A qualitative exploration of internet forum discussions surrounding female sexual function for individuals with Sjögren's syndrome.

Sexual dysfunction is a common experience for women with the autoimmune rheumatic disease, Sjögren's syndrome (SS); however, the lived experience of how the disease affects sexual functioning and the sexual environment remains unexplored. This qualitative study explores the conversations pertaining to female sexual function and the sexual environment that individuals with SS have on an internet forum. Qualitative data posted on one publicly accessible, worldwide, internet forum was extracted using an automated web scraping tool. A total of 247,694 posts across 23,382 threads were scraped from the forum in July 2019 and June 2022 (from the United Kingdom). A predetermined and theoretically informed keyword search strategy was used to screen the captured data for content relevant to the study aim. The dataset was cleaned to remove duplication and identifying information and screened for topic relevance. The Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis software tool, ATLAS.ti, was used to facilitate the data analysis process. Thematic analysis was conducted on 1443 female-oriented posts, and four key themes were identified: the symptoms of SS and their impact on the sexual environment; the emotional responses that are commonly evoked in response to sexual difficulties; the strategies that users have implemented to manage sexual problems; and the impact that a partner's behavior may have on the sexual environment. Together these themes provide an insight into the nature of sexual difficulties for females with SS. Our findings provide novel insights to inform clinical discussions between practitioners and patients whilst further outlining the importance of undertaking qualitative research with this population.

Men's perception of current and ideal body composition and the influence of media internalization on body judgements.

Introduction: To determine men's body ideals and the factors that influence these choices, this study used a matrix of computer generated (CG) male bodies (based on an analysis of 3D scanned real bodies) which independently varied in fat and muscle content. Methods: Two hundred and fifty-eight male participants completed a range of psychometric measures to index body concerns and body ideal internalization and then chose the CG body that best reflected their own current body, as well as the body that reflected their personal ideal. A subset of participants was then retested to check that these judgements were stable over time. Results: While judgements of the ideal body seem to be influenced by a shared appearance ideal, the degree to which this ideal was internalized showed significant variability between participants. The effect of this internalization was reflected in the difference between the estimated current body and the ideal. Discussion: Higher internalization led to a preference for higher muscle and lower fat content. This preference was most marked for fat content, although reducing adiposity also made the underlying musculature more salient. Additionally, the ideal body composition was modulated by the composition the participant believed his current body had (i.e., it seemed that a participant's ideal body was anchored by what they believed to be their current body and what change was possible from this starting point).

Consistency of Eye Coloration Across Different Relationship Partners.

Studies have indicated that people are attracted to partners who resemble themselves or their parents, in terms of physical traits including eye color. We might anticipate this inclination to be relatively stable, giving rise to a sequential selection of similar partners who then represent an individual's "type". We tested this idea by examining whether people's sequential partners resembled each other at the level of eye color. We gathered details of the eye colors of the partners of participants (N = 579) across their adult romantic history (N = 3250 relationships), in three samples, comprising two samples which made use of self-reports from predominantly UK-based participants, and one which made use of publicly available information about celebrity relationship histories. Recorded partner eye colors comprised black (N = 39 partners), dark brown (N = 884), light brown (N = 393), hazel (N = 224), blue (N = 936), blue green (N = 245), grey (N = 34), and green (N = 229). We calculated the proportion of identical eye colors within each participant's relationship history, and compared that to 100,000 random permutations of our dataset, using t-tests to investigate if the eye color of partners across an individual's relationship history was biased relative to chance (i.e., if there was greater consistency, represented by higher calculated proportions of identical eye colors, in the original dataset than in the permutations). To account for possible eye color reporting errors and ethnic group matching, we ran the analyses restricted to White participants and to high-confidence eye color data; we then ran the analyses again in relation to the complete dataset. We found some limited evidence for some consistency of eye color across people's relationship histories in some of the samples only when using the complete dataset. We discuss the issues of small effect sizes, partner-report bias, and ethnic group matching in investigating partner consistency across time.

