Bpd Emotional Responses to Stimuli

BPD EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO STIMULI

"Emotional Processing in Borderline Personality Disorder"

The article Emotional Processing in Borderline Personality Disorder examines the emotional responses participants with Boderline Personality Disorder display when exposed to picture stimuli and an ideographic interpersonal conflict script. The participates where shown pictures tthat provoked emotional responses before and after listening to the ideographic interpersonal conflict script and their responses were measured.

Method

Participants

The study consited of 75 adult women; 24 with Borderline Personality Disorder, 23 with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and 28 healthy, normal women in the control group. The women were predominatly Caucasian and fairly well-educated. Their mean age was around 33 years old. The participants were recruited from flyings on bulliten boards and on the internet. Ten participants were recruited from the Brown University and McLean Hospital sites of the Collaborative Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders. It was a requirement that all BPD participants could not display any of the traits of OCPD and vice versa. All of the participants of the control group could have a history of either of the two disorders.

Research Design

The procedure was set up in two sessions that were scheduled a week apart. In the first session, participants gave their consent, were informed about the procedure, and then they completed a diagnostics interview. The interviewing process is were the doctors got the emotion-triggering information that would later be used in the ideographic interpersonal conflict script. In the second session the participants were placed in a comfortable room and shown a block of 30 images. One part was pleasant images, unpleasant images, and the other was neutral. After,they rated the photos based on the level of anger and emotions felt after viewing them. When they finished rating, they listened to the ideographic interpersonal conflict script. After the script, they were shown another block of 30 images and rated the images accordingly.

Discussion

To the suprise of those conducting the expierement, the reading of the ideographic