Emotional Expression

Theories regarding susceptibility to emotional contagion, which address the ease of "catching" the emotions expressed by others, have recently received growing interest in the field of social psychology and health. Despite the theoretical and empirical importance, reliable and valid instruments to assess emotional contagion in men and women from cultures outside the English-speaking world are not well developed. The present study examines the psychometric properties and factor structure of the Greek adaptation of the Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS), and is a first attempt to test its measurement invariance across gender and culture groups (Greece and Sweden). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of competing models supports a five-factor model that includes the five basic emotions of anger, fear, sadness, happiness, and love. Using multiple-group CFA and a sequence of nested tests, configural invariance and partial metric and partial scalar invariance across gender and culture groups of the five-factor model were demonstrated. The results show that meaningful comparisons of ECS can be made across men and women from different cultures and support the hypothesis that susceptibility to emotional contagion operates at a differential emotions level.

This study examined the modulatory function of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles on subjective and autonomic components of emotion. Participants were asked to hold a pencil in their mouth to either facilitate or inhibit smiles and were not instructed to contract specific muscles. Five conditions-namely lips pressing, low-level non-Duchenne smiling, high-level non-Duchenne smiling, Duchenne smiling, and control-were produced while participants watched videoclips that were evocative of positive or negative affect. Participants who displayed Duchenne smiles reported more positive experience when pleasant scenes and humorous cartoons were presented. Furthermore, they tended to exhibit different patterns of autonomic arousal when viewing positive scenes. These results support the facial feedback hypothesis and suggest that facial feedback has more powerful effects when facial configurations represent valid analogs of basic emotional expressions. I thank Nathalie Fontaine for her assistance in the data collection. I am grateful to Patrick Mollaret for helpful comments concerning the design of this research. I also thank Paul Gendreau, Benoist Schaal, and Rita Compatangelo for valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.

We report work on a LEGO robot that displays different emotional expressions in response to physical stimulation, for the purpose of social interaction with humans. This is a first step toward our longer-term goal of exploring believable emotional exchanges to achieve plausible interaction with a simple robot. Drawing inspiration from theories of human basic emotions, we have implemented several prototypical expressions in the robot's caricaturized face and conducted experiments to assess the recognizability of these expressions.

Facial expression of pain has rarely been researched in the context of facial expression of negative emotions with which it may occur. The main aim of the study was to investigate how pain expression resembled or differed from that of other negative emotions (fear, anger, sadness, surprise, disgust and embarrassment), using multidimensional scaling, a dimensional approach to understanding relationships among emotions. As possible misidentification of facial expressions by participants could distort those results, a judgement study as a categorical approach was conducted to examine the accuracy of identification of pain and negative emotion facial expressions. The sample was health care professionals. Identification of pain was good (unbiased hit rate 58.8%), but less than all other negative emotions. Confidence in ratings approximated accuracy of identification. Multidimensional scaling revealed two dimensions: the first distinguished embarrassment from all other emotion expressions; the second separated pain, sadness and anger from fear, surprise and disgust. Possible explanations for these findings were sought in patterns of facial action units, and in the messages conveyed by the expressions according to Fridlund's Behavioural

The neural substrates that subserve decoding of different emotional expressions are subject to different rates of degeneration and atrophy in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and there is therefore reason to anticipate that a differentiated profile of affect recognition impairment may emerge. However, it remains unclear whether AD differentially affects the recognition of specific emotions. Further, there is only limited research focused on whether affect recognition deficits in AD generalize to more ecologically valid stimuli. In the present study, relatively mild AD participants (n = 24), older controls (n = 30) and younger controls (n = 30) were administered measures of affect recognition. Significant AD deficits were observed relative to both the younger and older control groups on a measure that involved labeling of static images of facial affect. AD deficits on this measure were observed in relation to all emotions assessed (anger, sadness, happiness, surprise and fear), with the exception of disgust, which was preserved even relative to the younger adult group. The relative preservation of disgust could not be attributed to biases in the choice of labels made, and it is suggested instead that this finding might reflect the relative sparing of the basal ganglia in AD. No significant AD effect was observed for the more ecologically valid measure that involved dynamic displays of facial expressions, in conjunction with paralinguistic and body movement cues, although a trend for greater AD difficulty was observed.

