Effects of empathic paraphrasing – extrinsic emotion regulation in social conflict

In the present study, we investigated the effects of empathic paraphrasing as an extrinsic emotion regulation technique in social conflict. We hypothesized that negative emotions elicited by social conflict can be regulated extrinsically in a conversation by a listener following the narrator’s perspective and verbally expressing cognitive empathy. Twenty participants were interviewed on an ongoing or recently self-experienced social conflict. The interviewer utilized 10 standardized open questions inviting participants to describe their perception of the conflict. After each of the 10 descriptions, the interviewer responded by either paraphrasing or taking notes (control condition). Valence ratings pertaining to the current emotional state were assessed during the interview along with psychophysiological and voice recordings. Participants reported feeling less negative after hearing the interviewer paraphrase what they had said. In addition, we found a lower sound intensity of participants’ voices when answering to questions following a paraphrase. At the physiological level, skin conductance response, as well as heart rate, were higher during paraphrasing than during taking notes, while blood volume pulse amplitude was lower during paraphrasing, indicating higher autonomic arousal. The results show that demonstrating cognitive empathy through paraphrasing can extrinsically regulate negative emotion on a short-term basis. Paraphrasing led to enhanced autonomic activation in recipients, while at the same time influencing emotional valence in the direction of feeling better. A possible explanation for these results is that being treated in an empathic manner may stimulate a more intense emotion processing helping to transform and resolve the conflict

Talking about emotion: prosody and skin conductance indicate emotion regulation

Talking about emotion and putting feelings into words has been hypothesized to regulate emotion in psychotherapy as well as in everyday conversation. However, the exact dynamics of how different strategies of verbalization regulate emotion and how these strategies are reflected in characteristics of the voice has received little scientific attention. In the present study, we showed emotional pictures to 30 participants and asked them to verbally admit or deny an emotional experience or a neutral fact concerning the picture in a simulated conversation. We used a 2 × 2 factorial design manipulating the focus (on emotion or facts) as well as the congruency (admitting or denying) of the verbal expression. Analyses of skin conductance response (SCR) and voice during the verbalization conditions revealed a main effect of the factor focus. SCR and pitch of the voice were lower during emotion compared to fact verbalization, indicating lower autonomic arousal. In contradiction to these physiological parameters, participants reported that fact verbalization was more effective in down-regulating their emotion than emotion verbalization. These subjective ratings, however, were in line with voice parameters associated with emotional valence. That is, voice intensity showed that fact verbalization reduced negative valence more than emotion verbalization. In sum, the results of our study provide evidence that emotion verbalization as compared to fact verbalization is an effective emotion regulation strategy. Moreover, based on the results of our study we propose that different verbalization strategies influence valence and arousal aspects of emotion selectively

