Papers by Virpi-Liisa Kykyri
Social Psychology of Education
School discontinuation in Finland is more common among the Finnish Roma than among the population... more School discontinuation in Finland is more common among the Finnish Roma than among the population as a whole. We lack knowledge of the perspective of those of the Roma, representing a minority inside a minority, who have left compulsory school without a leaving certificate. Within a study about school experiences of imprisoned early school leavers in Finland we had six participants with a Finnish Roma background, whose experiences of relatedness, and frustration of it, we examine in this paper. We conducted narrative interviews with the participants, applying a co-operative narrative interpretation to the meanings of what was told. After the field process, we interpreted the narrative accounts focusing on experiences of relatedness, and how relationships with people in the school environment affected the participants’ sense of belonging together with the people in the school environment. Frustration of relatedness was identified at three levels. Firstly, at a general, life condition...
Proceedings of the 2022 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
Work stress impacts people's daily lives. Their well-being can be improved if the stress is monit... more Work stress impacts people's daily lives. Their well-being can be improved if the stress is monitored and addressed in time. Attaching physiological sensors are used for such stress monitoring and analysis. Such approach is feasible only when the person is physically presented. Due to the transfer of the life from offline to online, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, remote stress measurement is of high importance. This study investigated the feasibility of estimating participants' stress levels based on remote physiological signal features (rPPG) and behavioral features (facial expression and motion) obtained from facial videos recorded during online video meetings. Remote physiological signal features provided higher accuracy of stress estimation (78.75%) as compared to those based on motion (70.00%) and facial expression (73.75%) features. Moreover, the fusion of behavioral and remote physiological signal features increased the accuracy of stress estimation up to 82.50%. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Health care information systems.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
Research on embodied aspects of clinical encounters is growing, but discussion on the premises of... more Research on embodied aspects of clinical encounters is growing, but discussion on the premises of including embodied variables in empirical research is scarce. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that embodied aspects of psychotherapy interaction are vital in developing a therapeutic alliance, and these should be considered to better understand the change process in psychotherapy. However, the field is still debating which methods should be used and which features of the embodied aspects are relevant in the clinical context. The field lacks methodological consistency as well as a theoretical model. In the Relational Mind research project, we have studied the embodied aspects of interaction in the context of couple therapy for almost a decade and have gained experience with the positive and negative aspects of studying embodied variables in quantitative and qualitative studies. We have set out to develop the methodology (or procedures) for studying embodied variables in a multiperso...
Kykyri, Virpi-Liisa Helping Clients to Help Themselves. A Discursive Perspective to Process Consu... more Kykyri, Virpi-Liisa Helping Clients to Help Themselves. A Discursive Perspective to Process Consulting Practices in Multi-party Settings Jyväskylä, University of Jyväskylä, 2008, 76 p. (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 330) ISBN 978-951-39-3082-0 (PDF), 978-951-39-3071-4 (nid.) Finnish Summary Diss. This study approaches process consulting work as conversation. The commonly shared ideal of process consulting is to help clients to help themselves. To follow this ideal, active client participation and collaborative work between the consultant and the clients in handling the client’s problems are needed. The aim of this thesis is to find out how this is done through talk: what kind of talk is used in process consulting interaction and how is this achieved during multi-party consulting conversations. More specifically, it is asked what kind of discursive activity was used in multi-party settings to bring about active client participation, to...
Virpi-Liisa Kykyrin vaitoskirja Helping clients to help themselves : a discursive perspective to ... more Virpi-Liisa Kykyrin vaitoskirja Helping clients to help themselves : a discursive perspective to process consulting practices in multi-party settings (Jyvaskylan yliopisto 2008).
Systemic Research in Individual, Couple, and Family Therapy and Counseling, 2020
This chapter presents a couple therapy session from four different research perspectives: The ver... more This chapter presents a couple therapy session from four different research perspectives: The verbal dialogue was analysed with the Dialogical Investigations of Happenings of Change method, the embodied reactions of each participant were analysed by examining the electrodermal activity of each participant, and nonverbal synchrony was observed between the participants. Stimulated Recall Interviews, conducted individually after the session, were used to gain insights on the participants’ thoughts and feelings concerning particular moments in the session. We wished to determine what could be learned from the embodied reactions of the participants in couple therapy, including whether the data obtained via the different research methods were telling the same or different story about the same moment within the couple therapy session.