Study involving the interviewing of 538 children between ages 5 - 14 years with stories constructed to represent represent – prosocial alone, prosocial audience, self-protective alone, self-protective audience conditions, based on Gnepp and Hess’s (1986) research. Results were then collated and coded to study the isolating and observing of children’s spontaneous utilization of display rules, as opposed to genuine or unregulated emotional expression (Saarni, 1984).

Previous studies have shown that recognition of facial expressions is influenced by the affective information provided by the surrounding scene. The goal of this study was to investigate whether similar effects could be obtained for bodily expressions. Images of emotional body postures were briefly presented as part of social scenes showing either neutral or emotional group actions. In Experiment 1, fearful and happy bodies were presented in fearful, happy, neutral and scrambled contexts. In Experiment 2, we compared happy with angry body expressions. In Experiment 3 and 4, we blurred the facial expressions of all people in the scene. This way, we were able to ascribe possible scene effects to the presence of body expressions visible in the scene and we were able to measure the contribution of facial expressions to the body expression recognition. In all experiments, we observed an effect of social scene context. Bodily expressions were better recognized when the actions in the scenes expressed an emotion congruent with the bodily expression of the target figure. The specific influence of facial expressions in the scene was dependent on the emotional expression but did not necessarily increase the congruency effect. Taken together, the results show that the social context influences our recognition of a person’s bodily expression.

This research examined the relationship between individual differences in working memory capacity and the self-regulation of emotional expression and emotional experience. Four studies revealed that people higher in working memory capacity suppressed expressions of negative emotion (Study 1) and positive emotion (Study 2) better than did people lower in working memory capacity. Furthermore, compared to people lower in working memory capacity, people higher in capacity more capably appraised emotional stimuli in an unemotional manner and thereby experienced (Studies 3 and 4) and expressed (Study 4) less emotion in response to those stimuli. These findings indicate that cognitive ability contributes to the control of emotional responding.

The present study addressed music's disputed ability to induce genuine sadness in listeners by investigating whether listening to sad music can induce sadness-related effects on memory and judgment. Related aims were to explore how the different mechanisms of music-induced emotions are involved in sadness induced by familiar, self-selected music and unfamiliar, experimenter-selected music, and whether the susceptibility to music-induced sadness is associated with trait empathy. One hundred twenty participants were randomly assigned into four conditions with different tasks: listening to unfamiliar sad or neutral music, or to self-selected sad music, or recalling a sad autobiographical event and writing about it. The induced affective states were measured indirectly using a word recall task and a judgment task where participants rated the emotions expressed by pictures depicting facial expressions. The results indicate that listening to sad music can indeed induce changes in emotion-related memory and judgment. However, this effect depends, to some extent, on the music's relevance to the listener, as well as on the personality attributes of the listener. Trait empathy contributed to the susceptibility to sadness induced by unfamiliar music, while autobiographical memories contributed to sadness induced by self-selected music.

Previous research has found that high emotional expressivity contributes to interpersonal attraction independently of and on par with the contributions of physical attractiveness. Using an evolutionary perspective, we argue that emotional expressivity can act as a marker for cooperative behavior or trustworthiness. Theoretical and empirical work from social dilemma research pointing to the advantages of having a signal for cooperation is considered, as well as research from the limited number of studies that have looked at expressive behavior within a social exchange context. We also argue that we need to inject nonverbal emotional behavior into the social dilemma paradigm, which has downplayed or ignored its role in the communication processes associated with cooperation. Finally, we offer an outline for testing our theory and expanding the role of nonverbal emotional processes within research on cooperation and social exchange.

