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Introduction: The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia, two types of ruminations (intrusive and deliberate) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms for two groups of emergency workers working in Poland: paramedics and emergency call centre operators. Material and methods: The research project was conducted the Wielkopolskie voivodship in Poland. The participants were paramedics (n = 72; 54 men, 18 women) and dispatchers (n = 66; 35 men, 31 women). The following Polish versions of standardized tools were used: the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), and the Event Related Rumination Inventory (ERRI). Results: Analysis of the correlation with Spearman's test demonstrated a statistically significant relationship in both groups between the symptoms of PTSD and ruminations and alexithymia and intrusive ruminations. The correlation between intrusive ruminations and PTSD was stronger for the paramedic group. Also, in the paramedic group, ruminations acted as a mediator for the relation of alexithymia and the intensity of post-traumatic stress. Conclusions: The results of the study provide some evidence that paramedics present more PTSD symptoms than emergency call centre operators. The important individual features which increase PTSD are emotional-cognitive aspects of mental processing: ruminations and alexithymia. The paramedics' direct participation in traumatic events is more overloading for them than the indirect participation in traumatic events for dispatchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge of children with a mild intellectual disability (ID) is less complex and poorer than that of their peers in the intellectual norm (IN). The aim of this study was to characterize knowledge about anger in children with mild intellectual disabilities. The study used the authoring tool to measure children’s knowledge of emotions, including anger. This tool facilitated the exploration of the cognitive representation of the basic emotions available in three codes (which perform the functions of perception, expression, and understanding) and the interconnections between them. Children in the intellectual norm (N = 30) and children with mild intellectual disabilities (N = 30) participated in the study. The results mainly indicated differences in how anger was understood by particular groups, to the detriment of children with a disability. The results were largely determined by the child’s level of organization of knowledge about anger and accompanying mental operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychological burden of the COVID-19 pandemic may have a lasting effect on emotional well-being of healthcare workers. Medical personnel working at the time of the pandemic may experience elevated occupational stress due to the uncontrollability of the virus, high perceived risk of infection, poor understanding of the novel virus transmission routes and unavailability of effective antiviral agents. This study used path analysis to analyze the relationship between stress and alexithymia, emotional processing and negative/positive affect in healthcare workers. The sample included 167 nurses, 65 physicians and 53 paramedics. Sixty-two (21.75 %) respondents worked in COVID-19-designated hospitals. Respondents were administered the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale, Emotional Processing Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The model showed excellent fit indices (χ² (2)=2.642, p=0.267; CFI=0.999, RMSEA=0.034, SRMR=0.015). Multiple group path analysis demonstrated physicians differed from nurses and paramedics at the model level (X² diff (7)=14.155, p<0.05 and X² diff (7)=18.642, p<0.01, respectively). The relationship between alexithymia and emotional processing was stronger in nurses than in physicians (difference in beta=0.27; p<0.05). Individual path χ2 tests also revealed significantly different paths across these groups. The results of the study may be used to develop evidence-based intervention programs promoting healthcare workers’ mental health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the stress outcomes in health-care staff working during the COVID-19 pandemic and to explore the role of coping in the relationship between stress outcomes and mental health dimensions with Preacher & Hayes's mediation analysis.Subjects and Methods: One hundred seventy participants including physicians (n = 41; 24.1%), nurses (n = 114, 67.1%), and paramedics (n = 15, 8.8%) with a mean age of 37.69 ± 12.23 years and an average seniority of 14.40 ± 12.32 years were administered the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), the Emotional Processing Scale, and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The data were analyzed by estimation of simple correlation coefficients and a Preacher and Hayes's mediation procedure.Results: Participants reported elevated levels of stress (7-8 sten on the sten scale developed for the PSS-10 questionnaire). Statistically significant differences in the stress levels between nurses, paramedics, and physicians could not be determined. In contrast, significant association between mental health outcomes and the occupational category could not be found.Conclusion: Our observations support the assumption about a controlling role of coping in the relationship between work-related stress, alexithymia, emotional processing loneliness and positive/negative affect in medical staff working amid pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The study aimed to investigate the psychosocial predictors of bruxism. The association of various psychosocial factors such as alexithymia, emotional processing, state and trait anxiety, and stress with awake bruxism was analysed. Methods. The study involved 52 volunteers diagnosed with awake bruxism. The toolkit that was used included the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Emotional Processing Scale (EPS), the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), and the State- and Trait-Anxiety Inventory (STAI), with independent individual psychological diagnoses being made for every