Joan Welkowitz’s research while affiliated with New York University and other places

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Publications (76)


Relationships among Facial, Prosodic, and Lexical Channels of Emotional Perceptual Processing
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  • Full-text available

August 2010

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410 Reads

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99 Citations

Joan C. Borod

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Lawrence H. Pick

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Susan Hall

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[...]

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Matthias Tabert

This study was designed to address the issue of whether there is a general processor for the perception of emotion or whether there are separate processors. We examined the relationships among three channels of emotional communication in 100 healthy right-handed adult males and females. The channels were facial, prosodic/intonational, and lexical/verbal; both identification and discrimination tasks of emotional perception were utilised. Statistical analyses controlled for nonemotional perceptual factors and subject characteristics (i.e. demographic and general cognitive). For identification, multiple significant correlations were found among the channels. For discrimination, fewer correlations were significant. Overall, these results provide support for the notion of a general processor for emotional perceptual identification in normal adult subjects.

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Changes in Posed Facial Expression of Emotion Across the Adult Life Span

October 2004

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76 Reads

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47 Citations

Experimental Aging Research

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the facial expression of emotion across the adult life span. Two positive and two negative emotional expressions were posed by 30 young (21 to 39 years), 30 middle-aged (40 to 59 years), and 30 older (60 to 81 years) healthy, right-handed women. Photographs of the four emotional expressions were rated by independent judges for intensity, accuracy, and confidence. Special features of this study were the use of a neutral face as a nonemotional control, as well as careful cognitive and affective screening procedures for posers and judges. Overall, the expressions of older posers were rated as significantly less accurate and with significantly less confidence than those of younger posers. Although the neutral faces of older posers were rated as significantly more intense than those of younger posers, there were no significant age-related intensity differences for positive and negative emotions. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of aging.


Figure 1. Percent Change of IGF-I from Visit 1 to Visit 2
Variability and Reliability of Single Serum IGF-I Measurements: Impact on Determining Predictability of Risk Ratios in Disease Development

June 2004

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42 Reads

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93 Citations

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism

In recent years, a number of investigators have studied the relationship between IGF-I and risk of developing cancer, diabetes or cardiovascular disease. Upper tertile, quartile, and quintile IGF-Is were associated with higher risk of developing cancer, and lowest quartile with cardiac disease and diabetes. As part of a study to correlate serum IGF-Is and growth hormone dynamics in aging, we measured fasting serum IGF-I at baseline and two weeks later in a group of 84 normal volunteers between the ages of 50 and 90 years. Although the correlation between the two IGF-Is was high (r=0.922; p<0.0001) there were substantial differences between the two IGF-I values ranging from -36.25 to +38.24% between individual IGF-I values at the two blood draws and a significant difference between the mean IGF-Is at visits I and 2 (mean 120.28+/-53.5 vs. 114.95+/-50.03; p=0.03). When considered in quartiles, IGF-I changed from one quartile to another in 34/84 (40.5%) of the volunteers. When the group was divided in halves, tertiles,quartiles, or quintiles there was an increasing number of subjects who changed from one subdivision to another as the number of gradations increased. These results suggest that the predictive outcomes of earlier studies that used single IGF-I samples for analysis of risk ratios according to tertiles, quartiles, or quintiles could have been different if a second IGF-I was used to establish the risk ratio. The results also suggest that variability in IGF-I should be taken into account when designing such studies.


Panic and Comorbid Anxiety Symptoms in a National Anxiety Screening Sample: Implications for Clinical Interventions

April 2004

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12 Reads

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7 Citations

Psychotherapy Theory Research Practice Training

Questionnaire data from 2,033 participants in the National Anxiety Disorders Screening Day sample were used to assess the presence of panic and comorbid anxiety problems. These participants were selected from more than 15,000 attendees on the basis of never having received treatment for a psychiatric disorder and meeting screening criteria for panic disorder. With each comorbid anxiety problem (generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, social phobia, and obsessive–compulsive disorder), participants had a corresponding increase in interference in daily living as well as readiness to seek treatment. The addition of generalized anxiety or depression with panic symptoms resulted in marked increases in interference scores. Clinical treatment implications for panic disorder are discussed in terms of the effects of comorbid anxiety problems.


Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Comorbid Anxiety Problems in a National Anxiety Screening Sample

September 2000

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41 Reads

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57 Citations

Journal of Anxiety Disorders

Questionnaire data were obtained from 5867 participants attending a national anxiety screening program. These participants were selected from more than 15,000 respondents on the basis of never having received treatment for a mental health problem. A screening instrument was designed to assess five anxiety disorders (obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder). The present study focused on those participants meeting full or partial screening criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder (n = 3212), with those not meeting criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder (n = 2655) serving as a comparison group. Significant relationships were found between questionnaire scores on both interference with daily living, readiness for treatment, and the number of comorbid anxiety problems. These findings shed light on the extent to which undiagnosed and untreated persons with obsessional or compulsive symptoms, or both, are experiencing, as well as the factors that may lead them to seek formal psychiatric or psychological treatment.


Table 1 Characteristics of the Right Brain-Damaged Participants Case Lesion 
Figure 2. Mean appropriateness ratings and standard errors (error bars) for three pragmatic features for the positive monologues as a function of participant group and condition, testing the facilitation effect. RBDs = right brain-damaged patients; LBDs = left brain-damaged patients; NCs = normal controls. 4 This pattern of results also held for conciseness, although the univariate test on the three-way interaction failed to reach significance , F(2, 39) = 2.90, MSE = 0.479, p = .067. Similar to the pragmatic features displayed in Figure 2, for the positive monologues , the RBD group was rated as more appropriate in the nonemotional (M -3.27 ± 0.67) than the emotional (M = 2.95 ± 1.05) condition, whereas the LED group was rated as more appropriate in the emotional (M — 3.13 ± 0.92) than the nonemotional (M = 3.00 ± 0.78) condition. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  
Table 3 Description of the Pragmatic Features and Rating Scale Values Scale endpoints 
Figure 3. Mean appropriateness ratings and standard errors (error bars) for three pragmatic features for the negative monologues as a function of participant group and condition, testing the facilitation effect. RBDs = right brain-damaged patients; LBDs = left brain-damaged patients; NCs = normal controls.
Verbal Pragmatics Following Unilateral Stroke: Emotional Content and Valence

January 2000

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473 Reads

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69 Citations

Neuropsychology

Verbal pragmatic aspects of discourse production were examined in 16 right brain-damaged (RBD), 16 left brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 normal control right-handed adults. The facilitation effect of emotional content, valence hypothesis, and relationship between pragmatics and emotion were evaluated. Participants produced monologues while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Transcribed monologues were rated for appropriateness on 6 pragmatic features: conciseness, lexical selection, quantity, relevancy, specificity, and topic maintenance. Overall, brain-damaged groups were rated as significantly less appropriate than normals. Consistent with the facilitation effect, emotional content enhanced pragmatic performance of LBD aphasic participants yet suppressed performance of RBD participants. Contrary to the valence hypothesis, RBD participants were more impaired for positive emotions and LBD participants for negative emotions. Pragmatic appropriateness was not strongly correlated with a measure of emotional intensity.


Emotional versus nonemotional lexical perception in patients with right and left brain damage

November 1999

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54 Reads

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38 Citations

Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology

This study examined lexical emotional perception in patients with unilateral brain damage. Hypotheses pertaining to laterality and emotion were tested. More specifically, we were interested in whether the right hemisphere is dominant for verbally-presented emotion. In addition, we examined whether emotional content improves the performance of patients with left brain damage (LBD) and language deficits. Subjects were 11 patients with right brain damage (RBD), 10 patients with LBD, and 15 normal control adults. The subject groups did not differ significantly on demographic or basic cognitive variables; the patient groups were similar on neurologic variables. Parallel emotional experimental and nonemotional control tasks included word identification (or recognition), sentence identification, and word discrimination. There were eight emotional categories (e.g., happiness) and eight nonemotional categories (e.g., vision). A significant interaction among Group, Condition, and Task revealed that patients with RBD were significantly impaired relative to patients with LBD and normals within the emotional condition, particularly for the identification tasks. Furthermore, the performance of patients with LBD and language deficits was improved by emotional content for the sentence identification task. These findings suggest that the right hemisphere has a unique contribution in the identification of lexical emotional stimuli. Implications for rehabilitation of patients with LBD and language deficits and patients with RBD by means of emotion-based strategies are discussed.


