617 results match your criteria: "Swiss Center for Affective Sciences[Affiliation]"

Plasticity of human resilience mechanisms.

Sci Adv

January 2025

Normandie Univ, UNICAEN, PSL Research University, EPHE, INSERM, U1077, CHU de Caen, GIP Cyceron, Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de la Mémoire Humaine, 14000 Caen, France.

The hippocampus's vulnerability to trauma-induced stress can lead to pathophysiological disturbances that precipitate the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The mechanisms of resilience that foster remission and mitigate the adverse effects of stress remain unknown. We analyzed the evolution of hippocampal morphology between 2016/2017 and 2018/2019, as well as the memory control mechanisms crucial for trauma resilience.

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Voice of a woman: influence of interaction partner characteristics on cycle dependent vocal changes in women.

Front Psychol

December 2024

Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany.

Introduction: Research has shown that women's vocal characteristics change during the menstrual cycle. Further, evidence suggests that individuals alter their voices depending on the context, such as when speaking to a highly attractive person, or a person with a different social status. The present study aimed at investigating the degree to which women's voices change depending on the vocal characteristics of the interaction partner, and how any such changes are modulated by the woman's current menstrual cycle phase.

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When social comparison works as a demotivator: Stronger peers mitigate effort levels.

Int J Psychophysiol

December 2024

Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

The present study tested the effect of social comparison on effort-related cardiovascular responses. Specifically, we investigated how effort levels are influenced when individuals compare themselves to significantly better peers versus similar or slightly better peers. 43 participants played five-minute video games while displaying the scores of peers who were similar, slightly better, or significantly better, in addition to a control condition without peer scores.

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Unpacking mentalizing: The roles of age and executive functioning in self-other appraisal and perspective taking.

Q J Exp Psychol (Hove)

January 2025

Developmental Clinical Psychology Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.

Article Synopsis
  • Mentalizing involves understanding oneself and others from different viewpoints; this study investigates how individuals switch between these perspectives.
  • It analyzes 88 adolescents and 163 young adults using the Self Other Switching Task to measure their mental representation flexibility and the influence of age and executive functioning.
  • Findings show that participants were generally quicker to make self-referential attributions, with younger individuals taking longer to switch from self to other perspectives, and better working memory linked to improved perspective switching.
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Many of the complex behaviours of humans involve the production of nonadjacent dependencies between sequence elements, which in part can be generated through the hierarchical organization of sequences. To understand how these structural properties of human behaviours evolved, we can gain valuable insight from studying the sequential behaviours of nonhuman animals. Among the behaviours of nonhuman apes, tool use has been hypothesised to be a domain of behaviour which likely involves hierarchical organization, and may therefore possess nonadjacent dependencies between sequential actions.

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Past research on people's moral judgments about moral dilemmas has revealed a connection between utilitarian judgment and reflective cognitive style. This has traditionally been interpreted as reflection is conducive to utilitarianism. However, recent research shows that the connection between reflective cognitive style and utilitarian judgments holds only when participants are asked whether the utilitarian option is permissible, and disappears when they are asked whether it is recommended.

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Parietofrontal Networks Mediate Contextual Influences in the Appraisal of Pain and Disgust Facial Expressions.

J Neurosci

January 2025

Theory of Pain Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (FPSE), University of Geneva, Geneva 1202, Switzerland.

We appraise other people's emotions by combining multiple sources of information, including somatic facial/body reactions and the surrounding context. Wealthy literature revealed how people take into account contextual information in the interpretation of facial expressions, but the mechanisms mediating such influence still need to be duly investigated. Across two experiments, we mapped the neural representations of distinct (but comparably unpleasant) negative states, pain, and disgust, as conveyed by naturalistic facial expressions or contextual sentences.

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Personal choice shields against affective influences on effort in a "do your best" task: Effects on cardiac response.

Int J Psychophysiol

December 2024

Geneva Motivation Lab, FPSE, Section of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Electronic address:

This experiment (N = 113) tested whether personal choice vs. external assignment of task characteristics moderates the effect of incidental affective stimulation on effort-related cardiovascular response in a "do your best" task context. When participants could choose themselves the color of the stimuli (i.

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Early parental vocal contact in neonatal units: rationale and clinical guidelines for implementation.

Front Neurol

October 2024

Department of Neonatal Medicine, Hautepierre Hospital University Hospital, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France.

This paper aims to present clear and evidence-based proposals for the integration of Early Parental Vocal Contact into the clinical practices of neonatal units. In the first part, we present a comprehensive rationale exploring the ontogenesis of voice perception in both term and preterm newborns that establishes a foundational understanding. This knowledge serves as a crucial starting point for developing evidence-based auditory and multisensory interventions aimed at fostering the developmental trajectory of preterm infants.

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Article Synopsis
  • Perceived social support plays a crucial role in predicting the severity of PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms after experiencing trauma, but gender differences in responses to this support have not been extensively studied.
  • In a study involving 2,483 adults across 39 countries, it was found that females reported higher PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms compared to males, while no significant gender differences in perceived social support were observed.
  • Both male and female participants with low perceived social support experienced greater PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms, with some evidence suggesting that the relationship between perceived social support and PTSD symptoms might be stronger for males.
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Why dogs prefer zoomies to zoom and what it tells us about the importance of in-person meetings for learning and memory.

Cogn Process

October 2024

Tillster, Inc., 5959 Cornerstone Court West #100, San Diego, CA, 92121, USA.

