We explored how experimentally induced psychological stress affects the production and recognition of vocal emotions. In Study 1a, we demonstrate that sentences spoken by stressed speakers are judged ...by naïve listeners as sounding more stressed than sentences uttered by non-stressed speakers. In Study 1b, negative emotions produced by stressed speakers are generally less well recognized than the same emotions produced by non-stressed speakers. Multiple mediation analyses suggest this poorer recognition of negative stimuli was due to a mismatch between the variation of volume voiced by speakers and the range of volume expected by listeners. Together, this suggests that the stress level of the speaker affects judgments made by the receiver. In Study 2, we demonstrate that participants who were induced with a feeling of stress before carrying out an emotional prosody recognition task performed worse than non-stressed participants. Overall, findings suggest detrimental effects of induced stress on interpersonal sensitivity.
It has repeatedly been argued that individual differences in personality influence emotion processing, but findings from both the facial and vocal emotion recognition literature are contradictive, ...suggesting a lack of reliability across studies. To explore this relationship further in a more systematic manner using the Big Five Inventory, we designed two studies employing different research paradigms. Study 1 explored the relationship between personality traits and vocal emotion
while Study 2 examined how personality traits relate to vocal emotion
. The combined results did not indicate a pairwise linear relationship between self-reported individual differences in personality and vocal emotion processing, suggesting that the continuously proposed influence of personality characteristics on vocal emotion processing might have been overemphasized previously.
Objective
We studied the point prevalence of suicidal and violent ideation, as well as their co‐occurrence and associated characteristics in inpatients with mental health disorders.
Methods
Data on ...suicidal and violent ideation, and sociodemographic and clinical information, were gathered from 1,737 patients when admitted to the acute psychiatric ward.
Results
The point prevalence was 51.9% for suicidal ideation and 19.8% for violent ideation. The point prevalence of co‐occurring suicidal and violent ideation was 12.3%, which was significantly greater than expected by chance. Logistic regression analyses indicated that both suicidal and violent ideation were associated with young age and the absence of diagnoses of psychotic disorders; in addition, suicidal ideation was associated with female gender, violent ideation, and diagnoses of mood‐ neurotic and personality disorders, whereas violent ideation was associated with male gender, suicidal ideation, and diagnoses of mood and neurotic disorders.
Conclusions
Overall, the findings highlight the need for further research on suicidal and violent ideation in people with mental health problems including, but not limited to, their association with adverse behavioral outcomes, as well as the need to routinely assess both suicidal and violent ideation in clinical practice.
Background: Childhood Trauma has been linked to a wide range of psychopathologies. However, although individuals diagnosed with psychosis and individuals diagnosed with BPD have been found to overlap ...in terms of their trauma histories, and similar trauma-related mechanisms have been explored in both groups, these two clinical groups are often studied in isolation. The main aim of this thesis was to explore how trauma and trauma-related mechanisms are related to the development of psychotic and borderline symptomatology from both a diagnostic and transdiagnostic perspective. Method: First, theoretical accounts of critical concepts and of BPD and psychosis were reviewed. Second, a systematic review approached psychotic symptomatology from a transdiagnostic perspective, in which the relationship between childhood trauma, cognitive appraisals and psychotic-like experiences were examined in samples drawn from different psychosis populations. Third, an empirical study examined the relationship between childhood traumas, trauma-related mechanisms and psychotic and borderline symptomatology from both a diagnostic and transdiagnostic perspective. Finally, an attempt was made to integrate theoretical accounts with the thesis findings, and research and clinical implications were discussed. Results: Findings from the systematic review supported previous evidence suggesting that there is a dose-response relationship between trauma severity and symptom severity, and that specific trauma types may be linked to specific symptoms. These findings were confirmed in the empirical paper (and outlined in an additional results chapter). The findings also suggested an important role of trauma-related mechanisms and supported transdiagnostic predictions. Specifically, dissociation and post-traumatic symptomatology may partially explain development of psychosis and borderline symptomatology, respectively. Conclusion: The relationship between childhood trauma and psychosis and borderline symptomatology is becoming well established. This thesis portfolio emphasised the benefits of approaching symptomatology from a transdiagnostic perspective, as well as the advantages of using more complex statistical approaches when exploring these relationships.
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