Are we measuring loneliness in the same way in men and women in the general population and in the older population? Two studies of measurement equivalence.

BACKGROUND: High levels of loneliness are associated with negative health outcomes and there are several different types of interventions targeted at reducing feelings of loneliness. It is therefore important to accurately measure loneliness. A key unresolved debate in the conceptualisation and measurement of loneliness is whether it has a unidimensional or multidimensional structure. The aim of this study was to examine the dimensional structure of the widely used UCLA Loneliness Scale and establish whether this factorial structure is equivalent in men and women. METHODS AND SAMPLE: Two online UK-based samples were recruited using Prolific. The participants in Study 1 were 492 adults, selected to be nationally representative by age and gender, whilst the participants in Study 2 were 290 older adults aged over 64. In both studies, participants completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3) as part of a larger project. RESULTS: In both studies, the best fitting model was one with three factors corresponding to 'Isolation,' 'Relational Connectedness,' and 'Collective Connectedness.' A unidimensional single factor model was a substantially worse fit in both studies. In both studies, there were no meaningful differences between men and women in any of the three factors, suggesting measurement invariance across genders. CONCLUSION: These results are consistent with previous research in supporting a multidimensional, three factor structure to the UCLA scale, rather than a unidimensional structure. Further, the measurement invariance across genders suggests that the UCLA scale can be used to compare levels of loneliness across men and women. Overall the results suggest that loneliness has different facets and thus future research should consider treating the UCLA loneliness scale as a multidimensional scale, or using other scales which are designed to measure the different aspects of loneliness.

The degree to which the cultural ideal is internalized predicts judgments of male and female physical attractiveness.

We used attractiveness judgements as a proxy to visualize the ideal female and male body for male and female participants and investigated how individual differences in the internalization of cultural ideals influence these representations. In the first of two studies, male and female participants judged the attractiveness of 242 male and female computer-generated bodies which varied independently in muscle and adipose. This allowed us to map changes in attractiveness across the complete body composition space, revealing single peaks for the attractiveness of both men and women. In the second study, we asked our participants to choose the most attractive male and female bodies in a method of adjustment task in which they could independently vary muscle and adipose to create the most attractive body. We asked whether individual differences in internalization of cultural ideals, drive for muscularity, eating disorder symptomatology and depressive symptoms could systematically shift the location of peak attractiveness in body composition space. We found a clear preference by both genders for a male body with high muscle and low adipose, and a toned, low adipose female body. The degree of internalization of cultural ideals predicted large individual differences in the composition of the most attractive bodies.

The Effect of Own Body Concerns on Judgments of Other Women's Body Size.

We investigated the relationships between healthy women's estimates of their own body size, their body dissatisfaction, and how they subjectively judge the transition from normal to overweight in other women's bodies (the "normal/overweight" boundary). We propose two complementary hypotheses. In the first, participants compare other women to an internalized Western "thin ideal," whose size reflects the observer's own body dissatisfaction. As dissatisfaction increases, so the size of their "thin ideal" reduces, predicting an inverse relationship between the "normal/overweight" boundary and participants' body dissatisfaction. Alternatively, participants judge the size of other women relative to the body size they believe they have. For this implicit or explicit social comparison, the participant selects a "normal/overweight" boundary that minimizes the chance of her making an upward social comparison. So, the "normal/overweight" boundary matches or is larger than her own body size. In an online study of 129 healthy women, we found that both opposing factors explain where women place the "normal/overweight" boundary. Increasing body dissatisfaction leads to slimmer judgments for the position of the "normal/overweight" boundary in the body mass index (BMI) spectrum. Whereas, increasing overestimation by the observer of their own body size shifts the "normal/overweight" boundary toward higher BMIs.

An exploration of the impact of contextual information on the emotion recognition ability of autistic adults.

