Conscious knowledge of CS-UCS contingency information affects extinction retrieval of conditioned disgust responses: Findings from an online de novo disgust conditioning task

Objective: The present study aimed to establish and develop an online de novo conditioning paradigm for the measurement of conditioned disgust responses. We further explored the effects of explicit instructions about the CS-UCS contingency on extinction learning and retrieval of conditioned disgust responses. Method: The study included a sample of 115 healthy participants. Geometric figures served as conditioned stimuli (CS) and disgust-evoking pictures as unconditioned stimuli (UCS). During disgust conditioning, the CS+ was paired with the UCS (66% reinforcement) and the CS- remained unpaired; during extinction and retrieval, no UCS was presented. Half of the participants (n = 54) received instructions prior to the disgust extinction stating that the UCS will not be presented anymore. 1-2 days or 7-8 days later participants performed a retrieval test. CS-UCS contingency, disgust and valence ratings were used as dependent measures. Results: Successful acquisition of conditioned disgust response was observed on the level of CS-UCS contingency, disgust and valence ratings. While some decline in valence and disgust ratings during the extinction stage was observed, contingency instructions did not significantly affect extinction performance. Retrieval one week later revealed that contingency instructions increased the discrimination of the CSs. Conclusions: Extinction of conditioned disgust responses is not affected by explicit knowledge of the CS-UCS contingencies. However, contingency instructions prior to extinction seem to have a detrimental effect on long-term extinction retrieval. (AU)

About Disgust: a brief introduction

The use of repulsive substances, often consisting of human or animal excrement, to treat numerous diseases was quite common in primitive and ar-chaic cultures. Historical research has given this phenomenon the name of Dreck Apotheke or "excremental pharmacopoeia",and it is precisely this term that is the title of a medical text published in 1699 by a German physician, Christian Franz Paullini: Heylsame Dreck-Apotheke (Salubrious excremental pharmacopoeia). This paper aims to explain, to the extent possible, the inopportune proposal of treating human diseases using feces and urine in an age when most doctors were against said doctrine

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Salubrious disgust: excrement therapy in Eighteenth-century Medicine

The use of repulsive substances, often consisting of human or animal excrement, to treat numerous diseases was quite common in primitive and ar-chaic cultures. Historical research has given this phenomenon the name of Dreck Apotheke or "excremental pharmacopoeia", and it is precisely this term that is the title of a medical text published in 1699 by a German physician, Christian Franz Paullini: Heylsame Dreck-Apotheke (Salubrious excremental pharmacopoeia). This paper aims to explain, to the extent possible, the inopportune proposal of treating human diseases using feces and urine in an age when most doctors were against said doctrine

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Blood and pollution: visualisations of menstrual flow in contemporary art

Nowadays menstrual blood is the only kind that neo-capitalist patriarchal decorum will not tolerate. At a time when the visual industry has successfully monetarised the "seduction of blood", the representation of this type of female fluid remains completely barred and relegated to invisibility. The identification of menstrual blood with pollution has become a hegemonic cultural construct that seeks to safeguard the ideals of purity and whiteness through which women's bodies are socially coded. Contemporary artistic practice has reacted against this state of affairs by turning this cultural dirtiness into a political tool with which to expand the limits of female body experience. From the early 1970s to the present, a number of women artists have made crucial contributions to this field of work known as menstrual art, in which the primary aim has been to formulate an alternative image of periods that could put women back in control of the most intimate aspects of their physical and emotional identity

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Face transplantation and the anatomy of facelessness

Heather Laine Talley locates the still-experimental technique of face transplantation within a contemporary 'disfigurement imaginary' that equates facial difference with social death. This paper extends Talley's account by considering the ideological and affective components of 'facelessness' as a shared cultural idea. The first part of the paper argues that 'facelessness' has a history that links the stigma of facial war injuries in early twentieth century Europe to current assumptions about the horror of disfigurement. The second part of the paper uses Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1959) to examine the aesthetics of horror and the uses of cinematic disgust. The paper concludes with a discussion of the 'framing' or management of disgust in the contexts of transplant medicine and anatomical illustration. Face transplantation, it is argued, presents a particular challenge to the 'spare parts' model that has dominated the biomedical approach to organ transfer

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The faces of disgust. Death masks of famous and infamous

Human faces are not usually objects of disgust. However, this can be diffuse if there are some kind of malformations or if they are masks of dead people. Corpses disgust us not only by reminding us of our mortal condition, but also by their association with immoral acts. This article proposes to analyze the relationship between the bodies and faces of corpses and their reaction with physical and moral disgust

