What I like is How I Am: Impact of Alexithymia on Aesthetic Preference

Aim of this work was to explore the impact of alexithymia on art works appreciation, to examine the influence of emotion regulation on art judgment. While observing a painting, the viewer's cognitive structure contains several types of information (semantic, episodic, and strategic) and is the repository of personal traits, motivations, and emotional dispositions that are involved in this interaction. The study of how personal traits influence work of art appreciation, and especially the study of the way emotion regulation impacts on art judgment, was aimed at improving the comprehension of the aesthetic experience costruct. One hundred adults, divided into 2 groups (high and low scores in alexithymia), observed 20 works of art and were then asked to give an evalutative judgment on three dimentions: cognitive, emotional, aesthetic. As hypothesized, the two groups had significant differences in their aesthetic preferences. Although subjects without affective regulation disorders preferred excitation related pictures, subjects with alexithymia appreciated works evoching emotions of pleasure inhibition. These results confirm the impact of personality traits on aesthetic preference and support the need to include emotional regulation in a comprehensive model of aesthetic experience.     

Young Freud's linkage with Persia

Abstract

Sigmund Freud's hands helped to mutilate a volume containing a series of “colored plates” like the one replicated in Figure 1 in the text. As a young adult, his personal library included a fairytale whose German text was entitled Die Träumleiter: Ein Marchen. No one has yet been able to authenticate the author's identity beyond the following imprint: “S. Andreas (1832).” The poetic play centers upon a celestial meeting featuring Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dschami. It has been translated into English (The dream ladder: A fairy tale), but still awaits a psychoanalytically informed exegesis.     

Enhanced Encoding of Nonverbal Cues Bipolar Illness in Males

Twenty-five affectively bipolar males were found to possess an enhanced ability to encode nonverbal cues when compared to matched controls. This ability was present during both manic and euthymic phases.     

Decreased Reception of Nonverbal Cues in Heroin Addicts

The ability to interpret nonverbal cues was tested in 15 young, white American male heroin addicts who were not intoxicated. When their responses were compared with those of age-matched controls, addicts were found to be significantly less accurate in reading nonverbal communications.     

Teaching with symbols tangentially related to topic: using a linked multimedia approach to enhance learning

40 undergraduate students, none of whom were history or literature majors, attended a lecture on Medieval literature. For half the students the lecture was supplemented by two sets of slides. One set summarized course content while the second set contained slides of paintings or other forms of visual art which were only tangentially related to the topic. For the other half of the student-group, the lecture was supplemented by course content slides only. Students viewing symbolic slides had significantly higher test scores on a written 20-question multiple-choice test given immediately after the lecture.     

Perception of nonverbal facial cues in chronic phencyclidine abusers.

The ability to interpret nonverbal facial cues was tested in 10 young white male chronic phencyclidine (PCP) abusers. When their responses were compared with those of age-matched controls, abusers were significantly more accurate in interpreting the facial cues of videotaped medical interns. Phencyclidine abusers tend to form a socially maladroit and downwardly mobile group. However, previous studies of similar maladroit populations such as heroin addicts have indicated that they are less accurate in interpretation of nonverbal facial cues. The complex action of multiple affected neurotransmitters in PCP abusers was examined. Dopamine and serotonin were thought to be the relevant transmitters.