Studies of non-autistic individuals and people with an intellectual disability show that contextual information impacts positively on emotion recognition ability, however, this area is not well researched with autistic adults. We investigated this using a static emotion recognition task. Participants completed an emotion recognition task in person or online. In total, 46 autistic participants and 379 non-autistic participants completed the task. A linear mixed model showed that autistic adults had significantly lower accuracy when identifying emotions across all contexts, compared to control participants, even when contextual information was present. No significant effect of context was found in either group, nor was gender shown to be an influential variable. A supplementary analysis showed that higher scores on the Autism-Spectrum Quotient led to lower scores on the emotion recognition task; no effect of context was found here either. This research adds to the limited work investigating the influence of contextual factors in emotion recognition in autistic adults. Overall, it shows that context may not aid emotion recognition in this group in the same way as it does for non-autistic individuals.

Themes, communities and influencers of online probiotics chatter: A retrospective analysis from 2009-2017.

We build on recent examinations questioning the quality of online information about probiotic products by studying the themes of content, detecting virtual communities and identifying key influencers in social media using data science techniques. We conducted topic modelling (n = 36,715 tweets) and longitudinal social network analysis (n = 17,834 tweets) of probiotic chatter on Twitter from 2009-17. We used Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to build the topic models and network analysis tool Gephi for building yearly graphs. We identified the top 10 topics of probiotics-related communication on Twitter and a constant rise in communication activity. However the number of communities grew consistently to peak in 2014 before dipping and levelling off by 2017. While several probiotics industry actors appeared and disappeared during this period, the influence of one specific actor rose from a hub initially to an authority in the latter years. With multi-brand advertising and probiotics promotions mostly occupying the Twitter chatter, scientists, journalists, or policymakers exerted minimal influence in these communities. Consistent with previous research, we find that probiotics-related content on social media veers towards promotions and benefits. Probiotic industry actors maintain consistent presence on Twitter while transitioning from hubs to authorities over time; scientific entities assume an authoritative role without much engagement. The involvement of scientific, journalistic or regulatory stakeholders will help create a balanced informational environment surrounding probiotic products.

Using immersive virtual reality to modify body image.

We tested the efficacy of a training programme, delivered in virtual reality (VR), to modify the perceptual boundary between what participants classify as a fat versus a thin body. Three cohorts of 20 female volunteers with high body image concerns were recruited to two intervention groups and one control group. All participants completed a 4-day training programme in VR where they categorised a series of 3D models as either thin or fat; one intervention group was presented with the stimuli briefly, while the other group had no time limits imposed. Both intervention groups were given inflationary feedback to shift their categorisations of the stimulus models towards higher BMIs. Our results show that, compared to controls, both intervention groups shifted their categorical boundaries between Day 1 and follow-up on Day 14. Unlimited stimulus presentation times were associated with a larger training effect. Furthermore, both intervention groups experienced statistically significant reductions in their concerns about their own body shape, weight and eating habits. However, only in the group with longer stimulus presentation times were these reductions consistent with a clinically meaningful effect. These findings suggest that manipulating categorical perception in VR might provide a complementary addition to existing treatments for eating disorders.

An evaluation of the distribution properties, factor structure, and item response profile of an assessment of emotion recognition.

Many people with developmental disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability have emotion recognition (ER) difficulties compared with typically developing (TD) peers. Accurate assessment of the extent and nature of differences in ER requires an understanding of the response profiles to ER assessment stimuli. We analysed data from 504 TD individuals in response to an ER assessment in respect of distribution properties, factor structure, and item response profile. Eighteen emotion items discriminated better at lower levels of ER ability in TD participants. Neutral expressions were the hardest to interpret; surprise, anger, happy, and bored were easiest. The amount of contextual information in combination with the emotion being depicted also appeared to influence level of difficulty. Similar psychometric research is needed with people with developmental disabilities.

Hypogravity reduces trunk admittance and lumbar muscle activation in response to external perturbations.

