Encephale
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According to a thesis based on the idea of an influence of cognitions in the structuring of internal reality, emotional awareness, ie the capacity of representing your own emotional experience and that of others, is a cognitive process that goes into maturation. Defining this concept, Lane and Schwartz present a cognitivo-developmental model in five stages of the processes of symbolization, accounting for the differences in levels of emotional awareness observed in individuals. The organization of these cognitive processes would thus be structured in well differentiated stages, in which the development of the emotions would be inseparable from the development of ego and of the relation to others. ⋯ Furthermore, the study of the reliability made it possible to highlight excellent intra-class correlation coefficients (r=0.993). The French version of the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale thus appears to be valid and accurate and should allow the study of levels of emotional awareness on psychopathology. It is about an easily acceptable and simple questionnaire of use in varied clinical circumstances.
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Schizophrenic patients are known to feature alterations in their cognitive performances, principally in executive functions, attention and memory. In this last domain, studies have shown a relatively severe and global deficit, which can be assessed in chronic and first episode patients. It seems that the memory dysfunction is independent of age and intellectual level, but does correlate with negative psychopathology and global functioning. ⋯ Further analyses taking into account group differences on attention suggest that the impairment featured by schizophrenic patients in the domain of verbal memory strongly relies on an attentional deficit. These results are discussed according to the existing literature and methodological limitations. Clinical implications are also discussed.
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The psychobiological model of personality developed by Cloninger, including four dimensions of temperament and three dimensions of character, allows to explore personality factors associated with depressive disorders. The three main dimensions of temperament are Novelty Seeking (NS), ie the tendency towards excitement in response to novel or rewarding stimuli, Harm Avoidance (HA) hypothesized to represent the tendency to respond intensely to signals of adverse stimuli, and Reward Dependence reflecting the tendency to respond intensely to signals of reward and to maintain behavior previously associated with reward. These personality traits are hypothetically related to underlying neurotransmetter systems (especially NS to dopaminergic function and HA to serotonergic function). ⋯ More specifically, correlations have been obtained between platelet serotonergic markers (5-HT2a receptors) and Harm Avoidance scores also in depressed patients. In conclusion, Harm Avoidance seems to be a vulnerability factor or at least an associated factor to depressive disorders. This temperament dimension is supposed to be highly heritable, and to be linked to the serotonergic system variations.
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Most instruments focussing on hypochondriasis symptoms do not have for goal to assess beliefs specifically. Instead, these instruments are used to measure specific behaviors. To assess underlying beliefs with these kinds of instruments, you have to extract false beliefs by deduction. ⋯ These results show that general health beliefs and false beliefs associated to worry about health are more often present in high worriers than in moderate worriers. The GHBQ and the WW-H allow psychologists, physicians and psychiatrists to do a quicker and more exhaustive evaluation of general health beliefs and false beliefs associated to worry about health, in less costs. These questionnaires will improve the chances of success of the hypochondriasis' treatment by helping clinicians to detect and correct false beliefs more easily.
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The term alexithymia is derived from the Greek and means no words for feeling and is used to describe a personality trait characterized by the inability to experience and express emotion. Alexithymia is a relevant feature in subjects with eating disorders. The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) is the more used scale to assess alexithymia. ⋯ Emotional and cognitive avoidance could be linked to the fact that our subjects wanted to loose weight and exhibited restrain eating. A positive correlation between restrain eating and alexithymia was previously reported. The last factor lack of interest in psychological comprehension would constitute an actual dimension of alexithymia: former studies found a negative correlation between alexithymia and psychologically oriented thinking.