Cognitive-evaluative Components Research Articles

Понимание эмоций как фактор социальной самореализации обучающейся и работающей молодежи

<p>Self-realization, as a psychological phenomenon that combines well-pronounced motivational and cognitive-evaluative components, largely determines adaptive resources of a person. This article analyzes the relationships among three types of self-realization, basic personal traits, professional experience and emotional intelligence of young adults on a sample of 125 students (girls and boys) of the Southern Federal University. A part of the sample consisted of part-time students who combined work and professional training (n=51), the rest were full-time students in their respective fields of study (n=74). The study tested three research hypotheses, namely that: (1) The respondents would report relatively low level of social self-realization, in comparison with professional and personal self-realization; (2) Significant differences would be observed in indicators of social self-realization, but not in emotional intelligence, between the sub-samples of part-time and full-time students; (3) Professional experience, basic personal characteristics and individual indicators of emotional intelligence would contribute to the respondents' subjective assessment of their social self-realization. Results of ANOVA, correlational and regression analysis of data collected using psychodiagnostic techniques by Kudinov (self-realization profiles), Lyusin (EmIn), and Sschebetenko (Big Five-2), by and large, confirmed all three study hypotheses, in particular and most importantly – about the differences between the two categories of respondents in the level of their social self-realization and in various combinations of its predictors, specifically, about the unique role of the ‘understanding emotions’ factor. The article also discusses the importance of self-realization for successful social adaptation of young people and describes various psycho-correctional and psychological-pedagogical methods, including specialized training of emotional intelligence, designed to compensate for low social self-realization.</p>

Moral and Ethical Factors of Conflict Behavior Strategies

The article presents the results of an empirical study of moral and ethical factors of conflict behavior strategies. In the presence of numerous studies of the psychological determinants of behavior strategies in conflict, the question of the moral and ethical side of behavioral strategies remains open. The study used the questionnaire “Behavior in a Conflict Situation, TKI” (Thomas-Kilmann) adapted by N.V. Grishina, “Dark Dozen” adapted by T.V. Kornilova, “Ethical Positions Questionnaire” as adapted by A. A. Fedorov, I. V. Badiev. The personality traits of the Dark Triad (emotional- behavioral component) and D. Forsyth's concept of ethical positions (cognitive-evaluative component) are considered as moral and ethical factors of behavioral strategies in conflict. It is shown that the personality traits of the Dark Triad and ethical positions are independent phenomena. Each strategy of behavior in a conflict is associated with the severity of certain moral and ethical factors.

Brain circuits for pain and its treatment.

Pain is a multidimensional experience with sensory-discriminative, affective-motivational, and cognitive-evaluative components. Pain aversiveness is one principal cause of suffering for patients with chronic pain, motivating research and drug development efforts to investigate and modulate neural activity in the brain’s circuits encoding pain unpleasantness. Here, we review progress in understanding the organization of emotion, motivation, cognition, and descending modulation circuits for pain perception. We describe the molecularly defined neuron types that collectively shape pain multidimensionality and its aversive quality. We also review how pharmacological, stimulation, neurofeedback, surgical, and cognitive-behavioral interventions alter activity in these circuits to relieve chronic pain.

Psychological Well-Being and Intra-personal Conflicts in Adolescence.

