The Constructionist Approach to Emotional Aging: Theoretical Insights and Predictions

In this article, we introduce a constructionist approach to understanding emotional aging in adulthood. The purpose of the paper is to show how constructionism offers a promising avenue for gaining new insights into age-related changes in emotional experiences. We begin by introducing the constructionist theoretical framework and illustrating how constructionism may shape conceptualizations of emotional aging in adulthood. We compare the constructionist conceptualization of emotional aging with existing conceptualizations of emotional aging derived from prominent theories of emotional aging, focusing on how such conceptualizations highlight different aspects of emotional aging (e.g., different mechanisms) and overlook or downplay other aspects. We conclude by explicating what constructionism may offer research on emotional aging, including considerations of research agendas, study designs, and method of measurement.

Positive and Negative Affect in Children Living in Refugee Camps

In the present study, we assessed the psychometric proprieties of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale–Child Version (PANAS-C) in a large sample of Palestinian children ( N = 1,376) of different age ranges living in refugee camps. In particular, we used standard confirmatory factor analysis to test competing factor structures for the PANAS-C, with a view to developing a stable version of the instrument, suitable for speedy administration in applied and research settings in the contexts of military violence. Four alternative models of the PANAS-C were evaluated: unidimensional; two-dimensional with independent PA and NA scales and covariance of item-level errors unallowed; two-dimensional with dependent PA and NA scales and covariance of item-level errors unallowed; and two-dimensional with dependent PA and NA scales and covariance of item-level errors. The results of the statistical analysis supported a 20-item measurement model comprising the PANAS-C20 Arabic version for children. The items in this best fitting model loaded on two different and negatively correlated factors. These findings encourage full adoption of the PANAS-C20 as a tool for assessing both PA and NA in Palestinian children living in contexts of warfare.

What's the meaning of this? A behavioral and neurophysiological investigation into the principles behind the classification of visual emotional stimuli

Two experiments were performed to investigate the principles by which emotional stimuli are classified on the dimensions of valence and arousal. In Experiment 1, a large sample of healthy participants rated emotional stimuli according to both broad dimensions. Hierarchical cluster analyses performed on these ratings revealed that stimuli were clustered according to their semantic content at the beginning of the agglomerative process. Example semantic themes include food, violence, nudes, death, and objects. Importantly, this pattern occurred in a parallel fashion for ratings on both dimensions. In Experiment 2, we investigated if the same semantic clusters were differentiated at the neurophysiological level. Intracerebral EEG was recorded from 18 patients with intractable epilepsy who viewed the same set of stimuli. Not only did electrocortical responses differentiate between these data-defined semantic clusters, they converged with the behavioral measurements to highlight the importance of categories associated with survival and reproduction. These findings provide strong evidence that the semantic content of affective material influences their classification along the broad dimensions of valence and arousal, and this principle of categorization exerts an effect on the evoked emotional response. Future studies should consider data-driven techniques rather than normative ratings to identify more specific, semantically related emotional images.

Flavors of Appraisal Theories of Emotion

Appraisal theories of emotion have two fundamental assumptions: (a) that there are regularities to be discovered between situations and components of emotional episodes, and (b) that the influence of these situations on these components is causally mediated by a mental process called appraisal. Appraisal theories come in different flavors, proposing different to-be-explained phenomena and different underlying mechanisms for the influence of appraisal on the other components.

Distinct iEEG activity patterns in temporal-limbic and prefrontal sites induced by emotional intentionality

Our emotions tend to be directed towards someone or something. Such emotional intentionality calls for the integration between two streams of information; abstract hedonic value and its associated concrete content. In a previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we found that the combination of these two streams, as modeled by short emotional music excerpts and neutral film clips, was associated with synergistic activation in both temporal-limbic (TL) and ventral-lateral PFC (vLPFC) regions. This additive effect implies the integration of domain-specific 'affective' and 'cognitive' processes. Yet, the low temporal resolution of the fMRI limits the characterization of such cross-domain integration. To this end, we complemented the fMRI data with intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) recordings from twelve patients with intractable epilepsy. As expected, the additive fMRI activation in the amygdala and vLPFC was associated with distinct spatio-temporal iEEG patterns among electrodes situated within the vicinity of the fMRI activation foci. On the one hand, TL channels exhibited a transient (0-500 msec) increase in gamma power (61-69 Hz), possibly reflecting initial relevance detection or hedonic value tagging. On the other hand, vLPFC channels showed sustained (1-12 sec) suppression of low frequency power (2.3-24 Hz), possibly mediating changes in gating, enabling an on-going readiness for content-based processing of emotionally tagged signals. Moreover, an additive effect in delta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) was found among the TL channels, possibly reflecting the integration between distinct domain specific processes. Together, this study provides a multi-faceted neurophysiological signature for computations that possibly underlie emotional intentionality in humans.