This review focuses on facial asymmetries during emotional expression. Facial asymmetry is defined as the expression intensity or muscular involvement on one side of the face ("hemiface") relative to the other side and has been used as a behavioral index of hemispheric specialization for facial emotional expression. This paper presents a history of the neuropsychological study of facial asymmetry, originating with Darwin. Both quantitative and qualitative aspects of asymmetry are addressed. Next, neuroanatomical bases for facial expression are elucidated, separately for posed/voluntary and spontaneous/involuntary elicitation conditions. This is followed by a comprehensive review of 49 experiments of facial asymmetry in the adult literature, oriented around emotional valence (pleasantness/unpleasantness), elicitation condition, facial part, social display rules, and demographic factors. Results of this review indicate that the left hemiface is more involved than the right hemiface in the expression of facial emotion. From a neuropsychological perspective, these findings implicate the right cerebral hemisphere as dominant for the facial expression of emotion. In spite of the compelling evidence for right-hemispheric specialization, some data point to the possibility of differential hemispheric involvement as a function of emotional valence.

We hypothesized that parents who express positive emotions and are supportive of their preschoolers' emotional expressions and experiences are likely to engage in talking and teaching about emotions, thereby enhancing children's emotion knowledge. Observational and self-report indices of parents' socialization of emotion were obtained for 134 families when children were 3 and 4 years old, along with children's emotion knowledge from ages 3 to 5. Mothers' valuing teaching about emotions mediated the positive effects of their positive expressions and reactions on the emotion knowledge of 3-year-olds. More limited paternal contributions were found for 4-year-olds' emotion knowledge only. Departures from predicted relations suggested that fathers might see their role in emotion socialization as different from that of

Objectives. Difficulties in processing emotional states are implicated in the aetiology and maintenance of diverse health conditions, including anorexia nervosa (AN) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). This study sought to explore distress tolerance, selfsilencing, and beliefs regarding the experience and expression of emotions in individuals diagnosed with AN and CFS. These conditions were chosen for this study because their clinical presentation is characterized by physical symptoms, yet cognitive behavioural models suggest that emotional processing difficulties contribute to the aetiology and maintenance of both. Design. A between-subjects cross-sectional design was employed. Methods. Forty people with AN, 45 with CFS, and 48 healthy controls (HCs) completed the Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS), Silencing the Self Scale (STSS), Beliefs about Emotions Scale (BES), and measures of clinical symptomatology. Results. Initial group comparisons found that both AN and CFS participants scored higher than HCs on a subscale measuring difficulties in distress tolerance. AN and CFS participants were also more likely to judge themselves by external standards, endorse statements reflecting a tendency to put the needs of others before themselves, and present an outwardly socially compliant image of themselves whilst feeling hostile within. Relative to HCs, AN participants reported more maladaptive beliefs regarding the experience of having negative thoughts and feelings and revealing these emotions to

ABSTRACT: Previous research has found that high emotional expressivity contributes to interpersonal attraction independently of and on par with the contributions of physical attractiveness. Using an evolutionary perspective, we argue that emotional
expressivity can act as a marker for cooperative behavior or trustworthiness. Theoretical and empirical work from social dilemma research pointing to the advantages of having a signal for cooperation is considered, as well as research from the limited number of studies that have looked at expressive behavior within a social exchange context. We also argue that we need to inject nonverbal emotional behavior into the social dilemma paradigm, which has downplayed or ignored its role in the communication processes associated with cooperation. Finally, we offer an outline for testing our theory and expanding the role of nonverbal emotional processes within research on cooperation and social exchange.

