A Clinical Case of the Role Lettering Therapy Analysis and Enlightenment from Eye-Movement Data

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2016, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (4) : 1011-1016.

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PDF(890 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2016, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (4) : 1011-1016.

A Clinical Case of the Role Lettering Therapy Analysis and Enlightenment from Eye-Movement Data

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Abstract

Role lettering therapy (RLT) involves writing letters to someone toward whom one has negative feelings such as anger, hostility, or hatred, even though the letters will never be mailed. After you finish the first letter, the therapist would ask for you cognitive shifts - writing back from different perspectives. In the beginning, you are both "sender" and " addressee" and would experience the conflict with each other, but when you write more letters, the conflict will be reconciled or corrected and eventually reach a state of mutual understanding. Many Japanese researchers have conducted a lot of research by using clinical case, KJ method, and measuring the physiological index difference from the perspective of the brain science. RLT has little English literature, however, western scholars have rich study on expressive writing or written emotional expression, which demonstrates that writing will help people reappraise the situation, elicits meaning-making processes such as searching for causal explanations and interpretation of the events. So, we believe, RLT also help people change unreasonable cognition and reappraise the situation. In addition, according to the clinical practical cases in Japan and China, the novice consultant may have different perspectives with client. According to the discussion above, this paper will talk about these two ideas. Eye movement research is the commonly method to study language and reading comprehension. RLT also use writing and reading to self-treatment. It is feasible to use eye movement technology to understand RLT. Due to the confidential clinical research, the author takes the case study. “A” lady is a teacher of the administrative department in vocational colleges. Before a position adjustment, the leader of “A” lady made the commitment of promotion to her. But finally, “A” lady did not get promotion, and she is very angry. In the process of psychological counseling, researcher ask for write a letter to her leader (first letter), and then ask for standing on the position of the leader write a letter to herself (second letter). According to the length of the letters, we respectively cut them into seven pictures and five pictures. The picture resolution all is 1600 x 900. Then the author imports all the pictures into German SMI iView X RED Eye Tracking System and in the reading letter process, “A” lady's eye movements were tracked by it. And after “A” lady's consent, the researcher let a novice consultant read the letter who majors in the psychology, with poor clinical consulting experience. Fixation duration, fixation times and heat map are saved and analyzed. The study revealed that (1) when “A” lady reading the second letter, she responds to part of cognitive interpretation of the event in first letter. (2)The novice consultant’s fixation duration is significantly shorter than “A” lady, but the “A” lady has little fixation times. That may mean “A” lady has more cognitive activity to some words of the letters. The result of the study showed that PLT can help people change unreasonable cognition and help novice consultant understand client.

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role lettering therapy / eye movement / case study

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A Clinical Case of the Role Lettering Therapy Analysis and Enlightenment from Eye-Movement Data[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2016, 39(4): 1011-1016
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