Low Emotional Intensity Research Articles

Teachers’ engaging messages, students’ motivation to learn and academic performance: The moderating role of emotional intensity in speech

This study examined how emotional intensity of speech affects the relationship between teachers’ engaging messages, and students’ motivation to learn and academic performance. To achieve our goal, we recorded and transcribed teachers’ lessons. Results revealed that messages appealing to external stimuli had lower emotional intensity than those appealing to internal stimuli. Our results also suggest that emotional intensity moderates the relationship between engaging messages and academic performance, with the effect decreasing as emotional intensity increases. This study offers insights into the role of acoustic features in teachers’ influence on students’ motivation and academic performance and suggests avenues for further research.

Emotion perception from vocal cues: Testing the influence of emotion intensity and sex on in-group advantage.

The present study examined individuals' ability to identify emotions being expressed in vocal cues depending on the accent of the speaker as well as the intensity of the emotion being expressed. Australian and Canadian participants listened to Australian and Canadian speakers express pairs of emotions that fall within the same emotion family but vary in intensity (e.g., anger vs. irritation). Accent of listener was unrelated to emotion recognition. Instead, performance varied more based on emotion intensity and sex; Australian and Canadian participants generally found high intensity emotions easier to recognize compared to low intensity emotions as well as emotion conveyed by females compared to males. Participants found it particularly difficult to recognize the expressed emotion of Australian males. The results suggest the importance of considering the context in which emotion recognition is embedded. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Facial and Vocal Emotion Recognition in Adolescence: A Systematic Review

AbstractThe ability to recognize emotion is important to wellbeing and building relationships with others, making this skill important in adolescence. Research investigating adolescents’ ability to recognize facial and vocal emotion expressions has reported differing conclusions about the pattern of emotion recognition across this developmental period. This systematic review aimed to clarify the pattern of recognition for facial and vocal emotion expressions, and the relationship of performance to different task and emotion expression characteristics. A comprehensive and systematic search of the literature was conducted using six databases. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data for adolescents between 11 and 18 years of age and measure accuracy of the recognition of emotion cues in either the face or voice. A total of 2333 studies were identified and 47 met inclusion criteria. The majority of studies focused on facial emotion recognition. Overall, early, mid-, and late-adolescents showed a similar pattern of recognition for both facial and vocal emotion expressions with the exception of Sad facial expressions. Sex of the participant also had minimal impact on the overall recognition of different emotions. However, analysis showed considerable variability according to task and emotion expression characteristics. Future research needs to increase focus on recognition of complex emotions, and low-intensity emotion expressions as well as the influence of the inclusion of Neutral as a response option.

Here comes the sun: music features of popular songs reflect prevailing weather conditions.

We examine associations between prevailing weather conditions and music features in all available songs that reached the United Kingdom weekly top charts throughout a 67-year period (1953-2019), comprising 23 859 unique entries. We found that music features reflecting high intensity and positive emotions were positively associated with daily temperatures and negatively associated with rainfall, whereas music features reflecting low intensity and negative emotions were not related to weather conditions. These results held true after controlling for the mediating effects of year (temporal patterns) and month (seasonal patterns). However, music-weather associations were more nuanced than previously assumed by linear models, becoming only meaningful in those months and seasons when changes in weather were the most notable. Importantly, the observed associations depended on the popularity of the music: while songs in the top 10 of the charts exhibited the strongest associations with weather, less popular songs showed no relationship. This suggests that a song's fit with prevailing weather may be a factor pushing a song into the top of the charts. Our work extends previous research on non-musical domains (e.g. finance, crime, mental health) by showing that large-scale population-level preferences for cultural phenomena (music) are also influenced by broad environmental factors that exist over long periods of time (weather) via mood-regulation mechanisms. We discuss these results in terms of the limited nature of correlational studies and cross-cultural generalizability.

Heightened but Inefficient Thought-Action Fusion in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: New Insight From a Multiple Trial Version of the Classic Thought-Action Fusion Experiment.

