Emotion Schemas Research Articles

Clinical and Research Perspectives on the Therapeutic Conversation: The Case of MS. M.

This paper presents a collaboration between a clinician (C.M.J.) and a research team (W.B., B.M., and S.M.) to address the question: At an operational level, what happens in the special form of conversation that is psychotherapy? How can we study, beyond a priori lenses of psychoanalytic models, what we are actually doing when we engage in this process? How can we capture from the linear flow of conversation, the simultaneous, complex, active, interwoven, dimensional emotion schemas that words can only point toward? To address the question, we first present the need for new approaches in the current climate within the clinical and research communities. Next, we address the challenges for clinicians and researchers by using multiple code theory and derived linguistic measures that offer an objective view of the processes of subjectivity. We then apply the research methods to the clinical data to illustrate the yield of the collaborative effort-a yield that captures the connection between the linear flow of words and the arousal, verbal expression, and reflection/integration of emotion schemas without the usual filters of psychoanalytic models of process and change. The project illustrates the critical value of clinicians' perspectives to guide researchers and encourages clinicians to participate in research to advance our field. For researchers, this project represents a "fourth generation" of process research that includes the criteria of video-recorded, transcribed data; the clinician's report of their experience; a theory of how emotion-laden meaning and motivations (emotion schemas) are expressed in the therapeutic conversation; and reliable, valid measures to capture and represent those processes; and that encourages researchers to access the rich contributions of clinicians' understanding. The implication for clinical practice is a new way to look beyond the lens of psychoanalytic models into what is actually unfolding in real time.

Attentional Processing of Unpleasant Stimuli in Alexithymia.

Alexithymia is a multi-faceted personality trait defined by difficulties in identifying and describing emotions and is considered a risk factor for multiple psychiatric disorders. Current alexithymia research debates the type of attention bias involved in the processing of negative emotional information, especially in anxiety-evoking situations that are frequently associated with stress states. Relatedly, this study aims to examine the role of emotional influence on the attentional processing of Taiwanese alexithymic individuals. Using the Chinese version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), individuals with high alexithymia (HA: TAS > 60, n = 26; Mage = 23.36) and individuals with low alexithymia (LA: TAS < 39, n = 26; Mage = 25.76) were recruited. Participants performed an emotional counting Stroop task preceded by anxiety-evoking (threatening and aversive pictures) or neutral pictures. Reaction times (RTs) of the emotional Stroop task were compared between HA and LA groups. Our results demonstrate that compared to individuals with LA, individuals with HA show early avoidance tendency (i.e., allocate less attentional resources to anxiety-evoking stimuli), and that negative affect therefore does not interfere with subsequent attention processing during the Stroop task, resulting in faster RT for unpleasant stimuli (Mthreatening = 683.87, Maversive = 685.87) than neutral stimuli (Mneutral = 695.64) (ps < .05). In addition, the attentional bias toward specific types of negative emotion was not differentiated in individuals with HA (p < .05), suggesting that alexithymic individuals' emotion schemas may be underdeveloped in terms of ability to specify exact emotions. This study provides evidence regarding early sensitization to negative stimuli during information processing, consistent with the notion that alexithymia is related to avoidant emotion regulation processes.

Emotion schema effects on associative memory differ across emotion categories at the behavioural, physiological and neural level

Previous behavioural and neuroimaging studies have consistently reported that memory is enhanced for associations congruent or incongruent with the structure of prior knowledge, termed as schemas. However, it remains unclear if similar effects arise with emotion-related associations, and whether they depend on the type of emotions.Here, we addressed this question using a novel face-word pair association paradigm combined with fMRI and eye-tracking techniques. In two independent studies, we demonstrated and replicated that both congruency with emotion schemas and emotion category interact to affect associative memory. Overall, memory retrieval was higher for faces from pairs congruent vs. incongruent with emotion schemas, paralleled by a greater recruitment of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during successful encoding. However, emotion schema effects differed across two negative emotion categories. Disgust was remembered better than fear, and only disgust activated left IFG stronger during encoding of congruent vs. incongruent pairs, suggestive of deeper semantic processing for the associations. On the contrary, encoding of congruent fear vs. disgust-related pairs was accompanied with greater activity in right fusiform gyrus (FG), suggesting a stronger sensory processing of faces. In addition, successful memory formation for congruent disgust pairs was associated with a higher pupil dilation index related to sympathetic activation, longer gaze time on words compared to faces, and more gaze switches between paired words and faces. This was reversed for fear-related congruent pairs where the faces attracted longer gaze time (compared to words).Overall, our results provide converging evidence from behavioural, physiological, and neural measures to suggest that congruency with available emotion schemas influence memory associations in a similar manner to semantic schemas. However, these effects vary across distinct emotion categories, pointing to a differential role of semantic processing and visual attention processes in the modulation of memory by disgust and fear, respectively.

