http://www.cnbc.pt/jpmatos/29.%20Bradley.pdf?origin=publicationDetail

Measuring emotion: The self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential

Virtually all current theories of choice under risk or uncertainty are cognitive and consequentialist. They assume that people assess the desirability and likelihood of possible outcomes of choice alternatives and integrate this information through some type of expectation-based calculus to arrive at decision. The authors propose an alternative theoretical perspective, the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, that highlights the role of affect experienced at the moment of decision making. Drawing on research from clinical, physiological, and other subfield of psychology, they show that emotional reactions to risky situations often drive behavior. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is shown to explain a wide range of phenomena that have resisted interpretation in cognitive-consequentialist terms.

Risk as Feelings

In this article we propose mechanisms that govern the processing of emotional information, particularly those involved in fear reduction. Emotions are viewed as represented by information structures in memory, and anxiety is thought to occur when an information structure that serves as program to escape or avoid danger is activated. Emotional processing is denned as the modification of memory structures that underlie emotions. It is argued that some form of exposure to feared situations is common to many psychotherapies for anxiety, and that confrontation with feared objects or situations is an effective treatment. Physiological activation and habituation within and across exposure sessions are cited as indicators of emotional processing, and variables that influence activation and habituation of fear responses are examined. These variables and the indicators are analyzed to yield an account of what information must be integrated for emotional processing of a fear structure. The elements of such a structure are viewed as cognitive representations of the stimulus characteristic of the fear situation, the individual's responses in it, and aspects of its meaning for the individual. Treatment failures are interpreted with respect to the interference of cognitive defenses, autonomic arousal, mood state, and erroneous ideation with reformation of targeted fear structures. Applications of the concepts advanced here to therapeutic practice and to the broader study of psychopathology are discussed.

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Emotional processing of fear : exposure to corrective information

Virtually all current theories of choice under risk or uncertainty are cognitive and consequentialist. They assume that people assess the desirability and likelihood of possible outcomes of choice alternatives and integrate this information through some type of expectation-based calculus to arrive at a decision. The authors propose an alternative theoretical perspective, the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, that highlights the role of affect experienced at the moment of decision making. Drawing on research from clinical, physiological, and other subfields of psychology, they show that emotional reactions to risky situations often diverge from cognitive assessments of those risks. When such divergence occurs, emotional reactions often drive behavior. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is shown to explain a wide range of phenomena that have resisted interpretation in cognitive-consequentialist terms.

Risk as feelings.

We review psychometric and other evidence relevant to mixed anxiety-depression. Properties of anxiety and depression measures, including the convergent and discriminant validity of self- and clinical ratings, and interrater reliability, are examined in patient and normal samples. Results suggest that anxiety and depression can be reliably and validly assessed; moreover, although these disorders share a substantial component of general affective distress, they can be differentiated on the basis of factors specific to each syndrome. We also review evidence for these specific factors, examining the influence of context and scale content on ratings, factor analytic studies, and the role of low positive affect in depression. With these data, we argue for a tripartite structure consisting of general distress, physiological hyperarousal (specific anxiety), and anhedonia (specific depression), and we propose a diagnosis of mixed anxiety-depression.

Tripartite model of anxiety and depression: psychometric evidence and taxonomic implications.

There exists a divide between findings from integrative neuroscience and clinical research focused on mechanisms of psychopathology. Specifically, a clear correspondence does not emerge between clusters of complex clinical symptoms and dysregulated neurobiological systems, with many apparent redundancies. For instance, many mental disorders involve multiple disruptions in putative mechanistic factors (e.g., excessive fear, deficient impulse control), and different disrupted mechanisms appear to play major roles in many disorders. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework is a heuristic to facilitate the incorporation of behavioral neuroscience in the study of psychopathology. Such integration might be achieved by shifting the central research focus of the field away from clinical description to more squarely examine aberrant mechanisms. RDoC first aims to identify reliable and valid psychological and biological mechanisms and their disruptions, with an eventual goal of understanding how anomalies in these mechanisms drive psychiatric symptoms. This approach will require new methods to ascertain samples, relying on hypothesized psychopathological mechanisms to define experimental groups instead of traditional diagnostic categories. RDoC, by design, uncouples research efforts from clinically familiar categories to focus directly on fundamental mechanisms of psychopathology. RDoC proposes a matrix of domains and levels of analyses and invites the field to test and refine the framework. If RDoC is successful, the domains will ultimately relate to familiar psychopathologies in ways that promote new knowledge regarding etiology and more efficient development of new preventive and treatment interventions.

