Intensity Of Emotional Expression Research Articles

Valence and Intensity of Emotional Expression in Autistic and Non-Autistic Toddlers.

Differences in emotional experience and expression have long been recognized as common in the presentation of autism, yet research examining emotional expression in early childhood is limited, with mixed findings. Understanding emotional reactivity and expression in autism in early life is an essential step towards uncovering the mechanisms of these risks and identifying targets for intervention. The present study examined emotional expression in autistic (N = 17) and non-autistic (N = 20) toddlers (mean age = 25.27; SD = 1.88) during emotion elicitation tasks aimed at eliciting joy, frustration, and unease. Video recorded tasks were coded in ten second intervals for emotional valence and intensity, and the following variables were computed: proportion of time in positive, neutral, and negative affect; maximum intensity of positive and negative affect; and range of affect (i.e., most negative to most positive intensity). Autistic toddlers spent more time in neutral facial expressions, less time displaying positive affect, and had somewhat less intense positive emotional expression than non-autistic peers. Small differences were apparent in intensity of negative affect expression, while no differences emerged in duration of time spent in negative affect. Findings emphasize that differences may be more apparent in duration, rather than intensity of emotional expression, and that it may be particularly important to examine periods of "neutral" affect in young autistic children. Future research should consider the best ways to understand emotional reactivity in this population considering their unique interests, challenges, and communication styles.

Family Chaos, Interparental Conflict, and Preschooler Adjustment: Comparing Mediation and Moderation Models

Children residing in chaotic homes exhibit greater behavior and adjustment problems. Proximal factors, such as interparental conflict, may play a role, although the ways in which these factors interplay in predicting adjustment problems is unclear. We explored different models for how chaos and conflict work together to predict child adjustment. We hypothesized that chaos would both moderate and mediate the relationship between interparental conflict and preschooler adjustment and that there would be a stronger pattern of associations for fathers than mothers. A community sample of 70 families with preschoolers participated in the current study. Parents engaged in a conflict resolution task during which their child was present. Interparental conflict was coded assessing for specific positive and negative conflict expressions, intensity of emotional expressions, and degree of resolution. Conflict codes were sorted into three categories: positive, angry, and depressive conflict. Parents completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) assessing child adjustment and the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (CHAOS) assessing levels of chaos and disruption in the home. Path analyses revealed evidence for mediation in the father: fathers’ angry conflict was significantly predictive of greater chaos, which was in turn predictive of greater child peer problems. No evidence of mediation was found for mothers. Chaos also moderated associations between conflict and child adjustment for both mothers and fathers, such that dimensions of conflict were significantly associated with child adjustment in high chaos, but not low chaos homes. Clinical implications are discussed.

The emotion bias of health product consumers in the context of COVID-19.

The ongoing COVID-19 has led to an increase in negative emotions and health awareness among consumers. This paper discusses the emotion bias of Chinese consumers during the three periods: the pre-COVID-19 period, the COVID-19 lockdown period, and the COVID-19 normalization period. This study takes health products as the research object and crawls relevant reviews on the JD platform to classify products. The data were classified into emotion, the intensity of emotion was calculated, and the logistic regression model and variance analysis were used to analyze the difference in emotion expression. The study reveals that consumers are willing to express fear and sadness during the COVID-19 lockdown era and are willing to express like emotions before the pandemic compared to the three periods. There are also differences in the emotional intensity of different product reviews. The intensity of emotional expression is more vigorous for consumers who purchase nutritional products, while for those who purchase healthcare equipment, the intensity of emotional expression is lower. This study offers the emotion bias of consumers in response to COVID-19 to provide a theoretical basis and reference solution for implementing marketing strategies for health product companies.

The aftereffect of the ensemble average of facial expressions on subsequent facial expression recognition

An ensemble or statistical summary can be extracted from facial expressions presented in different spatial locations simultaneously. However, how such complicated objects are represented in the mind is not clear. It is known that the aftereffect of facial expressions, in which prolonged viewing of facial expressions biases the perception of subsequent facial expressions of the same category, occurs only when a visual representation is formed. Using this methodology, we examined whether an ensemble can be represented with visualized information. Experiment 1 revealed that the presentation of multiple facial expressions biased the perception of subsequent facial expressions to less happy as much as the presentation of a single face did. Experiment 2 compared the presentation of faces comprising strong and weak intensities of emotional expressions with an individual face as the adaptation stimulus. The results indicated that the perceptual biases were found after the presentation of four faces and a strong single face, but not after the weak single face presentation. Experiment 3 employed angry expressions, a distinct category from the test expression used as an adaptation stimulus; no aftereffect was observed. Finally, Experiment 4 clearly demonstrated the perceptual bias with a higher number of faces. Altogether, these results indicate that an ensemble average extracted from multiple faces leads to the perceptual bias, and this effect is similar in terms of its properties to that of a single face. This supports the idea that an ensemble of faces is represented with visualized information as a single face.