The Cultural Schemas in the Meranaw Folktales: A Cultural Study

The rich potential of folktales as a resource on matters of great cultural significance is revealed in this inquiry. In this study, the twenty (20) Meranaw stories (tutul) was scrutinized and evaluated with the critical lens focused this time on the area of cultural conceptualizations. To determine the cultural conceptualizations constructed in folktales, the analytical tool of Cultural Linguistics was used, specifically, the cultural schemas. Findings pertaining to cultural conceptualizations realized through folktales are the following: the Event schemas of courtship and marriage, honoring of the bride/wife (kapelawi/kalawi), thanksgiving (kakhandori), seasonal festivities (kalilang/kariyala), the Eid prayer (khutbah), and other social gatherings or communal celebrations (pakaradiyaan) are portrayed in the folktales; Role schemas which are not only about achieved and modified social roles or positions in a cultural group, it also includes an expected set of behavior associated with the roles. The role of a Sultan in his kingdom is depicted in the folktales; Closely related to role schemas are image schemas which provide a structure for certain conceptualizations. The latter is often readily imagined as iconic images, or popular conceptions of a person, for example, a datu is popularly imagined as a man of noble birth or a scion of the royal clan; Proposition schemas as models of thought and behavior are represented in the folktales by the order and customary law or norms of conduct (taritib ago igma). The two are the threads that establish and maintain relations in the fabric of Meranaw society. Strict adherence to taritib ago igma ensures harmony and order in society; Finally, emotion schemas contains affects and evaluations activated through association with other schemas. Presumably a very important emotion is Meranaw culture is the sense of shame or loss of face. Meranaw are a people who take pride in their lineage traced through the family tree (salsila).

Insight Into the Hispanic Paradox: The Language Hypothesis

Hispanics have a lower burden of heart disease than would be predicted from their risk factors. Explanations for this phenomenon, the Hispanic paradox, focus on specific characteristics of the culture that affect stress appraisal and accumulation, including social connections. Features of culture evolve in the context of language, which influences the way emotions are appraised and expressed. The Spanish language, a unifying component defining Hispanic cultures, has unique features that may promote emotional expression, expand the emotional concepts implicated in the construction of emotion, and influence the appraisal of stress. Under chronic stress conditions, sustained responses can become maladaptive, leading to disease. Features of the Spanish language allow its speakers a wide range of emotion schemas by virtue of its emotion lexicon, the ability to easily minimize or exaggerate expressions, and ease in considering hypothetical situations with the use of the subjunctive. The hypothesis here proposes that the Spanish language is directly and indirectly (via culture) responsible for mitigating some of the effects of acute stress responses in Hispanics and, therefore, limits stress accumulation and is partly responsible for the Hispanic paradox.

Overview of the Referential Process: The Operation of Language Within and Between People.

Human mentation involves multiple formats of thought, which are connected substantially but partially, and may operate within or outside of awareness. The modes of thought include symbolic processes which are discrete representations with properties of reference and generativity, and which may be images or words, and subsymbolic components which are continuous in format and based on analogic relationships. The organization of experience is based on memory schemas, including emotion schemas organized through episodes that involve related sensory and bodily experiences with particular people in particular contexts. The referential process is a set of bidirectional functions that enable connection between the subsymbolic components operating in multiple sensory channels and the discrete single channel verbal code. The process involves three major functions: Arousal, the activation of an emotion schema not yet in symbolic form; Symbolizing, describing an event in which the schema has been activated; and Reflection/Reorganizing, exploring and elaborating the emotional meaning of such an event. The concepts of the theory concern psychological aspects of thought, but are potentially mappable onto the underlying neural structure.