Reduced paraspinal muscle size and flattening of spinal curvatures have been documented after spaceflight. Assessment of trunk adaptations to hypogravity can contribute to development of specific countermeasures. In this study, parabolic flights were used to investigate spinal curvature and muscle responses to hypogravity. Data from five trials at 0.25 g, 0.50 g, and 0.75 g were recorded from six participants positioned in a kneeling-seated position. During the first two trials, participants maintained a normal, upright posture. In the last three trials, small-amplitude perturbations were delivered in the anterior direction at the T10 level. Spinal curvature was estimated with motion capture cameras. Trunk displacement and contact force between the actuator and participant were recorded. Muscle activity responses were collected by intramuscular electromyography (iEMG) of the deep and superficial lumbar multifidus, iliocostalis lumborum, longissimus thoracis, quadratus lumborum, transversus abdominis, obliquus internus, and obliquus externus muscles. The root mean square iEMG and the average spinal angles were calculated. Trunk admittance and muscle responses to perturbations were calculated as closed-loop frequency-response functions. Compared with 0.75 g, 0.25 g resulted in lower activation of the longissimus thoracis (P = 0.002); lower responses of the superficial multifidus at low frequencies (P = 0.043); lower responses of the superficial multifidus (P = 0.029) and iliocostalis lumborum (P = 0.043); lower trunk admittance (P = 0.037) at intermediate frequencies; and stronger responses of the transversus abdominis at higher frequencies (P = 0.032). These findings indicate that exposure to hypogravity reduces trunk admittance, partially compensated by weaker stabilizing contributions of the paraspinal muscles and coinciding with an apparent increase of deep abdominal muscle activity.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study presents for the first time novel insights into the adaptations to hypogravity of spinal curvatures, trunk stiffness, and paraspinal muscle activity. We showed that exposure to hypogravity reduces the displacement of the trunk by an applied perturbation, partially compensated by weaker stabilizing contributions of the paraspinal muscles and concomitant increase in abdominal muscle responses. These findings may have relevance for future recommendations for planetary surface explorations.

Hungry people prefer larger bodies and objects: The importance of testing boundary effects.

Several lab-based studies have indicated that when people are hungry, they judge larger women's bodies as more attractive, compared to when they are satiated. These satiety-dependent judgements are assumed to provide explanatory power when it comes to the noted cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards women's adiposity, whereby people who live in regions that are under greater nutritional stress tend to have more favourable attitudes towards bigger bodies. However, it is premature to assume that women's bodies are the proper or actual domain of the satiety-dependent judgement shifts found within research study testing contexts until stimuli other than female bodies have also been tested: The research programme falls into the trap of confirmation bias unless we also seek out disconfirmatory evidence and test the boundaries of the effects of hunger. Accordingly, we collected attractiveness judgements of female and male bodies manipulated to vary in size by varying level of adiposity, and objects manipulated to vary in size, from 186 participants who also reported their current hunger level. We found that larger sizes of stimuli in general, and women's bodies in particular, especially when judged by women, were judged as more attractive by the hungrier participants. We discuss these patterns in the context of the Insurance Hypothesis, the Environmental Security Hypothesis, and the impact of hunger on acquisition.

How Does Variation in the Body Composition of Both Stimuli and Participant Modulate Self-Estimates of Men's Body Size?

When measured in units of body mass index (BMI), how much variation in men's self-estimates of body size is caused by i) variation in participants' body composition and ii) variation in the apparent muscle mass and muscle tone of the stimuli being judged? To address this, we generated nine sets of male CGI bodies representing low, mid, and high muscle mass rendered at low, mid, and high muscle tone, from 18.75 to 40 BMIhse units. BMIhse units in this study are estimates of BMI derived from calibration equations predicting BMI from waist and hip circumference, age, sex, height, and ethnicity in the Health Survey for England databases. Forty-five healthy adult men estimated their body size using a yes-no paradigm for each combination of muscle mass/tone. We also measured participants' body composition with Harpenden callipers and their body concerns with psychometric questionnaires. We show that stimulus variation in apparent muscle mass/tone can introduce differences up to ∼2.5 BMIhse units in men's self-estimates of body size. Moreover, men with the same actual BMI, but different body composition, showed up to ∼5-7 BMIhse unit differences in self-estimates of body size. In the face of such large errors, we advocate that such judgments in men should be made instead by simultaneously manipulating both the adiposity and the muscle mass of stimuli which are appropriately calibrated for body composition, so that the participant can match the body size and shape they believe themselves to have to the stimulus they see.

