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People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are often judged as less engaging, less likeable, and more awkward based on nonverbal behavior alone (Grossman, 2015; Marchena & Eigsti, 2010). Such first impressions can have a significant negative impact on social development and functional outcome for individuals with ASD. Recent studies have also found that individuals with ASD do not achieve the same level of nonverbal coordination in their interactions as typically-developed (TD) individuals (Georgescu et al., 2020; Wadge et al., 2019). This study investigates whether impression formation by TD participants differs between ASD and TD individuals and is influenced by non-verbal interpersonal synchrony.

There is growing interest in smartphone apps as a means of increasing the reach of interventions for poor sleep. To date, most evaluations of sleep interventions delivered via mental health apps (MHapps) have focused on formal treatment programs designed for clinical populations and specific disorders, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for insomnia. Yet, there has been a dramatic increase in the demand, availability, and media coverage of standalone, audio-based tools designed for ad-hoc use by the general public before and during sleeping hours. Despite the popularity of such tools (including amongst individuals with disrupted sleep), there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding their efficacy. The current study will aim to assess the feasibility of conducting a future definitive RCT to evaluate the efficacy of two categories of standalone, audio-based sleep exercises (referred to collectively as ‘Sleep Tools’ here) featured on Unmind -- a digital mental health platform for working adults. The two categories will include 1) Nightwaves (NW; ambient music and nature sounds), and 2) Sleep Tales (ST; narrated stories), both of which are designed to facilitate improved sleep. The study will recruit working adults who meet predefined criteria for poor sleep, and will be a multi-arm, parallel-group, external pilot RCT with assessments at pre- (t0) and post-intervention (t1). Participants will be randomised to one of two Sleep Tools interventions featured on the Unmind platform (NW or ST), or to a wait-list (WL) control group, for a period of 4 weeks. The primary aim of this study is to assess the feasibility of the research methods and interventions, in preparation for a definitive RCT. A secondary aim is to assess the preliminary efficacy of each intervention arm via self-reported outcome measures of sleep disturbance, sleep-related impairment, workplace productivity, core symptoms of depression and anxiety, and overall mental wellbeing, captured at t0 and t1. The study will incorporate a secondary trial designed to report on acceptability and usability of the Unmind Sleep Tools under more pragmatic, naturalistic study conditions.

Review Question: What are the social determinants of mental illness? Population: Humans Exposure: Social determinants Outcome: Mental Illness symptoms or diagnoses

Adaptive behavior requires learning about the structure of one’s environment to derive optimal action policies, and previous studies have documented transfer of such structural knowledge to bias choices in new environments. Here, we asked whether people could also acquire and transfer more abstract knowledge across different task environments, specifically expectations about cognitive control demands. Over three experiments, participants performed a probabilistic card-sorting task in environments of either a low or high volatility of task rule changes (requiring low or high cognitive flexibility respectively) before transitioning to a medium-volatility environment. Using reinforcement learning modeling, we consistently found that previous exposure to high task rule volatilities led to faster adaptation to rule changes in the subsequent transfer phase. These transfers of expectations about cognitive flexibility demands were both task- (Experiment 2) and stimulus- (Experiment 3) independent, thus demonstrating the formation and generalization of environmental structure knowledge to guide cognitive control.Statement of RelevanceWe investigated whether structural knowledge of one task environment can be transferred to guide cognitive control strategies in new environments. Past research has found that while learning generally improves subsequent performance, it does so only for the learned task (“near transfer”) and has little or no generalizability to novel task rules and stimuli (“far transfer”). However, recent studies suggest that learning more abstract, structural task features (e.g., cognitive maps) allows for that knowledge to be applied to new environments. Here, we took a critical additional step and showed that people can acquire and transfer expectations about cognitive control demands (specifically cognitive flexibility) across different task environments. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of people’s ability to extract and re-use cognitive control learning parameters that transcend specific stimuli and tasks. This transfer of learned cognitive flexibility is particularly noteworthy because such flexibility is impaired in several common psychiatric conditions.

Contemporary diasporas have brought many Muslims to thepredominantly Judeo-Christian West. These have been attendedby prevalent mistrust, stigmatization and, discrimination, espe-cially against Muslim women, many of whom are visibly identifi-able by their hijabs. Such factors pose clear risks to their mentalhealth and well-being. Protective religiosity-subjective well-being associations are well known among Christians and Jews,but not among Muslims in the West. This meta-analytic reviewof 21 surveys found a significant association between religiosityand well-being among an aggregate sample of 7,145 Muslims;r = 0.20, p < .05. Two-thirds of religious Muslims scored higheron measures of well-being than nonreligious Muslims, and suchprotections were greater among Muslim women than men; χ2(1) = 4.37, p < .05. Islamic religiosity seems to bolster subjectivewell-being among Muslims in the West. Social workers andallied practitioners ought to incorporate religious beliefs andpractices as life space resources in working with Muslims as wework to eradicate Islamic discrimination from Western socialstructures.

This study evaluates the efficacy of an Italian adaptation of the Identity Project, a school-based intervention designed to promote adolescents’ cultural identity. After culturally adapting and piloting the intervention protocol, a randomized controlled trial on a sample of ethnically diverse adolescents (N = 600, Mage = 15 yrs) will be conducted, with classrooms being randomly assigned to intervention or waitlist control conditions. Using a Bayesian approach, analyses will address whether in the intervention (vs. control) group, (a) identity exploration increases from pre- to posttest, (b) increases in exploration at posttest predict higher resolution at follow-up. Moreover, the moderating role of students’ migration background and trait-like environmental sensitivity will be explored. Implications for extant theory and practice will be discussed.

To fully understand the causes and mechanisms involved in overeating and obesity, measures of both cognitive and physiological determinants of eating behavior need to be integrated. Effectively synchronizing behavioral measures such as meal micro-structure (e.g., eating speed), cognitive processing of sensory stimuli, and metabolic parameters, can be complex. However, this step is central to understanding the impact of food interventions on body weight. In this paper, we provide an overview of the existing gaps in eating behavior research and describe the development and validation of a new methodological platform to address some of these issues. As part of a controlled trial, 76 men and women self-served and consumed food from a buffet, using a portion-control plate with visual stimuli for appropriate amounts of main food groups, or a conventional plate, on two different days, in a random order. In both sessions participants completed behavioral and cognitive tests using a novel methodological platform that measured gaze movement (as a proxy for visual attention), eating rate and bite size, memory for portion sizes, subjective appetite and portion-size perceptions. In a sub-sample of women, hormonal secretion in response to the meal was also measured. The novel platform showed a significant improvement in meal micro-structure measures from published data (13 vs. 33% failure rate) and high comparability between an automated gaze mapping protocol vs. manual coding for eye-tracking studies involving an eating test (ICC between methods 0.85; 90% CI 0.74, 0.92). This trial was registered at Clinical Trials.gov with Identifier NCT03610776. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13428-021-01745-9.

Introduction: An increase in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was predicted as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures established for controlling it. Aims: This review seeks to analyze the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and in particular the pandemic’s effect on the prevalence of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms, predisposing factors, interventions carried out, their effectiveness and the proposal of interventions in future situations similar to the one studied. Methods: For this purpose, a systematic review of empirical articles, published from November 2019 to June 2022, is carried out, following the PRISMA methodology. The review was registered in Open Science Forum [10.17605/OSF.IO/DV8GZ]. Results: The studies indicated an increase in the prevalence of OC symptoms in the general population, as well as new obsessions, relapses, and/ or worsening of the pre-existing symptoms in patients with OCD mainly related to contamination obsessions and cleaning and hand washing compulsions. Predisposing factors are being younger, low resilience, low social support, the presence of previous contamination symptoms, overexposure to news about COVID-19, the previous severity and aggressiveness of OC symptomatology, and the absence or lack of treatment adherence. The combined use of pharmacological treatment, cognitive-behavioral therapies, teaching skills to reinforce resilience, and training in coping strategies will be recommended. Conclusions: The data obtained can be used as a basis for future OCD prevention plans in crises similar to the one studied.

Intensive treatments for youth obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are important and underresearched. This study used three adolescent cases to assess the preliminary efficacy of an intensive treatment combining acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with exposure and response prevention (ERP) for OCD. Participants received intensive treatment for 15 hours per week for three weeks. Assessments were collected at pre-treatment, weekly during treatment, and at posttreatment. All participants ended treatment in the mild range of OCD severity with 32-60% reductions in symptoms. Participants also reported notable improvements in psychological flexibility and ended treatment in the non-clinical range of depression, anxiety, and stress. These results indicate promise and preliminary support for the use of ACT+ERP in intensive settings for adolescents with OCD. This paper focuses on the clinical application of these techniques.

Rumors, conspiracies, and health-related misinformation have gone hand-in-hand with the global COVID-19 pandemic and made accessing reliable and accurate information difficult. Against this background, the present study examined the different psychosocial predictors of believing in conspiratorial information related to general health in India. Indian participants (N = 826) responded to measures related to conspiratorial thinking, trust, moral emotions, political ideology, bullshit receptivity, and belief in conspiratorial information in an online survey. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to determine the validity of the instruments used with an Indian sample. Results revealed that lower socioeconomic status, lower trust in political institutions, greater negative moral emotions, greater conspiratorial thinking, and right-leaning political ideology predicted beliefs in health-related conspiratorial information. In highlighting these potential psychosocial determinants of conspiratorial beliefs, we can move towards combating conspiracies effectively and develop necessary interventions for the same. Future work can focus on those areas and assess the moderating effects of political ideology on conspiratorial beliefs.

As survival rates increase, more emphasis has gone to possible cognitive sequelae in older cancer patients, which could be explained by accelerated brain aging. In this review, we provide a complete overview of studies investigating neuroimaging, neurocognitive, and neurodegenerative disorders in older cancer survivors (>65 years), based on three databases (Pubmed, Web of Science and Medline). Ninety-six studies were included. Evidence was found for functional and structural brain changes (frontal regions, basal ganglia, gray and white matter), compared to healthy controls. Cognitive decline was mainly found in memory functioning. Anti-hormonal treatments were repeatedly associated with cognitive decline (tamoxifen) and sometimes with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (androgen deprivation therapy). Chemotherapy was inconsistently associated with later development of cognitive changes or dementia. Radiotherapy was not associated with cognition in patients with non-central nervous system cancer but can play a role in patients with central nervous system cancer, while neurosurgery seemed to improve their cognition in the short-term. Individual risk factors included cancer subtypes (e.g., brain cancer, hormone-related cancers), treatment (e.g., anti-hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, cranial radiation), genetic predisposition (e.g., APOE, COMT, BDNF), age, comorbidities (e.g., frailty, cognitive reserve), and psychological (e.g., depression, (post-traumatic) distress, sleep, fatigue) and social factors (e.g., loneliness, limited caregiver support, low SES). More research on accelerated aging is required to guide intervention studies. ispartof: CANCERS vol:15 issue:4 ispartof: location:Switzerland status: published

Maltreatment of children is a societal issue, leading to substantial adverse effects on children’s psychosocial development (Cicchetti & Toth, 2016; Schlensog-Schuster et al., 2022). For example, adolescents maltreated early in life show greater difficulties in emotion regulation, social, and cognitive processes than non-maltreated children (Lansford et al., 2002; Sullivan et al., 2008) . This leads to an increased risk of developing mental health difficulties including anxiety and depressive disorders (Kim & Cicchetti, 2010; Schlensog-Schuster et al., 2022). Unfortunately, the mechanisms underlying maltreatment-based vulnerability remain incompletely understood (Teicher & Samson, 2013), although atypical patterns of social functioning, especially under threat, are thought to account for much of this vulnerability (McCrory et al., 2019). Social exclusion or ostracism (i.e., being rejected, excluded and/or ignored within a social context), threatens basic human needs of belonging, control, meaningful existence, and self-esteem, and is often accompanied by negative affective arousal and psychological pain (Eisenberger et al., 2003; Wesselmann et al., 2012; Williams, 2009), as well as elevated rates of distress (Eisenberger et al., 2003; Eisenberger, 2015; Hartgerink et al., 2015). A Intrafamilial adversity, especially emotional abuse and neglect, appear to confer hypersensitivity to exclusion (Schulz et al., 2022; van den Berg et al., 2018) as well as signs of negative social expectancies (Gunther Moor et al., 2014). In light of the conceptual links between maltreatment and avoidant processing of emotion (White et al., 2021), we expect problems in accessing this negative affectivity within maltreated individuals with explicit self-reports of affect only. The reason for this expectancy is that children with those experiences report on trying to suppress the expression of negative affect in general as an attempt to minimize potential conflict with their respective caregivers (Shipman et al., 2005) and even suppress spontaneous facial mimicry (Ardizzi et al., 2016). So, for maltreated individuals we expect a higher emotional discordance (a discordance–congruence continuum, which reflects the extent to which felt and displayed emotions are aligned (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012, S. 7) than for non-maltreated subjects. In addition, self-reports, or explicit measures in general also tap into biasing factors such as conscious deliberation, reduced introspective ability, self-presentational concerns, and social desirability (Mitchell & Tetlock, 2015). This raises the question of how to capture a more holistic picture of affective experiences. Especially in children and adolescents with experiences of maltreatment masking affects seems to be a mechanism necessary to maintain a relationship to their caregivers and therefore necessary for survival. Nonetheless, since affects also comprise different components such as situation appraisal, subjective feelings, expressive behavior, physiological responses, and action preparation, multiple ways to approach and measure affective reactions were developed (Montag & Panksepp, 2017). Hence, for the present study we found implicit measures, assumed to assess affective evaluations, activated automatically, spontaneously, without effort, and, at times, without the subjects’ awareness, to be of interest. One of those measures, the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT; Quirin et al., 2009) conceptualizes implicit affect as the automatic and pre-reflective component of the affective experience, providing information different from and sometimes above explicit measures (Weil et al., 2019). However, surprisingly little research has been conducted regarding the influence of social exclusion on implicit affect in comparison to explicit measures, particularly in maltreated children and adolescents. Ostracism has been widely researched within the Cyberball paradigm. The individuals playing the Cyberball game are instructed on playing with other players online, involving phases of fair play, exclusion, and reunion during a virtual ball-tossing game (Williams & Jarvis, 2006). To the best of our knowledge, only one study to date investigated a modified Cyberball game, with no significant effect on implicit affect as measured by the IPANAT (Ho et al., 2014). We want to highlight that within this study, exclusion was more subtle and the questionnaire altered as well, which leads to the idea of using the more “clear-cut” version of Cyberball and the IPANAT to investigate the effect on implicit affect again. Another innovation would be the sample of maltreated individuals as subjects potentially masking their feelings to their social environment. Therefore, the goal for the present study is to investigate the IPANAT as an implicit measure of affect in addition to self-report of affect to capture the subjects’ affective experience during social exclusion in a more complete approach. For the assessment of explicit affect, we chose the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Krohne et al., 1996). In approaching affective experience in this way, it could lead to a deeper understanding of how children with the experience of maltreatment in comparison to their non-maltreated counterparts undergo a threatful situation like social exclusion.

The present registration contains the details on a new cross-cultural study aimed at defining, testing, and evaluating the reliability and assessment model of a new expanded version of the Exercise Addiction Inventory, called EAI-3. The structure of the EAI-3 will be also validated across gender and different languages/cultures. Finally, it will be explored it is possible to find a general cutoff point able to screen individuals at risk of exercise addiction.

Ecological Momentary Assessment Study evaluating the effects of stress beliefs on psychological and cardiac responses to stress in every day life

Research question: To what extent does trait social anxiety and the use of shaded versus clear eye-tracking glasses influence gaze behavior and physiological responses in natural situations? Methodological Approach: To cover a wide spectrum of trait social anxiety, potential study participants previously complete a screening questionnaire that assesses the presence and severity of DSM-5 criteria for social anxiety disorder. In the study, participants are instructed to take an approximately 30-minute walk. No specific route is given. During the walk, gaze behavior, physiological responses (heart rate and electrodermal activity), and the chosen route are recorded. Participants will receive a mobile eye tracker with shaded or clear lenses with the members of the two groups matched for gender and social anxiety. By doing so we aim to investigate the influence of social desirability on natural gaze behavior. After the walk, participants are asked to wait briefly in the study room with a confederate allegedly being another participant filling out questionnaires. The presence of another person allows the measurement of attentional processes during a natural interaction with a stranger. After a brief waiting period, the confederate initiates a short, scripted interaction with the participant. Afterward, the participants are again asked to complete the screening questionnaire as well as some further questionnaires on social anxiety, autism spectrum traits, and social competence (SPAI, SIAS, AQ-K, ISK-K). To ensure that the participants' behavior occurs spontaneously and intuitively, rather than being controlled top-down, they are told that the eye tracker is used to record pupillary responses and the sports watch is used to measure pulse. In addition, participants are not informed in advance that the waiting situation is also a situation of interest for the current study. Subsequently, all participants will be fully informed about the manipulation, the relevant dependent variables, and the necessity of the experimental procedure. They can then again object to anonymized use and analysis of the data and request their immediate and complete deletion.

The proposed scoping review aims to gather the literature on (1) the modulating impact of L1/L2 social or situational context on language usage in people with psychosis, (2) the impact of multilingualism on symptom expression in individuals with psychosis, and (3) specific struggles faced by multilinguals with psychosis in navigating social and healthcare systems. In this way, we hope to synthesize the literature from a (1) psycholinguistic, (2) phenomenological, and (3) sociological perspective.

