Background Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is considered to be one of the most debilitating and difficult to treat mental disorders. Traditionally, studies investigating the aetiology and mechanisms associated with the development and exacerbation of BPD have relied on the use of clinical populations. As a consequence, the opportunities to understand vulnerabilities and fundamental processes that may contribute to the development and maintenance of the disorder have been limited. Objectives The aim of this study was to examine the potential interactions and mediating effects of metacognition and emotion regulation on the relationships among different forms of childhood abuse, attachment, and parental bonding with a composite of core BPD features designed to encompass major areas of personality functioning and pathological personality traits (per DSM-5 section III). Method: A non-clinical sample of 695 students in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland took part in an internet survey composed of a battery of self-report measures. This was geared to identify features associated with BPD, emotion regulation difficulties, characteristics of metacognition, adult insecure attachment, fundamental parental bonding styles and signs of childhood maltreatment. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data. Results All variables of interest had a direct effect on the development of features associated with BPD. Metacognition was found to mediate the effects of all three forms of childhood abuse used in the study as well as the effects of adult insecure attachment on the development BPD related traits. Emotion regulation suppression was found to mediate the effects of sexual and physical childhood abuse (but not emotional abuse, adult insecure attachment, parental bonding indifference, or parental bonding overprotection) on the development of borderline features. In addition, the lack of emotion regulation reappraisal was found to mediate the effects of sexual abuse and adult insecure attachment (but not emotional or physical abuse, parental bonding indifference, or parental bonding overprotection) on the development of BPD related traits. Discussion These findings have important clinical and theoretical implications. The results provide support and understanding of the role of mediating mechanisms in the exacerbation and in the development of features associated with BPD. This is important because metacognition and emotion regulation may be more amenable to change than traumatic past experiences and/or deep seeded patterns of attachment. In addition, further development in this area of research has the potential to lead to better and more effective psychotherapeutic treatments for BPD.

I denna C-uppsats beskriver vi de organisations- och förändringsprocesser i välfärdssamhället som påverkat arbete inom vård och omsorg. Genom en kvalitativ studie av ett gruppboende i Halmstad studerar vi hur förändringsprocesser i välfärdssamhället påverkar enskilda verksamheter inom den offentliga sektorn. Vi belyser förhållandet mellan enhetschef och anställda som arbetar på boendet, hur dessa i samspel med välfärdssystemet hanterar förändringar som sker inom organisationer. Trots minskade hierarkiska nivåer formas arbete inom vård och omsorg fortfarande av direktiv och riktlinjer, vilka är utformade av ledningen för organisationen där bland annat politiker och Socialnämnd ingår. Hur anställda är påverkade av dessa riktlinjer samt enhetschefens arbetsledning belyser vi i studien. / We describe the organizational processes of change in the welfare society that has affected work in health care. This study describes how the unit manager and staff relate to the new changes which take place in the welfare society this includes reduced levels of hierarchy. We are studying how this takes place on a local level and how it affect the management on the accommodation for humans with disabilities that we are studying.