Journal of Deafblind Studies on Communication, 2021
This article reports a qualitative study of cognitive assessments of three teenagers with sensory... more This article reports a qualitative study of cognitive assessments of three teenagers with sensory and multiple disabilities, including moderate to profound developmental disability. The aim was to evaluate the possibilities for adapting standardized tests and the implementation of interactional partnership in assessment. Cognitive assessments were made with an individually-adapted psychological assessment tool, the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development. The assessment situations were video-recorded and analyzed based on sociocultural theories of early interaction, dynamic assessment, and the bodily-tactile modality of cognition. The results showed that the requirements for assessment are complex and highly individualized, extending beyond universal guidelines on test adaptations. The assessments were built on developmental steps within the standardized test, but required a special emphasis on individuality and interaction. We conclude that the study provides novel insights...
espanolSe han explorado a traves de Entrevistas de Recuerdo Estimulado (Stimulated Recall Intervi... more espanolSe han explorado a traves de Entrevistas de Recuerdo Estimulado (Stimulated Recall Interviews, SRIs, siglas en ingles) las experiencias subjetivas de los participantes en la terapia de pareja, en la que los clientes y los terapeutas vienen individualmente a ver videos de sus sesiones de terapia. Suponemos que las SRIs pueden convertirse en un buen recurso de Investigacion Orientada por la Practica (POR) mediante la promocion de una interaccion significativa y flexible entre la investigacion cientifica y la practica clinica. Los miembros del equipo tienen diferentes roles, ya sea como "internos” o “externos” del contexto terapeutico. Las implicaciones de estas entrevistas se ilustran a traves de un estudio de caso del proyecto de investigacion Relational Mind (RM), en el que las SRIs contribuyeron a la emergencia de nuevas reflexiones. Si bien hasta ahora las SRIs se consideraron como una herramienta de investigacion, mostraron un gran potencial de intervencion; los clien...
Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 2019
Objectives: To study underlying processes of alliance formation, a multi-method and multimodal re... more Objectives: To study underlying processes of alliance formation, a multi-method and multimodal research procedure was developed and applied to a six-minute episode from one couple therapy case. Method: The participants were a couple and two male co-therapists. The interaction was analyzed at the levels of the conversational exchange, bodily postures and movements, and Autonomic Nervous System responses. Data were also obtained from Stimulated Recall Interviews and an alliance measure. Results: When there were clear markers of alliance in a dyad's conversation, markers of nonverbal synchrony (such as posture or movement mirroring, or sympathetic nervous system synchrony), were also observed in one or several modalities. Moreover, markers of nonverbal synchrony were often observed, not only between those who participated actively on the conversational level, but also between listeners. These markers of nonverbal alliance served important balancing functions by providing support, and maintaining the connection to a client. Conclusion: Even more than previously assumed, implicit nonverbal attunement between clients and therapists may be relevant in the formation of the therapeutic alliance.
Psychotherapy, 2019
In previous research we found that sympathetic nervous system synchrony, measured via electroderm... more In previous research we found that sympathetic nervous system synchrony, measured via electrodermal activity (EDA), occurs between participants at the start of couple therapy. The aim now was to test whether this synchrony changes during the therapy process, and how any changes may be related to clients' and therapists' evaluations of the working alliance, and the outcome of therapy. Twelve different couple therapy processes were analyzed (24 clients, plus 10 therapists, working in pairs; hence 4 persons per session) using EDA concordance indices and questionnaires (ORS, SRS, CORE-OM). EDA synchrony between the couples increased from the beginning to the end of therapy. This seemed to be connected to a positive linear trend in female clients' wellbeing during the therapy process. There were no statistically significant changes in the EDA synchrony between the co-therapists, or between the clients and the therapists. We found specific changes in the EDA synchrony to be related to changes in the therapeutic alliance, and/or changes in the clients' wellbeing. Heightened EDA synchrony was frequently related to a better outcome; nevertheless, there was one instance in which decreasing synchrony seemed to be more beneficial. It appears that couple therapy can bring spouses closer together also on a physiological level, which could be especially important for the wellbeing of women.
