The purpose of this research is to understand how the emotions of people with different mental health concerns (e.g., people with schizophrenia, people with major depressive disorder) differ from individuals without mental health concerns. A large body of literature suggests that people with mental illnesses have emotional abnormalities compared to healthy individuals, but a number of these abnormalities are not well understood. For example, often people with schizophrenia report on questionnaires that they experience fewer pleasant emotions when talking with other people, but some evidence suggests these individuals report a similar amount of pleasant emotion when they are actually engaged in a pleasant activity. Thus, it is unclear the extent to which reports of emotional abnormalities extend to a more real-world setting. In the tasks in the current proposal, participants will engage in a series of tasks designed to assess their emotional functioning. These tasks involve viewing emotional stimuli on the computer, engaging in social interactions, and consuming small amounts of food. In all tasks, participants will make ratings of their experiences of pleasure (and displeasure). We will then compare the experiences of patient groups to those of healthy individuals to test how emotional ratings might differ across these tasks.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
46
Participants will engage in a social interaction with another person
Participants will be offered food stuffs to eat/drink
Social Ecology 1
Irvine, California, United States
Social Anhedonia Scale
measures social anhedonia
Time frame: 1 day
Physical Anhedonia Scale
measures physical anhedonia
Time frame: 1 day
EEG activity
physiological parameter
Time frame: 1 day
Verbal behavioral rating
how many words are spoken throughout the task
Time frame: 1 day
Non-verbal behavioral rating
how many gestures are made throughout the task
Time frame: 1 day
International Personality Item Pool questionnaires
measure of personality
Time frame: 1 day
Following Affective States test
questionnaire re: how much participants follow or ignore their emotions
Time frame: 1 day
AMNART
measure of verbal IQ
Time frame: 1 day
MMSE
measure of mental status
Time frame: 1 day
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