Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Parenting and Special Education Research Unit, Leuven, Belgium.
Res Dev Disabil. 2013 Mar;34(3):902-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2012.11.013. Epub 2013 Jan 2.
Although it is shown that attention plays an important role both in the onset and in the regulation of emotions in people without disabilities there is no information about how attention is related to emotions in people with severe or profound intellectual disability (ID). Therefore, in our study, we investigated the role of attention in the onset and regulation of the emotions of persons with severe or profound ID. We presented 27 participants with 4 staff-selected negative and 4 staff-selected positive stimuli. The situations were videotaped and their heart rate and attention was measured. Contrary to the expected higher attention to negative stimuli during the onset of negative emotions, we did not find differences in attention in the fourth to sixth second of stimulus presentation. However, in support of the emotion regulation theory of Gross (2008) we did find less attention to the negative stimuli than to the positive stimuli after these first 6s of stimuli presentation. As expected from research in people without disabilities, there was also a negative relationship between the heart rate and the probability of being attentive. Our results suggest that people with severe and profound ID use attentional deployment to regulate their emotions and that, as in people without disabilities, a low heart rate is associated with attention.
尽管已经表明，在非残疾人群中，注意力在情绪的发生和调节中都起着重要作用，但对于严重或极重度智力障碍（ID）人群的注意力与情绪之间的关系，目前还没有信息。因此，在我们的研究中，我们调查了注意力在严重或极重度 ID 人群的情绪发生和调节中的作用。我们向 27 名参与者呈现了 4 名工作人员选择的负面和 4 名工作人员选择的正面刺激。这些情况被录像，并测量了他们的心率和注意力。与预期的在负面情绪发生时对负面刺激的注意力更高相反，我们在刺激呈现的第四到第六秒没有发现注意力的差异。然而，支持 Gross（2008）的情绪调节理论，我们确实发现，在最初的 6 秒刺激呈现后，对负面刺激的注意力比对正面刺激的注意力要少。正如在非残疾人群中研究的那样，心率和注意力的概率之间也存在负相关关系。我们的结果表明，严重和极重度 ID 人群使用注意力部署来调节他们的情绪，并且与非残疾人群一样，低心率与注意力相关。