Dissociations in semantic cognition: Oscillatory evidence for opposing effects of semantic control and type of semantic relation in anterior and posterior temporal cortex.

How does the brain represent and process different types of knowledge? The Dual Hub account postulates that anterior temporal lobes (ATL) support taxonomic relationships based on shared physical features (mole - cat), while temporoparietal regions, including posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), support thematic associations (mole - earth). Conversely, the Controlled Semantic Cognition account proposes that ATL supports both aspects of knowledge, while left pMTG contributes to controlled retrieval. This study used magnetoencephalography to test these contrasting predictions of functional dissociations within the temporal lobe. ATL and pMTG responded more strongly to taxonomic and thematic trials respectively, matched for behavioural performance, in line with predictions of the Dual Hub account. In addition, ATL showed a greater response to strong than weak thematic associations, while pMTG showed the opposite pattern, supporting a key prediction of the Controlled Semantic Cognition account. ATL showed a stronger response for word pairs that were more semantically coherent, either because they shared physical features (in taxonomic trials) or a strong thematic association. These effects largely coincided in time and frequency (although an early oscillatory response in ATL was specific to taxonomic trials). In contrast, pMTG showed non-overlapping effects of semantic control demands and thematic judgements: this site showed a larger oscillatory response to weak associations, when ongoing retrieval needed to be shaped to suit the task demands, and also a larger response to thematic judgements contrasted with taxonomic trials (which was reduced but not eliminated when the thematic trials were easier). Consequently, time-sensitive neuroimaging supports a complex pattern of functional dissociations within the left temporal lobe, which reflects both coherence versus control and distinctive oscillatory responses for taxonomic overlap (in ATL) and thematic relations (in pMTG).

Are attitudinal and perceptual body image the same or different? Evidence from high-level adaptation.

We used a high-level adaptation paradigm to distinguish between two hypotheses: (1) perceptual and attitudinal body image measurements reflect conceptually different mechanisms which are statistically independent of each other; (2) attitudinal (e.g., questionnaire) and perceptual (e.g., visual yes-no) body image tasks represent two different ways of measuring exactly the same construct. Forty women, with no history of eating disorders, carried out the experiment. Each participant carried out five adaptation blocks, with adapting stimuli representing female bodies at: extreme-low body mass index (BMI), mid-low BMI, actual BMI of the observer, mid-high BMI, and extreme-high BMI. Block order was randomized across participants. The main outcome variable was percentage error in participants' self-estimates of body size, measured post-adaption. In regressions of this percentage error on the strength of the adapting stimuli together with observers' attitudinal body image as a covariate, we found positive regression slopes and no evidence for any interaction between the fixed effects. Therefore, we conclude that perceptual and attitudinal body image mechanisms are indeed independent of each other. In the light of this evidence, we discuss how people with eating disorders, like anorexia nervosa, may come to over-estimate their body size.

The visual cues that drive the self-assessment of body size: Dissociation between fixation patterns and the key areas of the body for accurate judgement.

A modified version of the bubbles masking paradigm was used in three experiments to determine the key areas of the body that are used in self-estimates of body size. In this paradigm, parts of the stimuli are revealed by several randomly allocated Gaussian "windows" forcing judgements to be made based on this partial information. Over multiple trials, all potential cues are sampled, and the effectiveness of each window at predicting the judgement is determined. The modified bubbles strategy emphasises the distinction between central versus edge cues and localises the visual features used in judging one's own body size. In addition, eye-movements were measured in conjunction with the bubbles paradigm and the results mapped onto a common reference space. This shows that although observers fixate centrally on the torso, they are actually directing their visual attention to the edges of the torso to gauge body width as an index of body size. The central fixations are simply the most efficient way of positioning the eye to make this estimation. Inaccurate observers are less precise in their central fixations and do not evenly allocate their attention to both sides of the torso's edge, illustrating the importance of efficiently sampling the key information.

Emotion recognition from body movement and gesture in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder is improved by situational cues.

BACKGROUND: Research shows people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have poorer emotion recognition (ER) compared to their typically developing (TD) peers. However, it is not known whether this is the case when stimuli are limited to gesture and posture, and lack facial expressions. METHOD: Fifty-four children with (n = 27) and without (n = 27) ASD, matched on age and gender, completed an ER task, that used dynamic stimuli. Processing style bias, Autistic-like-traits and empathy were also measured. With ER as the outcome variable, a multilevel logistic model was created. RESULTS: Children with ASD were found to be significantly less accurate in identifying emotions, compared to the control group. Presence of situational cues aided both groups. Autistic-like-traits and empathy were found to correlate too highly with the diagnosed condition to use in the multilevel model. Processing style did not significantly impact ER ability. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports previous research which finds ER ability in people with ASD to be poorer than that of TD peers and that situational cues can aid ER ability. Importantly, the latter is true for people with ASD. The implication of these findings are programmes that aim to improve ER should consider using cues. Limitations of the study are discussed.

Distorted body image influences body schema in individuals with negative bodily attitudes.

There is now a considerable body of evidence to suggest that internal representations of the body can be meaningfully separated into at least two general levels; body image as a perceptual construct and body schema as a motor metric. However, recent studies with eating disordered individuals have suggested that there may in fact be more interaction between these two representations than first thought. We aimed to investigate how body image might act to influence body schema within a typical, healthy population. 100 healthy adult women were asked to judge the smallest gap between a pair of sliding doors that they could just pass through. We then determined whether these estimates were sufficient to predict the size of the smallest gap that they could actually pass through, or whether perceptual and attitudinal body image information was required in order to make these predictions. It was found that perceptual body image did indeed mediate performance on the egocentric (but not allocentric) motor imagery affordance task, but only for those individuals with raised body image concerns and low self-esteem; body schema was influenced by both the perceptual and attitudinal components of body image in those with more negative bodily attitudes. Furthermore, disparities between perceived versus actual size were associated with body parts that had larger variations in adipose/muscle-dependent circumference. We therefore suggest that it may be the affective salience of a distorted body representation that mediates the degree to which it is incorporated into the current body state.

The relationship between Type D personality and insomnia.

OBJECTIVES: Type D personality is characterized by the combination of social inhibition and negative affectivity. This study examined the relationship between Type D personality and insomnia symptoms amongst a sample of the general-population. METHODS: Adults from the general-population (n = 392) completed online measures of Type D personality (DS14) and insomnia severity. RESULTS: Individuals with the Type D personality trait reported significantly greater symptoms of insomnia relative to Non-Type Ds. Moreover, insomnia-symptoms were independently related to negative affectivity (NA) and social inhibition (SI) and the Type D interaction (i.e. synergistic product of SI and NA). Linear regression analysis determined that NA but not SI significantly predicted insomnia symptoms after controlling for age and sex. However, after accounting for the Type D interaction, negative affectivity remained the only significant predictor of insomnia-symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The Type D personality type appears to be related to insomnia-symptoms, both as a categorical and dimensional construct. These outcomes support prior research evidencing that whilst Type D personality is related to poor sleep in adolescents, NA appears to be the main contributor.

View-dependent accuracy in body mass judgements of female bodies.

A fundamental issue in testing body image perception is how to present the test stimuli. Previous studies have almost exclusively used images of bodies viewed in front-view, but this potentially obscures key visual cues used to judge adiposity reducing the ability to make accurate judgements. A potential solution is to use a three-quarter view, which combines visual cues to body fat that can be observed in front and profile. To test this hypothesis, 20 female observers completed a 2-alternative forced choice paradigm to determine the smallest difference in body fat detectable in female bodies in front, three-quarter, and profile view. There was a significant advantage for three-quarter and profile relative to front-view. Discrimination accuracy is predicted by the saliency of stomach depth, suggesting that this is a key visual cue used to judge body mass. In future, bodies should ideally be presented in three-quarter to accurately assess body size discrimination.