The present thesis aimed to examine if children with ASD process emotions comparably to TD children or if they show emotion processing difficulties, with particular focus on the recognition- and imitation of facial emotional expressions and on processing human faces. Furthermore, the thesis sought to contrast the performance of children (both with- and without ASD) with that of neurotypical adult participants to establish the typical level of emotion processing and to investigate if emotion processing capabilities improve with age from childhood to adulthood. Experiment 1 tested the recognition of the six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise, and also neutrality) under timed conditions, when restricted stimulus presentation length- (1200ms, 200ms, no limit) and increased pressure to respond were introduced (1200ms limit, no limit), as well. In addition, the experiment compared participants’ performance from human facial expressions and from the expressions of animated characters. The Animated Characters Stimulus Set has been developed and validated before the main experiment. The overall performance of children with ASD was comparable to that of TD children, whose superiority only emerged with the introduction of additional task demands through limiting the length of stimuli presentation or applying a temporal restriction on the response window. Using animated characters to present emotions, instead of human actors, however, improved emotion recognition and alleviated the difficulty of additional task demands, especially for children with ASD, when facial expressions were only briefly presented. Experiment 2 tested the effects of face inversion and in-plane rotations (from 0° to 330°, in 30° increments) on the recognition of the six basic emotions (and neutrality). Children with ASD and TD children recognised emotions with comparable accuracy, while neurotypical adults have outperformed the two child groups. Overall, emotion recognition decreased gradually as rotations approached full inversion; although, this pattern was most prominent in typical adults, whereas the emotion recognition of TD children and especially children with ASD varied considerably across rotations. In contrast to adults and TD children, inversion effects were only found in children with ASD when they observed negative- or more complex emotions, thereby showing evidence both for the availability of configural face processing and for the use of feature-based strategies. Experiment 3 tested imitative behaviour by comparing performance on emotional facial expressions (reflecting anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise, and also neutrality), and non-emotional facial gestures and bilateral bodily actions/movements, presented in short video clips. The style of the imitation was also examined (subtle- vs strong stimulus intensity). A video stimulus set was developed and validated for the purpose of the experiment with a series of pilot studies. Results showed that the imitations of children with ASD were less intense than those of TD children and typical adults only when the participants were copying emotional facial expressions but not when they reproduced non-emotional facial and bodily actions. Moreover, children with ASD were less able to copy the style of the presented actions (only for the imitation of emotional facial expressions) than the two neurotypical groups. Overall, the present thesis demonstrated that the emotion processing of children with ASD was consistently comparable to TD children’s, when their performance was contrasted in experimental, facial emotion recognition and face processing tasks, and in a behavioural study, which assessed their imitations of emotional facial expressions. On the other hand, it was also shown that the emotion processing of children with ASD involved atypical features both when they were recognising- and reproducing emotions. Compared to TD children, they showed increased sensitivity to the negative effects of additional task difficulties and their advantage in utilising featural face processing strategies seemed to be greater, as well, while they were less able to imitate the exact style of the presented emotional facial expressions. These findings support a number of theoretical approaches; however, the notion of an early deficit in social motivation seems to be both appealing and promising in studying and developing socio-emotional functioning in ASD as its perspective could be beneficial to reflect on and possibly affect multiple underlying features.

Music has been used to evoke emotions for centuries. The mechanisms underlying this effect have remained largely unclear. This thesis contributes to research on how music evokes emotions by investigating two mechanisms from the model of Juslin and Västfjäll (2008) - musical expectancy and emotional contagion. In the perception studies the focus is on how musical expectancy violations are detected by either musically trained or untrained individuals. In the music-making studies, we concentrate on mood change brought about by cheerful music in healthy and depressed individuals and factors which could modulate this change like personality, musical preference and general emotional state. The results indicate that the subtlest scale violations are detected at the level of brain electrical potential while the task remains behaviourally difficult. This suggests that scale information is processed using music-syntactic analysis and in memory existing representations of tonal hierarchies, instead of auditory sensory memory as previously believed. Music-making decreased anxiety, depression and fatigue in both depressed and healthy participants whereas arousal and positive mood increased. This suggests that musicmaking could be beneficial for depressed individuals in terms of improving their mood on a short-term basis, even though a reliable music-related decrease of depression symptoms was not found. Among healthy participants, intraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, musical training and liking of the music predicted positive changes in mood following a music-making session. Taken together, these studies indicate that subtle musical scale violations are detected even if they are not consciously perceived as deviants and could therefore be used to evoke emotions, and music-making improves the mood in both healthy and depressed individuals and could serve as a temporary relief in case of depression.

