Lectures Affective Sciences and
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,HC1 Introduction Affective Science
What do we say when we say affective science?
The study of affective processes is not new, but has seen a recent rise. This is because people first
believed affective processes are subjective and thus cannot be studied.
Affect (Affictus – to have been influenced/attacked):
Involves an evaluation of a stimulus as salient and thereby triggering a response. Consists of:
- subjective components: negative / positive feeling
- behavioral components: motor expression or inclination (face expression, posture, speech)
- physiological components: brain/body
With James Gross’ modal model you see you can alter the evaluation of the stimulus with eg:
- attentional deployment: eg for speaking phobia -> look over peoples’ heads
- response modification: eg breathing techniques
This schema shows the most prominent affective
processes.
Embodiment = physiological response
event-focused = how much triggered by an event?
affective disposition: a tendency to act e.g. nervous in
many circumstances.
stress: longer response than emotions, because
hormones play a role.
Affective processes have a function. They are response tendencies that generally help maximize our
wellbeing.
- getting stressed for an exam
- getting angry at a student for handing in a paper late
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, - showing happiness when the person you love approaches you
Affective science and psychopathology
Affective symptoms are central in affective disorders (depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety).
Worldwide, the depressive disturbances rank #1 in years lost due to disability (11.5%). Over a million
people are depressed. Anxiety disorders are the most common form of psychopathology in USA and
NL.
Affective disturbance is present in almost every other disorder:
- emotional flattening -> schizophrenia, psychopathy
- high sensitivity to reward -> addiction
- being hyposensitive to social emotional cues -> autism
- explosive emotional responding -> conduct disorder, borderline
Emotional disturbance is not only feeling too much. There are different categories:
• emotional reactivity problems:
o emotional intensity (over- or underreactions)
o emotional duration (too short or long)
o emotional frequency (too little or frequent)
o emotion type (inappropriate)
• emotion regulation problems:
o awareness (over or under)
o goals (excessive dampening or searching for the peak)
o strategies (overuse or wrong implementation
How can we use affective science to improve understanding and treatment of psychopathology?
The current mental health science has an efficacy of psychological and pharmacological treatment for
disorders of around 50%. Likely reasons for the lack of higher efficiency despite of all the research is:
- clinical heterogeneity: psychiatric symptoms are very diverse. For depression, 2 patients
could share only 1 symptom. And there are 636.120 unique symptom profiles for PTSD.
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, - lack of mechanistic understanding, which precludes tailored treatment
79.4% of the lifetime disorders are presented with 1 (25.5%) or 2 (53.9%) comorbid disorders.
point prevalence: 50% of patients with anxiety have at least 1 additional anxiety disorder or
depression. Patients are rarely pure. The overlap among patients within a diagnosis is sometimes
smaller than between.
Possible explanations for comorbidity are:
• poor discriminant validity
• one disorder might be a risk factor for another
o primary vs secondary disorder
• common risk
o predisposing = genetics, predispositions -> risk factors
o precipitating = what triggers the disease? eg trauma
o perpetuating = what keeps the disorder in place? eg avoidance
The goal of the DSM is to develop a system to provide specific, reliable diagnosis based on clinical
experience. However, this does not reflect the mechanism. Scientific mechanistic research needs to
focus on symptoms instead of syndromes.
The result is that there is a gap between the goals of clinical diagnosis and scientific studies and that
research on one disorder is isolated from parallel research of other disorders.
Disorder-focus:
- advantages:
o common language for communication between clinicians, scientists etc.
Gedownload door: ikarumba316 | € 912 per jaar
Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?
Slides
Gedownload door: ikarumba316 | € 912 per jaar
Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?
,HC1 Introduction Affective Science
What do we say when we say affective science?
The study of affective processes is not new, but has seen a recent rise. This is because people first
believed affective processes are subjective and thus cannot be studied.
Affect (Affictus – to have been influenced/attacked):
Involves an evaluation of a stimulus as salient and thereby triggering a response. Consists of:
- subjective components: negative / positive feeling
- behavioral components: motor expression or inclination (face expression, posture, speech)
- physiological components: brain/body
With James Gross’ modal model you see you can alter the evaluation of the stimulus with eg:
- attentional deployment: eg for speaking phobia -> look over peoples’ heads
- response modification: eg breathing techniques
This schema shows the most prominent affective
processes.
Embodiment = physiological response
event-focused = how much triggered by an event?
affective disposition: a tendency to act e.g. nervous in
many circumstances.
stress: longer response than emotions, because
hormones play a role.
Affective processes have a function. They are response tendencies that generally help maximize our
wellbeing.
- getting stressed for an exam
- getting angry at a student for handing in a paper late
Gedownload door: ikarumba316 | € 912 per jaar
Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?
, - showing happiness when the person you love approaches you
Affective science and psychopathology
Affective symptoms are central in affective disorders (depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety).
Worldwide, the depressive disturbances rank #1 in years lost due to disability (11.5%). Over a million
people are depressed. Anxiety disorders are the most common form of psychopathology in USA and
NL.
Affective disturbance is present in almost every other disorder:
- emotional flattening -> schizophrenia, psychopathy
- high sensitivity to reward -> addiction
- being hyposensitive to social emotional cues -> autism
- explosive emotional responding -> conduct disorder, borderline
Emotional disturbance is not only feeling too much. There are different categories:
• emotional reactivity problems:
o emotional intensity (over- or underreactions)
o emotional duration (too short or long)
o emotional frequency (too little or frequent)
o emotion type (inappropriate)
• emotion regulation problems:
o awareness (over or under)
o goals (excessive dampening or searching for the peak)
o strategies (overuse or wrong implementation
How can we use affective science to improve understanding and treatment of psychopathology?
The current mental health science has an efficacy of psychological and pharmacological treatment for
disorders of around 50%. Likely reasons for the lack of higher efficiency despite of all the research is:
- clinical heterogeneity: psychiatric symptoms are very diverse. For depression, 2 patients
could share only 1 symptom. And there are 636.120 unique symptom profiles for PTSD.
Gedownload door: ikarumba316 | € 912 per jaar
Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?
, - lack of mechanistic understanding, which precludes tailored treatment
79.4% of the lifetime disorders are presented with 1 (25.5%) or 2 (53.9%) comorbid disorders.
point prevalence: 50% of patients with anxiety have at least 1 additional anxiety disorder or
depression. Patients are rarely pure. The overlap among patients within a diagnosis is sometimes
smaller than between.
Possible explanations for comorbidity are:
• poor discriminant validity
• one disorder might be a risk factor for another
o primary vs secondary disorder
• common risk
o predisposing = genetics, predispositions -> risk factors
o precipitating = what triggers the disease? eg trauma
o perpetuating = what keeps the disorder in place? eg avoidance
The goal of the DSM is to develop a system to provide specific, reliable diagnosis based on clinical
experience. However, this does not reflect the mechanism. Scientific mechanistic research needs to
focus on symptoms instead of syndromes.
The result is that there is a gap between the goals of clinical diagnosis and scientific studies and that
research on one disorder is isolated from parallel research of other disorders.
Disorder-focus:
- advantages:
o common language for communication between clinicians, scientists etc.
Gedownload door: ikarumba316 | € 912 per jaar
Dit document is auteursrechtelijk beschermd, het verspreiden van dit document is strafbaar. extra verdienen?
