Pleasure,Arousal, Dominance: Mehrabian and Russell revisited

This paper presents a discursive review of the dimensions pleasure, arousal and dominance that Mehrabian and Russell developed in 1974 to assess environmental perception, experience, and psychological responses. Since then numerous researchers applied these dimensions to assess the experience of the physical environment and its perceived qualities. Although the dimensions appeared to be useful, there is a long-lasting debate going on among environmental psychologists about the interpretation of pleasure, arousal and dominance and its underlying mechanisms. Due to the lack of clarity researchers use different adjectives to describe environmental experiences, which makes any comparison between research findings difficult. This paper shows that the three dimensions can be linked to the current ABC Model of Attitudes: pleasure, arousal and dominance can be respectively related to affective, cognitive and conative responses, i.e. Affect, Cognition and Behaviour (ABC). In addition, connecting the three dimensions to the triad feeling, thinking and acting, can also help to improve our understanding, interpretation and measurement of pleasure, arousal and dominance. Based on this review, it is proposed to re-introduce the three dimensions and to replace the nowadays often used two dimensional model with pleasure and arousal by a three dimensional model, including dominance as a third dimension, to represent the complete range of human responses.     

Schizotypy and verbal memory in the adolescent general population

The following study examines the relationship between verbal memory deficits and schizotypal traits measured psychometrically from a non- clinical adolescent population. In this transversal analytical study participated 139 subjects. They were secondary school students, with ages ranging from 13 to 16 years old (mean= 14, 35; Sta.Dev.= 0, 548). After administrating the scales O-LIFE (psychometrical schizotypy), CVLT (verbal memory), and Letters and Numbers subtest of WAIS-III (working memory), data was analyzed utilizing Pearson correlations and mean comparison test. Results showed lack of relations between schizotypy measures and working memory. Nonetheless, some of the O-LIFE dimensions correlated with verbal memory. These findings support partly the literature reviewed. Yet, more work focused on schizotypy and cognitive deficits as risk factors are suggested.     

Skeletal structure of printed words: evidence from the stroop task

Do readers encode the sequencing of consonant (C) and vowel (V) phonemes (skeletal structure) in printed words? The authors used the Stroop task to examine readers' sensitivity to skeletal structure. In Experiment 1, CVC nonwords (e.g., pof) facilitated the naming of colors with congruent frames (e.g., red, a CVC word) but not with incongruent ones (e.g., green). In Experiment 2, the color black (a CCVC frame) was named faster with a congruent CCVC frame (e.g., grof) compared to either CCVCC (e.g., groft) or CVC (e.g., gof) incongruent controls. Finally, in Experiment 3, the color pink (a CVCC frame) was named faster with a CVCC frame (e.g., goft) compared to either CCVCC or CVC incongruent controls. In most cases, congruent frames shared no segments with the color name. These findings demonstrate that readers automatically assemble the skeletal structure of printed words.     

Affective images: relieving chronic pain and enhancing quality of life for older persons.

With increasing life expectancy, the incidence of chronic illness and chronic pain also increase. Chronic pain robs older people of their quality of life, and limits functional mobility and ambulation, which leads to muscle atrophy. Older people are often reluctant to request pain relief, attempting to endure pain as a "normal" part of ageing. Innovative non-pharmacological interventions in pain management are appealing. In this study, affective images and pictures were used in 15 elderly patients (12 female and three male) in chronic pain who needed to perform stretching and standing exercises in their physiotherapy sessions. Pain scores were measured by the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), and health-related quality of life was measured by the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 (SF-36). VAS and SF-36 were administered in weeks 1 and in 6. Pain scores were measured during physiotherapy session in the following weeks. There was a significant decreased in VAS from week 1 to week 6 (t = 3.607; df = 14; p < 0.05). Also, a significant decrease in VAS occurred when the patients were watching affective pictures while performing the physiotherapy exercise in weeks 2 and 3, but not in weeks 4 and 5. SF-36 increased in week 6, which indicated an increase in health-related quality of life, though not statistically significant. Affective images and pictures appear to be an effective non-pharmacological intervention in pain management for the older person.     

