is an index of the family climate, measuring how critical, hostile, and overinvolved a family member is toward a mentally ill patient. No study to date has examined the evidential value of this body of research as a whole. That is to say, although many studies have shown a link between EE and symptom relapse, the integrity of the literature from which this claim is derived has not been tested. In an effort to confirm the integrity of the literature of EE predicting psychiatric relapse in patients with schizophrenia, we conducted a p‐curve analysis on all known studies examining EE (using the Camberwell Family Interview) to predict psychiatric relapse over a 9‐ to 12‐month follow‐up period. Results suggest that the body of literature on EE is unbiased and has integrity, as there was a significant right skew of p‐values, a nonsignificant left skew of p‐values, and a nonsignificant test of flatness. We conclude that EE is a robust and valuable predictor of symptom relapse in schizophrenia.     

Transexuals' Recognition of Emotions as Measured by the FEEL-Test

ABSTRACT

The study investigates the ability of transsexuals (TS) to recognize facially expressed basic emotions. It was hypothesized that, due to their discomfort in their gender role, this ability might be diminished in TS. In addition it was expected that emotion recognition improves during the course of transgendering, e.g., after having started the Real-life Experience (RLE) which regularly reduces stress levels. Finally it was hypothesized that TS do better in recognizing facial emotions when the person showing them has their desired sex and gender. To test these hypotheses the FEEL-test (Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling) was used. Forty-seven TS and 55 non-transsexual controls matched for age and sex were included in the study. The first hypothesis was confirmed. As regards the second hypothesis, no differences could be found between the groups at different stages in the transition between the two genders. The third hypothesis was also rejected: TS recognized facially expressed basic emotions from male and female stimuli independently of their desired sex.     

Emotion space as a predictor of binocular rivalry

In our 1999 report, we examined robustness of a two-dimensional structure of facial expressions of emotion under the condition of some perceptual ambiguity, using a stereo-scope. The current study aimed to replicate and extend the previous work by adding facial photographs of different persons and by measuring participants' perception of stereoscopically presented faces. Multidimensional scaling provided a two-dimensional configuration of facial expressions comparable with the previous studies. Although binocular rivalry was a less frequent phenomenon, it was suggested that the distances between facial expressions in the derived space were a contributing factor in eliciting binocular rivalry.     

The Adjective Check List as a predictor of lifelong learning in the human service professions

The purpose of this study was to identify personality characteristics, using The Adjective Check List, that could be used to predict lifelong learners in the human service professions. 143 professionals responded to The Adjective Check List and a demographic form. 23 of the scales were subjected to principal factor analysis followed by a varimax rotation. Multiple regression was applied to the extracted factors to predict the average number of hours spent in learning activities per month. Characteristics identified were insufficient to develop a profile of lifelong learners. Only one factor-Organized-significantly correlated with the amount of time human service professionals spent in learning activities over the past year.     

The Stress-Arousal Checklist as a measure of situational stress versus simple arousal

The Stress-Arousal Checklist was developed as a self-report measure both of arousal and of the favorable or unfavorable appraisal of that arousal. Previous studies with the checklist showed differential sensitivity of the two subscales to experimental manipulations. In the present study, the convergent and discriminant validity were further explored by comparing scores with those on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-State. The results supported the validity of the two-factor structure.     

Personality Characteristics of Eating-Disordered Outpatients as Measured by the Hand Test

The Hand Test was administered to 34 eating-disordered and 26 noneating-disordered college-age women to determine discriminating projective personality features. Eating-disordered women scored higher on response time, overall pathology, and passivity. Anorexics present more tension, aggression, and acting out potential whereas bulimics demonstrate significantly more passive responses. The more severely affected women scored higher on crippled, passive, and withdrawal variables. Similarities as well as differences between the groups may have important implications for the diagnosis of subgroups of eating-disordered women and for treatment planning.     

Cognitive Appraisal as a Predictor of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Choice

More attention has recently been focused on how a person may choose their emotion regulation strategies depending on the situation. The present research examined how people cognitively appraised a situation that they had actually encountered in their life and how this appraisal affected their subsequent cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Three hundred and twenty‐four participants were instructed to recall the most stressful situation in the last month, and to rate how they cognitively appraised the situation (threat, centrality, controllability, commitment, injustice/unfairness, expectedness, expectancy) and how they cognitively regulated their emotion (self‐blame, blaming others, acceptance, refocus on planning, positive refocusing, rumination, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, catastrophizing). Multiple regression analysis revealed that even after control for other variables, such as age, sex, personality, the time when the situation occurred and the intensity of negative emotion, all criteria of cognitive appraisal except for expectedness predicted cognitive emotion regulation choice. Implications and limitations of this research are discussed.     

An Informational Analysis of Active Kinesthesis as Measured by Amplitude of Movement

5 blindfolded Ss were required to make absolute judgments of the extent to which their extended right arm was voluntarily moved in the horizontal plane. The first experiment entailed the judgment of 20 different amplitudes and from these data a scale of equal discriminability was constructed for each S. From these individual scales amplitudes were selected for 5 additional absolute judgment experiments where the number of amplitudes were varied from 4 to 16. Analysis of the mean equal discriminability scale showed that kinesthetic sensitivity varied over the continuum of movements. The primary analysis of information transfer between number of amplitudes of movement and responses indicated that information transfer varied considerably over the 5 experiments with a maximum transfer of 2.48 bits occurring when 16 amplitudes were used. These results were discussed in terms of the possible cues involved in movement discrimination and whether kinesthetic cues could be used in a closed-loop model of voluntary movement control.     

The Robustness of Anti-Atheist Prejudice as Measured by Way of Cognitive Errors

Over the past decade, distrust of atheists has been documented in psychological literature yet remains relatively understudied. The current research sought to test the robustness of anti-atheist prejudice. Specifically, it examined the extent to which an individual’s anti-atheist prejudice remained unchanged in light of new information. One hundred participants from the United Kingdom completed an online experiment. The experiment involved reading a vignette describing the actions of an untrustworthy individual. Participants were asked to make a judgment with regards to the untrustworthy individual’s identity. The occurrence of a cognitive bias, namely, the conjunction fallacy, was used to measure the frequency of anti-atheist prejudice. An examination of judgment errors (i.e., conjunction fallacies) under different conditions was used to test the robustness of anti-atheism prejudice. The results show that anti-atheist prejudice is not confined either to dominantly religious countries or to religious individuals but rather appears to be a robust judgment about atheists.     

The Adjustment of Drug Addicts as Measured by the Sentence Completion Test

The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank was administered to fifty out-patients at a rehabilitation center for narcotic addicts. There were twenty male heroin users, twenty male pill users, and ten female heroin users. Interscorer, intrascorer, and split-half reliabilities were all high. It was found that a cutting score of adjustment of 135 correctly identified 80 per cent of the male heroin users, 90 per cent of the male pill users, and 100 per cent of the female heroin users.