First Validation of the Referential Process Post-Session Scale - Therapist Version (RPPS-T).

ObjectiveBucci’s multiple code theory maintains that for a significant change the patient-therapist relationship should foster a referential process shaping in three alternating phases: arousal of emotion schemas, symbolizing/narrating emotional experiences, and reflecting/reorganizing the emotional meanings. Until now to monitor these phases clinicians and researchers have used several referential process computerized linguistic measures, which however need the sessions verbatim transcription. In order to have a less time-consuming method we developed and tested a therapist self-report questionnaire measuring the referential process phases.MethodWe asked eight psychotherapists in a first study and nine psychotherapists in a second study to complete the Referential Process Post-session Scale – Therapist version (RPPS-T) just after the end of their sessions. In a third study we transcribed 29 sessions conducted by three psychotherapists to calculate the correlations between the RPPS-T scores and the computerized linguistic measures of the referential process calculated on the session transcripts.ResultsIn the first study we collected 105 evaluations regarding 29 patients and an exploratory factor analysis revealed a four-factor pattern consistent with the hypothesized constructs. The analysis reduced the initial pool of 42 items to 12. In the second study 130 sessions with 25 different patients have been evaluated on the shortened version of the RPPS-T and a confirmatory factor analysis found that the four-factor model satisfactorily fitted the new data as well. In the third study we found that the factors of RPPS-T regarding the symbolizing phase correlated with the corresponding computerized linguistic measures calculated on the session transcripts.ConclusionsThe RPPS-T received a first validation as a concurrent measure of the referential process, especially for the symbolizing phase, and could be considered a useful instrument for research and supervision.

A Schema-Activation Approach to Failure and Success in Self-Control.

Numerous studies confirm the so-called ego depletion effect (i.e., self-control is impaired after an initial unrelated self-control task). During recent years, the criticism on this limited-resource approach to willpower has increased, and alternative models have been developed. I argue that the existing models cannot explain the variety of results found in the ego depletion literature and introduce the schema model of self-control. Referring to related schema conceptions (i.e., illness schemas and emotion schemas), I posit that the processes that cause ego depletion effects occur around the activation of the fatigue/decreased vitality schema. This schema becomes activated via the registration of behavioral and physiological changes related to exercising self-control. The activation of the schema should instigate the motivation to conserve energy and, therefore, cause reduced effort and decreased performance in a subsequent self-control task. Moderator variables (e.g., energy supply) should influence the (non)activation of the fatigue/decreased vitality schema or its consequences.

Representations, Schemas, and Living-in-the-World

Responding to Kenneth Frank’s paper on therapeutic action, the present paper focuses especially on Frank’s emphasis on emotion schemas as a central therapeutic target across the spectrum of approaches. While strongly agreeing with the value and importance of the emotion schema concept as a unifying foundation for understanding therapeutic action, this paper highlights the differences between primarily one-person versions of the concept and conceptualizations of emotion schemas more rooted in contextual, two-person, and bidirectional interactive models. In elaborating on this distinction, the paper addresses as well as differences between a primarily representational psychology and one focused on living-in-the-world.

“Mismatch” in the Search for “Effortless Permanence”: Discussion of “Rethinking Therapeutic Action”

In this discussion of Kenneth Frank’s paper “Rethinking Therapeutic Action: Finding Commonality in Diversity,” critical elements of research on memory reconsolidation are specified for transformational change through psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Central functions of the therapeutic relationship are put forth, including the use of the relationship for delineating often dissociated “maladaptive emotion schemas” and developing tolerance for necessary experiences of activated relational trauma. The therapeutic relationship is central in the process of tolerating destabilized traumatic memory and making it available for update. Often the therapeutic relationship offers an experience of “mismatch” or new experience with links to the emotional schema, facilitating a key component of change.