The use of the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method in describing and comparing gestalt and rational emotive behavior therapy with adolescents

The Core Conflitual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method (Luborsky, 1977) is used to study recurrent relationship patterns in therapy and may be employed as a measure of transference as well. We found only one article in the literature in which it was applied to a mode of psychotherapy, other than psychodynamic (Turner, 1992). In addition, there are only a few articles in the literature that refer to the CCRT method with children and adolescents. In this paper, we applied the CCRT method to two videotaped individual sessions of young adolescent boys, one in gestalt therapy and the other in rational emotive behavior therapy. Results showed that both boys revealed similar core relational theme profiles, but that their respective therapists each dealt differently with these relationship conflicts. In this pilot use of the CCRT with adolescent therapy, we were able to describe relationship patterns and delineate key differences between the two treatment modalities.Stacey Agin, a gradduate student in School Psychology at New York University, submitted this paper for partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate of Psychology. Iris E. Fodor is a professor of Applied Psychology at New York University and is director of the School Psychology program. She is known for her work on integrating cognitive and gestalt therapies. We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of Raymond DiGiuseppe, Ph.D. Violet Oaklander, Ph.D. and Michael Bernard, Ph.D. in allowing us to utilize their videotaped psychotherapy sessions for the purposes of this study.     

How to bite your tongue without blowing your top: implicit evaluation of emotion regulation predicts affective responding to anger provocation

People frequently have to control their emotions to function in life. However, mounting evidence suggests that deliberate emotion regulation often is costly. This presents a dilemma: Is it better to let emotions go or to pay the price of exerting costly control? In two studies, the authors explore whether emotion regulatory processes associated with implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation might provide the benefits of successful emotion regulation without the costs. In Study 1, the authors introduce a measure of implicit evaluation of emotion regulation (ER-IAT). Study 2 examined whether this measure is associated with actual emotional responses to an anger provocation. It was found that greater ER-IAT scores were associated with lesser anger experience, fewer negative thoughts, lessened self-reported effortful emotion regulation, and an adaptive pattern of cardiovascular responding. These findings suggest that implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation is associated with successful, automatic, and physiologically adaptive down-regulation of anger.     

The role of Hebrew letter names in early literacy: the case of multiphonemic acrophonic names

English-speaking children spell letters correctly more often when the letters' names are heard in the word (e.g., B in beach vs. bone). Hebrew letter names have been claimed to be less useful in this regard. In Study 1, kindergartners were asked to report and spell initial and final letters in Hebrew words that included full (CVC), partial (CV), and phonemic (C) cues derived from these letter names (e.g., kaftor, kartis, kibepsilonl, spelled with /kaf/). Correct and biased responses increased with length of congruent and incongruent cues, respectively. In Study 2, preschoolers and kindergartners were asked to report initial letters with monosyllabic or disyllabic names (e.g., /kaf/ or /samepsilonx/, respectively) that included the cues described above. Correct responses increased with cue length; the effect was stronger with monosyllabic letter names than with disyllabic letter names, probably because the cue covered a larger ratio of the letter name. Phonological awareness was linked to use of letter names.     

The pursuit of happiness can be lonely

Few things seem more natural and functional than wanting to be happy. We suggest that, counter to this intuition, valuing happiness may have some surprising negative consequences. Specifically, because striving for personal gains can damage connections with others and because happiness is usually defined in terms of personal positive feelings (a personal gain) in western contexts, striving for happiness might damage people's connections with others and make them lonely. In 2 studies, we provide support for this hypothesis. Study 1 suggests that the more people value happiness, the lonelier they feel on a daily basis (assessed over 2 weeks with diaries). Study 2 provides an experimental manipulation of valuing happiness and demonstrates that inducing people to value happiness leads to relatively greater loneliness, as measured by self-reports and a hormonal index (progesterone). In each study, key potential confounds, such as positive and negative affect, were ruled out. These findings suggest that wanting to be happy can make people lonely. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanations

Many cognitive scientists, having discovered that some computational-level characterization f of a cognitive capacity ${\phi}$ is intractable, invoke heuristics as algorithmic-level explanations of how cognizers compute f. We argue that such explanations are actually dysfunctional, and rebut five possible objections. We then propose computational-level theory revision as a principled and workable alternative.