Why the hell are cuss words not included in teaching Portuguese as foreign language?!

This brief study of Brazilian swear words is an attempt to understand the non-inclusion of swear words in the teaching of Portuguese as a foreign language as they are considered as taboo lexicon from the point of view of the institutionalized normative standard language supervised periodically by the Academies. I argue that, since the swear words form a part of the repertoire of popular colloquial vocabulary, they represent the popular culture through their intensity of emotional expression and contextual use. I use the Theory of Lexiculture, proposed by Galisson (1987), and Functional Grammar, by Halliday (2004), to argue that swear words should be introduced through figures of speech such as euphemism and dysphemism, as well as comparisons between swear words of native language of the learner and that of the target language to give the learner a better understanding of the emotional aspect of the language and to foster better pragma-linguistic, socio-pragmatic competence and intercultural competence for the learner of Portuguese as a Foreign Language.

Relación entre atención compartida madre-hijo, sensibilidad materna y expresión emocional gestual infantil

Shared attention refers to episodes through which a child and his or her caretaker are intentionally focused on some object or activity while engaging in physical and emotional exchange. This study describes shared attention bearing in mind levels of commitment and emotional tone, and it analyzes associated relationships with maternal sensitivity and the intensity of emotional expression in one-year-old children. The sample includes 12 mother-child dyads with the following inclusion criteria: only children, of ages between 12 and 14 months, living with both parents and attending a nursery. The instruments used were the Shared Attention Assessment, the Children's Emotional Expressions Assessment, and the Adult Sensitivity Scale (ASS). Results show episodes of shared attention between mother-child dyads at one year of age. A significant relationship between shared attention, levels of commitment, and maternal sensitivity was also found.

Associations Between Depression/Anxiety and Headache Frequency in Migraineurs: A Cross-Sectional Study.

While migraines have been associated with emotional disturbances, it remains unknown whether the intensity of emotional expression is directly related to migraine frequency. The present study investigated depression/anxiety among migraineurs. This cross-sectional study included 588 clinical outpatients in Taiwan. Migraines were stratified by attack frequency, with and without auras, and with well-controlled confounding variables. Demographic and clinical data, including sleep characteristics, were collected. Multivariable linear regressions were employed to examine whether migraine frequency (1-4 headache days per month, 5-8 headache days per month, 9-14 headache days per month, or >14 headache days per month) was associated with depression/anxiety symptoms, as indicated by the Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Subscales (HADS). BDI total scores were highest in patients with chronic migraines (mean±SD: 13.2±8.5), followed by those with high frequency (12.1±8.5), medium frequency (10.6±8.0), low frequency (9.1±7.1), and lowest in nonmigraine controls (6.6±5.9), with a significant trend in frequency (P trend < .001); similar results were obtained for HADS scores. BDI and HADS scores were independently related to high-frequency episodic and chronic migraine frequency and to poor sleep quality. The relationship between BDI score and migraine frequency was present in both aura-present (P trend=.001) and aura-absent subgroups (P trend=.029). Higher migraine frequency, either with or without auras, correlated with higher symptom scores of anxiety and depression.

A influência da intensidade emocional no reconhecimento de emoções em faces por crianças brasileiras

The ability to recognize emotions in faces is essential to human interaction and occurs since childhood. Hypothesis: research using the morphing technique assume that children require greater or lesser intensity of emotional expression to perceive it. Objective: to examine the emotional recognition of faces in childhood, using a task with emotional intensity variation. Method: it was applied a Test of Facial Emotion Recognition for Children to 28 children between 7 and 11 years, of both sexes, which presented 168 faces manipulated by the morphing technique, of the six basic emotions. Results: age as a trend growth of the likelihood of success at the task; more right answers for happiness and worst performances for fear; and the emotional intensity increasing at 42% the chance of success by every unit of intensity. Conclusion: these findings are relevant because they show the recognition of emotions at different levels as a more sensitive method.

All-or-nothing thinking: The processing of emotional expressions in traumatized post-deployment soldiers

The exposure to trauma is a dramatic life event with complex consequences among those like changes in information processing. Dysfunctional cognitions like a negative interpretation of information are a risk factor for the development of trauma-related disorders. The aim of the present study was to test whether post-deployment soldiers with trauma differ in their interpretation of emotional expressions from member of a control group. Interpretation of emotional expressions was assessed in a sample of 106 males (n=53 soldiers, n=53 controls) with the Similarity Rating Task (simtask) and analyzed with a multidimensional scaling (MDS) approach. The findings suggest that individuals with war-related trauma tend to show a negative interpretation bias. Furthermore, traumatized individuals did not discriminate between different intensities of emotional expressions the way controls did. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of dysfunctional cognitions in the development and treatment of mental disorders.

Attachment relationship to teacher and intensity of emotional expression in children with Down syndrome in regular kindergarten and nursery school

ABSTRACTBackground We investigated attachment behaviours of children with Down syndrome (DS) toward their preschool teacher and examined whether children's emotional expressivity predicted the incidence of attachment behaviours. We hypothesised that children with DS will show a low level of secure attachment to their teacher and that emotional competence will be associated with secure attachment.Method Forty-one children with DS (21 males, 20 females, M mental age = 34.6 months, SD = 11.9) were matched with 51 typically developing (TD) children (24 males, 27 females, M mental age = 32.2 months, SD = 17.5). Attachment and socio-emotional development were assessed for each child.Results Children with DS presented lower scores of attachment, affiliation, anger, and emotional competence compared to TD children. Affiliation in high-stress situations was predictive of attachment behaviours.Conclusions The findings show that children with DS were less attached to the teacher and less emotionally expressive compared to TD children.

STABILITY IN TEMPERAMENT AND EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION IN 1- TO 3-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN

I examined the stability of emotional expression in 18 toddlers aged 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years using laboratory observation. The children were presented with 5 social stimuli. Their emotional expressions were video recorded and later behaviorally coded by 2 independent raters. Average latency, intensity, and duration scores for emotional expression for each child were calculated at ages 1, 2, and 3 years and compared using Friedman's test. Intensity of emotional expression in the children showed stability over the 3 years; no significant differences were found between ages 1, 2, and 3 (χ2(2) = 1.78, p = .41). Additionally, based on parental questionnaires for each year, from 1 to 3 years of age intensity, mood, activity, approach, and adaptability were 5 dimensions of temperament that showed stability.

Review: emotion identification deficits are associated with functional impairments in people with schizophrenia

QUESTION Question: What is the strength of the relationship between emotional perception and function in people with schizophrenia and what factors moderate this relationship? Outcomes: Strength of the association between...

Are you really angry? The effect of intensity on facial emotion recognition in frontotemporal dementia

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative brain disorder that affects the frontal and temporal lobes predominantly. Impaired emotion recognition has been reported in two FTD subtypes: behavioral-variant FTD (bvFTD) and semantic dementia (SD), but has not been investigated in the third subtype: progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA). Methods: Recognition of six basic facial emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, and happiness) was investigated in 41 FTD patients (bvFTD = 16; SD = 12; PNFA = 13) and 37 age- and education-matched controls, using two tests. In one task, intensity of emotional expression was increased to identify cognitive components contributing to emotion recognition performance. Results: All patient groups demonstrated impaired overall facial emotion recognition compared to controls. Performance, however, improved with increased emotion intensity in bvFTD and PNFA groups, the effect of intensity on emotion recognition being particularly pronounced for negative emotions. In contrast, increased intensity of facial emotion did not change performance in SD. Conclusions: Patients with SD demonstrate a primary emotion processing impairment, whereas PNFA and bvFTD patients' emotional disturbance is in part mediated by attentional deficits. These findings indicate that a subset of FTD patients may benefit from enhanced emotional intensity that will facilitate facial emotion recognition.

Emotional context, maternal behavior and emotion regulation

This study investigated the importance of emotion-eliciting context (positive and negative) and mother's behaviors (constrained and involved) on toddlers’ emotion regulation behavioral strategies, emotional expressiveness and intensity, during three episodes eliciting fear, frustration/anger and positive affect. Fifty-five children between 18 and 26 months of age and their mothers participated in the study. Toddlers’ regulatory strategies varied as function of emotion-eliciting context (children exhibited behavioral strategies more frequently during positive affect and frustration/anger episodes and less frequently during fear episodes) and maternal involvement. Toddlers’ expression of emotion varied as function of emotion-eliciting context (children exhibited more emotional expressions, both negative and positive during fear and frustration/anger episodes compared to positive affect episodes). Toddlers’ expression of emotion was not strongly related to maternal involvement, however, the intensity of emotional expression was related to the interaction of context and maternal involvement.

A Technique for Estimating Intensity of Emotional Expressions and Speaking Styles in Speech Based on Multiple-Regression HSMM

In this paper, we propose a technique for estimating the degree or intensity of emotional expressions and speaking styles appearing in speech. The key idea is based on a style control technique for speech synthesis using a multiple regression hidden semi-Markov model (MRHSMM), and the proposed technique can be viewed as the inverse of the style control. In the proposed technique, the acoustic features of spectrum, power, fundamental frequency, and duration are simultaneously modeled using the MRHSMM. We derive an algorithm for estimating explanatory variables of the MRHSMM, each of which represents the degree or intensity of emotional expressions and speaking styles appearing in acoustic features of speech, based on a maximum likelihood criterion. We show experimental results to demonstrate the ability of the proposed technique using two types of speech data, simulated emotional speech and spontaneous speech with different speaking styles. It is found that the estimated values have correlation with human perception.