Rethinking Therapeutic Action: Finding Commonalty in Diversity

Understanding what the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy have in common with other forms of therapy helps us identify essential elements of therapeutic change. Several processes that cut across diverse psychotherapy approaches are outlined, based on clinical empiricism, theory, and research. A model of therapeutic action is considered that places emotion schemas at the center of therapeutic change across modalities; to modify these memory structures, diverse therapies utilize overtly different, if complementary, methods. These shared processes are drawn together into a common, coherent change model that is further informed by the role of neuroplastic memory reconsolidation. Although the model seeks to explain and to link multiple transformative therapy approaches, and in that sense, is a general model that applies to many therapies, for the purposes of this paper, the case example applies the model to psychoanalytic therapy. Paradoxically, the case illustration brings into sharpened focus what is important and often underemphasized in psychoanalytic therapy, while also opening and extending customary forms of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic thinking and methodology.

Emotion schemas are embedded in the human visual system.

Theorists have suggested that emotions are canonical responses to situations ancestrally linked to survival. If so, then emotions may be afforded by features of the sensory environment. However, few computational models describe how combinations of stimulus features evoke different emotions. Here, we develop a convolutional neural network that accurately decodes images into 11 distinct emotion categories. We validate the model using more than 25,000 images and movies and show that image content is sufficient to predict the category and valence of human emotion ratings. In two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, we demonstrate that patterns of human visual cortex activity encode emotion category-related model output and can decode multiple categories of emotional experience. These results suggest that rich, category-specific visual features can be reliably mapped to distinct emotions, and they are coded in distributed representations within the human visual system.

Emotional Communication in the Case of Antonio

ABSTRACTIn describing her work with her traumatized patient Antonio, Dr. Jane Lewis focuses on Barthes’s (1981) notion of a photograph as having the symbolic linking function of an umbilical cord, and emphasizes the notion of the punctum, the specific personal wounding detail in an image that connects to the viewer’s experience. This article discusses these ideas, which appear mystical to Lewis, in the contexts of the theory of multiple coding and the referential process, as well as recent advances in the fields of social neuroscience and embodied communication. In the early Arousal phase of the referential process, emotion schemas associated with painful events of the past are activated for both participants, in subsymbolic, embodied form. Antonio is largely mute and frozen; Lewis also feels herself freezing and disappearing. In the Symbolizing phase, Antonio begins to connect to dreaded experience of his past, and to tell memories, fantasies and dreams. Memories and images of her past, related emotionally to Antonio’s experience, are awakened for Lewis as well. Through their embodied communication and shared imagery, the therapist’s ability to find emotional meaning for her own painful experience appears to support the patient’s beginning to provide some meaning for his pain and dread. Related observations by Bollas and Arlow, and parallels to a case reported by Ogden are discussed.

Cultural Influences in the Processing of Emotion Schemas Related to Death and Violence: A Pilot Study

Culture is a key element in determining emotions that people experience when facing death. Recent studies revealed a specific emotion schema for the affective response to death (in comparison with ...

Connecting emotions and words: the referential process

This paper outlines the process of verbal communication of emotion as this occurs through the phases of the referential process, including arousal of an emotion schema; detailed and specific descriptions of images and episodes that are exemplars of emotion schemas; and reflection and reorganization, which may include emotion labels and other types of categorical terms. The concepts of emotion schemas and the referential process are defined in the theoretical framework of multiple code theory which includes subsymbolic sensory, visceral and motoric processes, symbolic images and words. Emotion schemas are defined as clusters of representations of events incorporating similar bodily, sensory and motoric processes activated in relation to different people in different contexts. Through the referential process subsymbolic components of a schema that have been activated in a speaker or writer and that may be connected only partially to words may be evoked in a listener or reader. The concept of the emotion schemas is examined in relation to current work in emotion theory and neuroscience. The unique effects of detailed descriptions of episodes in conveying complex aspects of emotional experience are discussed, as recognized by writers, and as demonstrated in empirical research. Computerized measures of the phases of the referential process are presented, focusing particularly on the central measure, the Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD) which identifies points of narrative and imagery. The operation of the function words that dominate the WRAD are examined in relation to the structure of narrative expression underlying the verbal representation of emotion schemas.

