This study investigated the impact of family factors on individual differences in the social and emotional development of children with autism and their families. Based on the modifier model hypothesis suggested by Mundy, Henderson, Inge, and Coman (2007), family factors may serve as a modifier that contributes to the variability in the phenotypic presentation of children with higher functioning autism. Results indicated that Expressed Emotion (EE) was associated with parent-reported hyperactivity and anxiety in children and adolescents. Family cohesion was associated with parent-reported aggression and depression. These results differed for typically developing and HFA children; higher EE or lower cohesion was associated with greater impairment in the HFA group and less impairment in the typically developing children. Family factors were not associated with social symptoms, indicating these effects may be more related to the development of comorbidity than to the core symptoms of autism. Expressed emotion was related meaningfully to neutral attributions on the FMSS and provided validity for the measure. Family factors were not associated with parental stress, which was not expected. Implications for clinical interventions and future directions are discussed.

In searching for new human pain models that more closely resemble clinical pain states, the capsaicin pain model has emerged as a viable model for both inflammatory and neuropathic pain states. A principal benefit of the capsaicin model is that it allows study of two different pain processes, primary and secondary hyperalgesia. Primary hyperalgesia is characterized by spontaneous pain and both heat and mechanical hyperalgesia. In addition, it is likely the result of activation and sensitization of both peripheral and central nociceptors. In contrast, secondary hyperalgesia is characterized by only mechanical hyperalgesia and is caused by the sensitization of central nociceptive neurons. Previous research utilizing the capsaicin pain model has primarily focused on the neural properties with little focus on the impact of affective states on capsaicin-related pain processes. The present study examined the impact of a noise stressor on both primary and secondary hyperalgesia. Results indicated that the effects of the noise stressor impacted secondary hyperalgesia, but not primary hyperalgesia.

Background: Clinical findings indicate that touch massage has the ability to induce positive emotions and influence stress responses. However, little is known about mechanisms that can explain observed responses. Aim: To understand mechanisms behind observed emotional and physiological responses during and after touch massage. Methods: This thesis is based upon healthy volunteers in Studies I, II, IV and patients undergone aortic surgery in Study III. Study I had a crossover design, participants served as their own controls. After randomization they received TM on one occasion and the other occasion served as control. Heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate (HR) saliva cortisol concentration, glucose, insulin in serum and extracellular (ECV) levels of glucose, lactate, glycerol and pyruvat were measured before, during and after TM/control. In study II, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used in order to measure brain activity during TM movement. The study design included four different touch stimulations, human touch with movement (TM movement) human stationary touch and rubber glove with or without movement. Force (2.5 N) and velocity (1.5 cm/s) were held constant across conditions. The pleasantness of the four different touch stimulations was rated on a visual analog scale (VAS-scale). Study III had a randomized controlled design. The intervention group received TM and the control group rested. HRV, cortisol, glucose, insulin in serum, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, respiratory frequency and anxiety levels were measured before, during and after TM/control. In study IV participants were interviewed about experiences after TM and the text was analyzed in by qualitative content analyze. Results: Study I. TM reduced the stress response as indicated by decreased heart rate and decreased activity in the sympathetic nervous system, followed by a compensatory decrease in parasympathetic nervous activity in order to maintain balance. Cortisol and insulin levels decreased significantly after intervention, while serum glucose levels remained stable. A similar, though less prominent, pattern was seen during the control session. There were no significant differences in ECV concentrations of analyzed substances. Study II. Human moving touch (TM movement) was significantly rated as the most pleasant touch stimulation. The fMRI results revealed that human moving touch (TM movement) most strongly activated the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC). Study III. Selfrated anxiety levels significantly decreased in the patient group that received TM compared with control group. There were no significant differences in physiological stress-related outcome parameters between patients who received touch massage and controls. Study IV. In this study participants talked about the experience of TM in terms of rewards. Expressions like need, desire, pleasure and conditioning could be linked with a theoretical model of reward. Four different categories were identified as wanting, liking, learning and responding. In conclusion: Results from these studies indicate that receiving TM is experienced as rewarding. Touch massage movement activates a brain area involved in coding of rewarding pleasant stimulations. TM decreases anxiety and dampens the stress response by a decreased activation of the sympathetic nervous activity. Our results indicate that TM is a caring intervention that can be used to induce pleasure, decrease anxiety and stress in the receiver.

The aim of this study is to elucidate the process in which psychology was separated from philosophy and established itself as a distinct academic discipline in Sweden. I argue that the concept of will, as well as the concepts of thinking and emotion, have a lot to tell us about the rise of academic psychology in Sweden. This is done through an analysis of psychology textbooks, encyclopaedia-articles and academic texts on the themes will and psychology, from around 1800 till 1950. Prior to the establishment of the first chair of psychology in Uppsala 1948, the discipline was above all a part of the philosophical discipline. For psychology to become a science of its own, it was crucial to obtain a position among the empirical sciences. It thus had to distance itself from philosophy, and in particular from metaphysics. In that respect the concept of will, thinking and emotion posed a problem. On the one hand, these concepts seamed necessary for a science of the psyche but on the other, they were traditionally associated with philosophy and especially with metaphysics. From around 1900, the concept of will underwent an empirisation process in which it distanced itself from the metaphysical content of meaning. The idea of thinking, emotion and will as faculties was criticised and replaced by a way of speaking of them in terms of single acts, able to be analysed in a more empirical manner. This change was in accordance with the new demand on empiricism. Within psychology, however, practicians of the trade still spoke in terms of will, thinking and emotion, as well as of classical philosophical problems such as that of the free will, albeit in a more empirical manner. A second, more profound change, occurred in the 1940s when the concepts of thinking, emotion and will, as well as the problem of the free will were sorted out from the psychological discourse. In light of their long time as an integral part of the psychological discourse it was a significant change that the human psyche was no longer to be discussed in terms of will, thinking and emotion. The most likely explanation of this change is that the institutional split between psychology and philosophy after 1948 also signified a separation between philosophical and empirical-psychological questions. After 1948 it was possible to pursue scientific studies in psychology without any knowledge of philosophy and hence, without an urge to pose philosophical questions.