In human communication there is often a close relationship between the perception of an emotionally expressive face and the facial response of the viewer himself. Whereas perception and generation of facial expressions have been studied separately with functional imaging methods, no studies exist on their interaction. We combined the presentation of emotionally expressive faces with the instruction to react with facial movements predetermined and assigned. fMRI was used in an event related design to examine healthy subjects while they regarded happy, sad, or neutral faces and were instructed to simultaneously move the corners of their mouths either (a) upwards or (b) downwards, or (c) to refrain from movement. The subjects' facial movements were recorded with an MR-compatible video camera. Movement latencies were shortened in congruent situations (e.g. the presentation of a happy face and combined with upward movements) and delayed in non-congruent situations. Dissonant more than congruent stimuli activated the inferior prefrontal cortex and the somatomotor cortex bilaterally. The congruent condition, in particular when seeing a happy face, activated the medial basotemporal lobes (hippocampus, amygdala, parahippocampal region). We hypothesize that this region facilitates congruent facial movements when an emotionally expressive face is perceived and that it is part of a system for non-volitional emotional facial movements. ᮊ

We hypothesized that parents who express positive emotions and are supportive of their preschoolers' emotional expressions and experiences are likely to engage in talking and teaching about emotions, thereby enhancing children's emotion knowledge. Observational and self-report indices of parents' socialization of emotion were obtained for 134 families when children were 3 and 4 years old, along with children's emotion knowledge from ages 3 to 5. Mothers' valuing teaching about emotions mediated the positive effects of their positive expressions and reactions on the emotion knowledge of 3-year-olds. More limited paternal contributions were found for 4-year-olds' emotion knowledge only. Departures from predicted relations suggested that fathers might see their role in emotion socialization as different from that of

Background: A multicomponent psychological intervention designed to alleviate neuropsychiatric symptoms and to improve communication in mild to moderate dementia was evaluated in a controlled trial. Components were (1) TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication handicapped Children)-based cognitive-behavioral and environmental interventions adapted for dementia and (2) music therapy. Methods: In a Pre-post design, the treatment group (n = 26) received the program for 6 months, whereas controls (n = 23) participated in nonspecific occupational therapy. Statistical analyses included t-tests, effect sizes, and two-way ANOVAs. Results: Relative to controls, the treatment group showed partly significant reductions of agitation, aggression, apathy, and anxiety, and improvement of communication, emotional expression, and activity. Conclusion: The intervention can help to increase psychological well-being in patients with dementia.

Background: While heavy cannabis-users seem to show various cognitive impairments, it remains unclear whether they also experience significant deficits in affective functioning. Evidence of such deficits may contribute to our understanding of the interpersonal difficulties in cannabis-users, and the link between cannabis-use and psychological disorders . Method: Emotion recognition performance of heavy cannabis-users and non-using controls was compared. A measure of emotion recognition was used in which participants identified facial expressions as they changed from neutral (open-mouth) to gradually more intense expressions of sadness, neutral, anger or happiness (open or closed mouth). Reaction times and accuracy were recorded as the facial expressions changed. Participants also completed measures of 'theory of mind,' depression and impulsivity. Results: Cannabis-users were significantly slower than controls at identifying all three emotional expressions. There was no difference between groups in identifying facial expressions changing from open-mouth neutral expressions to closed-mouth neutral expressions suggesting that differences in emotion recognition were not due to a general slowing of reaction times. Cannabis-users were also significantly more liberal in their response criterion for recognising sadness. Conclusion: Heavy cannabis-use may be associated with affect recognition deficits. In particular, a greater intensity of emotion expression was required before identification of positive and negative emotions. This was found using stimuli which simulated dynamic changes in emotion expression, and in turn, suggests that cannabis-users may experience generalised problems in decoding basic emotions during social interactions. The implications of these findings are discussed for vulnerability to psychological and interpersonal difficulties in cannabis-users.

Two studies provided direct support for a recently proposed dialect theory of communicating emotion, positing that expressive displays show cultural variations similar to linguistic dialects, thereby decreasing accurate recognition by out-group members. In Study 1, 60 participants from Quebec and Gabon posed facial expressions. Dialects, in the form of activating different muscles for the same expressions, emerged most clearly for serenity, shame, and contempt and also for anger, sadness, surprise, and happiness, but not for fear, disgust, or embarrassment. In Study 2, Quebecois and Gabonese participants judged these stimuli and stimuli standardized to erase cultural dialects. As predicted, an in-group advantage emerged for nonstandardized expressions only and most strongly for expressions with greater regional dialects, according to Study 1.

