Research has indicated that individuals with ASD have deficits in the ability to correctly identify and interpret the emotions and feelings of others. The ability to recognize the emotions of others has shown to be extremely beneficial in a number of ways. On the other hand, the inability to recognize the emotions of others has been linked to a number of negative outcomes, including inappropriate behaviors, as well as mental health, personal, social, and academic difficulties. The purpose of the current study was to extend the previous literature on effective strategies for teaching individuals with ASD to correctly label the situation-based emotions of others. Overall, the current study’s results suggest that an intervention package combining animated videos with prompt delay, error correction, and reinforcement procedures was effective in teaching participants the ability to label situation-specific emotions. Additionally, the current study’s results also supported the idea that individuals with ASD have stronger deficits in recognizing negative emotions, such as sad, mad, and afraid, as compared to positive emotions, such as happy. Future research should continue to focus on exploring the generalization and maintenance of these results.

No description available.

To date, few computer programs have been constructed to express or understand human emotional states. None of these programs can detect a large spectrum of emotions from emotional situations, nor do any of them express emotions over more than one temporal dimension. A number of these programs used representations with domain restrictive structures. We have constructed a computational model of emotion that detects twenty-eight emotions and is non-domain specific. It reports emotional episodes, moods, and dispositions. The psychological theory behind the model draws extensively on the ideas developed in the book “The Cognitive Structure of Emotions,” by Ortony, Clore and Collins [Ortony et al. 1988]. To test the model, we implemented a contextual front end to the system to provide input data. The domain chosen was doctor/patient interaction scenarios. Because our model is domain independent, any context could have been chosen, and other such contexts are explored in this paper. Our model demonstrated its ability by detecting a considerable range of appropriate emotions from the test case. / Master of Science

Vita. / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

Studies in the perceptual identification of emotional states suggested that listeners seemed to depend on a limited set of vocal cues to distinguish among emotions. Linguistics and speech science literatures have indicated that this small set of cues included intensity, fundamental frequency, and temporal properties such as speech rate and duration. Little research has been done, however, to validate these cues in the production of emotional speech, or to determine if specific dimensions of each cue are associated with the production of a particular emotion for a variety of speakers. This study addressed deficiencies in understanding of the acoustical properties of duration and intensity as components of emotional speech by means of speech science instrumentation. Acoustic data were conveyed in a brief sentence spoken by twelve English speaking adult male and female subjects, half with dramatic training, and half without such training. Simulated expressions included: happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. The study demonstrated that the acoustic property of mean intensity served as an important cue for a vocal taxonomy. Overall duration was rejected as an element for a general taxonomy due to interactions involving gender and role. Findings suggested a gender-related taxonomy, however, based on differences in the ways in which men and women use the duration cue in their emotional expressions. Results also indicated that speaker training may influence greater use of the duration cue in expressions of emotion, particularly for male actors. Discussion of these results provided linkages to (1) practical management of emotional interactions in clinical and interpersonal environments, (2) implications for differences in the ways in which males and females may be socialized to express emotions, and (3) guidelines for future perceptual studies of emotional sensitivity.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Clinical Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Executive Function (EF) is a highly complex, interrelated set of the cognitive process composed of multiple components: attention (sustain and selective), cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibitory control (simple and complex) and problem-solving skill. These skills play a crucial role in the development where deficit in EF could lead to academic failure and a lifelong dissatisfaction. Research has found integral relationship between EF and emotion regulation(ER) suggesting children with weak EF skills are likely exhibit weak ER abilities. The current study is aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a curriculum-based intervention program designed to promote EF skills and through that, increase children’s ER abilities. Program design includes group and individual activities placed in play corners within classroom setting. Seventy-eight preschoolers from 3 Hong Kong nursery schools were divided into control and program group. A multi-informant pre- and post- program evaluation including teacher questionnaires and a battery of EF and ER tasks completed by participants was used. The program group completed a 20-weeks program delivered by trained classroom teacher. Program benefits are found in promoting working memory, inhibitory control, “Hot” EF problem-solving and cognitive flexibility skills. Improvements in ER abilities and decreased of overall emotion, and behavioral post-program is also found. The gains in ER are observed to be correlates with gain in problem-solving and inhibitory control of EF components. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Psychology

No description available.

No description available.