patterns reflect this process on a neural and psychophysiological level

Sozialer Austausch und verbale Kommunikation sind in der Psychotherapie zentral, um belastende Emotionen des Patienten zu identifizieren und helfen diese zu regulieren. Eine gestörte Emotionsregulation ist für eine Reihe von psychiatrischen Krankheitsentitäten charakteristisch. Bisher lag der Fokus bei der Untersuchung von Emotionsregulation nicht auf der verbalen Kommunikation. Stattdessen erforschte man auf psychophysiologischer und neuronaler Ebene verschiedene Regulationsstrategien am Einzelnen. Anhand eines Prozess- Modells konnten auf diese Weise zugrundeliegende Mechanismen der Emotionsregulation (Aufmerksamkeitssteuerung, Impulskontrolle, Aktualisierung des Arbeitsgedächtnisses) bestimmt werden. Diese Arbeit untersucht die unmittelbare Wirkung verbaler Regulationsstrategien im sozialen Miteinander und Prozesse, die diesen Regulationsstrategien zugrunde liegen. In den Studien wird auf neuronaler und psychophysiologischer Ebene getestet, wie die emotionale Reaktion eines Sprechers reguliert wird. Einerseits, wenn er selbst seine Emotion verbalisiert (Studie 1, Matejka et al., 2012) oder andererseits sein Gesprächspartner die Emotionen identifiziert bzw. paraphrasiert (Studie 2, Seehausen et al., 2014). Paraphrasieren ist eine nicht direktive und nicht urteilende Technik der Konfliktlösung, für deren Wirksamkeit der aktuelle affektive Zustand entscheidend sein könnte. Deshalb werden emotionale Verarbeitung (Studie 3, Meriau et al., 2009) und die Wirkung der paraphrasierenden Äußerungen, abhängig von den individuellen Unterschieden in der Affektivität, untersucht (Studie 2, Seehausen et al., 2014). In den Studien 1 und 2 wurde gezeigt, dass das Verbalisieren der Emotion die emotionale Reaktion des Sprechers reguliert. Hautleitwert und Grundfrequenz der Stimme spiegelten beim Sprechen über die eigene Emotion eine geringere emotionale Erregung wider als das Sprechen über Fakten (Studie 1). Beim Hören empathischer Kommentare beurteilten die Probanden ihre Emotion positiv, während ihre emotionale Erregung anstieg (Studie 2). Die Analyse neuronaler Korrelate in Studie 2 zeigte, dass während der empathischen Kommentare ein fronto-parietales Netzwerk aktiviert war. Ein negativer affektiver Zustand und stärkere Hautleitwertreaktion auf negative Bilder gingen mit Aktivierungen in neuronalen Strukturen einher, die allgemein mit der Verarbeitung und Bewertung der Emotion im Zusammenhang stehen (Studie 3). Diese Arbeit zeigt, dass die emotionale Verarbeitung durch das eigene Sprechen und durch die Kommentare des Gesprächspartners reguliert werden kann. Speziell dann, wenn Emotionen verbalisiert bzw. paraphrasiert werden. Die Befunde unterstützen eine Integration der verbalen Regulationsstrategien in das Prozess-Modell der Emotionsregulation, um die Mechanismen psychotherapeutischer Interventionen besser zu verstehen.Social Interaction and verbal communication are necessary in psychotherapy to identify maladaptive emotions in the patient and in helping him to regulate these emotions. A dysfunctional regulation of emotion is characteristic for a number of psychiatric disorders, such as affective disorders, personality disorders and frontotemporal dementia. Recent studies could relate neural correlates and psycho-physiological patterns with basal executive function (Attention selection, Inhibition, Updating) and develop a neural model of emotion regulation. This thesis aims at identifying the executive functions that underlie the immediate effect that spoken language has on emotion processing in social interaction. Therefore, it is necessary to test the immediate effectiveness of the verbal strategies. In particular, this thesis investigates how a verbal strategy regulates the emotion of the narrator when he is either talking about his own emotion (study 1, Matejka et al., 2013), or a listener identifies and paraphrases the emotion (study 2, Seehausen et al., 2014). Paraphrasing is a non-directive and non-judgemental technique regularly used in conflict resolution. Since one's affective state might be related to the effectiveness of a verbal strategy in regulating the emotion, this thesis also investigates how individual differences in state negative affect influence emotion processing in general (study 3, Meriau et al., 2009) and when the listener paraphrases the narrator (study 2, Seehausen et al., 2014). In the studies 1 (Matejka et al., 2013) and 2 (Seehausen et al., 2014) it was found that emotion is influenced by the verbalization strategy: Emotional arousal as indicated by skin conductance and voice pitch were lower when one was talking about his own emotion compared to when one talking about facts (Study 1, Matejka et al., 2013). Reversely, receiving empathic comments (being paraphrased) by the listener raised emotional arousal while positively altering emotion (study 2). Analyzing the neural correlates in study 2 showed that paraphrasing engaged a fronto-parietal network associated with emotion regulation. In study 3, a neural network associated with emotion processing was positively correlated with individual differences in state negative affect and with differences in skin conductance reactivity to aversive pictures. These studies on verbal and social interaction show that verbalizing ones emotion and being paraphrased by a listener are strategies of emotion regulation. The neural findings support an integration of these verbal strategies in the neural model of emotion regulation. A closer understanding of these neural mechanisms will help to evaluate the effectiveness of certain verbal interventions in psychotherapy

Effects of intranasal oxytocin on pupil dilation indicate increased salience of socioaffective stimuli

To investigate the mechanisms by which oxytocin improves socioaffective processing, we measured behavioral and pupillometric data during a dynamic facial emotion recognition task. In a double-blind between-subjects design, 47 men received either 24 IU intranasal oxytocin (OXT) or a placebo (PLC). Participants in the OXT group recognized all facial expressions at lower intensity levels than did participants in the PLC group. Improved performance was accompanied by increased task-related pupil dilation, indicating an increased recruitment of attentional resources. We also found increased pupil dilation during the processing of female compared with male faces. This gender-specific stimulus effect diminished in the OXT group, in which pupil size specifically increased for male faces. Results suggest that improved emotion recognition after OXT treatment might be due to an intensified processing of stimuli that usually do not recruit much attention

Temporal dynamics of prediction error processing during reward-based decision making

Adaptive decision making depends on the accurate representation of rewards associated with potential choices. These representations can be acquired with reinforcement learning (RL) mechanisms, which use the prediction error (PE, the difference between expected and received rewards) as a learning signal to update reward expectations. While EEG experiments have highlighted the role of feedback-related potentials during performance monitoring, important questions about the temporal sequence of feedback processing and the specific function of feedback-related potentials during reward-based decision making remain. Here, we hypothesized that feedback processing starts with a qualitative evaluation of outcome-valence, which is subsequently complemented by a quantitative representation of PE magnitude. Results of a model-based single-trial analysis of EEG data collected during a reversal learning task showed that around 220 ms after feedback outcomes are initially evaluated categorically with respect to their valence (positive vs. negative). Around 300 ms, and parallel to the maintained valence-evaluation, the brain also represents quantitative information about PE magnitude, thus providing the complete information needed to update reward expectations and to guide adaptive decision making. Importantly, our single-trial EEG analysis based on PEs from an RL model showed that the feedback-related potentials do not merely reflect error awareness, but rather quantitative information crucial for learning reward contingencies