Search results for " Function"

A computational approach for the assessment of executive functions in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

2019

Previous studies on obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) showed impairments in executive domains, particularly in cognitive inhibition. In this perspective, the use of virtual reality showed huge potential in the assessment of executive functions; however, unfortunately, to date, no study on the assessment of these patients took advantage of the use of virtual environments. One of the main problems faced within assessment protocols is the use of a limited number of variables and tools when tailoring a personalized program. The main aim of this study was to provide a heuristic decision tree for the future development of tailored assessment protocols. To this purpose, we conducted a study that…

Respuesta sexual en el varón adulto: estudio preliminar

2016

Las personas mayores cada vez otorgan más importancia a la vivencia activa de su sexualidad, lo que choque con algunas de las limitaciones físicas que impone la vejez. El objetivo de este trabajo es acercarnos a la vivencia de la sexualidad en hombres mayores a través de uno de los principales cuestionarios empleados en el estudio de la respuesta sexual masculina: el Índice Internacional de la Función Eréctil. Para ello, 38 hombres de entre 53 y 81 años completaron este y otros instrumentos a través de los cuales se encontró que si bien algunos aspectos de la respuesta sexual (como la función eréctil o el deseo sexual) efectivamente se veían afectados negativamente en hombres mayores, el im…

Mentalizing Subtypes in Eating Disorders: A Latent Profile Analysis

2020

Background: Mentalizing, the mental capacity to understand oneself and others in terms of mental states, has been found to be reduced in several mental disorders. Some studies have suggested that eating disorders (EDs) may also be associated with impairments in mentalizing. The aim of this work is to investigate the possible presence of mentalizing subtypes in a sample of patients with EDs.Method: A sample of patients with eating disorders (N = 157) completed a battery of measures assessing mentalization and related variables, including the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Strategies (DERS), the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Clinicia…

2016

The negative interpretation of body sensations (e.g., as sign of a severe illness) is a crucial cognitive process in pathological health anxiety (HA). However, little is known about the nature and the degree of automaticity of this interpretation bias. We applied an implicit association test (IAT) in 20 subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate behavioral and neural correlates of implicit attitudes towards symptom words. On the behavioral level, body symptom words elicited strong negative implicit association effects, as indexed by slowed reaction times when symptom words were paired with the attribute “harmless” (incongruent condition) relative to a contro…

Validation of the Weight Bias Internalization Scale for Mainland Chinese Children and Adolescents

2021

Weight stigma internalization among adolescents across weight categories leads to adverse psychological consequences. This study aims to adapt and validate a Chinese version of the Weight Bias Internalization Scale for Mainland Chinese children and adolescents(C-WBIS). A total of 464 individuals aged 9 to 15 years participated in the present study. Based on item response theory (IRT) and classical test theory (CTT), we selected the items for the C-WBIS and evaluated its reliability and validity. The item response theory yields support for the one-dimensional factor mode. All item parameters fit the IRT model (albeit within an adequate range), eight items were adopted. No evidence of signifi…

Asymmetry matters: Dynamic half-way points in bidirectional labeling for solving shortest path problems with resource constraints faster

2017

Abstract With their paper “Symmetry helps: Bounded bi-directional dynamic programming for the elementary shortest path problem with resource constraints” [Discrete Optimization 3, 2006, pp. 255–273] Righini and Salani introduced bounded bidirectional dynamic programming (DP) as an acceleration technique for solving variants of the shortest path problem with resource constraints (SPPRC). SPPRCs must be solved iteratively when vehicle routing and scheduling problems are tackled via Lagrangian relaxation or column-generation techniques. Righini and Salani and several subsequent works have shown that bounded bidirectional DP algorithms are often superior to their monodirectional counterparts, s…

Using Genetic Algorithms for Optimizing the PPC in the Highway Horizontal Alignment Design.

2016

Various studies have emphasized the interesting advantages related to the use of new transition curves for improving the geometric design of highway horizontal alignments. In a previous paper, one of the writers proposed a polynomial curve, called a polynomial parametric curve (PPC), proving its efficiency in solving several design problems characterized by a very complex geometry (egg-shaped transition, transition between reversing circular curves, semidirect and inner-loop connections, and so on). The PPC also showed considerable advantages from a dynamic perspective, as evidenced by the analysis of the main dynamic variables related to motion (as well as rate of change of radial accelera…

Packing colorings of subcubic outerplanar graphs

2018

Given a graph $G$ and a nondecreasing sequence $S=(s_1,\ldots,s_k)$ of positive integers, the mapping $c:V(G)\longrightarrow \{1,\ldots,k\}$ is called an $S$-packing coloring of $G$ if for any two distinct vertices $x$ and $y$ in $c^{-1}(i)$, the distance between $x$ and $y$ is greater than $s_i$. The smallest integer $k$ such that there exists a $(1,2,\ldots,k)$-packing coloring of a graph $G$ is called the packing chromatic number of $G$, denoted $\chi_{\rho}(G)$. The question of boundedness of the packing chromatic number in the class of subcubic (planar) graphs was investigated in several earlier papers; recently it was established that the invariant is unbounded in the class of all sub…

An experimental study on the effect of systemic functional linguistics applied through a genre-pedagogy approach to teaching writing

2016

Abstract In the tradition of teaching English as a second language, there has been an increased interest in how functional language descriptions and understandings of genres may be used as resources for making meaning. The present study investigates what impact writing instruction that draws upon systemic functional linguistics (SFL) applied through a genre-pedagogy approach has on students’ ability to write argumentative essays. This includes explicit grammar instruction inspired by SFL, as well as instruction on text structure. The study uses a mixed-methods approach, with a quasi-experiment followed up by quantitative and qualitative analyses of the collected material. Statistical analys…

Rho resonance, timelike pion form factor, and implications for lattice studies of the hadronic vacuum polarization

2020

We study isospin-1 P-wave ππ scattering in lattice QCD with two flavors of O(a) improved Wilson fermions. For pion masses ranging from mπ=265 MeV to mπ=437 MeV, we determine the energy spectrum in the center-of-mass frame and in three moving frames. We obtain the scattering phase shifts using Lüscher’s finite-volume quantization condition. Fitting the dependence of the phase shifts on the scattering momentum to a Breit-Wigner form allows us to determine the corresponding ρ mass mρ and gρππ coupling. By combining the scattering phase shifts with the decay matrix element of the vector current, we calculate the timelike pion form factor, Fπ, and compare the results to the Gounaris-Sakurai repr…