Thought-action fusion (TAF), which is a tendency to make the relationship between one's thoughts and external consequences, is a dysfunctional belief linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While the TAF is commonly evaluated using the Thought-Action Fusion Scale (TAFS), it cannot fully reflect the actual experience of experimentally evoked TAF. In the present study, we applied a multiple-trial version of the classic TAF experiment and evaluate two variables, reaction time (RT) and emotional intensity (EI). Ninety-three patients with OCD and 45 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. The participants were asked to read the name of a close or neutral person embedded in different positive (PS) or negative (NS) TAF statements. During the experiments, RT and EI were gathered. The OCD patients presented with longer RT and lower EI in the NS condition than HCs. In each group, the HCs showed a significant relationship between RT in the NS condition and TAFS scores, whereas the patients did not, although they had higher TAFS scores than the HCs. In contrast, the patients showed a trend toward a correlation between RT in the NS condition and guilt. These findings may indicate our multiple-trial version of the classical TAF showed reliable results of the two new variables, especially RT, in the task and allow to newly identify paradoxical patterns in which the TAFS scores are high but actual performance is impaired, that is, the inefficient activation of TAF in OCD.

N-Step Pre-Training and Décalcomanie Data Augmentation for Micro-Expression Recognition.

Facial expressions are divided into micro- and macro-expressions. Micro-expressions are low-intensity emotions presented for a short moment of about 0.25 s, whereas macro-expressions last up to 4 s. To derive micro-expressions, participants are asked to suppress their emotions as much as possible while watching emotion-inducing videos. However, it is a challenging process, and the number of samples collected tends to be less than those of macro-expressions. Because training models with insufficient data may lead to decreased performance, this study proposes two ways to solve the problem of insufficient data for micro-expression training. The first method involves N-step pre-training, which performs multiple transfer learning from action recognition datasets to those in the facial domain. Second, we propose Décalcomanie data augmentation, which is based on facial symmetry, to create a composite image by cutting and pasting both faces around their center lines. The results show that the proposed methods can successfully overcome the data shortage problem and achieve high performance.

Capgras syndrome and poor facial emotion recognition

IntroductionCapgras syndrome is a disorder of personal identification characterized by the delusional belief that one or more persons close to the subject have been replaced by physically identical doubles.ObjectivesTo deepen our knowledge of the Capgras syndromeMethodsA case report about a Capgras syndrome.ResultsWe report the case of a 46-year-old female patient who was admitted in February 2021 for incoherent speech and behavior disorder against her family members. Three years ago, she started to have hypochondriacal concerns. A week before her admission, she threatened her husband with a knife and she was convinced that her daughters were dead and that they had been replaced by clowns. She had a Capgras delusion with a hallucinatory and interpretative mechanism against her daughters, she reported olfactory and cenesthetic hallucinations. Biological explorations and brain CT were normal. The PANNS scale showed a positive scale of 36, a negative scale of 39, the general psychopathology scale of 53. She had a total score of 30/40 on The Penn emotion recognition test. The patient had difficulty in recognizing low intensity emotions (0 or 1) and 50% of the false responses were for the neutral emotion with responses tending towards anger first and then sadness.Conclusions Capgras syndrome remains poorly described in the literature and the hypotheses concerning its origin often oscillate between neuropsychological and psychodynamic. With the recent advances in neuroscience, it would be interesting to deepen its physiopathology in order to place it in a more modern nosological framework.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

An Exploration of the Own-Age Effect on Facial Emotion Recognition in Normal Elderly People and Individuals with the Preclinical and Demented Alzheimer’s Disease

The issue of whether there exists an own-effect on facial recognition in the elderly remains equivocal. Moreover, currently the literature of this issue in pathological aging is little. Our study was thus to explore the issue in both of healthy older people and patients with ADMethods:In study 1, 27 older and 31 younger healthy adults were recruited; in study 2, 27 healthy older adults and 80 patients (including subjective cognitive decline (SCD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer's disease (AD) groups) were recruited. Participants received the Taiwan Facial Emotion Recognition Task (FER Task), and a clinical neuropsychological assessment. No significant differences on the FER test were found among our groups, except for sadness recognition in which our MCI and AD patients' scores were remarkably lower than their healthy counterparts. The own-age effect was not significantly evident in healthy younger and older adults, except for recognizing neutral photos. Our patients with MCI and AD tended to have the effect, particularly for the sad recognition in which the effect was significantly evident in terms of error features (mislabeling it as anger in younger-face and neutral in older-face photos). Our results displayed no remarkable own-age effect on facial emotional recognition in the healthy elderly (including SCD). However, it did not appear the case for MCI and AD patients, especially their recognizing those sadness items, suggesting that an inclusion of the FER task particularly involving those items of low-intensity emotion in clinical neuropsychological assessment might be contributory to the early detection of AD-related pathological individuals.