Facial age affects emotional expression decoding

Facial expressions convey important information on emotional states of our interaction partners. However, in interactions between younger and older adults, there is evidence for a reduced ability to accurately decode emotional facial expressions. Previous studies have often followed up this phenomenon by examining the effect of the observers' age. However, decoding emotional faces is also likely to be influenced by stimulus features, and age-related changes in the face such as wrinkles and folds may render facial expressions of older adults harder to decode. In this paper, we review theoretical frameworks and empirical findings on age effects on decoding emotional expressions, with an emphasis on age-of-face effects. We conclude that the age of the face plays an important role for facial expression decoding. Lower expressivity, age-related changes in the face, less elaborated emotion schemas for older faces, negative attitudes toward older adults, and different visual scan patterns and neural processing of older than younger faces may lower decoding accuracy for older faces. Furthermore, age-related stereotypes and age-related changes in the face may bias the attribution of specific emotions such as sadness to older faces.

Discourse(s) of emotion within medical education: the ever‐present absence

Emotion in medical education rests between the idealised and the invisible, sitting uneasily at the intersection between objective fact and subjective values. Examining the different ways in which emotion is theorised within medical education is important for a number of reasons. Most significant is the possibility that ideas about emotion can inform a broader understanding of issues related to competency and professionalism. The current paper provides an overview of three prevailing discourses of emotion in medical education and the ways in which they activate particular professional expectations about emotion in practice. A Foucauldian critical discourse analysis of the medical education literature was carried out. Keywords, phrases and metaphors related to emotion were examined for their effects in shaping medical socialisation processes. Despite the increasing recognition over the last two decades of emotion as 'socially constructed', the view of emotion as individualised is deeply embedded in our language and conceptual frameworks. The discourses that inform our emotion talk and practice as teachers and health care professionals are important to consider for the effects they have on competence and professional identity, as well as on practitioner and patient well-being. Expanded knowledge of how emotion is 'put to work' within medical education can make visible the invisible and unexamined emotion schemas that serve to reproduce problematic professional behaviours. For this discussion, three main discourses of emotion will be identified: a physiological discourse in which emotion is described as located inside the individual as bodily states which are universally experienced; emotion as a form of competence related to skills and abilities, and a socio-cultural discourse which calls on conceptions from the humanities and social sciences and directs our attention to emotion's function in social exchanges and its role as a social, political and cultural mediator.

Looming Cognitive Style, Emotion Schemas, and Fears of Loss of Emotional Control: Two Studies

We examined links between looming cognitive style (Riskind, Williams, Gesner, Chrosniak, & Cortina, 2000) and aspects of dysfunctional emotional regulation, and particularly fears of loss of emotional control. In study 1 we used a cross-sectional design to determine the associations between looming cognitive style and a battery of measures related to fears of loss of emotional control and associated emotional schemas. Consistent with predictions, looming cognitive style was associated with fears of loss of emotional control (Williams, Chambless, & Ahrens, 1997) and with dysfunctional emotion schemas and beliefs (Leahy, 2002). In study 2, we examined whether looming cognitive style predicted increases in fears of losing emotional control over time. Results were consistent with the assumption that the sense of threat created by looming cognitive style produced increased fears of losing control over emotions. Conversely, results indicated a partial reciprocal effect such that fears of losing control over anx...

Priming emotion concepts and helping behavior: How unlived emotions can influence action

In a field setting, participants (N = 227) were primed with 1 of 3 concepts: love (positive valence), distress (negative valence), or solidarity (positive valence). Participants were then asked to give money to help hospitalized children. Results indicated that the inducing of love triggered more helpfulness than the inducing of solidarity or of distress. This finding is explained in light of the emotion schemas theory (Izard, 2007), the gender role theory of helping (Eagly &amp; Crowley, 2006), and affective influences on information-processing strategies (Berkowitz, 2000).

Forms and Functions of Emotions: Matters of Emotion–Cognition Interactions

This article clarifies my current and seemingly ever-changing position on issues relating to emotions. The position derives from my differential emotions theory and it changes with new empirical findings and with insights from my own and others’ thinking and writing. The theory distinguishes between first-order emotions and emotion schemas. For example, it proposes that first-order negative emotions are attributable mainly to infants and young children in distress and to older individuals in emergency or highly challenging situations. Emotion schemas are defined as emotion feelings interacting with cognition in motivating the decision making and actions of everyday life.