Emotional Versus Nonemotional Lexical Perception in Patients With Right and Left Brain Damage

October 1999

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28 Reads

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5 Citations

Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology

Objective: This study examined lexical emotional perception in patients with unilateral brain damage. Background: Hypotheses pertaining to laterality and emotion were tested. More specifically, we were interested in whether the right hemisphere is dominant for verbally-presented emotion. In addition, we examined whether emotional content improves the performance of patients with left brain damage (LBD) and language deficits. Method: Subjects were 11 patients with right brain damage (RBD), 10 patients with LBD, and 15 normal control adults. The subject groups did not differ significantly on demographic or basic cognitive variables; the patient groups were similar on neurologic variables. Parallel emotional experimental and nonemotional control tasks included word identification (or recognition), sentence identification, and word discrimination. There were eight emotional categories (e.g., happiness) and eight nonemotional categories (e.g., vision). Results: A significant interaction among Group, Condition, and Task revealed that patients with RBD were significantly impaired relative to patients with LBD and normals within the emotional condition, particularly for the identification tasks. Furthermore, the performance of patients with LBD and language deficits was improved by emotional content for the sentence identification task. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the right hemisphere has a unique contribution in the identification of lexical emotional stimuli. Implications for rehabilitation of patients with LBD and language deficits and patients with RBD by means of emotion-based strategies are discussed. (C) 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.


Psychometric Aspects of Verbal Pragmatic Ratings

August 1999

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133 Reads

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14 Citations

Brain and Language

This study examined the psychometric aspects of a verbal pragmatic rating scale. The scale contained six pragmatic features (i.e., Conciseness, Lexical Selection, Quantity, Relevancy, Specificity, and Topic Maintenance) based on Grice's cooperative principles. Fifteen right brain-damaged (RBD), 15 left brain-damaged (LBD), and 16 healthy normal control (NC) right-handed adult participants produced narratives while recollecting emotional and nonemotional experiences. Naive raters evaluated each pragmatic feature for appropriateness on a 5-point Likert scale. When reliability was examined, the overall internal consistency of the pragmatic scale was extremely high (alpha =.96). Factor analysis was conducted to examine the theoretical relations among the six pragmatic features. Three meaningful factors involving discourse content, conceptual unity, and parsimony were identified. Findings are discussed in light of Grice's model and the construct validity of the scale.



Citations (49)


... Two hypotheses may elucidate this phenomenon. The first is the Right-Hemisphere Hypothesis (RHH) of emotional perception lateralization, which asserts that the right hemisphere is predominantly involved all emotions, regardless of their valence (Borod et al., 1998;2002;Gainotti, 2012). The second hypothesis, the Valence-Specific Hypothesis (VSH), proposes that each hemisphere is specialized for processing emotions of specific valence: negative or avoidance-related stimuli are lateralized to the right hemisphere, while positive or approach-related stimuli are lateralized to the left (Balconi et al., 2015;Craig, 2005;Davidson & Irwin, 1999;Tomarken et al., 1992). ...

Reference:

Integrating behavioral and neurophysiological insights: High trait anxiety enhances observational fear learning
Right Hemisphere Emotional Perception: Evidence Across Multiple Channels

Neuropsychology

... It can be shown that the derivative of the phase function ϕ(t) is the instantaneous frequency [3] as discussed in the Appendix ω = dϕ dt . (6) In addition to the original signal s(t), the need for the complex signal z(t) are as follows [4]: (1) The derivative of the phase function is defined as the instantaneous frequency. ...

2. frequency distributions and graphs
  • Citing Chapter
  • December 1971

... Each member wore a headset that positioned the microphone in front of his/her mouth, and the conversation was recorded on separate channels of a stereophonic taperecorder. The recordings were then processed by a spccialised computer system (Martz & Welkowitz, 1977) to yield the following objective parameters of temporal patterning: thefreqirerzcy arid average dicralion of spenking ticrris, the average durations of vocnlisations, parrses (intrapersonal silences) and switching pnicses (interpersonal silences) and the frequencies of ittterniptive atid noninternrptive sitniiltotleoils speeclt (ISS and NSS, respectively). A turn is defined as the period of time during which one of the participants has the floor. ...