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"A Weight of Carrion Flesh": Measuring Disgust, Shakespearean Mimesis

The present article argues that a Shakespearean poetics of disgust unveils a deeper concern in his work with the moral and social limits of the emotions. The essay first looks into a well-known treatise on physiology and psychology, Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in Generall (1601, 1604), in relation to Renaissance theories of poetry and Shakespeare’s figurations of disgust in Hamlet (1601), King Lear (1604), The Winter’s Tale(1611) and Timon of Athens (1607). Its aim is to explore the capacity of metaphors and tropes, in both medical and poetic discourse, to test affective intensity, as measuring the passions was considered a necessary condition for moral and social well-being. In Shakespeare’s plays the moral dimension of disgust is often put to question by the aesthetic element inherent in poetic mimesis, which tends to depict the disgusting as a source of pleasure. The essay’s second part turns to The Merchant of Venice (1596) to assess, through the trajectories of disgust that sustain the rivalry be-ween the merchant Antonio and the moneylender Shylock, a second notion of mimesis: the envious emulation of others’ ways of feeling that cultural theorists like René Girard (1991) have signposted as the core of Shakespeare's modernity. In broad-er terms, this study points to the centrality of the these two notions of mimesis for an understanding of the early modern phenomenology of the emotions

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Illness and disgust. Compensation strategies of patients and healthcare professionals

In this article, we carry out a review of disgust in healthcare contexts (healthcare staff and patients), a topic not studied enough yet. To this end, we first accomplish a brief presentation of disgust biological and socio-moral elements, which allow us to understand the role of disgust in patients' rejection of their own wounds and self-healing. Disgust can lead patients to refuse self-care treatments after surgery or refuse to carry out diagnostic tests. On the other hand, health professionals are not exempt from feeling disgust because they are in con-tact with factors that cause it, which may conflict with professional ethics and the duty of care. In addition, we present the preliminary results of a pilot study in which we show what causes dis-gust in doctors and nurses and how they deal with it. The results point to compensation strategies that could affect the quality of care. In this sense, it is necessary to highlight the differences between the factors that cause disgust, since on many occasions they are not due to the disease, but to the lack of hygiene on patient's side. In short, due to disgust, the patients could refuse to heal their wounds on their own and due to this same emotion doctors may feel discomfort in at-tending the patients

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Disgust in eating disorders, a basic emotion

The cognitive and emotional factors linked to the body image perceived by people with eating disorders and obesity can be so negative. Even, they lead to inappropriate behaviors and surgical treatments and interventions that involve health risks. As an inducing emotion, Disgust appears frequently linked to both the body and other factors related to eating disorders

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Emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia: the role of sex / Reconocimiento de emociones en pacientes con esquizofrenia: el papel del sexo

BACKGROUND: Despite the abundant research on emotion recognition in schizophrenia, there are still some issues about which there is no conclusive data. The present study examined one these issues: the role that sex plays in emotion recognition. Method: The sample consisted of 440 participants, 220 patients with schizophrenia and 220 controls. Measures of the six basic emotions, psychopathology, and cognitive functioning were taken. The data were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance. RESULTS: Controls perceived all emotions, except happiness, better than patients. In the patient group three main results were obtained: 1) men recognized disgust and neutral expressions better than women; 2) happiness and sadness were better recognized on female faces, while disgust and neutral expressions were better recognized on male faces; and 3) a significant interaction was seen between the stimulus sex and the participant sex only for the fear emotion. CONCLUSIONS: The results obtained support the hypothesis that deficits in the recognition of emotions is a core feature of schizophrenia that affects both men and women to the same extent. There is no clear pattern of interaction between the sex of the perceiver and the sex of the photograph used as a stimulus

ANTECEDENTES: a pesar de haber abundante investigación sobre el reconocimiento de emociones en esquizofrenia, hay algunas cuestiones sobre las que no hay datos concluyentes. El presente estudio valoró una de esas cuestiones: el papel del género en el reconocimiento de emociones. MÉTODO: la muestra estuvo compuesta por 440 sujetos, 220 pacientes con esquizofrenia y 220 controles. Se tomaron medidas de las seis emociones básicas, psicopatología y funcionamiento cognitivo. Los datos se analizaron mediante un ANOVA de medidas repetidas. RESULTADOS: los controles percibieron todas las emociones mejor que los pacientes, excepto la alegría. En los pacientes destacaron tres resultados: 1) los hombres reconocieron mejor el asco y la expresión neutra; 2) las emociones de alegría y tristeza se reconocieron mejor en caras femeninas, y el asco en masculinas; 3) se observó un efecto de interacción entre el género de la fotografía y del participante solo para la emoción de miedo. CONCLUSIONES: los resultados apoyan que el déficit en el reconocimiento de emociones es un rasgo característico de la esquizofrenia, que afecta tanto a hombres como a mujeres. No se observa un patrón claro de interacciones entre el género del participante y el género de la imagen usada como estímulo