The decisive role of subordination in social hierarchy in weanling mice and young children

SummarySocial hierarchy plays important roles in maintaining social structures. Despite similarity in concept, frameworks of human hierarchy have seldom been investigated in parallel with other animals. Moreover, the importance of subordination in hierarchical formation has been largely underestimated in previous research. Here we established, compared, and investigated hierarchy in children and weanling mice. Temperament assessments suggested that children who are less persistent, low emotional intensity, and withdrew easily were more likely to be subordinate in competitive scenarios independent of task characteristics and interaction experiences. The tube test further showed that conflicts between mice were not resolved by winner approach but by loser withdrawal, which was mainly determined by intrinsic subordinate status regardless of opponents. Our study presents evolutionary conserved hierarchical relationships in young and a critical role of the intrinsic subordinate characteristics in hierarchical determination. These findings provide a new perspective on social interactions with potential implications for preschool education.

Emotion matters for academic success: Implications of the Article by Jarrell, Harley, Lajoie, and Naismith (2017) for creating nurturing and supportive learning environments to help students manage their emotions.

This paper is in response to the published article entitled “Success, failure and emotions: examining the relationship between performance feedback and emotions in diagnostic reasoning” (Jarrell, Harley, Lajoie, & Naismith, Education Technology & Research Development, 65, 1263–1284: 2017) focusing on its implications to inform educational practice and research as learning and instruction are shifted to digital environments in times of emergencies and crisis. The study explored the relationships between learners’ retrospective performance outcome emotions and their academic performance (i.e., efficiency and accuracy). The results revealed that positive emotions were associated with higher performance while negative emotions were associated with poorer performance, and the low intensity emotions were associated with performance between high and low levels. A summary of the study reported by the article is provided, including the purpose, methods, measures, data analysis and findings. Following the summary, the paper focuses on the discussion about the focused perspective, values and impact of the study on digital learning environments with implications for education during the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergency situations. Based on Jarrell and her colleagues’ study, suggestions are made for designing and developing instructional strategies to support students with negative or low intensity emotions and for creating learning environments to cultivate positive emotions. This paper concludes with recommendations for future research.

The Decisive Role of Subordination in Social Hierarchy in Weanling Mice and Children

Social hierarchy plays important roles in maintaining social structures. Despite similarity in concept, frameworks of human hierarchy have seldom been investigated in parallel with other animals. Moreover, the importance of subordination in hierarchical formation has been largely underestimated in previous research. Here we established, compared and investigated hierarchy in children and weanling mice. Temperament Assessments suggested that children who are less persistent, low emotional intensity and withdrew easily were more likely to be subordinate in competitive scenarios independent of task characteristics and interaction experiences. The tube test further showed that conflicts between mice were not resolved by winner approach but by loser withdrawal, which was mainly determined by intrinsic subordinate status regardless of opponents. Our study presents evolutionary conserved hierarchical relationships in young and a critical role of the intrinsic subordinate characteristics in hierarchical determination. These findings provide a new perspective on social interactions with potential implications for preschool education.

Stimulus arousal drives amygdalar responses to emotional expressions across sensory modalities

The factors that drive amygdalar responses to emotionally significant stimuli are still a matter of debate – particularly the proneness of the amygdala to respond to negatively-valenced stimuli has been discussed controversially. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether the amygdala responds in a modality-general fashion or whether modality-specific idiosyncrasies exist. Therefore, the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study systematically investigated amygdalar responding to stimulus valence and arousal of emotional expressions across visual and auditory modalities. During scanning, participants performed a gender judgment task while prosodic and facial emotional expressions were presented. The stimuli varied in stimulus valence and arousal by including neutral, happy and angry expressions of high and low emotional intensity. Results demonstrate amygdalar activation as a function of stimulus arousal and accordingly associated emotional intensity regardless of stimulus valence. Furthermore, arousal-driven amygdalar responding did not depend on the visual and auditory modalities of emotional expressions. Thus, the current results are consistent with the notion that the amygdala codes general stimulus relevance across visual and auditory modalities irrespective of valence. In addition, whole brain analyses revealed that effects in visual and auditory areas were driven mainly by high intense emotional facial and vocal stimuli, respectively, suggesting modality-specific representations of emotional expressions in auditory and visual cortices.

Monitoring in emotion regulation: behavioral decisions and neural consequences.

