Specific Emotional Reactions Research Articles

Health‐related quality of life in children and emotional reactions of parents following completion of cancer treatment

Completing therapy is one of the major transitions in care in the practice of pediatric oncology and, therefore, deserves special consideration. The purpose of the study was to investigate health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of pediatric patients, and emotional reactions of their parents, shortly after the end of successful treatment. HRQOL of 126 patients, aged 1-15 years, on average 2 months after the end of successful treatment, was assessed with the TNO-AZL Pre-school Quality of life Questionnaire and the TNO-AZL Children's Quality of life Questionnaire. Emotional adjustment of 124 mothers and 111 fathers was assessed with the General Health Questionnaire and the Situation Specific Emotional Reaction Questionnaire. The outcomes of the patients and parents were compared with norm data by means of one sample t-tests, one sample sign-tests or binomial tests. All age groups, except patients aged 8-11 years, experienced worse HRQOL than the norm with respect to motor functioning. In addition, pre-school patients were rated worse on sleeping, appetite, stomach, skin, problem behavior, anxiety, and liveliness, and patients aged 6-7 years on autonomy and cognitive functioning. Parents reported more psychological distress than the norm. Compared to parents whose children were 1-5 years after cancer treatment, they suffered more from feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and uncertainty. A few months after the end of successful cancer treatment, both patients and parents appeared to experience worse well-being than the norm to a clinically relevant extent. Supporting patients and parents should not stop when treatment ends.

Typology of Reactions to Intimate Partner Violence Among Men and Women Arrested for Partner Violence

This study examined behavioral and emotional responses to partner-initiated violence reported by men and women court-ordered to domestic violence counseling. Respondents provided Likert-type ratings of behavioral and emotional responses to their partners' initiated violence. Cluster analysis to determine heterogeneity of emotional and behavioral responses resulted in a three-cluster solution. The profile for Cluster 1, predominantly male, showed no specific behavioral or emotional reaction pattern. Cluster 2 respondents, evenly split between males and females, but comprising a high proportion of all of the female participants, reported frequently doing what the partner wanted and attempting to escape. Emotional responses experienced by Cluster 2 respondents were anger, insult, and fear. Cluster 3, predominantly male, reported a frequent tendency to use force in response and escape when their partners initiated physical violence. Emotionally, Cluster 3 participants reported experiencing high levels of anger and insult, and relatively low levels of fear and low levels of amusement. Implications of these findings for development of gender-based intervention strategies will be discussed.

Psychopathology in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A preliminary study with 27 ALS patients

Considering the few studies published on the psychopathology of ALS patients, we carried out a preliminary study evaluating depression, anxiety, emotional reactions and coping strategies in such patients. Twenty-seven ALS patients were included and evaluated using a semi-structured interview, after which they were asked to complete a questionnaire. The rater asessed the DSM-IV criteria for a major depressive episode, dysthymia and generalized anxiety, using the MADRS scale for depression, the Covi anxiety scale and the Depressive Mood scale. Subsequently, patients completed the Ways of Coping checklist. Patients were neither anxious nor depressed. Patients whose diagnosis was recent (less than six months) presented greater emotional deficit. Patients younger than 50 years of age used problem focused strategies more frequently. Those having received the diagnosis in the preceeding six months used emotion focused strategies significantly more often.The absence of characterized depression and anxiety confirmed results of the literature. The significance of this study is found in the observation of specific emotional reactions present in the first six months following diagnosis disclosure. The results show that it is useful to continue the affective evaluation of these patients and to undertake longitudinal studies starting at the time of diagnosis disclosure.

Relations between emotion, memory, and attention: evidence from taboo stroop, lexical decision, and immediate memory tasks.

This article reports five experiments demonstrating theoretically coherent effects of emotion on memory and attention. Experiments 1-3 demonstrated three taboo Stroop effects that occur when people name the color of taboo words. One effect is longer color-naming times for taboo than for neutral words, an effect that diminishes with word repetition. The second effect is superior recall of taboo words in surprise memory tests following color naming. The third effect is better recognition memory for colors consistently associated with taboo words rather than with neutral words. None of these effects was due to retrieval factors, attentional disengagement processes, response inhibition, or strategic attention shifts. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that taboo words impair immediate recall of the preceding and succeeding words in rapidly presented lists but do not impair lexical decision times. We argue that taboo words trigger specific emotional reactions that facilitate the binding of taboo word meaning to salient contextual aspects, such as occurrence in a task and font color in taboo Stroop tasks.

A Comparison of Emotional Consequences of and Changes in Equity Over Time Using Global and Domain-Specific Measures of Equity

A sample of romantic partners completed several measures of perceived equity in regard to their relationship, at multiple times over almost five years. Three of the measures were one-item global assessments and one measure was detailed and based on Foa and Foa's (1974) classification of resources. The measures were compared on descriptive properties (e.g., percentage of participants who chose the equity category), their degree of association with the other equity measures, and the results obtained for two research questions: What is the association between equity/inequity and specific emotional reactions? How does equity change with the passage of time? The major findings were that partners tended to agree in their perceptions of equity, inequity was more common in the domain of money than in other resource areas, equity in the service domain was more highly associated with overall equity judgments for both men and women than was equity in other relationship domains, underbenefiting inequity but not overbenefiting inequity was associated with overall distress experienced as a result of exchange, and perceptions of equity remained generally stable over time. Although the different equity measures yielded some different findings, there were more similarities than differences.