Adolescence is a period characterized as transitional and as such, it is full of complications and conflicts. Research of Intra-Personal Conflicts in connection with Psycho-Emotional Well-being (PEW) comprising three kinds of indicators: personality, cognitive-evaluative and emotional represents new scientific approach. This approach provides the opportunity to define the role of PEW in Intra-Personal Conflicts: Motivation Value Conflict (MVC) and Self-Estimate Conflict (SEC). Our aim was to study the severity of MVC and SEC, the interrelationship of these types of conflicts, and their connection with various PEW components. 237 high school students (ages 15-18; 99 boys, 138 girls) were surveyed. Tests of MVC, the Self-Estimate Scale (SE), and the Level of Aspiration Scale (LA) were applied to measure the conflicts. The Scale of Psychological Well-Being, the Scale of Life Satisfaction, and the Dominant Emotional States Test were employed to measure PEW. The study revealed a high prevalence of Intra-Personal Conflicts in the sample. The adolescents all had high levels of Intra-Personal Conflicts; changes were found in all three blocks of PEW. In the group with a high level of MVC, the levels of Environmental Mastery and Self-Acceptance were significantly lower. Having high level of SEC went along with decreases in most indicators of the personal and cognitive-evaluative components of PEW: decreasing of Cheerfulness, Active Attitude to Life Situation and Life Satisfaction; there were changes in emotional blockage, including decreases in Stability and Emotional Tone, and increases in Despondency, Tension, and Anxiety. The study found the prevalence of Intra-Personal Conflicts in the adolescents. We showed that the personality and cognitive-evaluative components of PEW played the role of conflict moderators, while the emotional components were manifested as intra-personal conflict.

Somatosensory Stimulus Intensity Encoding in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is clinically characterized by emotional instability, interpersonal disturbances and dysfunctional behavior such as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). During NSSI, patients with BPD typically report analgesic or hypoalgesic phenomena, and pain perception and pain processing in BPD have been repeatedly investigated. Most of the studies so far focused on affective-motivational and cognitive-evaluative neural components of pain within categorial study designs. By contrast, rather basic somatosensory aspects such as neural intensity-encoding of somatosensory stimuli were not examined in further details. Thus, we investigated patients with BPD and healthy controls (HC) by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an unpleasant sensory stimulation task with parametrically increasing stimulus intensities. 15 females diagnosed with BPD and 15 HCs were investigated with fMRI during four individually adjusted levels of electrical stimulus intensities. Ratings of stimulus intensity were assessed by button presses during fMRI. fMRI-data were analyzed by analyses of variances (ANOVA) at a statistical threshold of p < 0.05 FWE-corrected on cluster level. Subjective ratings of stimulus intensities were alike between BPD and HC, and intensity levels identified with equal accuracy. Significant intensity-encoding neural activations were observed within the primary and secondary somtasensory cortex, the posterior insula, the posterior midcingulate cortex (pMCC) and the supplementary motor area (SMA) in both, HC and BPD. Notably, there were no significant between-groups differences in intensity-encoding neural activations, even at lowered significance thresholds. Present results suggest a similar neural somatosensory stimulus intensity encoding in BPD as previously observed on a behavioral level. The alterations in neural affective-motivational or cognitive-evaluative components reported so far may be restricted to pain rather than unpleasant stimulus processing and were absent in our study.

The effect of tDCS over the right temporo-parietal junction on pain empathy

Empathy is a complex psychological phenomenon crucial for social perception and interactions. Several lines of evidence suggest that the right temporo-parietal junction is involved in self-other control mechanisms that play an important role in empathic responses. However, limited direct evidence of the involvement of this region in empathic responses is currently available. In this study, inhibitory transcranial direct current stimulation over this region influenced empathic responses to others’ pain. It was found that compared to participants that received anodal or sham transcranial direct current stimulation, participants who received cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the right temporo-parietal junction perceived the pain of others as less intense compared to sham stimulation and showed decreased late event related potentials to facial expressions of pain. Furthermore, it was found the stimulation had no significant effect on measures of sensorimotor resonance and physiological responses to pain in others. Our results demonstrate that the right temporo-parietal junction plays a role in empathic responses and that its inhibition can decrease behavioural and cerebral measures related to the cognitive-evaluative component of empathy. It is proposed that the right temporo-parietal junction is a valid stimulation target to study the influence of self-other control in empathic processes and could be useful to study the involvement of this region observed in clinical conditions characterized by altered empathic responses.

