This article reports the findings of a study investigating alexithymia, emotional instability, and vulnerability to stress proneness among individuals (N = 120) seeking help for hypersexual behavior. At the onset of treatment at an outpatient community clinic, subjects completed the Sexual Compulsivity Scale (SCS), the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and the NEO Personality Inventory Revised (NEO-PI-R). The results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed the best model in predicting severity of hypersexual behavior included the facets of depression and vulnerability to stress from the NEO and the Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF) factor of the TAS-20. Although the NEO domain of neuroticism appeared to capture the majority of variance in hypersexual behavior, the difficulty identifying feelings factor of the TAS-20 did make some modest, but significant, contribution to the severity of hypersexual behavior after controlling for depression and vulnerability to stress. These data provide evidence for the hypothesis that individuals who manifest symptoms of hypersexual behavior are more likely to experience deficits in affect regulation and negative affect (including alexithymia, depression, and vulnerability to stress). Possible reasons for these results are suggested and future recommendations for research are offered.
STUDIES ADDRESSING EFFECTS OF MUSIC ON VIEWERS' perceptions of film have usually presented music simultaneously with a scene of interest. In the present study, 177 undergraduates viewed film excerpts with music presented before or after a scene featuring a single character. Whereas the film characters had emotionally neutral or subdued facial expressions, the music conveyed happiness, sadness, fear, or anger. Overall, participants tended to interpret characters' emotions in ways that were consistent with the particular emotion expressed in the music, offering evidence for both forward and backward affective priming effects. Our data confirm Boltz, Schulkind, and Kantra's (1991) findings on the role of music in foreshadowing. As far as we are aware, the effects of music on a prior scene have not been demonstrated in film music research. Our findings suggest that music does not have to be presented concurrently with onscreen images to influence viewers' interpretations of film content.
This study examined the relationship between emotion regulation, language ability, and reticent behavior in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typical peers. Participants included 43 children with SLI and 43 typically developing children, for a total sample of 86 participants. Children were selected from 2 age ranges: 5-8 years and 9-12 years. The Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; A. Shields and D. Cicchetti, 1997, 1998) and the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS; C. H. Hart and C. C. Robinson, 1996) were completed by each child's teacher to provide measures of emotion regulation and reticence, respectively. The Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL; E. Carrow-Woodfolk, 1999) was administered to provide a measure of language ability. A regression analysis including all participants indicated that the emotion regulation scores and the CASL scores were significant predictors of the reticence scores, accounting for 43% of the variance. Group-specific analyses were then conducted to determine whether the 2 predictor scales differentially predicted reticence based on language and age groups. None of the tests exceeded the.05 level, indicating that there was no significant difference in predictive power on the 2 factors in question.
It is suggested that clinical interventions for children with LI should include activities designed to enrich children's emotion understanding, giving them opportunities to develop skills they may not acquire otherwise.
The results provide additional evidence that children with language impairment may have impairments in emotion understanding. If these findings are replicated, interventions designed to facilitate emotion understanding as an aspect of social communication should be considered for some children with language impairment.
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