Author: dziobeklab

Festive opening of the university outpatient clinic

Published on by dziobeklab

On 09.09.2022, the new outpatient clinic for psychotherapy and psychodiagnostics, headed by Prof. Dr. Isabel Dziobek, at the Humboldt University of Berlin was officially opened. From now on it is located at Justus-von-Liebig-Str. 7, 12489 Berlin.

Prior to the tour of the new outpatient clinic premises, a scientific symposium was held at the Erwin Schrödinger Zentrum. An overview of the topics presented can be found in the attached PDF (only available in german).

Eröffung HSA HU BerlinDownload

The university outpatient clinic of the Institute of Psychology of the HU Berlin offers psychotherapeutic treatments and clinical-psychological diagnostics at the latest scientific level. There are four specialized clinics:

Specialized Outpatient Clinic for Social Interactions

The specialized outpatient clinic for social interactions at HU Berlin offers diagnostics, counselling and therapy for adults who have problems in social interaction and communication. For some people, such problems occur in the context of a mental illness. These disorders include, for example, autism spectrum disorders, social anxiety disorders or chronic depression.

Specialized outpatient clinic for anxiety disorders

The special outpatient clinic for anxiety disorders at HU Berlin offers treatment, diagnostics and specialised psychotherapy for people with anxiety disorder, panic disorder or various phobic disorders. Treatment is provided by individual therapy and is based on the latest scientific findings.

Specialized outpatient clinic for obsessive-compulsive disorders

In the specialized outpatient clinic for obsessive-compulsive disorders at the HU Berlin, patients with obsessive-compulsive disorders receive individual psychotherapy. Scientifically tested methods of cognitive behavioural therapy are applied. The therapy focuses on exposure with reaction prevention, i.e. facing fears, anxieties, obsessive thoughts and other triggers without engaging in the habitual compulsive actions. According to current research, cognitive behavioural therapy is the most effective method for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Spcialized outpatient clinic for children, adolescents and families

The specialized outpatient clinic for children, adolescents and families at the HU Berlin offers psychotherapeutic help for children and adolescents between the ages of 0 and 21. A special focus is currently on anxiety disorders. The offer consists of cognitive-behavioural individual treatments for children and adolescents as well as family treatments. The psychotherapy and diagnostics offered are closely linked to research on the development, course and treatment of mental illnesses in children and adolescents. At the same time, further developments and improvements of current therapy methods take place in the outpatient clinic.

📝 Subjective and objective difficulty of emotional facial expression perception from dynamic stimuli

Published on by dziobeklab

You can find the original article here (open access).

Is it difficult to read emotions? It can be. Is it always equally difficult? No. Why? That was our question in our study.

Background

For some people reading people’s emotional expressions is easier that for others, and that varies in different situations. But why? Is it about the observer? The person showing the expression? The emotion itself? Or, maybe it’s an interplay of all those?

We asked these questions by investigating how the following influence difficulty of emotion perception:

  • observer’s age and (self-reported) sex,
  • actor’s age and sex,
  • valence (positive/negative) and arousal of the displayed emotion

Why and how?

Hey, aren’t there plenty of papers about it already? Yes, there’s a ton of emotion 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 papers. They taught us a lot, but one problem is that they assume a “ground truth” – the correct answer. E.g., if you have to label the emotion of the person in the following image, what would it be?

Whatever you just thought, your answer would be correct if it matches the pre-established label for it in a study. What is it? Usually the actor’s intention. But what if the actor intended “puzzled” and all participants say it’s “surprised”? Are they all wrong? Well, it’s difficult.

We were interested in the 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: how hard it is to read an emotion?Importantly, we differentiated 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 (self-rated) and 𝗼𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 difficulty (how far off is your answer from others of similar culture and gender).

For that, we used a “multidimensional emotion perception framework”, in which 441 observers rated the perceived emotion along a number of dimensions (basic emotions + interest) instead of choosing from traditionally-used discrete categories of emotions (“happy”, “surprised”,etc).

Results

Our data showed that subjective and objective emotion perception is more difficult for:

  • older actors
  • female actors (more complex signals?)
  • female observers (less confidence and/or picking up more subtleties?)

Also, males and the youngest/the oldest participants underestimated their difficulty (subjective difficulty was smaller than the objective one).

The effects of valence/arousal were more complicated (see the figure below and check the paper), but overall stimulus-specific factors (valence and arousal) are more important for difficulty than person-specific (actor/observer age/sex) factors.

