Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by interpersonal deficits and has been associated with limited cognitive empathy, which includes perspective taking, theory of mind, and empathic accuracy ...(EA). The capacity for affective empathy may also be impaired. In the present study we aimed to determine if EA in normally developing individuals with varying levels of autism spectrum traits is moderated by trait affective empathy. Fifty male and fifty female participants ('perceivers') completed the Autism-Spectrum Quotient and the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale to assess autism spectrum traits and trait affective empathy, respectively. EA was assessed using a Dutch-language version of a previously developed task and involved rating the feelings of others ('targets') verbally recounting autobiographical emotional events. Targets varied in trait emotional expressivity, assessed using the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire. Perceivers with more autism spectrum traits performed worse on the EA task, particularly when their trait affective empathy was relatively low. Interpersonal deficits in autism spectrum disorder may be partially explained by low cognitive empathy. Further, they might be aggravated by a limited capacity for affective empathy.
Victims of bullying often show interpersonal problems, such as having less high-quality interpersonal relationships compared to non-involved individuals. Research suggests that interpersonal ...struggles are associated with diminished emotional intelligence and competence and can lead to mental health problems such as depression. Therefore, we examined emotion recognition abilities, empathic accuracy, and behavioral responses to emotions in bullying victims and non-involved individuals. Based on previous research, we expected victims to show diminished skills in all three domains.
Adolescents (M
=17years; 67% female; no "other" gender participants) with (
=24) and without (
=21) a self-reported history of bullying victimization in high school completed a Virtual Reality facial emotion recognition task (ERT-VR), an empathic accuracy task (EAT) using videos of people recounting real-life autobiographical events, and a computer task in which they indicated their likely behavioral responses to facial emotions.
The two groups only significantly differed in recognizing emotions when taking their depression symptoms into account. Across emotions, victims had lower recognition accuracy than non-involved individuals. When examining emotion-specific differences, victims showed lower accuracy for neutral faces which they mainly mistook for angry faces.
In contrast to expectations, adolescents with a high-school history of bullying victimization mostly showed similar emotional intelligence and competence skills as non-involved individuals. Nonetheless, we found some subtle differences regarding emotion recognition. Victims misjudged neutral as angry faces. This suggests a hostile attribution bias which might help explain victims' interpersonal problems as well as their increased risk for mental health problems.
Using TEMPEST Batalas, Nikolaos; aan het Rot, Marije; Khan, Vassilis Javed ...
Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction,
06/2018, Volume:
2, Issue:
EICS
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Researchers who perform Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) studies tend to rely on informatics experts to set up and administer their data collection protocols with digital media. Contrary to ...standard surveys and questionnaires that are supported by widely available tools, setting up an EMA protocol is a substantial programming task. Apart from constructing the survey items themselves, researchers also need to design, implement, and test the timing and the contingencies by which these items are presented to respondents. Furthermore, given the wide availability of smartphones, it is becoming increasingly important to execute EMA studies on user-owned devices, which presents a number of software engineering challenges pertaining to connectivity, platform independence, persistent storage, and back-end control. We discuss TEMPEST, a web-based platform that is designed to support non-programmers in specifying and executing EMA studies. We discuss the conceptual model it presents to end-users, through an example of use, and its evaluation by 18 researchers who have put it to real-life use in 13 distinct research studies.
Before diagnosing premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), 2 months of prospective assessment are required to confirm menstrual cyclicity in symptoms. For a diagnosis of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), ...this is not required. Women with PMDD and PMS often report that their symptoms interfere with mood and social functioning, and are said to show cyclical changes in interpersonal behaviour, but this has not been examined using a prospective approach. We sampled cyclicity in mood and interpersonal behaviour for 2 months in women with self- reported PMS.
Participants met the criteria for PMS on the Premenstrual Symptoms Screening Tool (PSST), a retrospective questionnaire. For 2 menstrual cycles, after each social interaction, they used the online software TEMPEST to record on their smartphones how they felt and behaved. We examined within-person variability in negative affect, positive affect, quarrelsomeness, and agreeableness.
Participants evaluated TEMPEST as positive. However, we found no evidence for menstrual cyclicity in mood and interpersonal behaviour in any of the individual women (n = 9).
Retrospective questionnaires such as the PSST may lead to oversampling of PMS. The diagnosis of PMS, like that of PMDD, might require 2 months of prospective assessment.
Objective Midbrain dopamine transmission is thought to regulate responses to rewarding drugs and drug-paired stimuli; however, the exact contribution, particularly in humans, remains unclear. In the ...present study, we tested whether decreasing dopamine synthesis, as produced by acute phenylalanine/tyrosine depletion (APTD), would alter responses to the stimulant drug, d-amphetamine. Methods On 3 separate days, 14 healthy men received d-amphetamine (0.3 mg/kg, given orally) plus a nutritionally balanced amino acid mixture, the phenylalanine/tyrosine-deficient mixture or the phenylalanine/tyrosine-deficient mixture followed by the immediate dopamine precursor, L-DOPA (Sinemet, 2 × 100 mg/25 mg). Responses to these treatments were assessed with visual analog scales, the Profile of Mood States, and a computerized Go/No-Go task. Results d-Amphetamine elicited its prototypical subjective effects, but these were not altered by APTD. In comparison, APTD significantly increased commission errors on the Go/No-Go task and did so uniquely in conditions where subjects were rewarded for making correct responses; this effect of APTD was prevented by L-DOPA. Conclusions Together these results support the hypothesis that, in healthy men, dopamine is not closely linked to euphorogenic effects of abused substances but does affect the salience of reward-related cues and the ability to respond to them preferentially.