In this study, we propose and test a conceptual model, representing the hedonic–utilitarian dual mediation hypothesis, in which both cognition and emotions are combined to help understand individual behavior in an online environment. Beyond what cognitive models offer, our results show that both cognitive and emotional responses play a key role in communication through websites and that the hedonic–utilitarian dual mediation hypothesis is the best fitting model in comparison with the four alternatives tested. Moreover, attitude is treated as a bi-dimensional construct made up of a hedonic and a utilitarian component. Based on this, an additional contribution concerns the correspondence that exists between consumer cognition and the utilitarian dimension of attitude, as well as the emotions expressed by subjects and the hedonic dimension of attitude. The relative importance of each dimension of attitudes can provide marketers in e-commerce settings with insights about whether to introduce more emotional appeals or more cognitive stimuli when communicating through their websites.

In the present study, we examined whether there is an impairment in affect matching abilities in remitted patients with bipolar disorder and if this could be attributed to problems with facial perception per se and/or the ability to perceive the relative valence of facial expressions indicating emotions. We examined 19 patients with bipolar disorder I, currently remitted, and 30 healthy controls (15 men), matched on age, education, and gender, using two computerized tests: matching facial identity [Kinney's Identity Matching Test (KIMT)] and matching facial emotional expressions [Kinney's Affect Matching Test (KAMT)]. Patients with bipolar disorder performed significantly worse than the healthy group on the KAMT, but not on the KIMT. Performance on the KAMT and KIMT did not correlate with age of onset and duration of illness, or with manic or depressive residual symptoms. The present findings support the differential deficit hypothesis regarding impaired affect perception in bipolar disorder during remission. Patients' deficits were restricted to the matching of facial emotional expressions despite their intact perception of facial identity.

The current study investigated detection and interpretation of emotional facial expressions in high socially anxious (HSA) individuals compared to non-anxious controls (NAC). A version of the morphed faces task was implemented to assess emotion onset perception, decoding accuracy and interpretation, either with time pressure (Restricted Viewing Task, RVT) or with unlimited viewing (Free Viewing Task, FVT). Twenty-seven HSA and 30 NAC viewed sequences of neutral faces slowly changing to full-intensity angry, happy, or disgust expressions. Participants were instructed to assign the expression as soon as possible to one of four given emotion categories (angry, contempt, disgust, or happy). While no group differences were found for emotion onset perception or decoding performance, the results suggest an interpretation bias in HSA. Under the RVT condition, HSA demonstrated a threat bias (disgust interpreted as contempt), contrasting the NAC's positive bias (disgust interpreted as happy). No group differences were found in the FVT. We suggest that socially anxious individuals tend to misinterpret facial expressions as threatening when they must do so quickly and efficiently, as in real life. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Self-esteem plays a central role in mental health, yet not enough is known about how youth evaluate themselves as they move across adolescence. This study used a cross-sectional design to examine age and gender patterns in self-esteem and to explore how contemporary social influences relate to adolescent self-esteem. Selfreported influences on self-esteem involving the media, sexual harassment, body image, family and peer relationships, and emotional expression were evaluated with 93 boys and 116 girls in Grades 5, 8, and 12. Girls reported lower selfesteem than boys in early adolescence, and late adolescent boys reported lower self-esteem than younger boys. The predictors as a set accounted for a significant portion of the variance in self-esteem, while the best predictor of self-esteem varied by age and gender. Large gender differences were present for emotional expression, with boys becoming more restrictive across adolescence. Girls reported more negative body image and media influence scores than did boys in late childhood and early adolescence. Body image appeared to mediate the relationships between

Seventy-three men who were currently accessing or had recently accessed mental health services completed a questionnaire regarding their emotional expression, engagement in therapy, perceptions of treatment helpfulness, and future help-seeking intentions. Perceptions of treatment helpfulness were inversely predicted by alexithymia (mediated by bond) and restrictive emotionality, although these emotional expression variables were unrelated to future help-seeking intentions. Bond was positively related to perceptions of treatment helpfulness and both variables predicted future help-seeking intentions. Contrary to expectations, perceptions of treatment helpfulness did not mediate the relationship between bond and future help-seeking intentions. It was concluded that, once in therapy, bond and perceptions of treatment helpfulness are more important to future help-seeking intentions than a man's difficulty or discomfort with emotional expression.

