Research for d eterminant factors and features of emotional responses of "kandoh" (the state of being emotionally moved)

Abstract: The feature and determinants of the emotional response kandoh (the state of being emotionally moved) were positively examined (kandoh has rarely been made the object of research in the field of psychology). First, the author reviewed the research done so far and summarized the features of kandoh, and the structural model of the process leading to kandoh was introduced from the results of the above research. Furthermore, experimental examination about the model was performed of different types of stories, and even stories with opposing the emotional frameworks of happiness or sadness, both were shown that they were able to become heart-warming good stories. Moreover, it was shown that the event-related knowledge was important for evocation of kandoh. From the experiment results, consideration was made about new aspects of kandoh.     

Laboratory analogue investigation of defusion and reappraisal strategies in the context of symbolically generalized avoidance

The present study examined and compared the effects of 2 analogues of cognitive treatments—cognitive defusion and cognitive reappraisal—on symbolically generalized avoidance established using a basic behavioral laboratory paradigm. This back‐translation design contributes to the development and validation of principle‐based definitions of the applied constructs of defusion and reappraisal. Eighty‐eight participants first underwent basic laboratory procedures designed to establish symbolically generalized avoidance in response to an arbitrary stimulus (a nonsense word). Participants were then randomized to defusion, reappraisal, or control conditions. The response variables were (a) equivalence responding—indicative of the trained relational network and analogous to the cognitive content responsible for symbolic generalization—and (b) avoidance—the behavioral impact of symbolic generalization. A between‐groups analysis revealed that defusion and reappraisal significantly increased the odds of nonavoidance responding. Discrete‐time survival mediation analyses provided preliminary support for the classification of defusion as a functional context intervention and reappraisal as a relational context intervention.     

Culture and change blindness

Research on perception and cognition suggests that whereas East Asians view the world holistically, attending to the entire field and relations among objects, Westerners view the world analytically, focusing on the attributes of salient objects. These propositions were examined in the change-blindness paradigm. Research in that paradigm finds American participants to be more sensitive to changes in focal objects than to changes in the periphery or context. We anticipated that this would be less true for East Asians and that they would be more sensitive to context changes than would Americans. We presented participants with still photos and with animated vignettes having changes in focal object information and contextual information. Compared to Americans, East Asians were more sensitive to contextual changes than to focal object changes. These results suggest that there can be cultural variation in what may seem to be basic perceptual processes.     

A preliminary investigation of acceptance and commitment therapy as a treatment for chronic skin picking

The effectiveness of a deliberately limited version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for chronic skin picking was evaluated in a pair of multiple baseline across participants designs. Self-monitoring of skin picking showed that four of the five participants reached near zero levels of picking by post-treatment, but these gains were not fully maintained for three of the four participants at follow-up. The findings of the self-reported skin picking were generally corroborated by ratings of photographs of the damaged areas and by ratings on a validated measure of skin picking severity. All participants rated the intervention as socially acceptable, and reductions were found on measures of anxiety, depression, and experiential avoidance for most participants as a result of the intervention. Results support the construction of more comprehensive ACT protocols for skin picking.     

Acceptance and commitment therapy: model, processes and outcomes

The present article presents and reviews the model of psychopathology and treatment underlying Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is unusual in that it is linked to a comprehensive active basic research program on the nature of human language and cognition (Relational Frame Theory), echoing back to an earlier era of behavior therapy in which clinical treatments were consciously based on basic behavioral principles. The evidence from correlational, component, process of change, and outcome comparisons relevant to the model are broadly supportive, but the literature is not mature and many questions have not yet been examined. What evidence is available suggests that ACT works through different processes than active treatment comparisons, including traditional Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT). There are not enough well-controlled studies to conclude that ACT is generally more effective than other active treatments across the range of problems examined, but so far the data are promising.     

Brief functional analysis and treatment of bizarre vocalizations in an adult with schizophrenia

Variables responsible for the maintenance of bizarre vocalizations emitted by an adult diagnosed with schizophrenia were examined via a brief functional analysis, and results suggested that the behavior was maintained by attention. A treatment consisting of extinction and differential reinforcement of appropriate vocalizations was effective in reducing bizarre vocalizations and increasing appropriate vocalizations. The use of functional analysis methodology to examine variables that maintain problem behavior in this population is discussed.     

Interactive processing of phonological information in reading Japanese Kanji character words and their phonemic radicals

Kanji are categorized into four types based on the combinations of "subword validity" (when the right phonemic radical represents the same On-reading as the whole Kanji character) and "radical-neighbor consistency" (when the whole Kanji character represents the same On-reading as all of its neighbor characters). The study demonstrated that both subword validity and radical-neighbor consistency affect naming latencies and error rates regardless of character frequency. The study also demonstrated that the subword validity affects ease of extraction of a subword's phonology. These results suggest that the phonology of the whole Kanji competes with the subword's phonology. Moreover, the competition is stronger when the radical-neighbors aid in extracting the phonology of the whole Kanji.     

Placing the face in context: cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion

Two studies tested the hypothesis that in judging people's emotions from their facial expressions, Japanese, more than Westerners, incorporate information from the social context. In Study 1, participants viewed cartoons depicting a happy, sad, angry, or neutral person surrounded by other people expressing the same emotion as the central person or a different one. The surrounding people's emotions influenced Japanese but not Westerners' perceptions of the central person. These differences reflect differences in attention, as indicated by eye-tracking data (Study 2): Japanese looked at the surrounding people more than did Westerners. Previous findings on East-West differences in contextual sensitivity generalize to social contexts, suggesting that Westerners see emotions as individual feelings, whereas Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group.