Matthew P. Spackman

Alexithymia, Emotional Instability, and Vulnerability to Stress Proneness in Patients Seeking Help for Hypersexual Behavior

This article reports the findings of a study investigating alexithymia, emotional instability, and vulnerability to stress proneness among individuals (N = 120) seeking help for hypersexual behavior. At the onset of treatment at an outpatient community clinic, subjects completed the Sexual Compulsivity Scale (SCS), the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and the NEO Personality Inventory Revised (NEO-PI-R). The results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed the best model in predicting severity of hypersexual behavior included the facets of depression and vulnerability to stress from the NEO and the Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF) factor of the TAS-20. Although the NEO domain of neuroticism appeared to capture the majority of variance in hypersexual behavior, the difficulty identifying feelings factor of the TAS-20 did make some modest, but significant, contribution to the severity of hypersexual behavior after controlling for depression and vulnerability to stress. These data provide evidence for the hypothesis that individuals who manifest symptoms of hypersexual behavior are more likely to experience deficits in affect regulation and negative affect (including alexithymia, depression, and vulnerability to stress). Possible reasons for these results are suggested and future recommendations for research are offered.

Understanding emotions in context: the effects of language impairment on children's ability to infer emotional reactions

BACKGROUND Research indicates children with language impairment (LI) may experience social deficits extending beyond those expected due to their language deficits. In particular, it has been found that children with LI have difficulty with various aspects of emotional competence. One aspect of emotional competence is emotion understanding, which includes the ability to infer the emotions of oneself and others from social context. AIMS To examine the ability of children with LI to infer the emotions elicited by specific social situations. METHODS & PROCEDURES Participants were presented with short scenarios in which the main character, Chris, was exposed to a situation that would be expected to elicit anger, fear, happiness or sadness. Children were then asked to indicate what emotion Chris experienced. Following selected scenarios, children were asked to talk about the emotions they associated with some of the scenarios. They were first asked why the character would feel a particular emotion (e.g. Why did Chris feel happy?) and then asked for a description of how the particular emotion would feel (e.g. How does it feel inside to be happy?). OUTCOMES & RESULTS Both groups of children identified happiness most accurately, followed by sadness, fear and anger. Older children were significantly more accurate than younger children, and typically developing children were significantly more accurate than children with LI. Children with LI were less sophisticated in their descriptions of emotion than were typical children. CONCLUSIONS It is suggested that clinical interventions for children with LI should include activities designed to enrich childrens emotion understanding, giving them opportunities to develop skills they may not acquire otherwise.

Ability of children with language impairment to understand emotion conveyed by prosody in a narrative passage

BACKGROUND Several recent studies have indicated that children with language impairment experience difficulty with various aspects of emotion understanding. Because emotion understanding skills are critical to successful social interaction, it is possible that these deficits play a role in the social problems frequently experienced by children with language difficulties. AIMS To explore further the emotion understanding skills of children with language impairment, the investigation examined the ability of these children to understand emotion conveyed by prosody in a narrative passage. METHODS & PROCEDURES Nineteen children with language impairment and their chronological age-matched peers served as participants. Children were sampled from the age range of 8-10; 10 years. These children were presented with a seven-sentence narrative read by actors to express happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. They were then asked to indicate what emotion the speaker expressed. OUTCOMES & RESULTS Children with language impairment performed significantly more poorly than their typical peers in identifying the emotion expressed in the passage. There were also differences between emotions, with happiness being the easiest emotion to identify and fear the most difficult. The interaction between group and emotion type was not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS The results provide additional evidence that children with language impairment may have impairments in emotion understanding. If these findings are replicated, interventions designed to facilitate emotion understanding as an aspect of social communication should be considered for some children with language impairment.

The Ability of Children With Language Impairment to Recognize Emotion Conveyed by Facial Expression and Music

The emotion understanding of children with language impairment (LI) was examined in two studies employing emotion-recognition tasks selected to minimize reliance on language skills. Participants consisted of 43 children with LI and 43 typically developing, age-matched peers, sampled from the age ranges of 5 to 8 and 9 to 12 years. In the first study, participants were shown photographs of faces (Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988) and asked to indicate what emotion was being expressed. In the second study, participants listened to excerpts of classical music and indicated what emotion was being expressed. Children with LI identified the facial expressions of happiness, anger, sadness, and fear with the same accuracy as typical children. They were significantly less accurate than their peers at identifying surprise and disgust. Age differences were observed on anger and surprise, with the younger group performing more poorly than the older group. Children with LI also showed significant differences from typical children in identifying the emotion expressed in music excerpts. Significant differences between the performances of the younger and older groups were also found.

