Emotion regulation through listening to music in everyday situations

Music is a stimulus capable of triggering an array of basic and complex emotions. We investigated whether and how individuals employ music to induce specific emotional states in everyday situations for the purpose of emotion regulation. Furthermore, we wanted to examine whether specific emotion-regulation styles influence music selection in specific situations. Participants indicated how likely it would be that they would want to listen to various pieces of music (which are known to elicit specific emotions) in various emotional situations. Data analyses by means of non-metric multidimensional scaling revealed a clear preference for pieces of music that were emotionally congruent with an emotional situation. In addition, we found that specific emotion-regulation styles might influence the selection of pieces of music characterised by specific emotions. Our findings demonstrate emotion-congruent music selection and highlight the important role of specific emotion-regulation styles in the selection of music in everyday situations.     

EFFECTIVENESS OF FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING WITH AND WITHOUT EXTINCTION AND PUNISHMENT: A SUMMARY OF 21 INPATIENT CASES

Functional communication training (FCT) is a frequently used treatment for reducing problem behavior exhibited by individuals with developmental disabilities. Once the operant function of problem behavior is identified by a functional analysis, the client is taught to emit an appropriate communicative response to obtain the reinforcer that is responsible for behavioral maintenance. Studies on FCT have typically used small numbers of participants, have reported primarily on clients for whom FCT was successful, and have varied with respect to their use of other treatment components. The main purposes of the present study were to evaluate the efficacy of FCT for treating severe problem behavior in a relatively large sample of individuals with mental retardation (N = 21) and to determine the contribution of extinction and punishment components to FCT treatment packages. FCT with extinction was effective in reducing problem behavior for the majority of clients and resulted in at least a 90% reduction in problem behavior in nearly half the applications. However, when demand or delay-to-reinforcement fading was added to FCT with extinction, treatment efficacy was reduced in about one half of the applications. FCT with punishment (both with and without fading) resulted in at least a 90% reduction in problem behavior for every case in which it was applied.