Introduction: Research indicates that individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) may experience deficits in positive affect (PA), and tend to dampen or intentionally suppress PA. Despite the ...presence of PA-related pathology in GAD, little is known about change in PA during GAD treatment. Objective: This study examines changes in PA, negative affect (NA) and worry in seven participants during cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for GAD. Method: Intensive repeated measures (i.e., time series) data were subjected to person-specific regression analysis to delineate individual change trajectories. Results: Significant improvement in worry was observed in all but one participant. Fear and irritability - indices of NA - each improved in 5/7 participants while sadness improved in 4/7 participants (worsening in one). Of all symptom domains, PA had the poorest treatment response: PA improved in only 2/7 participants and actually significantly worsened in 5/7 individuals even as NA and worry improved during therapy. Conclusion: These findings indicate that treatment gains from traditional CBT for GAD may not generalize to improvements in PA regulation, or even emotional functioning more broadly. This evidence is a call to increase the focus on PA regulation in treatment for GAD; perhaps PA could be a missing piece in our understanding of ways to bolster GAD treatment outcomes.
La retorica ha subito innumerevoli cambiamenti che hanno portato la classica “arte del parlare” a un sistematico sfaldamento, dapprima a favore della sola elocutio , poi della lexis poetica, infine ...della metafora. A risentire maggiormente del nuovo assetto di “riduzione tropologica” è la metonimia, bistrattata e declassata a tropo di second’ordine in confronto alla metafora, in particolare a partire dall’ultimo ventennio del XX secolo, dopo un momento di relativo successo. Negli ultimi quindici anni la comunità scientifica, grazie al cognitivismo e alle neuroscienze, ha iniziato a identificare nella metonimia un ruolo primario nell’ecosistema mentale e addirittura una supremazia a livello bio-evolutivo e neuro-fisiologico, a detrimento della metafora, fenomeno secondario e più slegato dalle sfere esperienziali dell’habitat quotidiano. Il funzionamento del cervello è programmato per utilizzare metonimie sia grazie alla capacità del ragionamento inferenziale, sia grazie al fatto che emozioni e sintomi fisiologici si linkano in una incessante operazione metonimica, in particolare dove gli stimoli condizionati predicono e sussumono le emozioni incondizionate, di fatto facilitando un autocontrollo pulsionale.
This article intends to investigate the place of affections and sensibilities in colonial literature produced in the late nineteenth century, specifically in the novel Jess (1887), by H. Rider ...Haggard. Written from Haggard’s experiences with the colonial administration in South Africa, the novel narrates the love triangle between a British soldier and two young girls on a farm in Transvaal. The plot evidences a wide range of resentments nourished by the author in front of the results of the conflicts against the Boers in 1881, but simultaneously demonstrates the relations between politics and sensibilities, love and colonialism, through the fictional narrative.
Objective: Research on the assimilation model has suggested that psychological change takes place in a sequence of stages punctuated by setbacks, that is, by transient reversals in the developmental ...course. This study analyzed such setbacks in one good outcome case and one poor outcome case of Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) for depression. Method: Intensive analyses of five transcribed sessions from each case identified 26 setbacks in the good outcome case and 27 in the poor outcome case. The reason for each setback was classified into one of four categories: balance strategy, exceeding the therapeutic zone of proximal development either induced by the therapist (ZPD-T) or induced by the client (ZPD-C), or spontaneous switches. Results: In the good outcome case the most frequent reasons for setbacks were balance strategy and spontaneous switches, whereas in the poor outcome case the most frequent reason for setbacks was ZPD-T. Conclusions: As in previously studied therapies, setbacks in EFT, usually represent productive work on relatively less advanced strands of the client's major problems. Results point to the importance of the therapist attending to the limits of the client's therapeutic ZPD.