As people commonly observe dog behaviors like the sudden bursts of physical movement colloquially known as "zoomies," and the canine penchant for sticking their nose out of car windows and for sniffing intently in dog parks, it is not surprising that people generally believe dogs learn and communicate by smell. While people generally discount their own olfactory sensitivity and the importance of smell overall, humans also learn and communicate by smell, in some cases even better than dogs. In this article, we discuss why this information exchange matters for learning and memory and why virtual meetings don't pass the sniff test.

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This article discusses how the and the to emotion may serve the future of affective sciences. A particular aim of the article is to show that an appraisal-based componential approach to emotion can help reconcile opposing theories. It begins by contextualizing the evolution of emotion science within the framework of affectivism, acknowledging that the significant epistemological differences between various theories have paradoxically spurred interest in studying emotion across various perspectives and disciplines.

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Background: The present study assessed physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) levels and their motivational and emotional health-related correlates, in outpatients following a cardiovascular rehabilitation (CR) program, and compared these variables with those of a healthy control group.

Methods: The study included 119 participants: 68 CR outpatients (M 57.76 ± 10.

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The energy crisis reshaped energy politics, resulted in energy price surges, increased energy capacity, and large-scale energy-saving campaigns. While an energy demand reduction was observed in Europe, little is known about how the crisis impacted citizens' climate-relevant judgment and decisions. Here we report a preregistered two-wave cross-national study ( = 1040) spanning the winter of 2022/2023 to investigate how support for renewable energy policies, energy literacy, and energy-efficient product choices developed as this crisis unfolded.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists did a big survey with over 59,000 people from 63 countries to understand how people think about climate change!
  • They tested different ways to encourage people to believe in climate change and support actions to help the environment!
  • The study includes lots of information and data that can help others learn more about what influences people's actions on climate change around the world!
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The added value of affective processes for models of human cognition and learning.

Behav Brain Sci

September 2024

Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Campus Biotech, University of Geneva, Geneva,

Building on the affectivism approach, we expand on Binz et al.'s meta-learning research program by highlighting that emotion and other affective phenomena should be key to the modeling of human learning. We illustrate the added value of affective processes for models of learning across multiple domains with a focus on reinforcement learning, knowledge acquisition, and social learning.

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Imaging body-mind crosstalk in young adults.

Int J Clin Health Psychol

September 2024

Faculty of Health Sciences and Sports, Macao Polytechnic University, 999078, Macao, China.

Objective: There is evidence that complex relationships exist between motor functions, brain structure, and cognitive functions, particularly in the aging population. However, whether such relationships observed in older adults could extend to other age groups (e.g.

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Theories and hypotheses: The forgotten plane of the multiverse.

Int J Psychophysiol

November 2024

Geneva Motivation Lab, FPSE, Section of Psychology, University of Geneva, 40, Bd du Pont-d'Arve, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Electronic address:

Multiverse analyses-the systematic examination of the effects of decisions that researchers can take over the course of a research project-became more common in recent psychophysiological research. However, multiverse analyses in psychophysiology almost exclusively focus on methodological and statistical decisions that can have a considerable impact on the findings. The role of the conceptual multiverse regarding theory-related research decisions is largely ignored.

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Metaphorical sentences are assumed to be related to more costly processes than their literal counterparts. However, given their frequent use in our daily lives, metaphorical sentences "must come with a benefit" (Noveck et al. Metaphor Symb 16:109-121.

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Background: The experimental evaluation of young children's socio-emotional abilities is limited by the lack of existing specific measures to assess this population and by the relative difficulty for researchers to adapt measures designed for the general population.

Methods: This study examined six early social-emotional abilities in 86 typically developing children aged 1 to 3 years using an eye-tracking-based experimental paradigm that combined visual preference tasks adapted from pre-existing infant studies.

Objectives: The aim of this study is to obtain developmental norms in six early social-emotional abilities in typical children aged 1 to 3 years that would be promising for an understanding of disorders of mental development.

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Background/objectives: With the rising ubiquity of digital media and screens in everyday life, toddlers are increasingly exposed to different screens from an early age (i.e., television, computer, tablet, phone).

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Comparing competing characterizations suggests there might be more than one type of interest.

Sci Rep

August 2024

Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Campus Biotech, 9 Chemin des Mines, 1202, Geneva, Switzerland.

Although there is general consensus concerning the importance and function of interest in our daily lives, there is little agreement about its nature. Four studies of increasing ecological validity (total N = 993) were carried out to compare two different characterizations of interest in terms of the key appraisals involved. The findings indicate that while a two-appraisal model is suitable to explain the interest we can feel towards simple stimuli, a more complex model may better capture the nature of interest in the real world.

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Childhood maltreatment is linked to larger preferred interpersonal distances towards friends and strangers across the globe.

Transl Psychiatry

August 2024

Department of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine, University Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is thought to be associated with altered responses to social stimuli and interpersonal signals. However, limited evidence exists that CM is linked to larger comfortable interpersonal distance (CID) - the physical distance humans prefer towards others during social interactions. However, no previous study has investigated this association in a comprehensive sample, yielding sufficient statistical power.

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Baby schema refers to physical features perceived as cute, known to trigger attention, induce positive emotions, and prompt social interactions. Given the reduced visual attention to social stimuli observed in individuals on the autism spectrum, the current study examines whether the sensitivity to baby schema is also affected. We expected that the looking time towards cute-featured stimuli would vary with symptom severity levels and would be associated with social affect.

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Unlabelled: This study examined intraindividual change in satisfaction with life (SWL) in Swiss older adults before, during, and after COVID-19. It assessed whether predictors of adaptation influenced SWL stability, and whether this differed depending on adverse childhood experiences (ACE). SWL was assessed eight times over a 21-month period.

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