EMOTIONAL PROCESSING IN VOCAL AND WRITTEN EXPRESSION OF FEELINGS ABOUT TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES

The purpose of this study was to compare vocal and written expression of feeling about interpersonal traumatic and trivial events in 20-min sessions over a 4-day period. Similar emotional processing was produce d by vocal and written expression of feeling about traumatic events. T he painfulness of the topic decreased steadily over the 4 days. At the end, both groups felt better about their topics and themselves and al so reported positive cognitive changes. A content analysis of the sess ions suggested greater overt expression of emotion and related changes in the vocal condition. Finally, there was an upsurge in negative emo tion after each session of either vocal or written expression. These r esults suggest that previous findings that psychotherapy ameliorated t his negative mood upsurge could not be attributed to the vocal charact er of psychotherapy.