Orientador: Paula da Cruz Landim / Banca: Monica Cristina de Moura / Banca: Miriam Mirna Korolkovas / Resumo: No cenário atual, muitas estratégias são usadas para atrair o consumidor, que deixou de suprir apenas, as necessidades consideradas naturais para satisfazer desejos e necessidades correspondentes a expectativas sociais. Diante desse consumidor ávido por novidades, o comércio estimula seu ímpeto para o consumo, fazendo uso da comunicação para atingir seus objetivos. Uma das mídias utilizadas, a vitrina, é o objeto deste estudo, aqui apresentada como uma mídia de comunicação com grande capacidade de atrair o consumidor. Objeto de estudos restritos, porém, com grande capacidade de persuasão, a vitrina investiga esta pesquisa que tem o objetivo de avaliar o papel do design em seu planejamento como atrativo para valorizar a imagem do produto e do ponto de venda, agregando valor na forma de expô-los ao consumidor. O objetivo específico visa relacionar o impacto emocional que sua composição, com o uso de conceitos e técnicas do design, pode proporcionar ao público, em específico o feminino. Para isso, optou-se por uma investigação bibliográfica e de campo. Compreende uma pesquisa exploratória, com abordagem qualitativa e por raciocínio indutivo. Os dados obtidos geraram informações que contribuem como ferramentas no planejamento visual da vitrina. Os conceitos do design, da emoção e da percepção visual, articulados por profissionais capacitados por meio do ensino de design, permitem que a informação transmitida pelas vitrinas seja compreendida pelos consumidores / Abstract: In the present scenery, many strategies are used to attract the consumers, which stopped supplying just the necessities considered natural to satisfy desires and the necessities towards the social expectations. Considering this eager consumer of news, the commerce stimulates his willing for consumption, making use of the communication to reach its aims. One of the used media, the window display, is the object of this study, here presented as a communication media with a great capacity to attract the shopper. Object of restrict studies, however, with a great persuasion power, the window display instigates this research that has the aim of evaluating the role of the design in its planning as an attractive to worth the image of the product and the store as well, attributing value in the way it is displayed to the shopper. The specific objective aims to connect the emotional impact that is composition, with the design's concepts and technical, can provide to the public, mainly the female one. That's why the option was to use both a bibliographic and a camping research. It concerns an exploratory research with qualitative approach and inductive throught. The obtained data created information that contributes a tools in the visual planning of the window display. The concepts of the design, emotion and visual perception said by the most capable professionals in design teaching, allow that the information transmited by the window display is understood by the shoppers / Mestre

Background: Negative forms of self-relating such as self-criticism and self-judgement are known to contribute to poor mental health across diagnoses including eating disorders. Negative self-relating can lead to avoidance or suppression of emotions, and poor attachment relationships can lead to deficits in self-reassuring abilities. Self-compassion is a construct which is gaining attention in clinical research as a potentially important and healthy way of relating to the self in the face of painful or difficult experiences. Systematic review: A systematic review of the literature eating disorders and self-compassion suggested that lower levels of self-compassion are related to worse eating disorder pathology, particularly emotional eating, and body image dissatisfaction. Findings suggest that self-compassion training may have a role in multimodal prevention and treatment approaches for eating disorders, disordered eating and body image problems, particularly bulimia or binge eating disorders. The role in restrictive eating behaviour is less clear and warrants further research. Aims: This study was a cross-sectional study design with a purpose of conducting Confirmatory factor analysis on the Self-Compassion Scale – Short Form, and correlational analysis of the relationship between self-compassion, (as measured on SCS-SF) with emotion regulation difficulties, alexithymia and distress. Participants and procedure: 297 people referred to an adult clinical psychology service in Scotland completed the SCS-SF and measures of emotion regulation, alexithymia and distress. Results: CFAs did not support six factor or hierarchical models for SCS-SF. Instead a two-factor model was supported. Correlation analysis indicated that self-compassion is inversely associated with difficulties in emotion regulation, alexithymia and distress. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that self-compassion was a unique predictor of distress. Implications: Further clarification of the construct of self-compassion, its role in psychopathology and how it should be measured is required. It is important that as research involving self-compassion and its role in mental health services progresses, that psychometrically valid measures are employed. Furthermore, correlation and regression analyses suggest convergent validity for the construct of self-compassion, and support theoretical links with emotion regulation. Conclusions: Self-compassion appears to be an important variable in eating disorders pathology and appears to be linked with adaptive emotion regulation in clinical populations. However results suggest longitudinal research and a more robust measure is required for use in clinical populations, especially if information about facets of the construct are to be understood.