Subjective Well-Being and Self-Reported Health in Osteoarthritis Patients Before and After Arthroplasty

The main aim of the current study is to examine the changes in the components of subjective well-being (SWB) over time in patients with osteoarthritis who have undergone total hip or knee replacement surgery (arthroplasty). We are also interested in determining whether pre-operative ratings of self-reported health (SRH) status, as well as change in health status, can serve as predictors for postoperative levels of SWB. To this end, 50 participants who had been admitted to a hospital for arthroplasty completed the measures twice—first at the clinic one day before the surgery, and then at home approximately 4.5 months after the surgery. Despite the fact that there were substantial improvements in participants’ health and physical functioning after the arthroplasty, there were no changes in their ratings of general SRH, life satisfaction (LS), or negative affect (NA). The only change in SWB scores was in the level of positive affect (PA), which was significantly higher after surgery compared with the pre-operative measurement. LS, NA, and PA scores after arthroplasty were differentially predicted by health ratings, showing that, it is the cognitive-evaluative component of SWB (i.e., LS) that is mostly responsible for the association between general SRH and SWB while affective components (i.e., NA and PA) are primarily related to more specific health indicators. Our findings can assist physicians in their efforts to provide more realistic expectations for their patients undergoing surgery in terms of the physical and psychological outcome.

Conflict Between Work and Family Roles and Satisfaction among Nurses in Different Shift Systems in Croatia: a Questionnaire Survey

The objective of this study was to examine the perception of conflict between work and family roles and job, family, and life satisfaction among nurses in Croatia. One hundred and twenty-nine nurses (married mothers) working in hospitals in Zadar, Šibenik, and Split were divided in four groups according to their worktime schedule. The participants completed a survey, which included a set of sociodemographic-type questions, questions about the level and allocation of family responsibilities between spouses, and scales measuring the perceived negative effects of worktime, psychological demands of the work, work-family conflict, and semantic differential scales for measuring the affective and cognitive-evaluative component of job, family, and life satisfaction. This was the first study in Croatia to deal with work-family conflict among nurses or workers with different shift systems.The results of this study indicate that nurses working morning shifts only experienced less conflict between work and family than other groups of nurses, who worked the morning, afternoon, and the night shift. The cognitive-evaluative component of job satisfaction was the highest among morning shift nurses and the lowest in nurses who worked 12-hour shifts, while the affective component of life satisfaction was the lowest in nurses working irregular and backward rotated shifts. These results confirm that shiftwork makes the work-family role conflict even worse. They also support the view that the type of shift rotation matters.

Prediction of postoperative pain

Pain is a complex subjective experience with sensory-discriminative, emotional-affective and cognitive-evaluative components. Postoperative pain is associated with considerable psychological and physiological distress that may impede postoperative recovery and lead to increased morbidity and development of persistent post-surgical pain. There seems to be a considerable individual variability in postoperative pain perception even following standardized surgical procedures. Implementation of clinically relevant preoperative screening methods may facilitate more aggressive pain therapies specifically targeted at high-risk individuals, a strategy that may improve postoperative rehabilitation and morbidity. This article reviews data on the predictive potential in postoperative pain of the surgical procedure, preoperative pain, age, gender, anxiety, depression, neuroticism, psycho-physiological assessments, catastrophizing, genetics and pharmacogenetics, and acute opioid tolerance.

Acoustic noise in functional magnetic resonance imaging reduces pain unpleasantness ratings

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is increasingly used in cognitive studies. Unfortunately, the scanner produces acoustic noise during the image acquisition process. Interference from acoustic noise is known to affect auditory, visual and motor processing, raising the possibility that acoustic interference may also modulate processing of other sensory modalities such as pain. With the increasing use of fMRI in the investigation of the mechanisms of pain perception, particularly in relation to attention, this issue has become highly relevant. Pain is a complex experience, composed of sensory-discriminative, affective-motivational and cognitive-evaluative components. The aim of this experiment was to assess the effect of MRI scanner noise, compared to white noise, on the affective (unpleasantness) and the sensory-discriminative (localisation) components of pain. Painful radiant heat from a CO 2 laser was delivered to the skin of the right forearm in 24 healthy volunteers. The volunteers attended to either pain location or pain unpleasantness during three conditions: i) no noise, ii) exposure to MRI scanner noise (85 dB) or iii) exposure to white noise (85 dB). Both MRI scanner noise and white noise significantly reduced unpleasantness ratings (from 5.1 ± 1.6 in the control condition to 4.7 ± 1.5 ( P = 0.002) and 4.6 ± 1.6 ( P < 0.001) with scanner and white noise respectively), whereas the ability to localise pain was not significantly affected (from 85.4 ± 9.2% correct in the control condition to 83.1 ± 10.3% ( P = 0.06) and 83.9 ± 9.5% ( P = 0.27) with MRI scanner and white noise respectively). This phenomenon should be taken into account in the design of fMRI studies into human pain perception.

