The relationship of personality, alexithymia, anxiety symptoms, and odor awareness: a mediation analysis.

OBJECTIVE: Personality, emotions, and olfaction exhibit partial anatomical overlap in the limbic system structure, establishing potential mechanisms between personality, affective disorders, and olfactory-related aspects. Thus, this study aims to investigate the associations among the Big Five personality traits, alexithymia, anxiety symptoms, and odor awareness. METHODS: A total of 863 college participants were recruited for this study. All participants completed the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory-15, the Odor Awareness Scale (OAS), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Screener-7. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine the hypothesized mediated model. RESULTS: The findings revealed the majority of significant intercorrelations among the dimensions of the Big Five personality traits, alexithymia, anxiety symptoms, and OAS (|r| = 0.072-0.567, p < 0.05). Alexithymia and anxiety symptoms exhibited a serial mediation effect between neuroticism and OAS (95%CI[0.001, 0.014]), conscientiousness and OAS (95%CI[-0.008, -0.001]), and extraversion and OAS (95%CI[-0.006, -0.001]). Anxiety symptoms mediated the relationship between agreeableness and OAS (95%CI[-0.023, -0.001]) and between openness and OAS (95%CI [0.004, 0.024]). CONCLUSION: The mediating roles of alexithymia and anxiety symptoms between the Big Five personality traits and odor awareness support the idea of a certain level of association among personality, emotions, and olfaction, with the underlying role of the limbic system structure. This enhances our understanding of personality, emotions, and olfaction and provides insights for future intervention measures for affective disorders and olfactory dysfunctions.

The cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric properties of the menstrual symptom questionnaire (MSQ) among Chinese women of reproductive age.

Objective: This study reports on a translation of the Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ) into Chinese, a cross-cultural adaptation among Chinese women of reproductive age, and an assessment of its reliability and validity. Methods: Previously published translation guidelines were followed to translate and cross-culturally adapt the English version of MSQ to produce a Chinese version. This Chinese version was then administered to 2800 Chinese women of reproductive age recruited by convenience sampling method. The reliability of the Chinese MSQ was tested for internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The concurrent and construct validity of the questionnaire was evaluated using correlation and factor analysis. Results: The Chinese version of the MSQ showed no linguistic or semantic issues. The internal consistency of the Chinese MSQ Cronbach'α = 0.912, and the test-retest reliability r = 0.911. The exploratory factor analysis identified four factors. The confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the four factor structure of the Chinese version of the MSQ (Pain Experience, Emotional Changes, Pain Coping Strategies, and Other Physical Symptoms) is reasonable among Chinese women of reproductive age. There was a significant correlation found between these four factors and both the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the SF-8 Health Survey. Conclusion: The Chinese version of the MSQ achieved semantic equivalence in translation and demonstrated good reliability and validity among Chinese women of reproductive age. Thus, it can serve as an effective tool to assess the experience of menstrual symptoms among Chinese women.

Factor structure and psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Odor Awareness Scale.

Background: The Odor Awareness Scale (OAS) is a questionnaire that assesses individual differences in awareness of odors in the surrounding environment, which has been shown to be associated with affective symptoms in recent researches. To further research, A Chinese version of the OAS needs to be introduced. Objective: To investigate the factor structure and validate the psychometric properties of the OAS. Methods: A total of 978 participants from college were randomly allocated into two groups for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), respectively. Additionally, the study entailed item analysis and scrutinized internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity. Test-retest reliability was assessed by having 214 participants complete the OAS twice at a one-week interval. Concurrent validity was measured using the Body Odor Sniffing Questionnaire (BOSQ), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7), and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Results: EFA identified three factors that best fit the data: odor sensitivity, odor impact, and odor attention. CFA validated a second-order factor model, yielding good fit indices: χ2/ Df = 2.326, RMSEA = 0.052, CFI = 0.911, TLI = 0.900, SRMR = 0.053. The final version of the OAS comprised 27 items and exhibited a commendable internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.913), and a good test-retest reliability, as evidenced by the high Pearson correlation coefficient (r = 0.940) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC = 0.940). The OAS was significantly correlated with BOSQ (r = 0.416), GAD-7 (r = 0.155), and TAS-20 (r = -0.081). Conclusion: The Chinese version of the OAS demonstrated robust reliability and validity, rendering it a valuable instrument for evaluating odor awareness in the Chinese population.

Deficits in Sense of Body Ownership, Sensory Processing, and Temporal Perception in Schizophrenia Patients With/Without Auditory Verbal Hallucinations.

It has been claimed that individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty in self-recognition and, consequently, are unable to identify the sources of their sensory perceptions or thoughts, resulting in delusions, hallucinations, and unusual experiences of body ownership. The deficits also contribute to the enhanced rubber hand illusion (RHI; a body perception illusion, induced by synchronous visual and tactile stimulation). Evidence based on RHI paradigms is emerging that auditory information can make an impact on the sense of body ownership, which relies on the process of multisensory inputs and integration. Hence, we assumed that auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), as an abnormal auditory perception, could be linked with body ownership, and the RHI paradigm could be conducted in patients with AVHs to explore the underlying mechanisms. In this study, we investigated the performance of patients with/without AVHs in the RHI. We administered the RHI paradigm to 80 patients with schizophrenia (47 with AVHs and 33 without AVHs) and 36 healthy controls. We conducted the experiment under two conditions (synchronous and asynchronous) and evaluated the RHI effects by both objective and subjective measures. Both patient groups experienced the RHI more quickly and strongly than HCs. The RHI effects of patients with AVHs were significantly smaller than those of patients without AVHs. Another important finding was that patients with AVHs did not show a reduction in RHI under asynchronous conditions. These results emphasize the disturbances of the sense of body ownership in schizophrenia patients with/without AVHs and the associations with AVHs. Furthermore, it is suggested that patients with AVHs may have multisensory processing dysfunctions and internal timing deficits.