Monitoring and deciding how to adjust an active regulatory strategy in order to maximize adaptive outcomes is an integral element of emotion regulation, yet existing evidence remains scarce. Filling this gap, the present study examined core factors that determine behavioral regulatory monitoring decisions and the neuro-affective consequences of these decisions. Using a novel paradigm, the initial implementation of central downregulation strategies (distraction, reappraisal) and the emotional intensity (high, low) were manipulated, prior to making a behavioral decision to maintain the initial implemented strategy or switch from it. Neuro-affective consequences of these behavioral decisions were evaluated using the Late Positive Potential (LPP), an electro-cortical measure of regulatory success. Confirming predictions, initial implementation of reappraisal in high intensity and distraction in low intensity (Strategy × Intensity combinations that were established in prior studies as non-preferred by individuals), resulted in increased behavioral switching frequency. Neurally, we expected and found that in high (but not low) emotional intensity, where distraction was more effective than reappraisal, maintaining distraction (relative to switching to reappraisal) and switching to distraction (relative to maintaining reappraisal) resulted in larger LPP modulation. These findings suggest that monitoring decisions are consistent with previously established regulatory preferences and are associated with adaptive short-term neural consequences.

Mixed emotion experiences for self or another person in adolescence

IntroductionThis study examined types of reported simultaneous mixed emotion experiences for the first time in adolescence for high and low intensity emotion pairs using an Analogue Emotion Scale which affords the graphing of two opposite valence emotions over time on the same graph. MethodsIn a cross sectional design, 163 participants based in schools across the UK formed two age groups representing early and mid-adolescence (12 years, 5 months-16 years, 9 months vs. 16 years, 10 months-18 years, 8 months) across two conditions considering either their own (n = 83) or another child's (n = 80) emotional experience divided equally for high (n = 80) or low (n = 83) intensity mixed emotion pairs presented in vignettes about themselves or another person. They were seen individually and completed an emotion presence interview and an Analogue Emotion Scale about the emotions experienced in the condition appropriate vignette. ResultsParticipants reported mixed emotions both sequentially and simultaneously. In particular we found that children showed that others experience emotions in a more sequential manner, while they themselves would experience more emotions in a highly simultaneous way. Emotion experience was different depending on the emotion pair and age group. ConclusionsAdolescents’ subjective mixed emotion experiences vary by intensity and patterns of simultaneity over time. Findings are discussed in relation to an evaluative space model of mixed emotion and applications of the AES with adolescent populations.

The power of weak ties in preserving cognitive function: a longitudinal study of older Chinese adults

Objectives: Characterized by infrequent contact, low emotional intensity, and limited intimacy, weak ties are found to be associated with better subjective well-being and other health outcomes. Drawing on the theory of weak ties and the convoy model of social relations, this paper aims to examine the association between weak ties and cognitive function among older adults in China.Methods: We used multilevel growth modeling to analyze panel data for adults aged 60 years and over (N = 2,650) selected from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2011–2015). Weak ties were measured based on the frequency of social activity participation and the number of social activities.Results: Weekly or irregular social activity participation in at least one social activity was significantly associated with better mental status and memory. The number of participated social activities was also significantly and positively associated with mental status and memory. After controlling for age, gender, marital status, educational attainment, geographic residence, household expenditures, and health conditions (i.e., depressive symptoms and self-reported health), we found that participation in a greater number of social activities protected memory from declining by 4% for every 2 years (p < 0.001).Conclusion: These findings suggest that social interactions with peripheral members of a diverse social network may help prevent cognitive decline for older Chinese adults. Greater attention on weak ties might yield practical implications for non-pharmacological dementia prevention and health promotion for the general older population.

The application of ‘valence’ to the idea of household food insecurity in Canada

Household food insecurity (HFI), lack of access to adequate food due to financial constraint, has been studied extensively in Canada and is well-recognized for its negative impacts on population health. Despite considerable high-level political recognition, the issue has evoked little substantive policy deliberation. We suggest that Béland and Cox's recently articulated construct of ‘valence’ may be useful in examining why the idea of HFI has motivated little policy response. Valence is defined as the emotional quality of an idea. According to valence theory, ideas with a high emotional intensity, positive valence acquire importance in policy debate, and those with high intensity, negative valence are ‘unthinkable’ as a policy idea. We compiled four datasets in which HFI was discussed (verbatim legislative excerpts, parliamentary committee proceedings, government reports, interviews with HFI policy entrepreneurs), representing different kinds of political forums for debate. We analyzed what was said with respect to the valence of the idea of HFI. We found that discussions about HFI were on the whole generally subdued and of low emotional intensity. High intensity negative valence pronouncements were found among legislators' statements and parliamentary committee evidence. Regardless of emotional intensity level, speakers usually talked about the idea of HFI in ways that elicited a negative valence. Positive valence in discussion of the idea of HFI was limited and invoked comments about individual aspiration, prosperity, and community spirit. Our findings suggest that the negative valence of HFI is an inherent trait of the idea that makes it unattractive to policy makers. We suggest that HFI may be a better metric than a policy problem and that aspirational goals with positive valence related to poverty alleviation might better use HFI as an outcome rather than the focus of action.