This study investigated the potentialities of student produced digital narratives in the context of a secondary history classroom. Using qualitative mixed methods, I employed think-aloud observations, interviews, nonparticipant observations and document collection with 14 high school freshmen as they completed digital history narratives, i.e., historical documentaries, as a requirement of their United States history course. The study found that components of digital history narrative creation evoked strong emotions in secondary high school students. Specifically, working with historical imagery and through a technological medium, study participants showed observable, activity-related achievement emotions; emotions that further resulted in increased motivation towards the successful completion of an original history product. The findings provide evidence that the use of technology and historical imagery possess potential to enhance the emotional quality of students' experience in the history classroom, and furthermore, that certain achievement emotions result in an increase in student motivation.

This thesis examines the clash of seemingly dissonant passages in Hannah Crafts’s The Bondwoman’s Narrative to consider how the text can and should anger the reader through the juxtaposition of multiple literary genres. In particular, the placement of scenes of gothic horror alongside expressions of piety unsettles the reader, forcing them to confront a complex array of social institutions (slavery, racism, religion, and the justice system) and their own complicity in those systems. Drawing on philosophical analyses of the structure and the morality of emotion, I argue that the text is intended to elicit anger that is both moderated by reason and rooted in love. I contest the notion that anger necessarily includes a problematic desire for payback and suggest that the desire that accompanies anger is better conceptualized as a desire for recognition of an injury that may include payback but is not fixated on payback. My reading of The Bondwoman’s Narrative contests multiple claims that the moments of dissonance in the text were a result of the author’s lack of skill. Instead, I posit that these juxtapositions are intentional and seek to engage the reader in a process of ethical formation that literature is uniquely able to provide. Anger is an essential part of the formation process, pushing the reader to consider their own complicity in injustice and to work to change unjust social systems.

Disordered sleep is strongly linked to depression, but reasons for this are not well understood. One possibility is that this link is partially explained by deficits in the emotional processing system. This model is substantiated based on the strong link between sleep and emotions, as well as ties between affect and depression. Therefore, this study tested whether various emotional and non-emotional deficits mediated the link between poor sleep quality and depression. Two hundred undergraduate students were recruited via an online university system. Participants completed self-report scales of depression, sleep quality, emotion recognition, and affective response to pre-tested pleasant or unpleasant stimuli. Mediation models were tested for viable emotion and non-emotion mediators, as well as using other mediators as covariates. The indirect effect for all models was tested using bootstrapping. Only affective response to unpleasant stimuli emerged as a significant mediator of the relationship between sleep quality and depression and accounted for 5% of the variance in that relationship; it remained a mediator after controlling for non-emotion related mediators. Recently, sleep problems have gained attention due to serious consequences for public health, including a strong association with psychological disorders. This study was a first step in testing pathways by which disordered sleep leads to increases in depression symptoms. In our sample, blunted emotional responding to unpleasant images partially accounted for the link seen between sleep and depression. Future research may aim to extend the study of process and pathway-related models, particularly in the realm of emotional responding in the relationship between sleep and depression.

The hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology (HiTOP) is a novel classification system that adopts both a dimensional and hierarchical approach to psychopathology to address shortcomings. However, the HiTOP framework is descriptive in nature and requires additional research to consider potential mechanisms for the onset and maintenance of psychopathology, such as cognitive-behavioral emotion regulation strategies. To redress this gap, a sample of 341 adults who endorsed ongoing mental health concerns completed self-report measures of emotion regulation strategies and psychopathology. The data revealed a three-spectra HiTOP model consisting of internalizing, thought disorder, and antagonistic externalizing. Results found that psychopathology was most strongly associated with avoidance, catastrophizing, expressive suppression, and self-blame. In contrast, adaptive strategies were generally unrelated to the HiTOP spectra. This pattern was strongest for internalizing, distress, and detachment. Fewer, yet noteworthy unique relationships between the strategies and specific spectra/subfactors were also found. These findings suggest that psychopathology may be best conceptualized as an overutilization of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. Furthermore, the results indicate there is added benefit to considering these strategies within a hierarchical approach to psychopathology. These associations alert clinicians to potential treatment targets and contribute to an ongoing literature that seeks to identify underlying mechanisms of the structure of psychopathology.