patient. The results were statistically analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 24. Results. The obtained data clearly show that psychological traits—both permanent dispositions (e.g., state anxiety and alexithymia) and temporary states (e.g., trait anxiety, emotional processing deficits, and psychological stress)—are significant determinants of awake bruxism. The percentage of explained variance indicates the presence of other factors as well. Conclusions. Psychosocial factors such as state anxiety and trait anxiety, alexithymia, and perceived stress are as important as somatic causes in the occurrence and maintenance of awake bruxism. The profile of the obtained data suggests the possibility of preventing or minimizing the symptoms of awake bruxism through properly constructed psychoprophylactic interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the link between emotions and art has an established place in the humanities. What attracts interest is, to equal degrees, the emotions experienced by both creators and the audience and the symbolic forms of emotion representation present in artistic realisations. Five independent theoretical models of emotion are currently discussed in psychology. The article is a creative attempt to explore various ways of representing emotions in works of art, consistent with the assumptions of these models. This suggests new ways of interpreting a work of art as a vehicle of emotional contents that go beyond elementary aesthetic experiences, organised from biologically conditioned responses to culturally developed symbols. These links have been illustrated in the works of British artist Damien Hirst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental study was conducted to examine whether simultaneous interpreters are affected by the speaker's emotions. To this end, two measures of emotion were used: galvanic skin response (GSR) as a marker of emotional arousal, and SUPIN - the Polish adaptation of PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). A group of interpreters with Polish as their A language and English as their B language (N = 20) took part in the experiment. They were asked to simultaneously interpret two speeches (recordings accompanied by video) from Polish into English: a neutral speech and an emotional speech. The results show that the interpreters are indeed affected by the speaker's emotions, which is reflected in both a greater galvanic skin response and higher SUPIN scores for the emotional speech, when compared to the neutral speech and baseline values. The results may shed new light on the importance of emotion processing in simultaneous interpreting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to characterize the knowledge about the joy in children with mild intellectual disability. The premises relating to mental functioning of these children suggest that this knowledge is poorer and less complex than the knowledge of their peers in the intellectual norm. The study used the authoring tool to measure children's knowledge of emotions including the joy. This tool takes into account the cognitive representation of the basic emotions available in three codes: image, verbal, semantic and interconnection between the codes - perception, symbolization and conceptualization which perform the functions of perception, expression and understanding. The study included children with the intellectual norm (N = 30) and children with mild intellectual disability (N = 30). The obtained results mainly indicate the differences in how the happiness is understood by particular groups, to the detriment of children with disability. The character of the results is largely determined by the level of organization of knowledge about the joy and accompanying mental operations. The results will be discussed, among others, in the context of the adjustment of the programs of lasting increase of happiness for people with intellectual disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents state of art in the area of emotion studies. It is stressed that emotions are multicomponent processes including neural, expression, subjective and social elements. We have tried to show that synchronization and coordination of these elements from elementary through intermediate to the most complex level may be understood in terms of emergent processes. Manifestations of emergence may be observed both in social aspects of emotions, as well as subjective and expression ones. Although the idea of emergent processes was not explicitly used by contributors of this volume, the traces of it are present in their papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to answer the question whether the words 'zaskoczenie' [phon. zaskɔˈʧ̑ɛ̃ɲɛ]- 'surprise' and 'zdziwienie' [phon. ʑʥ̑iˈvjɛ̇̃ɲɛ]- 'astonishment', which are treated in the Polish language as synonyms, possess a fixed pattern of application, and whether the colloquial context of using these words differs in terms of its emotional valence. The theoretical background for this investigation was the triadic approach to language cognition that includes perception, conceptualization and symbolization, and corresponding to this approach concept of mental representation of emotions. The obtained results have shown that people tend to use the word 'zaskoczenie' to describe emotions that occur in positive situations, whereas the word 'zdziwienie' is more frequently applied in negative situations. The observed emotive connotation of the investigated words has been explained by the rules of phonetic symbolism and implicative meaning of the words preserved in the popular/colloquial understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was aimed at validating the Polish version of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Form (TEIQue-SF). Our findings confirm the reliability and validity of the scale. With respect to reliability, internal consistency coefficients of the TEIQue-SF were comparable to those obtained using the original English version. The evidence of the validity of the TEIQue-SF came from the pattern of relations with the other self-report measure of EI, personality measures, as well as affective and