Cognitive Reappraisal of Negative Emotional Images in Borderline Personality Disorder: Content Analysis, Perceived Effectiveness, and Diagnostic Specificity.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) report using cognitive reappraisal less often than healthy individuals despite the long-term benefits of the emotion regulation strategy on emotional stability. Individuals with BPD, mixed anxiety and/or depressive disorders (MAD), and healthy controls (HC) completed an experimental task to investigate the tactics contained in cognitive reappraisal statements vocalized for high and low emotional intensity photographs. Self-reported effectiveness after using cognitive reappraisal to decrease negative emotions was also evaluated. Although BPD and MAD used a similar number of cognitive reappraisal tactics, they perceived themselves as less effective at reducing their negative emotions compared to HC. During cognitive reappraisal, BPD and MAD uttered fewer words versus HC, while BPD uttered fewer words versus MAD. Results suggest that individuals with BPD and MAD are less fluent and perceive themselves as less effective than HC when using cognitive reappraisal to lower negative emotions regardless of stimulus intensity.

Scared and surrounded by clutter: The influence of emotional reactivity

BackgroundHome visits can improve treatment outcomes for hoarding disorder, but factors influencing the success of home visits remain unknown. As home visits expose individuals to clutter and fear, the present study examined the effect that fear and emotional reactivity have on the relationship between clutter and discarding behaviour. MethodsParticipants with at least subclinical discarding problems (n = 143) were asked to save or discard personal possessions of varying value following an emotional induction that took place in either a tidy or cluttered context. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing hoarding severity, emotional state, and emotional reactivity, as defined by one's sensitivity, persistence, and intensity of reactions to emotional stimuli. ResultsAs expected, participants discarded more items in the presence of clutter and when feeling fearful. However, emotional reactivity moderated the relations between environmental context, acute emotional state, and discarding. Low sensitivity, low persistence, and high emotional intensity negatively influenced discarding in the cluttered context. When feeling fearful, low dispositional emotional intensity negatively influenced discarding in the tidy context. LimitationsIndividuals in the tidy environment reported higher levels of fear and anxiety than individuals in the cluttered environment after the fear induction. These differences could have contributed to the difference noted between the two contexts when examining the effect of emotional intensity tendencies. ConclusionsProviding treatment in an environment more representative of the cluttered home can improve discarding or at the very least give therapists a more accurate picture of what clients do in the context that matters most.

Negative affect varying in motivational intensity influences scope of memory

ABSTRACTEmotions influence cognitive processes involved in memory. While some research has suggested that cognitive scope is determined by affective valence, recent models of emotion–cognition interactions suggest that motivational intensity, rather than valence, influences these processes. The present research was designed to clarify how negative affects differing in motivational intensity impact memory for centrally or peripherally presented information. Experiments 1 & 2 found that, relative to a neutral condition, high intensity negative affect (anger) enhances memory for centrally presented information. Experiment 3 replicated this effect using another high intensity negative affect (threat). Experiment 4 extended this by finding that, relative to a neutral condition, low intensity negative affect (sadness) enhanced memory for peripherally presented information. Finally, in Experiment 5, the effects of sadness and threat on scope of memory were directly compared, finding that threat narrowed scope of memory, while sadness broadened scope of memory. Together, these results provide additional support for the motivational dimensional model of cognitive scope, in that high intensity emotions narrow cognitive scope, while low intensity emotions broaden cognitive scope.

An Automatic Multilevel Facial Expression Recognition System

Facial expression is one of the most natural way of human beings to communicate his-her internal feeling, to stress his-her words, to agree or disagree with the interlocutor, to regulate interaction with the environment and nearby people. This paper challenges the classification experiment run by human beings on the ADFES-BIV database, which is a recently introduced collection of videos expressing low, middle, and high intensity emotions. The proposed automatic system uses the Sparse Representation based Classifier and reaches the top performance of 80 % by considering the temporal information intrinsically present in the videos.