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Ann Kring Associate Professor Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook
Ann M. Kring's broad interests are in emotion and psychopathology. Specific interests include the emotional features of schizophrenia, the linkage between cognition and emotion in schizophrenia, and the social and emotional features of depression. In addition, Dr. Kring studies emotion in healthy individuals, with a focus on individual differences in expressive behavior, gender differences in emotion, and the linkages between personality, social context, and emotion. Dr. Kring and her research group have been studying the nature of emotion disturbance in schizophrenia, observing a couple of emotional disconnections in this population. First, schizophrenia patients show less observable facial expression despite reporting equally intense amounts of experienced emotion compared to individuals without schizophrenia. Second, schizophrenia patients score higher than nonpatients on clinical measures of anhedonia, indicating a reduction in the experience of pleasure, yet they report experiencing comparable amounts of pleasant emotions in daily life and in the presence of pleasant stimuli. A primary focus of her research program has been to uncover the mechanisms driving these emotion disconnections in schizophrenia. Ongoing studies are designed to assess the nature of anhedonia in schizophrenia, examining anticipatory pleasure (i.e., pleasure in anticipation of future events as well as the ability to predict whether future events will be pleasurable), consummatory pleasure (i.e., pleasure in the moment), and memory for pleasurable events. Other studies are examining emotional responding among women with schizophrenia, an area that has not been well investigated. An additional focus has been on the ways in which emotion can facilitate different types of cognitive processing in schizophrenia, such as attention and working memory, as well as the ways in which these cognitive processes can facilitate emotional processing. In addition to studying emotion and cognition in schizophrenia, Dr. Kring is also studying the linkage between emotional experience and the symptoms of depression during episodes and periods of remission. Studies also seek to examine the relationship between anxiety and depression over the course of treatment, as well as how gender may moderate this relationship. An additional focus of Dr. Kring's research is on the origins and consequences of individual differences in emotional expressivity. Ongoing studies seek to answer questions, such as under what circumstances and in the presence of what individuals might men and women differ in the expression of specific emotions. In addition, other studies seek to understand how social context modifies dispositional expressive tendencies, and the ways in which men and women use emotion to negotiate status and power differences. Additional studies have sought to examine linkages between emotion and social interaction in context of teasing, both with adults and children. Students working with Dr. Kring learn how to conduct clinical interviews and complete clinical symptom rating scales with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Students also learn psychophysiological assessment, the measurement of facial expression of emotion, the measurement of emotion in the context of ongoing social interactions, and self-report assessments of emotion and personality, in the context of experimental, naturalistic, and longitudinal research designs. Students are encouraged to receive broad training in psychopathology, cognitive neuroscience, emotion, social psychology, and multivariate statistics. Selected Publications Kring, A. M., Persons, J. B., & Thomas, C. (2007). Changes in affect during treatment for depression and anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 1753-1764. Kring, A. M. & Sloan, D. S. (2007). The facial expression coding system (FACES): Development, validation, and utility. Psychological Assessment, 19, 210-224. Gard, D. E., Kring, A. M., Germans Gard, M., Horan, W. P., & Green, M. F. (2007). Anhedonia in schizophrenia: Distinctions between anticipatory and consummatory pleasure. Schizophrenia Research 93, 253-360. Germans Gard, M. K. & Kring, A. M. (2007). Sex differences in the time course of emotion. Emotion, 7, 429-437. Heerey, E. A. & Kring, A. M. (2007). Interpersonal consequences of social anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 125-134. Gard, D. E., Germans Gard, M., Kring, A. M., & John, O. P. (2006). Anticipatory and consummatory components of the experience of pleasure: A scale development study. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 1086-1102. Horan, W. P., Green, M. F., Kring, A. M., & Nuechterlein, K. H. (2006). Does anhedonia in schizophrenia reflect faulty memory for subjectively experienced emotions? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115, 496-508. Horan, W. P., Kring, A. M., & Blanchard, J. J. (2006). Anhedonia in schizophrenia: A review of assessment strategies. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 32, 259-273. Kring, A. M. & Werner, K. (2004). Emotion regulation and psychopathology. In P. Philippot & R. S. Feldman (Eds.), The Regulation of Emotion (pp. 359-385). New York: LEA. Kring, A. M., Barrett, L. F., & Gard, D. (2003). On the broad applicability of the affective circumplex: Representations of affective knowledge in schizophrenia. Psychological Science, 14, 207-214. August 2007
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