Gender, Ethnicity, and Sexual Assault: Findings from a Los Angeles Study

This paper examines the influence of gender and ethnicity (Hispanic compared to non‐Hispanic White) on the probability of experiencing sexual assault, the circumstances surrounding the assault, and its sequelae. Based on a sample of over 3000 adult community residents, Hispanics and men reported significantly lower rates of assault than non‐Hispanic Whites and women. Once individuals were assaulted, however, neither ethnicity nor gender were related to their probability of being victimized again. Assaulted persons were more likely than nonassaulted persons to have a mental disorder; however, this association did not differ by gender or ethnicity. Women were more likely than men to report specific emotional and behavioral reactions to an assault. Sexual assault was associated with significantly greater use of mental health and general health services, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Provision of services for sexual assault victims is discussed in light of these findings.

Personal Control and Prisoner Adjustment: An Empirical Test of a Proposed Model

Expectany for control and perception of the control available in a situation has been hypothesized to involve specific emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral reactions. This study examined inmate control and adjustment to prison. The factor structure of 18 adjustment variables reported by prison inmates in five prisons was identified by means of a factor analysis. Four independent factors were identified, stress/anxiety, prisonization, misconducts, and lack of involvement. The inmates' responses to incarceration as measured by factor scores were examined as a function of three components of control: general expectancy, perceived control, and environmental control. Results indicated strong support for the importance of control in influencing inmate adjustment to prison. However, no support was found for a person-environment fit model of inmate adjustment proposed in an earlier paper.

An Experimental Study of the Role of Expectation and Variation in Music

PSYCHOLOGISTS, MUSICIANS, AND LAYMAN are agreed that music is often a powerful source of affect.1 Yet we know relatively little about the basis for this power of music to arouse emotion in the listener. Studies have attempted to show that music is capable of inducing a mood effect, or that there are affective qualities in music which can be identified by listeners; they have also correlated certain musical attributes, such as the minor mode, with specific emotional reactions. But such experiments, employing introspective reports, check lists of emotions, and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) measurements, have yielded no information about the characteristics of the musical stimuli actually involved in evoking the response. Directly relevant to this question is the theory of musical aesthetics formulated by Leonard Meyer, as presented in his Emotion and Meaning in Music. Starting from a psychological theory of emotions first proposed by Dewey, Meyer invokes the concept of expectation as a central factor determining the aesthetic response. His basic hypothesis states that affect or emotion-felt is aroused when an expectation-a tendency to respond-activated by the musical stimulus situation, is temporarily inhibited or permanently blocked.2 Expectations are products of our knowledge of the particular musical style, the individual work, and the modes of human perception and cognition. Any musical figure which deviates from the expected musical sequence is felt to be a disruption in the normal process of continuation and, hence, arouses tension in the listener, which is then resolved when a satisfactory musical resolution appears.

EMOTIONS AND ADRENERGIC AND CHOLINERGIC CHANGES IN THE BLOOD

In pursuit of previously published studies, 1 the problem presented itself whether a relationship can be established between substances in the blood having adrenergic and cholinergic properties and specific emotional reactions. Investigations were carried out on patients suffering from various psychopathologic reactions in which different emotions of varying intensity were demonstrable, and on members of the staff and medical students. All subjects were without demonstrable somatic disease. PHARMACOLOGIC METHODS The effect of samples of fresh whole blood on the contractions of an isolated strip of the rabbit duodenum was investigated by the following procedure: Healthy adult rabbits were killed by a blow on the head. The intestine was cut at the pylorus, and a strip approximately 10 cm. long was removed immediately and, with careful handling, was washed in Ringer-Tyrode solution. A section from 1 to 1.5 cm. long, attached to a recording lever, was suspended in about 180 cc.

The effect of substituting ethylene glycol dinitrate in permissible explosives : G. St. J. Perrott and J. E. Tiffany, U. S. Bureau of Mines, Reports of Investigations, May, 1929

This study investigates the content of the system of representations of Roma women as they emerge from a free-association task, collected from a sample of university students in Italy and Brazil. Available data on the situation of Roma women show that they experience greater social exclusion than the Roma men and the women of the majority community, especially in accessing employment, education, health and social services.The sample consists of 643 participants (mean age 22.9), 50.4% of whom are Italians and 74.3% female. Data were collected via a free-association task, the prompt word being “Gypsy woman”. SPAD-T software ran a lexical correspondence analysis, extracting two factors. We defined the first axis: “The mysterious Roma woman vs. The Outcast Roma woman”, and the second axis: “The seer Roma woman vs. Different sides of Roma woman”.Moreover, psychosocial anchoring to the emotional reactions towards Roma people was studied, showing how different groups of individuals, characterized by specific emotional reactions to Roma people, were attuned to certain social representations of the Roma woman.The implications of these results are discussed in terms of the role played by Roma women in traditional Roma and western societies.