Four studies demonstrate the psychometric adequacy and validity of scales designed to assess coping through emotional approach. In separate undergraduate samples, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of dispositional (Study 1) and situational (Study 3) coping item sets yielded 2 distinct emotional approach coping factors: emotional processing (i.e., active attempts to acknowledge and understand emotions) and emotional expression. The 2 scales yielded high internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity. A study (Study 2) of young adults and their parents established the scales' interjudge reliabilities. Longitudinal (Study 3) and experimental (Study 4) research supported the predictive validity of the emotional approach coping scales with regard to adjustment to stressful encounters. Findings highlight the utility of functionalist theories of emotion as applied to coping theory.

This study assessed the factor structure, internal consistency, and concurrent validity of a new instrument, the rational-experiential inventory for adolescents (REI-A), a 20-item measure designed to assess individual differences in preference for rational and experiential cognition in adolescent populations. Data from 306 Australian high school students confirmed the two-factor structure of the existing adult REI . Both rational and experiential scales of the REI-A exhibited good internal consistency (Cronbach's a > 0.80) and excellent five-week test-retest reliability (r > 0.90). Consistent with the tenets of cognitive experiential self theory , higher rational scores were significantly associated with openness to experience, conscientiousness, open-minded thinking, superior reasoning, the absence of neuroticism and the lack of superstitious beliefs. Higher experiential scores were associated with increased emotional expressivity, superstitious beliefs and poorer reasoning. The REI-A provides a valuable tool to assess individual differences in adolescents' preference for rational and experiential cognition.

This study evaluates personality changes, after successful completion of long-term group-analytic psychotherapy, in an outpatient day treatment unit (Athens Open Psychotherapy Centre). 1 Testretest method was applied in thirty-nine patients, who were assessed by the MMPI test and the Rorschach projective technique.

This research proposes that expressed emotional ambivalence elicits greater dominance in observers than expressed happiness or anger because ambivalence conveys deliberation and therefore submissiveness. Four laboratory studies yielded convergent findings across different measures of dominance and manipulations of emotional expressions (videos and vignettes). Study 1 showed that participants can identify the expression of tension and conflict as ambivalence and can reliably distinguish ambivalence expressions from the expression of a related emotion (sadness), as well as unrelated emotions (happiness and anger). Study 2 showed that participants intended to dominate the ambivalent partner significantly more than the happy, angry, or non-emotional partner. Study 3 provides evidence that negotiators dominated the ambivalent partner because they perceived the ambivalent partner as more deliberative, and thus submissive. Study 4 confirmed -using a different manipulation of ambivalence -that expressed ambivalence leads to perceived submissiveness because it suggests greater deliberation.

The present study was designed to investigate gender patterns in early adolescents' and their parents' verbal expression of three gender-stereotyped emotions: anger, sadness, and frustration. Parents and their early adolescent children discussed four interpersonal dilemmas and answered questions regarding those dilemmas in mother-child and father-child dyads. Consistent with previous literature regarding gender stereotypes in emotion expression, daughters used a higher frequency of emotion words than sons did during conversations with their mothers and fathers. Additional analyses regarding the three specific emotions under investigation, however, revealed findings that were inconsistent with conventional gender stereotypes. Contrary to expectations, in conversations with fathers, sons used a higher proportion of references to sadness than did daughters. Daughters used a higher proportion of references to frustration than did sons in their conversations with both mothers and fathers. Mothers and fathers used a higher proportion of references to frustration with daughters than with sons. No gender differences were found in parents' or children's references to anger. The results call into question culturally accepted gender stereotypes about sadness, anger, and frustration.

