Ready, set, and difficultly slowing down: What role does alexithymia, emotional regulation and interoceptive awareness play in exercise dependence?

Alexithymia is associated with a diverse range of addictive behaviours including exercise addiction symptoms. In addition, emerging research indicates that emotional regulation and interoceptive processes may help explain this relationship. Thus, the current study tested the ability of emotion regulation to mediate the relationship between alexithymia and exercise addiction symptoms and whether interoceptive awareness moderates these relationships. A total of 404 physically active adults (86.8 % female) completed measures of alexithymia, exercise dependence symptoms, difficulties with emotion regulation and interoceptive awareness (Mage = 43.72, SD = 14.09). Alexithymia, emotion regulation, interoceptive awareness and exercise dependence symptoms were all significantly correlated. Further analysis revealed that emotional regulation mediated the relationship between alexithymia and exercise dependence, although the mediation model did not vary as a function of interoceptive awareness. These findings underscore the importance of considering emotion-focused processes in treatment planning and other initiatives designed to help individuals who display exercise dependence symptoms.

Antibiotic Misuse Behaviours of Older People: Confirmation of the Factor Structure of the Antibiotic Use Questionnaire.

Antibacterial resistance (AR) is responsible for steadily rising numbers of untreatable bacterial infections, most prevalently found in the older adult (OA) population due to age-related physical and cognitive deterioration, more frequent and long-lasting hospital visits, and reduced immunity. There are currently no established measures of antibiotic use behaviours for older adults, and theory-informed approaches to identifying the drivers of antibiotic use in older adults are lacking in the literature. The objective of this study was to identify predictors of antibiotic use and misuse in older adults using the Antibiotic Use Questionnaire (AUQ), a measure informed by the factors of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB): attitudes and beliefs, social norms, perceived behavioural control, behaviour, and a covariate-knowledge. A measure of social desirability was included, and participants scoring highly were excluded to control for social desirability bias. Confirmatory Factor Analyses and regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses in a cross-sectional, anonymous survey. A total of 211 participants completed the survey, 47 of which were excluded due to incompletion and high social desirability scores (≥5). Results of the factor analysis confirmed that some (but not all) factors from previous research in the general population were confirmed in the OA sample. No factors were found to be significant predictors of antibiotic use behaviour. Several suggestions for the variance in results from that of the first study are suggested, including challenges with meeting requirement for statistical power. The paper concludes that further research is required to determine the validity of the AUQ in an older adult population.