Abstract To examine whether acute changes in cognitive empathy might mediate the impact of light therapy on mood, we assessed the effects of a single light-therapy session on mood and cognitive ...empathy in 48 premenstrual women, including 17 who met Premenstrual Symptoms Screening Tool criteria for moderate-to-severe premenstrual syndrome / premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMS/PMDD). Using a participant-blind between-groups design, 23 women underwent 30 minutes of morning light therapy (5000 lx; blue-enriched polychromatic light, 17000 K) while 25 women had a sham session (200 lx, polychromatic light, 5000 K). We administered the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule and the Affect Grid right before and after the intervention, and 60 minutes later upon completion of a computerized empathic accuracy task. There were no significant effects of light condition on cognitive empathy as assessed using the computer task. Nonetheless, bright light reduced negative affect, specifically in women not using hormonal contraceptives. No effects of bright light on mood were observed in women who were using contraceptives. If a single light-therapy session does not alter cognitive empathy, then cognitive empathy may not mediate the impact of light therapy on mood in premenstrual women.
Associations between impulsivity and interpersonal behaviours have rarely been examined, even though impulsivity may disrupt the flow of social interactions. For example, it is unknown to what extent ...the commonly used Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS‐11) predicts impulsive behaviour in social situations, and how behaving impulsively during interpersonal encounters might influence levels of quarrelsomeness and agreeableness. In this study, 48 healthy working individuals completed the BIS‐11 and recorded their behaviour in social situations using event‐contingent recording. Record forms included items representing quarrelsome, agreeable, and impulsive behaviours. BIS‐11 motor impulsiveness scores predicted impulsive behaviour in social situations. Impulsive behaviour was associated, in different interactions, with both agreeableness and quarrelsomeness. Behaving impulsively in specific interactions was negatively associated with agreeableness in participants with higher BIS‐11 motor impulsiveness and positively associated with agreeableness in participants with lower BIS‐11 motor impulsiveness. Impulsive quarrelsome behaviour may cause interpersonal problems. Impulsive agreeable behaviour may have positive effects in individuals with low trait impulsivity. The idea that there are between‐person differences in the effects of state impulsivity on the flow of social interaction deserves further study.
Rationale
Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been associated with disturbances in social functioning and in the brain serotonin system. Reduced levels of serotonin may negatively influence social ...functioning, for example by impairing the recognition of facial emotion expressions.
Objectives
The present study investigated the effect of acute tryptophan depletion (ATD), which reduces brain serotonin, on a related component of social functioning, empathic accuracy (EA), and oxytocin levels.
Methods
Individuals with (FH+) and without (FH−) a family history of MDD participated in a randomized, double-blind, crossover study. On two separate test days, participants ingested tryptophan-deficient and nutritionally balanced amino acid mixtures. Six hours later, they performed an EA task, which involved watching videos of people recounting autobiographical emotional events. While watching, participants continuously rated how these people felt during the recounting. Mood state was repeatedly assessed using the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule and a series of visual analogue scales. Blood samples obtained at baseline and 5 h after mixture ingestion were assessed for tryptophan and oxytocin levels.
Results
ATD decreased circulating levels of tryptophan and oxytocin. Nevertheless, there were no significant effects of ATD on EA or mood in either FH group.
Conclusions
While previous studies have shown that acute reductions in brain serotonin alter the recognition of facial emotion expressions in never-depressed individuals, the present study suggests that empathic abilities may remain unaffected.
Abstract Background Depression is associated with problems in social functioning. Impaired empathic abilities might underlie this association. Empathy is a multidimensional construct and involves ...both affective and cognitive processes. We reviewed the literature to find out to what extent depression may be associated with abnormal levels of affective and cognitive empathy. We also explored potential gender differences in these associations. Methods We used PsycInfo and Medline to conduct a systematic review of all studies on empathy and depression conducted in individuals with a primary diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD; patient samples) or in individuals with primarily subclinical depressive symptoms (analog samples). Results Thirty-seven studies met the inclusion criteria. The results indicated that depression was related to one type of affective empathy. Specifically, depression was related to high levels of empathic stress but not to abnormal empathic concern. Further, depression was related to limited cognitive empathy, as indicated by poor perspective taking, theory of mind, and empathic accuracy. Limitations Few studies have considered the variable gender in their design and analyses. Between and within study variation in demographic and clinical variables limits the interpretation of results. Self-report measures of empathy are subjective and vulnerable to bias. Poor performance on the more objective laboratory tasks might partially be explained by the broader cognitive deficits commonly observed in depression. Lastly, because all studies used a cross-sectional design, causality is difficult to establish. Conclusions Empathic abilities may be impaired in depression. The relation between empathy, depression, and gender is unclear. Future studies could use implicit and more ecologically valid measures of empathy. Insight into impaired empathy in depression may not only help explain poor social functioning in MDD but also benefit clinician–patient interactions.
Physical exercise and depression aan het Rot, Marije; Collins, Katherine A.; Fitterling, Heidi L.
The Mount Sinai journal of medicine,
April 2009, Volume:
76, Issue:
2
Journal Article
PDF
