Polarities influence implicit associations between colour and emotion

The Text-Picture Integration Scale for Perspectives on Mental Illness: Development and Validation

IMPORTANCE

Understanding the root cause of mental illness stigma is necessary to adopt effective management strategies.

OBJECTIVE

To establish a stable and effective text-picture integration rating scale to predict public perspectives on mental illness and to examine its reliability and validity.

DESIGN

Descriptive cross-sectional study using internet survey data.

SETTING

Online.

PARTICIPANTS

Two hundred volunteers.

RESULTS

The 10-item the Text-Picture Integration Scale for Perspectives on Mental Illness was developed. The authors conducted data analysis using SPSS to evaluate the reliability and criterion-related validity of the Mental Health Literacy Scale (MHLS). The Text-Picture Integration Scale's item-level content validity index ranged from 0.83 to 1.00, and the scale-level content validity index was 0.97. The scale demonstrated acceptable reliability (Cronbach's α = .80). The mean value of individual items ranged from 3.18 to 4.48, and the mean total score was 39.44 (SD = 8.47). The Text-Picture Integration Scale exhibited satisfactory criterion-related validity with the MHLS (r = .76, p < .001).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

Preliminary analyses support that the Text-Picture Integration Scale is a stable and effective rating scale to determine public perspectives on mental illness and is appropriate for evaluating destigmatization efforts. Plain-Language Summary: The study findings support the use of the Text-Picture Integration Scale as a stable and effective rating scale to determine public perspectives on mental illness. The scale is also appropriate for evaluating ways to address the stigmas that people associate with mental illness, which pose challenges for people in recovery. Occupational therapists can leverage their understanding of public perspectives on mental illness when choosing interventions to support the overall well-being of their clients with mental illness.

The good, the bad, and the red: implicit color-valence associations across cultures

Cultural differences-as well as similarities-have been found in explicit color-emotion associations between Chinese and Western populations. However, implicit associations in a cross-cultural context remain an understudied topic, despite their sensitivity to more implicit knowledge. Moreover, they can be used to study color systems-that is, emotional associations with one color in the context of an opposed one. Therefore, we tested the influence of two different color oppositions on affective stimulus categorization: red versus green and red versus white, in two experiments. In Experiment 1, stimuli comprised positive and negative words, and participants from the West (Austria/Germany), and the East (Mainland China, Macau) were tested in their native languages. The Western group showed a significantly stronger color-valence interaction effect than the Mainland Chinese (but not the Macanese) group for red-green but not for red-white opposition. To explore color-valence interaction effects independently of word stimulus differences between participant groups, we used affective silhouettes instead of words in Experiment 2. Again, the Western group showed a significantly stronger color-valence interaction than the Chinese group in red-green opposition, while effects in red-white opposition did not differ between cultural groups. Our findings complement those from explicit association research in an unexpected manner, where explicit measures showed similarities between cultures (associations for red and green), our results revealed differences and where explicit measures showed differences (associations with white), our results showed similarities, underlining the value of applying comprehensive measures in cross-cultural research on cross-modal associations.

Telerehabilitation proposal of mind-body technique for physical and psychological outcomes in patients with fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia (FM) syndrome is characterized by the close correlation of chronic widespread pain and other non-pain related symptoms. Aim of this study was to investigate whether telerehabilitation that provides physical and psychological support services of the mind-body techniques can affect the clinical profile and pain relief of FM patients. The study included twenty-eight female FM patients, mean aged 56.61 ± 8.56 years. All patients underwent a rehabilitation treatment (8 sessions, 1/week, 1 h/each) through Zoom platform, with the following principles of rehabilitation treatment: Anchoring to a positive emotion; listen and perceive your “own” body; conscious breathing; improve interoceptive awareness; relax. All patients then underwent clinical assessment of the physical distress and fear of movement for the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS); the Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS); the Fear Avoidance Belief Questionnaire (FABQ); with measures of physical and mental disability for the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ); the 12-Items Short Form Survey; the Resilience Scale for Adults and the Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Revised. The evaluations were performed at T0 (baseline), T1 (after 8 weeks of treatment), and T2 (after 1 month of follow-up). The main finding was that telerehabilitation reduced physical and mental distress, fear, and disability (p < 0.001). Resilience and coping ability were less affected by the rehabilitative treatment. Our attempt of mind-body technique telerehabilitation has shown good results in the improvement of painful symptoms and quality of life for the FM patients but showed fewer positive impacts for the resilience and coping abilities aspects.

Procedural Control Versus Resources as Potential Origins of Human Hyper Selectivity

In the current review, we argue that experimental results usually interpreted as evidence for cognitive resource limitations could also reflect functional necessities of human information processing. First, we point out that selective processing of only specific features, objects, or locations at each moment in time allows humans to monitor the success and failure of their own overt actions and covert cognitive procedures. We then proceed to show how certain instances of selectivity are at odds with commonly assumed resource limitations. Next, we discuss examples of seemingly automatic, resource-free processing that challenge the resource view but can be easily understood from the functional perspective of monitoring cognitive procedures. Finally, we suggest that neurophysiological data supporting resource limitations might actually reflect mechanisms of how procedural control is implemented in the brain.

A new type of pictorial database: The Bicolor Affective Silhouettes and Shapes (BASS)

We introduce the Bicolor Affective Silhouettes and Shapes (BASS): a set of 583 normed black-and-white silhouette images that is freely available via https://osf.io/anej6/. Valence and arousal ratings were obtained for each image from US residents as a Western population (n = 777) and Chinese residents as an Asian population (n = 869). Importantly, the ratings demonstrate that, notwithstanding their visual simplicity, the images represent a wide range of affective content (from very negative to very positive, and from very calm to very intense). In addition, speaking to their cultural neutrality, the valence ratings correlated very highly between US and Chinese ratings. Arousal ratings were less consistent between the two samples, with larger discrepancies in the older age groups inviting further investigation. Due to their simplistic and abstract nature, our silhouette images may be useful for intercultural studies, color and shape perception research, and online stimulus presentation in particular. We demonstrate the versatility of the BASS by an example online experiment.