BackgroundIndividuals with neurodevelopmental disorders often have atypical emotion profiles, but... more BackgroundIndividuals with neurodevelopmental disorders often have atypical emotion profiles, but little is known about how they regulate their emotions. While several studies have examined emotion regulation strategy use in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), only a few have included individuals with intellectual disability (ID) or focused on specific syndromes such as Williams syndrome (WS).MethodsA parent-reported survey launched during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed to exploratorily study emotion regulation strategy use and its link to anxiety in individuals with ASD with (N=785) and without ID (N=596), WS (N=261), and Intellectual Disability not otherwise specified (N=649).ResultsUsing multilevel analyses, besides revealing specific group differences in emotion regulation strategy use, a variety of strategies (e.g., rumination, avoiding information, repetitive behaviors) were found to be linked to elevated levels of anxiety, while focusing on the positive was lin...
Attenuated positive emotions and difficulties in regulating emotions are frequently observed in i... more Attenuated positive emotions and difficulties in regulating emotions are frequently observed in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and are linked to increased risk of affective disorders, problematic behaviors, and impaired socio-emotional functioning. As such, interventions specifically focused on positive emotion regulation (ER) skills could be very valuable for individuals with ASD, their caregivers, and therapists. However, the field of positive ER in ASD is under-researched. The present study aimed at testing the practical potential and the preliminary effects of a brief novel psycho-educational training program on positive ER for individuals with ASD. Thirty male participants with ASD (aged 10–35years; Ntraining=14, Nwaitlist=16) underwent a three-session program on the use of adaptive positive ER strategies (i.e., attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation). Participants rated the program as easy to understand, interesting, pleasant, and l...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Police officers are frequently exposed to highly stressful situations at work and have an increas... more Police officers are frequently exposed to highly stressful situations at work and have an increased risk to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and burnout (BO). It is currently not well understood which officers are most at risk to develop these disorders. The aim of this study was to determine which coping strategies and personality traits could act as protective or risk factors in relation to PTSD and BO. The second aim, in the interest of designating preventive and therapeutical measures, was to determine whether certain profiles of police officers could be identified as high risk for developing mental disorders. Herein, 1073 French-speaking police officers in Switzerland reported in an online survey about their PTSD and BO symptoms, anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, coping strategies, occupational stress, and personality factors. The cluster analysis highlighted three principal profiles of police officers: those who are not at risk of developing patho...
Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a testing procedure that can result in improved precision ... more Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a testing procedure that can result in improved precision for a specified test length or reduced test length with no loss of precision. However, these attractive psychometric features of CATs are only achieved if appropriate test items are available for administration. This set of test items is commonly called an item pool.. This paper discusses the optimal characteristics for an item pool that will lead to the desired properties for a CAT. Then, a procedure is described for designing the statistical characteristics of the item parameters for an optimal item pool within an item response theory framework. Because true optimality is impractical, methods for achieving practical approximations to optimality are described. The results of this approach are shown for an operational testing program including comparisons to the results from the item pool currently used in that testing program. Abstract The self-evaluation of the impact factor of a journ...
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, Jun 1, 2017
Expressive incoherence can be implicated in socio-emotional communicative problems in autism spec... more Expressive incoherence can be implicated in socio-emotional communicative problems in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined expressive incoherence in 37 children with ASD and 41 typically developing (TD) children aged 3-13 years old during a frustration task. The role of alexithymia in expressive incoherence was also assessed. Compared to TD children, children with ASD had higher expressive incoherence, such as more neutral and positive emotion expressions during negative behaviors, but not in the expression of negative emotions during positive behaviors. Further analyses revealed that alexithymia moderated the expressions of positive emotions during negative behaviors. These results suggest that children with ASD may benefit from interventions targeting alexithymia to increase emotional coherence, which may improve socio-emotional communication.
This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective h... more This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective humor processing in two studies. Three cartoon types differing in their logical mechanisms (LMs) and cognitive requirements were presented to participants with high scores on one scale and low scores on the other (empathizers and systemizers): visual puns, semantic cartoons and Theory of Mind cartoons. Empathizers and systemizers were expected to process these cartoon types differently. While empathizers and systemizers did not differ in recognition time and comprehensibility in study one (
The goal of this study was to examine the importance of humor as character strength in individual... more The goal of this study was to examine the importance of humor as character strength in individuals with Asperger's syndrome/High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA) and how it relates to life satisfaction and orientation to happiness. Thirty-three individuals with AS/HFA and 33 gender-, age- and education-matched typically developing (TD) participants filled out scales assessing character strengths (VIA-IS), life satisfaction (SWLS) and orientation to happiness (OTH). Profile analyses of the character strengths and character strengths factors revealed significant differences between the two groups. Humor was found to be the 8th highest out of 24 character strengths in TD, but was only at the 16th position in individuals with AS/HFA when the strengths are rank-ordered. In TD participants, humor is related to life of pleasure, life of engagement, life of meaning and life satisfaction. In individuals with AS/HFA, humor is only related to life of pleasure. This shows that 1) individuals wit...