Age Differences in Intensity of Emotional Expression between Younger and Older Infants

Age differences in the intensity of emotional expression of infants ages 7 to 8 months were compared to those ages 9 through 13 months. All 82 participants (33 boys, 49 girls) were prescreened for normal development. Participants were each presented with a randomized order of 12 stimuli (peek-a-boo, still face, stranger approaches, toy bug, toy taken, parent leaves, toy switch, puppets, toy out of reach, squeaky toy, jack-in-the-box, and loud noise). Emotional responses were video recorded and analyzed. Intensity of emotional expression was measured on an ordinal scale (PEEX: Parameters of Emotional Expression) incorporating MAX facialcodes and vocal and bodily items from Lab-Tab. Coding was analyzed for reliability. Older infants were significantly more intense in their emotional expressions than younger infants.

Processing of faces and emotional expressions in infants at risk of social phobia

Individuals with social phobia display social information processing biases yet their aetiological significance is unclear. Infants of mothers with social phobia and control infants’ responses were assessed at 10 days, 10 and 16 weeks, and 10 months to faces versus non-faces, variations in intensity of emotional expressions, and gaze direction. Infant temperament and maternal behaviours were also assessed. Both groups showed a preference for faces over non-faces at 10 days and 10 weeks, and full faces over profiles at 16 weeks; they also looked more to high vs. low intensity angry faces at 10 weeks, and fearful faces at 10 months; however, index infants’ initial orientation and overall looking to high-intensity fear faces was relatively less than controls at 10 weeks. This was not explained by infant temperament or maternal behaviours. The findings suggest that offspring of mothers with social phobia show processing biases to emotional expressions in infancy.

Amygdala and Nucleus Accumbens Activation to Emotional Facial Expressions in Children and Adolescents at Risk for Major Depression

Offspring of parents with major depressive disorder face a threefold higher risk for major depression than offspring without such family histories. Although major depression is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, neural correlates of risk for major depression remain poorly understood. This study compares amygdala and nucleus accumbens activation in children and adolescents at high and low risk for major depression under varying attentional and emotional conditions. Thirty-nine juveniles, 17 offspring of parents with major depression (high-risk group) and 22 offspring of parents without histories of major depression, anxiety, or psychotic disorders (low-risk group) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. During imaging, subjects viewed faces that varied in intensity of emotional expressions across blocks of trials while attention was unconstrained (passive viewing) and constrained (rate nose width on face, rate subjective fear while viewing face). When attention was unconstrained, high-risk subjects showed greater amygdala and nucleus accumbens activation to fearful faces and lower nucleus accumbens activation to happy faces (small volume corrected for the amygdala and nucleus accumbens). No group differences emerged in amygdala or nucleus accumbens activation during constrained attention. Exploratory analysis showed that constraining attention was associated with greater medial prefrontal cortex activation in the high-risk than in the low-risk group. Amygdala and nucleus accumbens responses to affective stimuli may reflect vulnerability for major depression. Constraining attention may normalize emotion-related neural function possibly by engagement of the medial prefrontal cortex; face-viewing with unconstrained attention may engage aberrant processes associated with risk for major depression.

Contingency songwriting to reduce combativeness and non-cooperation in a client with schizophrenia: a case study

Throughout history, schizophrenia has been an illness that has perplexed the greatest scientists of the world. Relatively recently, mental health professionals and chemists have made huge advances in research recognizing that intense psychotherapy and the invention of anti-psychotic medication have a major effect in battling the illness (Alley, Jacobson, & Acocella, 1999). Anti-psychotic drugs appear to lower the levels of dopamine in the brain resulting in the reduction of fear, agitation, thought disorders, delusions, and hallucinations (Costello & Costello, 1992). However, before these drugs were invented, individuals with severe cases of schizophrenia were doomed to a life locked away in large, over-crowded state institutions. These clients were mistreated, misunderstood, and subjected to horrible experiments (Costello & Costello, 1992). Schizophrenia is a disturbance that lasts for at least 6 months and includes at least 1 month of active-phase symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Negative symptoms are restrictions in the range and intensity of emotional expressions (affective flattening), restrictions in the fluency and productivity of thought and speech (alogia), and the limited initiation of goal-directed behavior (avolition). It is a social or occupational dysfunction that affects approximately one million people in the country (Kaplan & Saddock, 1991). Sixty to seventy percent of individuals with the illness do not marry and most have limited