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Developing constructs for psychopathology research: research domain criteria.

The Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (OCI) is a new self-report instrument developed to address the problems inherent in available instruments for determining the diagnosis and severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The OCI consists of 42 items composing 7 subscales: Washing, Checking, Doubting, Ordering, Obsessing (i.e., having obsessional thoughts), Hoarding, and Mental Neutralizing. Each item is rated on a 5-point (0-4) Likert scale of symptom frequency and associated distress. One hundred and forty-seven individuals diagnosed with OCD; 58 with generalized social phobia; 44 with posttraumatic stress disorder; and 194 nonpatients completed the OCI and other measures of OCD, anxiety, and depression. The present article describes the psychometrics of the OCI including (a) scale construction and content validity, (b) reliability (internal consistency and retest reliability), and (c) convergent and discriminant validity. The OCI exhibited satisfactory reliability and validity with all 4 samples.

/pdf/the-validation-of-a-new-obsessive-compulsive-disorder-scale-2jwgrmye4n.pdf

The Validation of a New Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Scale: The Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory

This article describes the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative. The description includes background, rationale, goals, and the way the initiative has been developed and organized. The central RDoC concepts are summarized and the current matrix of constructs that have been vetted by workshops of extramural scientists is depicted. A number of theoretical and methodological issues that can arise in connection with the nature of RDoC constructs are highlighted: subjectivism and heterophenomenology, desynchrony and theoretical neutrality among units of analysis, theoretical reductionism, endophenotypes, biomarkers, neural circuits, construct “grain size,” and analytic challenges. The importance of linking RDoC constructs to psychiatric clinical problems is discussed. Some pragmatics of incorporating RDoC concepts into applications for NIMH research funding are considered, including sampling design.

The NIMH Research Domain Criteria Initiative: Background, Issues, and Pragmatics.

This research examined deductions from a new theory of emotional imagery (Lang, 1979). Two experiments were performed, testing the hypothesis that the conceptual content processed during imagery determines the amplitude and pattern of coincident efferent activity. The image was manipulated by varying the content of the prompting instructions (either stimulus detail or active responding was emphasized in the image script) and by prior imagery training (in which subjects' post-image verbal reports were shaped to emphasize either stimulus or response material). Three thematic contents were examined: neutral, action, and fear scenes. In Experiment I, a group which received response-oriented imagery training and response scripts was compared to a stimulus-oriented group. The results strongly supported the hypothesis: response subjects showed greater physiological activity during imagery, and their efferent pattern generally followed the script content. In Experiment II, one group again received response training and the other, stimulus training. However, half of each group was later tested on response-structured scripts and the other half on stimulus scripts. Results again supported the hypothesis. As in Experiment I, response-trained subjects tested on response scripts showed substantial physiological activity. None of the other groups, which received stimulus training and/or stimulus scripts, showed significant physiological responses during imagery. Response-trained subjects generally rated their imagery as more vivid. Subjects administered response-oriented scripts reported more emotional arousal than did subjects administered stimulus scripts.

Emotional Imagery: Conceptual Structure and Pattern of Somato‐Visceral Response

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/92/3/276.pdf

Michael J. Kozak

Papers

Developing constructs for psychopathology research: research domain criteria.

The Validation of a New Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Scale: The Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory

The NIMH Research Domain Criteria Initiative: Background, Issues, and Pragmatics.

Emotional Imagery: Conceptual Structure and Pattern of Somato‐Visceral Response

Fear behavior, fear imagery, and the psychophysiology of emotion: the problem of affective response integration.