Blogs have become an appealing research topic due to their rapid growth and increasing influence. However, there are only a few literature concerning the customer satisfaction of bloggers and the service quality of blog websites, which indicates that the development of blog websites as a popular Web 2.0 tool has fallen far behind the dictates of academic research. To address this issue, this study first conducted a critical analysis by aggregating relevant literature and by deriving the basic items applicable to the concept of blog service quality. A multi-stage scale development process was then constructed to investigate and to identify factors needed in evaluating the service quality of blog websites. The results showed that System Functionality, Security/Responsiveness, Personalization, Efficiency, and Enjoyment were the five key factors affecting the service quality of blog websites. This study proposed managerial and practical implications, which are expected to fulfill the research gap in the service quality literature of blog websites, as well as to provide an effective and robust evaluation tool for blog websites, users, and researchers.

Examined the efficacy of an Emotion-focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (ECBT) for six anxious youths ages 7-13 years. All participants had a principal anxiety disorder (generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, or social phobia) based on the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule for Children-Child and Parent versions. Children and parents reported on anxious symptomatology using the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC). To assess emotion-related competencies, children were administered the Kusche Affective Interview-Revised and children and parents completed the Emotion Expression Scale for Children (EESC) and Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC), respectively. Cases began treatment after baselines of 0, 2, or 3 weeks. At posttreatment, the majority of children demonstrated improvements in anxious symptomatology, emotion understanding and regulation skills, and overall functioning. Such improvements in emotion-related skills, in addition to anxiety, are significant given that emotional competence is a crucial component in children's adaptive social functioning and psychological adjustment. These findings provide initial support for ECBT.

The concept of nonverbal emotional expressiveness was explored through the development of a 13-item self-report Affective Communication Test (ACT). Studies reported here show the ACT to be a reliable and valid measure of individual differences in expressiveness or what is sometimes called "charisma." In the course of the validation, expressiveness was shown to be a likely element of social influence in face-to-face interaction, a logical extension of past approaches to a basic element of personality (exhibition), and a valuable construct in approaching current problems in nonverbal communication research. The measure (and the concept it represents) suggests a new approach for personality research on emotional expression, studies of individual differences in nonverbal communication, and research on the process of face-to-face interaction.

The existing scale for assessing competence in cognitive therapy (CTS) dates from 1988 and only the previous version of 1980 has been validated to any extent. A revised version, the CTS-R, was devised to improve on the CTS by: eliminating overlap between items, improving on the scaling system, and defining items more clearly. Kolb's well-known educational model was used as a guideline. In the new 14-item scale, three new items measure general therapeutic flair, the facilitation of emotional expression, and therapist's non-verbal behaviours (optional). We hypothesized that the CTS-R would prove more user friendly and demonstrate satisfactory reliability and validity. Twenty-one mental health professionals undergoing training in cognitive therapy provided 102 video-tapes of therapy with 34 patients, reflecting three stages of therapy. The tapes were rated by four expert raters, in a balanced design. The CTS-R showed high internal consistency and adequate average interrater reliability. Reliability for individual items varied widely among pairs of raters. Validity was demonstrated by improved ratings of competence for trainees who saw patients early and later during the course of training. Although raters found the CTS-R a more useful tool than the CTS and satisfactory reliability and validity were demonstrated, more refinement is needed in item definition. The study has led to modifications in the CTS-R, which are in the process of evaluation.

Similar samples of English, Italian and Japanese subjects were asked to identify 8 emotional states and 4 interpersonal attitudes from video-taped expressions of 2 performers from each of these cultures. AN sets of judgements were above chance, except Italians judging Japanese. The Japanese subjects were no different f r o m English and Italian subjects in recognition ability but the Japanese performances were harder to recognize supporting Ekman's theory of display rules; in fact all Japanese expressions were difficult to recognize, with the exception of happy-friendly. The Japanese (performers) make a clearer distinction between sad and depressed than other cultural groups, but did not distinguish between happy and friendly, or between angry and hostile.