Reconocimiento de emociones básicas y sus principales confusores en la demencia tipo Alzheimer / Recognition of basic emotions and their main confusers in Alzheimer-type dementia

Introducción: En la demencia tipo Alzheimer se suele observar alteración en el reconocimiento de las emociones básicas. Aunque existe cierto consenso en que las emociones básicas son seis, trabajos más recientes concluyen que puede haber una combinación entre miedo/sorpresa y asco/enojo. Este patrón no está investigado en la demencia tipo Alzheimer. Objetivos: Evaluar si los principales confusores son significativos para determinar la cantidad de emociones básicas y estudiar cuáles son los principales confusores entre emociones que se manifiestan en los pacientes con demencia tipo Alzheimer. Pacientes y métodos: Se evaluó a 28 pacientes con la batería de reconocimiento facial de emociones básicas. Resultados: Los porcentajes más elevados de elección para cada emoción, que proceden de las respuestas correctas, corresponden a los principales factores de confusión (miedo × sorpresa, sorpresa × miedo y asco × enojo). Se encontraron diferencias significativas entre miedo correcto/sorpresa × miedo, sorpresa correcta/miedo × sorpresa, enojo correcto/asco × enojo y asco correcto/enojo × asco. Conclusiones: Estos resultados estarían apoyando la teoría clásica planteada sobre la existencia de seis emociones básicas. Respecto a los confusores emocionales, nuestros resultados coinciden parcialmente con estudios que encontraron que los principales errores se presentan entre enojo/asco y sorpresa/miedo. Como excepción, en nuestra muestra encontramos que cuando la respuesta correcta es enojo, la respuesta más común de los pacientes es miedo

Introduction: An alteration in the recognition of basic emotions is usually observed in Alzheimer's type dementia. Although there is some consensus that basic emotions are six, more recent studies conclude that there may be a combination between fear/ surprise and disgust/anger. This pattern has not yet been investigated in the Alzheimer's type dementia. Aims: To evaluate if the main confusers are significant as to determine the amount of basic emotions, and to study which are the main confusers, between emotions, that are manifested in patients with Alzheimer's type dementia. Patients and methods: Twenty-eight patients were evaluated with the Battery of Facial Recognition of Basic Emotions. Results: The highest percentages of choice for each emotion, proceeding those of correct answers, correspond to the main confusers (fear × surprise, surprise × fear, and disgust × anger). Significant differences were found between fear correct/surprise × fear, surprise correct/fear × surprise, anger correct/disgust × anger, and disgust correct/anger × disgust. Conclusions: These results support the classical theory raised on the existence of six basic emotions. As regard as emotional confusers, our results coincide partially with studies which found that the main errors are between anger/disgust and surprise/fear. As an exception, we found in our sample that when the correct answer is anger, the most common response by patients is fear

"The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge": differentiating the emotional experiences of grima and disgust

The Spanish term grima refers to the aversive emotional experience typically evoked when one hears, for example, a scratch upon a chalkboard. Whereas Spanish speakers can distinguish between the concepts of grima and disgust, English and German speakers lack a specific word for this experience and typically label grima as disgust. In the present research, we tested the degree of differentiation between the two aversive experiences in Spanish speakers. Study 1 addressed whether Spanish speakers apply spontaneously the term grima rather than disgust to grima-eliciting experiences. Study 2 systematically addressed the constitutive features of both grima and disgust by mapping their internal structures. Results showed that the noise of a chulk on a blackboard and scraping fingernails on a blackboard, along with the physical manifestation of goose bumps, were the most typical features of the category. Whereas both grima and disgust were characterized as unpleasant sensations, t(193) = 1.21, ns, they differed with respect to their physiological signatures (e.g., producing shivers was characteristic of grima, as compared to disgust, t(194) = 12.02, p = .001, d = 1.72) and elicitors (e.g., a fractured bone was a characteristic elicitor of grima; t(193) = 5.78, p = .001, d = .83, whereas pederasts and pedophiles were the most characteristic elicitor of disgust, t(193) = 8.46, p = .001, d = 1.21). Thus, both grima and disgust are conceptually different experiences, whose shared features hold different degrees of typicality. The present research suggests that grima and disgust are two distinct emotion concepts

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