Welmar—Computer Programs to Analyze Dialogic Time Patterns
  • Citing Article
  • October 1977

... The degree to which people rely on or believe information from computers is affected by how much they feel they can trust them or depend upon them. Trust and persuasion are moderated by numerous factors, including the source of the message (Priester and Petty, 1995), the strength of the argument (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), the person being influenced (Eagly and Carli, 1981), and speech characteristics, including speech rate (Woodall and Burgoon, 1984;Smith and Shaffer, 1995), rhythm of speech (Sadd et al., 1978) and the presence of verbal mistakes and hesitations (Erikson et al., 1978;Engstrom, 1994). ...

Judgments of Characteristics of Speakers in a Natural Stress Situation
  • Citing Article
  • August 1978

... However, for all DPICS categories, it will be important to examine normative data in different ethnic groups. Studies have found differences in the length of utterances (Welkowitz, Bond, & Feldstein, 1984) and frequency of utterances (Wheat & Hudson, 1988) between ethnic minority groups and European Americans. Differences in length of utterance (time) required to convey an idea as well as the frequency of utterances (speed of speech) during parent-child interactions may have significant implications for the criteria used to assess skill mastery in PCIT. ...

Conversational Time Patterns of Hawaiian Children as a Function of Ethnicity and Gender
  • Citing Article
  • April 1984

Language and Speech

... Several studies analyzed emotional recognition in female participants only (Malatesta et al., 1987;Moreno et al., 1993). Malatesta et al. (1987) tested the recognition of facial expressions of anger, TA B L E 4 Structural equation modeling (SEM) for mediation of associations with the number of errors when sad images were assigned to neutral category (Sad_SN) and total amygdala (AG), lateral (La), basal (B), accessory basal (AB), and cortical (Co) subnuclei volumes fear, and sadness, in three age groups of adult females. ...

The perception of facial emotion across the adult life span
  • Citing Article
  • July 1993

Developmental Neuropsychology

... Evidence of entrainment has been demonstrated in vowel spectra (Babel 2012); fundamental frequency (Babel & Bulatov 2012); pronunciation (Hay et al. 1999;Pardo 2006); intensity (Natale 1975); voice quality (Sherblom & La Riviere 1987); lexical and syntactic choice (Brennan 1996, Reitter et al. 2007); frequency and duration of pauses (Jaffe & Feldstein 1970); speaking rate (Guitar & Marchinkoski 2001, Bell et al. 2003; response latency (Cappella & Planalp 1981); utterance length (Matarazzo et al. 1968); turn-taking behavior , jokes and laughter (Ranganath et al. 2009). It has been found in many cultures: Hungarian (Kontra & Gosy 1988), Frisian and Dutch (Gorter 1987;Ytsma 1988), Hebrew (Yaeger-Dror 1988), Taiwanese Mandarin (Van den Berg 1986), Japanese (Welkowitz et al. 1984), Cantonese (Feldstein & Crown 1990), and Thai (Beebe 1981). ...

Conversational Time Patterns of Japanese-American Adults and Children in Same and Mixed-Gender Dyads

... Although it is important to understand how often professionals might agree diagnostically on an artificially generated set of symptoms, that reliability may not translate to real practice. Many studies have examined the diagnostic reliability of individual disorders, as well as the criterion validity of each DSM edition (Foster, Rubenstein, Welkowitz, Boksay, & Seeland, 1989), but Editor's Note. John F. Edens, PhD, served as sole action editor for this submission. ...

Clinical assessment of psychiatric consultations in a medical long-term care facility: Interrater reliability for DSM-III diagnostic groups
  • Citing Article
  • September 1989

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry

... Mitrushina (2009) concluded that the MMSE is a useful screening test for cognitive impairment and tracking cognitive change over time, particularly with appropriate demographic corrections. It also has excellent interrater reliability (Foster et al., 1988). ...

Psychiatric assessment in medical long-term care facilities: Reliability of commonly used rating scales
  • Citing Article
  • July 1988

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry