Search results for "Activities"
showing 10 items of 3552 documents
Gender differences in cardiovascular and electrodermal responses to public speaking task: the role of anxiety and mood states
2002
Gender moderates psychophysiological responses to stress. In addition to the hormonal background, different psychological states related to social stressors, such as anxiety and mood, could affect this response. The purpose of this study was to examine the existence of gender differences in the cardiovascular and electrodermal responses to a speech task and their relationship with anxiety and the mood variations experienced. For this, non-specific skin conductance responses (NSRs), heart rate (HR), and finger pulse volume (FPV) were measured at rest, and during preparation, task and recovery periods of an academic career speech in undergraduate men (n=15) and women (n=23), with assessment o…
Intimate partner violence is associated with increased maternal hair cortisol in mother–child dyads
2015
Abstract Background The chronic consequences of intimate partner violence (IPV) on HPA activation are a topic of debate. The current study investigated hair cortisol concentrations in female victims of IPV and their children. Methods A total of 52 mother–child dyads were divided into two groups depending on exposure to IPV: IPV group (n = 27 dyads) and control group (n = 25 dyads). Hair cortisol concentration was measured in 1-cm-long hair strands, representing 30 days of exposure before assessment. PTSD and depression symptoms were assessed in the mother and child. Results Women reporting IPV presented with higher hair cortisol levels, depression and PTSD symptoms severity in comparison to…
Social cognition dysfunctions in patients with epilepsy: Evidence from patients with temporal lobe and idiopathic generalized epilepsies
2015
Abstract Background and aim Despite an extensive literature on cognitive impairments in focal and generalized epilepsy, only a few number of studies specifically explored social cognition disorders in epilepsy syndromes. The aim of our study was to investigate social cognition abilities in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE). Materials and methods Thirty-nine patients (21 patients with TLE and 18 patients with IGE) and 21 matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. All subjects underwent a basic neuropsychological battery plus two experimental tasks evaluating emotion recognition from facial expression (Ekman-60-Faces test…
Subtyping panic disorder by major depression and avoidance behaviour and the response to active treatment
1991
In order to establish the clinical validity of currently used ways of subtyping panic disorder the predictive power of associated current avoidance behaviour and (secondary) major depression for the response to active treatment (alprazolam, imipramine) was tested. The analysis was based on the data from the Cross-National-Collaborative-Panic-Study. Limited support for validity evidenced by predicting drug response was found for grading panic disorder by the severity of avoidance behaviour; patients with panic attacks and agoraphobia are more responsive to imipramine (compared with alprazolam) when using the reduction of the total number of panic attacks (or of spontaneous panic attacks) as …
Improvement of inter-rater reliability of PANSS items and subscales by a standardized rater training.
1998
The present evaluation focused on the inter-rater reliability of single items and subscales of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) before and after a standardized rater training. The results of two independent studies comprising n=23 (study I) and n=12 (study II) psychiatrists and videotaped interviews with schizophrenic patients were analysed. Chance-corrected coefficients of rating agreement with expert standards (weighted kappa) were computed for single items and subscales of the PANSS. The results clearly demonstrate the importance of rater trainings. After three training sessions, 90% of the PANSS items reached an acceptable level of reliability (kappa(w)>0.40) in both eva…
Effects of high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of primary motor cortex on laser-evoked potentials in migraine.
2010
The aim of this study was to examine the effects of high-frequency (HF) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the left primary motor cortex (M1) on subjective pain and evoked responses induced by laser stimulation (LEPs) of the contralateral hand and supraorbital zone in a cohort of migraine patients without aura during the inter-critical phase, and to compare the effects with those of non-migraine healthy controls. Thirteen migraine patients and 12 sex- and age-matched controls were evaluated. Each rTMS session consisted of 1,800 stimuli at a frequency of 5 Hz and 90% motor threshold intensity. Sham (control) rTMS was performed at the same stimulation position. The vertex …
Genetic architecture of motives for leisure-time physical activity: a twin study
2017
The aim of this study was to estimate the contribution of genetic and environmental influences on motives for engaging in leisure‐time physical activity. The participants were obtained from the FinnTwin16 study. A modified version of the Recreational Exercise Motivation Measure was used to assess the motives for leisure‐time physical activity in 2542 twin individuals (mean age of 34.1 years). Linear structural equation modeling was used to investigate the genetic and environmental influences on motive dimensions. The highest heritability estimates were found for the motive dimensions of “enjoyment” [men 33% (95% CI 23–43%), women 53% (95% CI 45–60%)] and “affiliation” [men 39% (95% CI 0.28–…
The effect of associative strength on semantic priming in schizophrenia
2017
The present research was designed to investigate the pattern of semantic priming in schizophrenia as a function of strength of association (or semantic distance between concepts in the semantic network). Thirty schizophrenia patients, without formal thought disorder, and twenty-nine healthy controls participated in a lexical decision task in which prime-target associative strength (strong, weak and not related) and stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA: 250 ms and 750 ms) were manipulated. Patients and controls showed the same associative strength effect on RTs. In the short SOA condition priming effects were obtained for both strong and weak prime-target associative conditions. However in the lon…
Attentional Biases and Vulnerability to Depression
1999
This study was designed to examine selective processing of emotional information in depression. It focuses on possible attentional biases in depression, and whether such biases constitute a cognitive vulnerability factor to suffer from the disorder or, on the contrary, they reflect a feature associated exclusively with the clinical level of depression. 81 participants were included in the study: 15 with a diagnosis of Major Depression; 17 were diagnosed as Dysthymia; 11 participants scored over 18 in the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979); 15 participants, in whom a sad mood state was induced by an experimental mood induction (Velten technique + music, or biographic…
Barriers Perceived by Teachers at Work, Coping Strategies, Self-efficacy and Burnout
2010
This study examines the relationships among stressors, coping strategies, self-efficacy and burnout in a sample of 724 Spanish primary and secondary teachers. We understood stressors as barriers perceived by teachers that interfere with their work meeting learning objectives and which cause them stress and burnout. An analysis of teacher responses using hierarchical regression revealed that pedagogical barriers had significant positive effects on the burnout dimensions. Furthermore, the results show not only the moderator role played by coping strategies in the pedagogical barriers- burnout dimensions relationship, but also the association between self-efficacy and the coping strategies use…