Questo studio analitico-conversazionale esplora il modo in cui tre gruppi di studenti liceali di spagnolo come lingua straniera svolgono un compito chiamato "sciarada". In particolare, il presente ...contributo esamina come i partecipanti portano progressivamente a termine il compito attraverso l'uso di varie risorse semiotiche. Nella sciarada, ogni gruppo di studenti riceve un mazzo di cartoncini, ciascuno con una frase in spagnolo. Gli studenti, a turno, scelgono un cartoncino e ne mimano la frase, in modo da farla indovinare ai compagni. La ricerca qui presentata si concentra su come i partecipanti rispondono alle soluzioni proposte e, più in generale, all'interpretazione del compito adottata dai compagni. In particolare, l'analisi mostra come l'accettazione e il rifiuto delle ipotesi dei partecipanti e delle loro interpretazioni si realizzano con diverse configurazioni di risorse linguistiche, prosodiche e gestuali, configurazioni distribuite lungo un continuum di intensità emotiva. Questa ricerca contribuisce allo studio dell'insegnamento basato sui compiti (task-based instruction ) nel campo dell'analisi della conversazione applicata all'insegnamento delle lingue seconde attraverso l'analisi del ruolo delle emozioni esibite dai partecipanti nella realizzazione di compiti intesi come attività (tasks-as-activities ).
Objective: This study tested emotion-focused therapy (EFT) theory assumptions concerning optimal emotion schematic processing during experiential psychotherapies. Emotion schematic change was ...investigated in the particular problem context of resolving self-criticism, an emotion schematic vulnerability to depression identified across all major psychotherapy theories. Method: The sample was nine highly self-critical depressed clients who received experiential treatment (n = 5 resolved while n = 4 did not resolve their self-criticism by termination). Emotion episodes (EEs) were exhaustively sampled from five sessions across three therapy phases (early, working phase, and termination) for each client. All their EEs across therapy were coded using a process measure called the Classification of Affective-Meaning States. Three complementary analytic procedures were used to examine emotion schematic changes within and across phases of therapy: graphical/descriptive, linear mixed modelling, and THEME sequential pattern analysis. Results: Convergent evidence from these analyses supported EFT theory. Good resolvers of self-criticism decreased expression of secondary emotions and increased expression of primary adaptive emotions. Good resolvers also exhibited more sequences of EEs consistent with transformation of secondary and maladaptive emotions to adaptive emotions. Future directions of this research are discussed.
In accordo con la teoria di Antonio Damasio, è possibile definire le emozionicome complesse collezioni di risposte chimiche e neurali, in gran parte osservabili pubblicamente, utili all’uomo nel ...processo di conservazione della vita. I sentimentirappresentano, invece, le esperienze mentali private delle emozioni: ogni sentimento corrisponde al sentireuna determinata emozione. Affinché un individuo possa anche saperedi sentire le proprie emozioni, deve maturare in lui un senso del Sé cosiddetto autobiograficoe una coscienza estesa, o autonoetica. Dal punto di vista neurale, le persone affette da disturbi dello spettro autistico (ASD) sembrano non poter raggiungere un tale grado di consapevolezza emotiva a causa di un deficit a carico del Default Mode Network. Tuttavia, numerosi studi dimostrano la possibilità di accrescere il loro grado di coscienza coinvolgendoli in attività di storytelling. Tra gli esempi più significativi di narrazioni ‘terapeutiche’, si evidenziano le Storie Sociali, ideate da Carol Gray, e le storie computer-based, come Emotiplay, che vanta tra i nomi dei suoi ideatori quello dello psicologo Simon Baron-Cohen. Si anticipano, inoltre, alcuni risultati di un progetto sperimentale, attuato in una scuola elementare con due fratelli gemelli autistici di nove anni. Il progetto ha abbinato attività di storytellingcon attività di storywriting: ciascun bambino ha prodotto quattro racconti autobiografici che lo hanno stimolato ad esplorare ed esternare le proprie emozioni. According to Antonio Damasio’s theory, emotions are complex collections of chemical and neural responses, publicly observable and extremely useful for preservation of our life. On the other hand, feelings represent the mental and private experience of our emotions. Likewise, the process that leads a person to a complete awareness of his emotions and feelings is impossible without the growth of an autobiographical sense of self and autonoetic consciousness. People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) seem to lack this level of awareness as they are affected by a serious deficit in the Default Mode Network. Nevertheless, a lot of studies demonstrate the possibility of expanding their inner mental place thanks to storytelling activities. Most substantial examples of therapeutic narrations are Social Stories, invented by Carol Gray, and computer-based stories, such as Emotiplay, devised by Baron-Cohen and colleagues. Furthermore, we anticipate some results of an experimental project, implemented with two autistic twin brothers, aged nine, in a primary school. The project combined activities of storytelling with activities of storywriting: every child wrote four autobiographical accounts aimed at exploring and externalizing their emotions.
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