Here is the take-home message:

  • we measured difficulty of emotion perception (not recognition)
  • the new paradigm is more sensitive and captures a broader view of human emotion perception (consider the surprising higher objective difficulty for females)

Surprised? Interested? Puzzled? Get in touch, we’re happy to discuss!

Interessiert? Lesen Sie mehr!

📣 Language is action! Terminology Guideline for Autism Researchers.

Published on by dziobeklab

The autism-research-cooperation (AFK) developed a guideline to destigmatising and inclusive use of language in autism research for our team.

The Guideline for Language Use in Autism Research were developed following the recommendations of Bottema-Beutel et al. (2021), the publication guidelines for terminology of the scientific journals Autism and Autism in Adulthood and the discussion in the Autismus-Forschungs-Kooperation (AFK). The guideline contains recommendations for the use of diagnostic terms and the designation of subgroups and comparison groups in clinical trials. Medicalised and value-laden terms should be avoided and replaced with neutral or strengths-based language.

You can find the PDF of the guideline here:
You can download the PDF below.



Terminology Guideline for Autism ResearchersDownload
Interessiert? Lesen Sie mehr!

🗞 Article in the magazine “Psychologie Heute”: Autism in women and girls (german)

Published on by dziobeklab

“Nicht einfach nur schüchtern.” (“Not just shy.”)
Article in the “Psychologie Heute” from Angelika s. Friedl (04.11.2021). In interview with Isabel Dziobek among others.

The article deals with gender differences in individuals with Autism spectrum disorders.
Autism spectrum disorders are often associated with male gender. Diagnostic bias due to differences in male and female autistic individuals may have an impact on this.
In practice, Isabel Dziobek tells us, the gender distribution looks quite different.
In addition to the differences, general aspects and similarities of males and females in the autism spectrum are described.

Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

You will find the original article here (link to the Website of the magazine “Psychologie Heute”, registration necessary for reading).

Interessiert? Lesen Sie mehr!

New paper! 📝 Pupillary Responses to Faces Are Modulated by Familiarity and Rewarding Context

Published on by dziobeklab

Every day we see dozens of faces and we are experts in their processing. Faces carry a lot of information, one of which is feedback and reward for our actions. For example, when we do something and our friend smiles in response, it’s rewarding. On the other side, sometimes we see people smile, but this smile is not a response to our actions. If smiling faces are per se rewarding, we should feel rewarded in both situations. If, however, the rewarding value of faces depends on our actions, the smile is only rewarding in the first situation. Thus, in this study we compared how people process smiling faces when they serve as feedback and when they simply appear on the screen. Further, faces differ in how familiar (known, recognisable) and socially relevant (personally important) they are. We hypothesised that more familiar and relevant faces would also be more rewarding (when providing feedback). We found that 1) familiarity plays a larger role than social relevance when processing rewarding smiling faces, and that 2) smiling faces are rewards only when they are delivered in response to some actions, and not when we passively watch them on a screen.

Image by Lenka Fortelna from Pixabay 

You can find the original article here (open access, ENG).

Interested? Read more here

New member! 👥 Welcome, Hassan!

Published on by dziobeklab

Hassan Bassam has recently joined us as a PhD student!

He is interested in how large scale brain connectivity can inform behaviour in autistic and non-autistic people, in particular social behaviours such as emotion regulation. In his work, he tries to understand better the link between the brain and behaviour.

We wish him all the best for his doctoral studies!

📣 Patient and public involvement in research: B-Part

Published on by dziobeklab

Prof. Dr. Isabel Dziobek and Silke Lipinski are coordinating a new Patient and public involvement (PPI) group: The Berlin Circle for Participatory Research in Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry (B-Part).

What is B-part?

Patient and public involvement in clinical research, i.e. research in which patients are actively involved, improves the relevance and quality of studies and empowers those affected. However, research in the field of clinical psychology and psychiatry still takes too little account of the participation of patients. The Berlin Circle for Participatory Research in Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry (B-Part) was established to enable patients to participate more actively in the selection of topics, planning, implementation and dissemination of research results in Berlin and the surrounding area. B-Part is a place of exchange for patients, clinically active researchers and other stakeholders, in which participatory projects are discussed, support is given and concrete methods of patient involvement are developed.

Participation

You are welcome to participate in B-Part at any time. The meetings take place virtually via zoom.  For the next dates and further information, please send an email to psysekks@hu-berlin.de.