The aim of this essay is to investigate how paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenic patients differ in the processing of emotional facial expressions from healthy individuals, and how this could lead to deficits in the area of social cognition. Researchers have conducted many behavioral and neuroimaging studies on facial emotion processing and emotion recognition in schizophrenia. Several studies have shown that individuals with schizophrenia have deficits in recognizing and processing emotional facial stimuli. It is known that patients with different subtypes of schizophrenia also show differences in facial emotion processing. It has also been shown that patients with schizophrenia uses different strategies in the processing of emotional faces compared to healthy individuals.

There are lots of elements involved in the design of a car. This study, which is inspired by the brief of BMW group, explores the seating unit of cars with regard to prototypical activities, such as, listening to music, working, looking outside etc. The current study proposes that these external stimuli have an effect on comfort experience and felt emotions. So, this study explores the relationship between types of music and activities typically performed by car passengers and emotion and comfort perception, through performing a within subject design empirical study. A car seat provided by BMW group was used to test the above mentioned relationships. Data was collected through a self-report questionnaire, heart rate equipment, a pressure mat and analyzed separately for each condition. Results of the study show that there is a successful emotion induction by task and music individually, and partly on task*music interaction. A comparison of congruent and non-congruent situations, i.e. high arousal music and high arousal task or low arousal music and low arousal task, showed that differences occur in subjects&rsquo / reported level of arousal. Furthermore, the results of the study indicated that comfort is related to valance factors, independent of arousal levels. Lastly, physiological measurements showed that only task has a significant effect on heart rate, implicating for the complexity of linking physiological data to emotion and comfort.

As is tradition in the UK, monograph theses are as a rule unpublished, but all material published as based on the doctoral research must be included in the thesis. The current thesis contains two published empirical articles in peer-reviewed journals and one conference paper. / Thesis submitted for the doctoral degree

The aim of this thesis was the exploration of shame. Four experiments are among the very first to empirically test the validity of Tomkins' shame concept. The relation between internalized shame and memories of early interactions was examined, as well as Tomkins' concept of shame as an innate, momentary emotion. The influence of internalized shame as a personality trait on momentary shame emotion was also explored. Thirdly, how momentarily activated shame influences perception of self and others was studied. Finally, consequences of conscious versus unconscious shame activation was compared. Data from two survey studies implied that memories of ignoring and abandoning behaviors from mother are those that correlate most strongly with internalized shame. In the four experimental studies, internalized shame did not seem to influence momentary shame emotion, although two experiments implied different reactions to the praise that constituted part of the shame activating sequence depending on degree of internalized shame. Two experiments in part supported Tomkins’ notion of shame as a consequence of impeded positive emotion. However, participants with a high degree of internalized shame reacted with shame emotion to the praise feedback intended to elicit positive emotion. Therefore Tomkins’ concept of shame was successfully tested only with participants with a low degree of internalized shame. With this group, Tomkins’ conceptualization, however, received support. In addition these two experiments implied different processes for consciously versus unconsciously activated shame, since consequences for social perception and self-image following shame were reversed depending on whether the activating circumstances were conscious or not. The two subsequent experiments did not support the conclusions from the previous two, but gave some implications that shame activation, its consequences, and the effects of conscious versus unconscious activation are highly dependent on personal characteristics and social context. Taken together, data give some support to the validity of Tomkins’ shame conceptualization, but implies that it might be far too general, and that shame emotion might be primarily socially dependent.

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder characterized by social dysfunction. People with schizophrenia misinterpret social information and it is suggested that this difficulty may result from visual processing deficits. As faces are one of the most important sources of social information it is hypothesized that people suffering from the disorder have impairments in the visual face processing system. It is unclear which mechanism of the face processing system is impaired but two types of deficits are most often proposed: a deficit in face perception in general (i.e., processing of facial features as such) and a deficit in facial emotion processing (i.e., recognition of emotional facial expressions). Due to the contradictory evidence from behavioural, electrophysiological as well as neuroimaging studies offering support for the involvement of one or the other deficit in schizophrenia it is early to make any conclusive statements as to the nature and level of impairment. Further studies are needed for a better understanding of the key mechanism and abnormalities underlying social dysfunction in schizophrenia.

People  have  different  strategies  to  regulate  and  control  their  own emotions.  For  short-term  emotion  regulation  of  visual  stimuli, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment are of relevance. The present  study  used  self-ratings  and  eye-tracking  data  to  replicate previous  findings  that  eye  movements  are  effective  in  emotion regulation.  25  participants  (6  males)  watched  positive  and  negative pictures in an attend condition and a decrease emotion condition. They rated  their  emotional  experience  and  their  eye  movements  were followed  with  an  eye-tracker.  Ratings  showed  that  they  perceived pictures as less emotional in the decrease condition as compared to the attend condition both for positive and negative pictures. This decrease in  ratings  of  emotional  response  was  larger  for  positive  than  for negative  pictures.  Eye-tracking  data  showed  no  significant  effect  of emotion  regulation condition. Further  research  is proposed  to  include self-ratings  in  studies  of  physiological  changes  due  to  emotion regulation,  to  differentiate  between  strategies  of  emotion  regulation potentially used by participants.