Cancer and treatment related pains in patients with cervical carcinoma

Pain in carcinoma cervix is a multidimensional experience with sensory, affective and cognitive-evaluative components. Many patients do not receive adequate pain management because of a lack of proper assessment, misconceptions regarding the pharmacologic and non pharmacologic methods of pain management and failure to distinguish between different types of pain. In our audit pelvic and nodal recurrence were the commonest cause of pain presenting as as pelvic pain, [42%], lumbosacral plexopathy [40%] and abdominal pain [34%] [n = 30]. Pain on defaecation caused by rectal obstruction, and suprapubic pain due to pyometra can be relieved by colostomy and drainage. Very little literature is available on the pain syndromes associated with carcinoma cervix. The present article is a review of cancer and treatment related pains in carcinoma cervix.

Pain-related modulation of the human motor cortex

Pain is a complex multi-dimensional phenomenon that influences a wide variety of nervous system functions, including sensory–discriminative, affective–motivational and cognitive–evaluative components. So far, these components have been studied in both patients with chronic pain and in normal subjects in whom pain was induced experimentally. The interaction between pain and motor function is not fully understood, although from everyday life it is known that pain affects movements. The effects of pain on motor control are typically seen as a limited or impaired ability to perform movements. Most studies have dealt with the effects of pain on the spinal cord reflexes, but in recent years, several lines of evidence suggest that the interaction between motor and pain systems in conditions of pain induced experimentally, rather than a simple spinal reflex, is a more complex process that involves also supraspinal brain areas. Although pain–motor interaction shows different features and time course depending on different pain variables, such as duration (tonic versus phasic pain), submodalities (deep versus superficial pain) and location (distal versus proximal pain), a common finding is that pain is able to inhibit the motor cortex. This motor cortex inhibition may act as a sort of motor 'decerebration' so as to allow the spinal motor system to freely develop protective responses to noxious stimulation. Further studies are required to assess the effects of pain on the motor system in patients suffering from chronic pain, in order to develop innovative rational therapeutic strategies to reduce both pain and motor disability.

Chapter 2 Quantitative experimental assessment of pain and hyperalgesia in animals and underlying neural mechanisms

The primary aim of this chapter is to critically examine the use of acute noxious stimuli to assess pain in normal animals and in animal models of persistent pain. The new strategies are suggested to examine nomifensine behavior evoked by controlled stimuli over a wide range of stimulus intensities in assessing underlying neural mechanisms and treatments. As pain is normally a conscious perception, a more realistic animal model might incorporate a cognitive-evaluative component associated with nocifensive behavior. For this reason, this chapter develops the operant response model that requires the rat to perceive and respond to a noxious stimulus with a bar-press. It is interesting that rats respond over a higher range of stimulus intensities in this paradigm compared to the measure of tail flick reflex force. One might speculate that the operant response is a measure of the motivation of the animal working to avoid the noxious stimuli or of the probability that the animal will or will not tolerate it. On the other hand, in human studies using identical noxious radiant heat stimuli, the threshold for reflexive limb withdrawal was higher compared to that for pain sensation. However, the fact that subjects knew the stimuli would not cause tissue damage may have influenced their withdrawal threshold. These observations further underscore the need for caution in extrapolating from measures.