Family process, Jan 22, 2018
This article reports on the added value of embodied responses identified through sympathetic nerv... more This article reports on the added value of embodied responses identified through sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity in couple therapy research. It focuses on moments of change and the timing of therapeutic interventions or therapeutic moves in a couple therapy session. The data for this single-case study comprise couple therapy process videotapes recorded in a multi-camera setting, and measurements of participants' SNS activity. The voluntary participants were a marital couple in their late thirties and two middle-aged male psychotherapists. The division into topic segments showed how the key issue of seeking help, which was found to comprise three separate components, was repeatedly dealt with in the session. SNS activity showed different degrees of synchronization between the couple, between the therapists, and between the couple and therapists during the dialogue pertaining to these three components. The issue of timing emerged as a complex, even ambivalent, phenomenon...
Family process, Jan 22, 2018
Research on human intersubjectivity has found that humans participate in a dialogue throughout th... more Research on human intersubjectivity has found that humans participate in a dialogue throughout their life, and that this is manifested not only via language, but also nonverbally, with the entire body. Such an understanding of human life has brought into focus some basic systemic ideas concerning the human relational mind. For Gregory Bateson, the mind works as a system, formed from components that are in continuous interaction with each other. In our Relational Mind research project, we followed twelve couple therapy processes involving two therapists per session, looking at the ways in which the four participants attuned to each other with their bodies, including their autonomic nervous system activity. Using observations from the project, we here describe the ways through which the relational and embodied mind can be realized in a couple therapy setting.
Contemporary Family Therapy, 2016
Blaming one´s partner is common in couple therapy and such moral comment often evokes affective a... more Blaming one´s partner is common in couple therapy and such moral comment often evokes affective arousal. How people attune to each other as whole embodied beings is a current focus of interest in psychotherapy research. This study contributes to the literature by looking at attunement during critical moments in therapy interaction. Responses to blaming in verbal dialogue and at the level of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) were investigated in two couple therapy cases with a client couple and two therapists. Video-recorded couple therapy sessions were analyzed using discursive psychology and a narrative approach. The use of positioning, a discourse analytic tool, was also studied. ANS responses of the participants, including the therapists, were measured as electrodermal activity. The findings demonstrate how identity blaming, i.e. positioning the other person in ways counter to their preferred identity narrative, was accompanied by increased electrodermal activity in most participants. In the two cases studied, blaming centered on the themes of loyalty, trust and parenting. It is argued that identity blaming in these thematic domains increases the arousal level of the partners, since disloyalty, unfaithfulness and irresponsible parenting threaten the stability of the relationship.
Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 2016
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
BackgroundResearch on interpersonal synchrony has mostly focused on a single modality, and hence ... more BackgroundResearch on interpersonal synchrony has mostly focused on a single modality, and hence little is known about the connections between different types of social attunement. In this study, the relationship between sympathetic nervous system synchrony, movement synchrony, and the amount of speech were studied in couple therapy.MethodsData comprised 12 couple therapy cases (24 clients and 10 therapists working in pairs as co-therapists). Synchrony in electrodermal activity, head and body movement, and the amount of speech and simultaneous speech during the sessions were analyzed in 12 sessions at the start of couple therapy (all 72 dyads) and eight sessions at the end of therapy (48 dyads). Synchrony was calculated from cross-correlations using time lags and compared to segment-shuffled pseudo synchrony. The associations between the synchrony modalities and speech were analyzed using complex modeling (Mplus).FindingsCouple therapy participants’ synchrony mostly occurred in-phas...
Virpi-Liisa Kykyrin vaitoskirja Helping clients to help themselves : a discursive perspective to ... more Virpi-Liisa Kykyrin vaitoskirja Helping clients to help themselves : a discursive perspective to process consulting practices in multi-party settings (Jyvaskylan yliopisto 2008).
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Papers by Virpi-Liisa Kykyri