Do emotions have distinct vocal profiles? A study of idiographic patterns of expression

Research on vocal expressions of emotion indicates that persons can identify emotions from voice with relatively high accuracy rates. In addition, fairly consistent vocal profiles for specific emotions have been identified. However, important methodological issues remain to be addressed. In this paper, we address the issue of whether there are individual differences in the manner in which particular emotions may be expressed vocally and whether trained speakers’ portrayals of emotion are in some sense superior to untrained speakers’ portrayals. Consistent support was found for differences across speakers in the manner in which they expressed the same emotions. No accompanying relationship was found between differences in expression and accuracy of identification of those expressions. Little evidence for the superiority of trained speakers was found. Implications of these findings for future studies of vocal expressions of emotion, as well as our understanding of emotions in general, are discussed.

Listeners’ judgments of the musical unity of structurally altered and intact musical compositions

The aims of this study were to examine how listeners judge musical unity and whether they can detect lack of unity in compositions that have been structurally altered. Participants listened to 15 piano solos. Five were not altered. Ten were altered by combining three sections of three different compositions, or by repeating the same section three times in succession. Although their unity ratings for the 15 compositions were similar, trained and untrained participants focused on different aspects of the music. When judging unity, musically trained participants focused on repetition, themes/motifs, transitions, endings, and contrast providing overall balance. Untrained participants focused on pitch contour and range, tempo, mood, and pauses when judging musical unity. Although participants were not aware that any compositions had been altered, both groups were sensitive to varying degrees of repetition and variety in altered and unaltered compositions as shown in their unity ratings and written descriptions.

Embodying Emotions: What Emotion Theorists Can Learn from Simulations of Emotions

Cognitively-oriented theories have dominated the recent history of the study of emotion. However, critics of this perspective suggest the role of the body in the experience of emotion is largely ignored by cognitive theorists. As an alternative to the cognitive perspective, critics are increasingly pointing to William James’ theory, which emphasized somatic aspects of emotions. This emerging emphasis on the embodiment of emotions is shared by those in the field of AI attempting to model human emotions. Behavior-based agents in AI are attempts to model the role the body might play in the experiencing of emotions. Progress in creating such behavior-based models that function in their environments has been slow, suggesting some potential problems with Jamesian alternatives to cognitive perspectives of emotions. Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s conceptions of embodiment are suggested as alternatives to James’ and as means for addressing the shortcomings of the cognitive perspective.

Emotionology in prose: A study of descriptions of emotions from three literary periods

Descriptions of emotion incidents were extracted from classic American novels of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern Periods. These descriptions were then rated by respondents on scales relevant to attribution of responsibility for emotions. It was found that ratings of the emotion descriptions differed across the three literary periods, with descriptions from the Romantic Period being rated most intense and most appropriate, descriptions from the Victorian Period as least intense, and descriptions from the Modern Period as least appropriate. In addition, it was found that the contemporary American folk theory of attribution of responsibility for emotions might be characterised as being based on perceived intensity of emotions, the social appropriateness of emotions, and the degree to which persons other than the emoter might be said to be responsible for the emoters emotion. These findings are supportive of a growing appreciation in the emotion literature for culturally and historically relative approac...

The Ability of Children With Language Impairment to Dissemble Emotions in Hypothetical Scenarios and Natural Situations.

PURPOSE This study examined the ability of children with language impairment (LI) to dissemble (hide) emotional reactions when socially appropriate to do so. METHOD Twenty-two children with LI and their typically developing peers (7;1-10;11 [years;months]) participated in two tasks. First, participants were presented with hypothetical scenarios in which the main character was exposed to situations that would require dissembling an emotional reaction for social purposes (e.g., receiving a disappointing gift from a grandparent). In the second task, children were presented with four naturally occurring opportunities to dissemble emotion (e.g., receiving a disappointing reward for taking part in the study). RESULTS Although the ability to dissemble emotion was still emerging in children in both groups, typically developing children judged that dissemblance was appropriate significantly more often than did children with LI in the hypothetical scenarios. In naturalistic scenarios, there was little difference between groups in low-cost scenarios (those in which the child had nothing to lose by hiding emotion). In the high-cost scenario (hiding emotion meant accepting a disappointing prize), more typically developing children concealed their disappointment than did children with LI. These differences neared statistical significance (p = .058). CONCLUSION Children with typically developing language showed a greater ability to dissemble in hypothetical scenarios. In naturalistic scenarios, performance was more nuanced. In low-cost scenarios, there was little difference between groups. In the high-cost scenario, typically developing children tended to dissemble more often than did children with LI.

Infants and Emotions: How the Ancients' Theories Inform Modern Issues

Although cognitively oriented theories of emotion are now dominant in the psychological study of emotion, there remain issues upon which these theories do not agree. Central among these are questions regarding the minimal cognitive processes necessary to have an emotion. A potentially productive approach to such questions is the study of the relation of cognitive development and the development of emotions in infants. Such an approach was featured in ancient philosophical and psychological treatises, some of which formed the very foundations of later cognitive theories. However, the recent literature has been nearly indifferent to just these foundations. Ancient commentators, especially Aristotle and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, understood emotions as fundamentally sociomoral constructs. Owing to a lack of socialisation and moral understanding, infants are not fully capable of experiencing emotions as they are typically understood. Contemporary work in the area of emotion, including that of Micha...