Page 1. Cartoons: Drawn jokes? Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson Introduction Visual h... more Page 1. Cartoons: Drawn jokes? Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson Introduction Visual humor is, of course, humor, and cartoons are to visual humor what jokes are to verbal humor: the prototypical case that we ...
Emotionsdysregulation wird im Kontext von Angststörungen und aggressivem Verhalten im Kindesalter... more Emotionsdysregulation wird im Kontext von Angststörungen und aggressivem Verhalten im Kindesalter erläutert; desweiteren werden entsprechende Hinweise auf die Autismus-Spektrum-Störungen gegeben. Verschiedene dysfunktionale Regulationsstrategien werden identifiziert. Neben der generellen Betrachtung von Emotionsdysregulation im Kontext der genannten Störungsbilder wird die Frage, ob und inwiefern es sich bei der Verwendung solch ungünstiger Strategien um einen störungsübergreifenden Faktor handelt, diskutiert.
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, 2011
Humorous stimuli, like jokes and cartoons, are assumed to contain a central incongruity in a spec... more Humorous stimuli, like jokes and cartoons, are assumed to contain a central incongruity in a specific constellation of opposition and overlap that is essential to their humorousness. Many stimuli also contain additional incongruities that the audience usually overlooks, but that may be needed to create the setup for the main incongruity, e.g., animals that talk, space aliens, an Italian, an American, and a Russian sharing a language. Two of the studies described in the present paper investigated the effect of such backgrounded incongruities by removing them from a set of jokes and cartoons and testing how this affects humor processing and appreciation. A third study investigated whether the elimination of a backgrounded incongruity influences the position of a humorous stimulus on the incongruity-resolution and nonsense humor continuum. Methods included computer-based stimulus rating and self-explanations by the participants. The results suggested that backgrounded incongruities inf...
BackgroundIndividuals with neurodevelopmental disorders often have atypical emotion profiles, but... more BackgroundIndividuals with neurodevelopmental disorders often have atypical emotion profiles, but little is known about how they regulate their emotions. While several studies have examined emotion regulation strategy use in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), only a few have included individuals with intellectual disability (ID) or focused on specific syndromes such as Williams syndrome (WS).MethodsA parent-reported survey launched during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed to exploratorily study emotion regulation strategy use and its link to anxiety in individuals with ASD with (N=785) and without ID (N=596), WS (N=261), and Intellectual Disability not otherwise specified (N=649).ResultsUsing multilevel analyses, besides revealing specific group differences in emotion regulation strategy use, a variety of strategies (e.g., rumination, avoiding information, repetitive behaviors) were found to be linked to elevated levels of anxiety, while focusing on the positive was lin...
Attenuated positive emotions and difficulties in regulating emotions are frequently observed in i... more Attenuated positive emotions and difficulties in regulating emotions are frequently observed in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and are linked to increased risk of affective disorders, problematic behaviors, and impaired socio-emotional functioning. As such, interventions specifically focused on positive emotion regulation (ER) skills could be very valuable for individuals with ASD, their caregivers, and therapists. However, the field of positive ER in ASD is under-researched. The present study aimed at testing the practical potential and the preliminary effects of a brief novel psycho-educational training program on positive ER for individuals with ASD. Thirty male participants with ASD (aged 10–35years; Ntraining=14, Nwaitlist=16) underwent a three-session program on the use of adaptive positive ER strategies (i.e., attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation). Participants rated the program as easy to understand, interesting, pleasant, and l...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Police officers are frequently exposed to highly stressful situations at work and have an increas... more Police officers are frequently exposed to highly stressful situations at work and have an increased risk to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and burnout (BO). It is currently not well understood which officers are most at risk to develop these disorders. The aim of this study was to determine which coping strategies and personality traits could act as protective or risk factors in relation to PTSD and BO. The second aim, in the interest of designating preventive and therapeutical measures, was to determine whether certain profiles of police officers could be identified as high risk for developing mental disorders. Herein, 1073 French-speaking police officers in Switzerland reported in an online survey about their PTSD and BO symptoms, anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, coping strategies, occupational stress, and personality factors. The cluster analysis highlighted three principal profiles of police officers: those who are not at risk of developing patho...
Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a testing procedure that can result in improved precision ... more Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a testing procedure that can result in improved precision for a specified test length or reduced test length with no loss of precision. However, these attractive psychometric features of CATs are only achieved if appropriate test items are available for administration. This set of test items is commonly called an item pool.. This paper discusses the optimal characteristics for an item pool that will lead to the desired properties for a CAT. Then, a procedure is described for designing the statistical characteristics of the item parameters for an optimal item pool within an item response theory framework. Because true optimality is impractical, methods for achieving practical approximations to optimality are described. The results of this approach are shown for an operational testing program including comparisons to the results from the item pool currently used in that testing program. Abstract The self-evaluation of the impact factor of a journ...
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, Jun 1, 2017
Expressive incoherence can be implicated in socio-emotional communicative problems in autism spec... more Expressive incoherence can be implicated in socio-emotional communicative problems in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined expressive incoherence in 37 children with ASD and 41 typically developing (TD) children aged 3-13 years old during a frustration task. The role of alexithymia in expressive incoherence was also assessed. Compared to TD children, children with ASD had higher expressive incoherence, such as more neutral and positive emotion expressions during negative behaviors, but not in the expression of negative emotions during positive behaviors. Further analyses revealed that alexithymia moderated the expressions of positive emotions during negative behaviors. These results suggest that children with ASD may benefit from interventions targeting alexithymia to increase emotional coherence, which may improve socio-emotional communication.
This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective h... more This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective humor processing in two studies. Three cartoon types differing in their logical mechanisms (LMs) and cognitive requirements were presented to participants with high scores on one scale and low scores on the other (empathizers and systemizers): visual puns, semantic cartoons and Theory of Mind cartoons. Empathizers and systemizers were expected to process these cartoon types differently. While empathizers and systemizers did not differ in recognition time and comprehensibility in study one (
The goal of this study was to examine the importance of humor as character strength in individual... more The goal of this study was to examine the importance of humor as character strength in individuals with Asperger's syndrome/High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA) and how it relates to life satisfaction and orientation to happiness. Thirty-three individuals with AS/HFA and 33 gender-, age- and education-matched typically developing (TD) participants filled out scales assessing character strengths (VIA-IS), life satisfaction (SWLS) and orientation to happiness (OTH). Profile analyses of the character strengths and character strengths factors revealed significant differences between the two groups. Humor was found to be the 8th highest out of 24 character strengths in TD, but was only at the 16th position in individuals with AS/HFA when the strengths are rank-ordered. In TD participants, humor is related to life of pleasure, life of engagement, life of meaning and life satisfaction. In individuals with AS/HFA, humor is only related to life of pleasure. This shows that 1) individuals wit...
Page 1. Cartoons: Drawn jokes? Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson Introduction Visual h... more Page 1. Cartoons: Drawn jokes? Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson Introduction Visual humor is, of course, humor, and cartoons are to visual humor what jokes are to verbal humor: the prototypical case that we ...
Emotionsdysregulation wird im Kontext von Angststörungen und aggressivem Verhalten im Kindesalter... more Emotionsdysregulation wird im Kontext von Angststörungen und aggressivem Verhalten im Kindesalter erläutert; desweiteren werden entsprechende Hinweise auf die Autismus-Spektrum-Störungen gegeben. Verschiedene dysfunktionale Regulationsstrategien werden identifiziert. Neben der generellen Betrachtung von Emotionsdysregulation im Kontext der genannten Störungsbilder wird die Frage, ob und inwiefern es sich bei der Verwendung solch ungünstiger Strategien um einen störungsübergreifenden Faktor handelt, diskutiert.
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, 2011
Humorous stimuli, like jokes and cartoons, are assumed to contain a central incongruity in a spec... more Humorous stimuli, like jokes and cartoons, are assumed to contain a central incongruity in a specific constellation of opposition and overlap that is essential to their humorousness. Many stimuli also contain additional incongruities that the audience usually overlooks, but that may be needed to create the setup for the main incongruity, e.g., animals that talk, space aliens, an Italian, an American, and a Russian sharing a language. Two of the studies described in the present paper investigated the effect of such backgrounded incongruities by removing them from a set of jokes and cartoons and testing how this affects humor processing and appreciation. A third study investigated whether the elimination of a backgrounded incongruity influences the position of a humorous stimulus on the incongruity-resolution and nonsense humor continuum. Methods included computer-based stimulus rating and self-explanations by the participants. The results suggested that backgrounded incongruities inf...
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