Recent developments in emotion and EI research have introduced new ways of measuring emotional abilities, including performance based tests. The current study aimed to examine the associations of three emotional abilities, using three objective measures. The study consisted of a survey and an experiment, where 89 participants completed performance based multimodal emotion recognition and emotion understanding tests, and a conditioning task using social aversive and appetitive stimuli. The results showed that individuals who are more proficient in emotion understanding were more accurate in emotion recognition and more effective in extinguishing fear-evoking responses. In addition, individuals proficient in emotion recognition were shown to have stronger general responding during fear acquisition. Furthermore, various findings related to emotion understanding and emotion recognition modalities, including item difficulty and specific emotions. Implications of current findings support the notion of separate but related emotional abilities while also highlighting a potentially underlying mechanism or core emotional competence.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T13:17:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carlos Henrique Santos da Silva.pdf: 832548 bytes, checksum: 03094bcd7f2ef9a4031d5d74a5282e2b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Based on Seligman & Maier´s (1967) experiment related to learned helplessness indicating that exposition to response independent shocks may produce learning disabilities of an operant response, several authors have concerned to produce same effects in appetitive context and they have presented results indicating interference on operant acquisition (Engberg et al., 1972; Welker, 1976; Oakes et al., 1982 & Job, 1988) or results which do not support interference on operant acquisition (Schwartz et al., 1974; Wheatley et al., 1977 & Beatty & Maki, 1979). The suggestion of the present experiment is that response cost required from operant may be a relevant variable to produce interference on responding after a non contingent appetitive stimuli exposition. Eighteen male Wistar rats were allocated in six different conditions: Contingent CRF (CCRF), Contingent FR (CFR), Non Contingent CRF (NCCRF), Non Contingent FR (NCFR), Control CRF (CTCRF) and Control FR (CTFR). In first phase, subjects in Contingent conditions could produce reinforcers (water) through nose poke response while subjects in Non Contingent conditions were yoked with Contingent subjects and appetitive stimuli were delivered independently of responding and subjects in Control conditions were not exposed. In second phase, all rats in CRF conditions could produce reinforcers through barpressing response reinforced on a continuous reinforcement and rats in FR conditions through the same response reinforced on FR 3. Data suggest subjects exposed to non contingent appetitive stimuli that required more time to task completion in Phase 2 (100 reinforcer acquisitions) indicated more marked interference when FR 3 was utilized instead CRF. Furthermore, interference was identified on Phase 2 in subjects who showed accidentally reinforced variability in Phase 1 unlike subjects who presented stereotypy on responding. Results are discussed based on temporal contiguity among non contingent events, interference / response competition, and aversive / appetitive context differences / A partir do estudo de Seligman e Maier (1967) em relação ao desamparo aprendido , que indicou que a exposição a choques independentes do responder podem produzir dificuldades de aprendizagem de uma resposta operante, autores têm se preocupado em produzir os mesmos efeitos no contexto apetitivo e têm mostrado resultados que apontam interferência no responder na aquisição de resposta operante (Engberg et al., 1972; Welker, 1976; Oakes et al., 1982 & Job, 1988) ou resultados que contradizem o efeito (Schwartz et al., 1974; Wheatley et al., 1977 & Beatty & Maki, 1979). A sugestão do presente experimento é que o custo da resposta exigido da resposta operante pode ser uma variável relevante para a produção de interferência no responder após exposição a estímulos apetitivos não contingentes. Dezoito ratos Wistar machos foram alocados em seis diferentes condições: Contingente CRF (CCRF), Contingente FR (CFR), Não Contingente CRF (NCCRF), Não Contingente FR (NCFR), Controle CRF (CTCRF) e Controle FR (CTFR). Na primeira fase, os sujeitos de condições contingentes poderiam produzir água por meio da resposta de focinhar, os sujeitos de condições não contingentes estavam acoplados aos contingentes e recebiam os estímulos independentes do responder e os sujeitos das condições controle não foram expostos. Na segunda fase, todos os sujeitos das condições CRF poderiam produzir o reforçador por meio da resposta de pressão à barra reforçada em CRF e os sujeitos de condições FR por meio da mesma resposta reforçada em FR 3. Os dados sugerem que os sujeitos expostos a estímulos apetitivos não contingentes que precisaram de mais tempo para completar a tarefa na Fase 2 (aquisição de 100 reforçadores) apresentaram interferência mais acentuada quando a resposta foi reforçada em FR 3 do que quando a resposta foi reforçada em CRF. Além disso, interferência foi identificada na Fase 2 nos sujeitos que mais apresentaram variabilidade de respostas acidentalmente reforçadas na Fase 1, mas não nos sujeitos que mostraram padrões estereotipados no responder. Os resultados são discutidos com base na contiguidade temporal entre eventos não contingentes, interferência / competição de respostas e diferenças entre contexto aversivo e apetitivo

In appetitive conditioning, a neutral stimulus (CS) is conditioned to elicit a positive emotional response by pairing it with a positive/appetitive unconditioned stimulus (US). This method is useful for studying emotional disorders and emotion in general. Studying appetitive conditioning in humans has been hampered by the lack of adequate positive unconditioned stimuli. This study investigated multimodal social stimuli as potential unconditioned stimuli in an appetitive conditioning paradigm. Neutral faces (CS+’giggle’ and CS+’woohoo’) were paired with two multimodal unconditioned stimuli consisting of the same smiling face and two different sound stimuli (US‘giggle’ and US‘woohoo’). The dependent variable was participant skin conductance response (SCR) alongside participant emotional ratings of the stimuli, that together indexes the conditioned response. CS+’giggle’ was hypothesized to be rated as happier, and less fearful than CS+’woohoo’. Successful conditioning was evidenced by higher happiness ratings for both stimuli after acquisition compared to habituation. However, no effect of acquisition was found on SCR.  US’woohoo’ was also rated as more fearful and arousing and less happy and pleasant than the US’giggle’. In sum, this thesis presents a paradigm that can be used in future studies on appetitive conditioning.