social correlates. We demonstrated that the TEIQue-SF score correlated positively with scores on the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (INTE) (Jaworowska & Matczak, 2001). The TEIQue- SF score correlated negatively with Neuroticism and positively with Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. In addition, scores on the TEIQue-SF were related to dispositional affect, i.e., correlated positively with positive affectivity and negatively with negative affectivity. The TEIQue-SF score correlated positively with social competencies as measured with the Social Competencies Questionnaire (Matczak, 2001). We also found that trait EI, as measured with the TEIQue-SF, was positively related to the richness of one's supportive social network and this relationship remained statistically significant even after controlling for Big Five variance. We also demonstrated that scoring on the TEIQue-SF was positively related to satisfaction with life and negatively related to perceived stress and these relationships remained significant, even after controlling for positive and negative affectivity. Taken together, these findings suggest that the Polish version of the TEIQue-SF is a reliable and valid measure that inherits the network of associations both from the original version of the TEIQue-SF and the full form of the Polish TEIQue (Wytykowska & Petrides, 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional intelligence, psychological gender, work engagement, and masculinity of the national culture as predictors of women's experienced success in a male work environment are analyzed. Bank employees in Poland (N=39), Romania (N=48) and Austria (N=65) participated in this cross-national study. Work engagement and emotional intelligence were significantly related to experienced success. A significant relationship was also found between masculine psychological gender and success irrespective of biological sex. Masculine women also declared higher levels of success in their banking careers than feminine women. Women from countries differing in masculinity of their natural culture manifested different levels of career success and Romanian women declared the highest level of success. Both psychological gender and culture may be considered as determinants of career success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychological burden of the COVID-19 pandemic may have a lasting effect on emotional well-being of healthcare workers. Medical personnel working at the time of the pandemic may experience elevated occupational stress due to the uncontrollability of the virus, high perceived risk of infection, poor understanding of the novel virus transmission routes and unavailability of effective antiviral agents. This study used path analysis to analyze the relationship between stress and alexithymia, emotional processing and negative/positive affect in healthcare workers. The sample included 167 nurses, 65 physicians and 53 paramedics. Sixty-two (21.75 %) respondents worked in COVID-19-designated hospitals. Respondents were administered the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale, Emotional Processing Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The model showed excellent fit indices (χ 2 (2)=2.642, p=0.267; CFI=0.999, RMSEA=0.034, SRMR=0.015). Multiple group path analysis demonstrated physicians differed from nurses and paramedics at the model level (X 2 diff (7)=14.155, p<0.05 and X 2 diff (7)=18.642, p<0.01, respectively). The relationship between alexithymia and emotional processing was stronger in nurses than in physicians (difference in beta=0.27; p<0.05). Individual path χ 2 tests also revealed significantly different paths across these groups. The results of the study may be used to develop evidence-based intervention programs promoting healthcare workers' mental health and well-being., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© American Federation for Medical Research 2022. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Background: Due to the nature of their work, paramedics face an increased risk of developing a post-traumatic stress disorder. The main goal of this research project was to point out specific correlates of post-traumatic stress. The authors decided to approach that issue from the perspective of emotional-cognitive deficits and resources, such as alexithymia, rumination and coping with stress., Material and Methods: The authors conducted 3 independent research projects in the first half of the year 2017 in the Wielkopolskie voivodship, that included paramedics. In each one of them, they estimated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms using The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R). Additionally, in the first study the authors used alexthymia scale, Polish verion of Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), in the second - rumination questionnaire, in the third - coping with stress measured with Inventory for Measuring Coping with Stress Mini-COPE ., Results: The analyses demonstrate a relationship between PTSD symptoms and both alexithymia and rumination. There was not any significant relationship between coping strategies and PTSD. The mediation analysis results prove the role of intrusion as a mediator in a relationship between hyperarousal and avoidance. Individuals with PTSD demonstrate high avoidance for situations similar to the original traumatic event because high hyperarousal increases the risk of intrusion., Conclusions: More than a half of paramedics demonstrated post-traumatic stress symptoms, which most likely is a prognosis factor for future development of PTSD among them. The emotional-cognitive deficits correlated with traumatic stress symptoms. Resources such as coping strategies were not sufficient enough mechanisms for coping with traumatic stress. Post-traumatic stress disorder may be seen as a dynamic sequence. The nature of paramedics work entails the risk for experiencing complex and/or secondary trauma, which represent the phenomena that should be further examined. Med Pr. 2019;70(1):53-66., (This work is available in Open Access model and licensed under a CC BY-NC 3.0 PL license.)