RESUMEN

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) in which participants report on their moment-to-moment experiences in their natural environment, is a hot topic. An emerging field in clinical psychology based on either EMA, or what we term Ecological Retrospective Assessment (ERA) as it requires retrospectivity, is the field of personalized feedback. In this field, EMA/ERA-data-driven summaries are presented to participants with the goal of promoting their insight in their experiences. Underlying this procedure are some fundamental assumptions about (i) the relation between true moment-to-moment experiences and retrospective evaluations of those experiences, (ii) the translation of these experiences and evaluations to different types of data, (iii) the comparison of these different types of data, and (iv) the impact of a summary of moment-to-moment experiences on retrospective evaluations of those experiences. We argue that these assumptions deserve further exploration, in order to create a strong evidence-based foundation for the personalized feedback procedure.

RESUMEN

Given humans' limited ability to recall past experiences for evaluation, scholars have proposed the peak-end rule stating that if perceived discomfort at the end of an aversive experience is lower than the peak discomfort experienced, the aversive experience will be remembered more positively. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the peak-end rule as applied to high-intensity interval exercise (HIIE). Participants were 30 inactive men (M age = 27.9, SD = 5.2 years). In the first session they performed a graded exercise test on cycle-ergometer to determine their maximal aerobic power (MAP) (M = 233, SD = 35W); and, in the second and third sessions, they performed two HIIE protocols in randomized order: (a) Short trial - 20-minutes of HIIE, composed of 30-second efforts at 100% of MAP interspersed by 30-seconds of passive recovery; and (b) Long trial - 20-minutes of the short trial, plus 10-minutes more of HIIE, decreasing 3% of MAP in each additional bout, resulting in 70% of MAP in the last bout. During exercise, we recorded the participants' rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and affect, using the Feeling Scale (FS). At 30-minutes post-exercise, we again recorded the participants' affect, using the Global Affect Evaluation (GAE) and their session-RPE, and we recorded their enjoyment, using the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (PACES). In the last session, the participants chose a favorite protocol to repeat. All sessions were interspersed by at least 72 hours. The 10-minutes extra HIIE in the Long-trial condition resulted decreased heart rate values (M = 157, SD = 13bpm to M = 144, SD = 14bpm; p < 0.001), but psychological responses during and after exercise did not differ, nor did participants' preferred HIIE protocol. As the load drop for the Long-trial was not enough to change the psychological responses during exercise, there was no difference in the retrospective evaluation as the peak-end rule would have suggested.

Asunto(s)

Entrenamiento de Intervalos de Alta Intensidad , Adulto , Ejercicio Físico , Prueba de Esfuerzo , Frecuencia Cardíaca , Humanos , Masculino , Placer , Estudios Retrospectivos

RESUMEN

BACKGROUND: The ability to create and maintain an ongoing life narrative is a key characteristic of what makes us human; however, people with dementia lose this ability in the course of the disease. If the notion of having a self is intimately linked with being able to create and maintain a life narrative and if people with dementia tend to lose this ability, what kind of self do people with dementia still possess? OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: Recent theories developed in psychology and philosophy suggest that at least two notions of the self have to be distinguished: the experiencing self and the remembering self. This distinction is applied to people with dementia. RESULTS: While the remembering self is impaired in people with dementia, their experiencing self remains relatively intact. Critically, the experiencing self is a self with inner depth, mirroring the life history of the individual. Thus, the self of people with dementia is not unextended in time. Although people with dementia may have lost the ability to tell a story about their life, they are still able to express this story in their behavior. CONCLUSION: Understanding the structure of the self of people with dementia can help guide interactions as well as the designing of appropriate interventions and environments. Moreover, realizing the inner depth of the self of people with dementia may help acknowledge their dignity and personhood.

Asunto(s)

Demencia , Personeidad , Humanos , Recuerdo Mental , Narración

RESUMEN

Memory forms the input for future behavior. Therefore, how individuals remember a certain experience may be just as important as the experience itself. The peak-and-end-rule (PE-rule) postulates that remembered experiences are best predicted by the peak emotional valence and the emotional valence at the end of an experience in the here and now. The PE-rule, however, has mostly been assessed in experimental paradigms that induce relatively simple, one-dimensional experiences (e.g., experienced pain in a clinical setting). This hampers generalizations of the PE-rule to the experiences in everyday life. This paper evaluates the generalizability of the PE-rule to more complex and heterogeneous experiences by examining the PE-rule in a virtual reality (VR) experience, as VR combines improved ecological validity with rigorous experimental control. Findings indicate that for more complex and heterogeneous experiences, peak and end emotional valence are inferior to other measures (such as averaged valence and arousal ratings over the entire experiential episode) in predicting remembered experience. These findings suggest that the PE-rule cannot be generalized to ecologically more valid experiential episodes.