In today's world, stress seems to be omnipresent, and most people have already experienced stress and the resulting negative consequences in physical and mental health. A recent study shows that two out of three people in Germany sometimes feel stressed, and even every fourth person feels stressed frequently (Techniker Krankenkasse, 2021). Furthermore, stress levels in Germany have risen steadily in recent years (Techniker Krankenkasse, 2021). Stress can be defined as “a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p. 19). An individual’s stress reaction consequently depends on the cognitive evaluation of the situation. According to the transactional stress theory, in the primary appraisal, it is classified whether the situation is irrelevant, positive, or stressful for one's own well-being (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). If it is interpreted as stressful, the secondary appraisal follows. The available resources and coping options are assessed to determine whether they are enough to control the situation (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). If these are not assessed as sufficient, stress arises, and a stress reaction follows (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The body is put in a state of "danger", to which the central nervous system, autonomic nervous system, and endocrine system respond (Kentzler & Richter, 2011). This may have negative mental and physical consequences if the stress is overly intense or lasts too long (Rutsch, 2019). Frequently shown stress reactions are for example irritability, impaired concentration, muscle tension or nervousness (Rutsch, 2019). Long-term effects of stress often include high blood pressure, gastric juice overproduction or vegetative disorders, which can develop into serious subsequent illnesses if left untreated (Rutsch, 2019). Supporting individuals through stress prevention programs therefore appears to be quite necessary. However, there are various approaches when implementing a stress prevention campaign. One is based on the instrumental stress management, which directly addresses the stressor (Kaluza, 2018). Strategies for time management and setting boundaries, for example, are used to try to eliminate or at least reduce the stressor (Kaluza, 2018). If the individual stress enhancers are to be targeted, mental stress management is used where the individual works on its destructive attitudes and thought patterns (Kaluza, 2018). In addition, the regenerative stress management, addresses the individual's stress response through exercise or relaxation techniques (Kaluza, 2018). Admittedly, a variety of stress prevention campaigns have been conducted, using different methods, and targeting different audiences (Bodenmann et al., 2002; Herr et al., 2018; Stier-Jarmer et al., 2016, Niks et al., 2018; Van de Weijer-Bergsma et al., 2014). In summary studies confirm that stress prevention programs have proven to be useful and effective in the work setting (Herr et al., 2018; Niks et al., 2018) as well as in private life (Bodenmann et al., 2002; Stier-Jarmer et al., 2016). For example, an intervention based on the transactional stress model indicated improvement in personal coping skills and less usage of dysfunctional thoughts and additudes, even two years after the stress prevention program (Bodenmann et al., 2002). Moreover, in work environments, the long-term effectiveness of stress prevention was evident in the improvement of mental and sleep problems and the reduction of reactivity regarding interpersonal problems (Herr et al., 2018). Nevertheless, there are settings that are particularly affected by stress. In fact, school, university, and work are the most common stressors, followed by peoples’ excessive internal demands (Techniker Krankenkasse, 2021). For this reason, a setting-based approach to prevention seems more relevant in this context than an individual-based intervention. Setting-based prevention focuses on a more holistic view of health, emphasizing that people's living space has a significant influence on their wellbeing (Dooris et al., 1998). The aim of a setting-based prevention is therefore to support and stabilize health of individuals in the respective setting through setting-based interventions (Dooris et al., 1998). Indeed, setting-based prevention approaches were found to be particularly effective at universities (Conley et.al, 2015; Fernandez et al., 2016). Conley and colleagues (2015) made clear that setting-based prevention approaches at universities contributed to the change of important domains, which led to a reduction in students' perception of stress. In addition, the study by Fernandez and colleagues (2016) considered university employees as well as students. It was shown that changes or improvements in the way knowledge is communicated were most effective in promoting mental health (Fernandez et al., 2016). As described above, setting-based approaches have proven to be effective. In times of pandemics and the ongoing development of technical possibilities, setting-based stress prevention using various electronic-health (e-health) applications seems to be a promising strategy (Tebeje & Klein, 2021; Kwankam, 2004). E-health is “an emerging field in the intersection of medical informatics, public health and business, referring to health services and information delivered or enhanced through the Internet and related technologies” (Eysenbach, 2001, p.1). However, based on the research available to date, the use of e-health applications is already more widespread in other areas of health interventions for example in topics of dietary change and physical activity (Turner-McGrievy et al., 2013; Fukuoka et al., 2010) rather than for use in stress prevention campaigns. For example, Fukouka and colleagues (2010) confirmed that the average daily steps of the participants of a three-week mobile phone-based intervention on physical activity increased. Furthermore, it was shown that participants who used a mobile app to self-monitor their physical activity and eating habits exercised more often during the trial period of six months (Turner-McGrievy et al., 2013). It therefore seems surprising that e-health applications are hardly used for stress prevention campaigns since individuals gain, through the advancement and use of e-health, advantages in terms of accessibility to important health information and the ability to change their own unhealthy patterns (Kreps & Neuhauser, 2010). Moreover, previous research suggests that the additional use of social media in health interventions leads to a positive effect in terms of adherence (Al-Eisa et al., 2016). Al-Eisa and collegues (2016) reported that adherence regarding the improvement of physical fitness was strengthened by the additional use of Instagram. It was used as a motivational stimulus which included educational input on the benefits of physical activity and an alarm function for the participants to remember to do their workout (Al-Eisa et al., 2016). However there has been no research on the impact in terms of adherence through a setting-based stress prevention campaign via Instagram which is unexpected as the popularity and prevalence of social media has grown worldwide in recent years (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) and offers many benefits, especially in times of pandemics. Considering the previous findings, the aim of this paper is therefore to conduct a setting-based stress prevention campaign for university members via an online learning platform and to investigate whether the additional use of Instagram shows a significant effect on participants' adherence. In addition, it is intended to show that a university stress prevention campaign improves life satisfaction, stress resistance, and perceived stress among the participants, whereby a stronger improvement is expected among the individuals who additionally use the Instagram profile.

This study aims to assess the feasibilty and acceptability of a brief preoperative psychological expectation optimization intervention (EXPECT) in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty. Patients on the waiting list for primary total knee arthoplasty (TKA) will be approached regarding study participation. Patients giving verbal and written informed consent will receive EXPECT prior to TKA. Patient reported outcomes will be assessed at baseline, after EXPECT on day before surgery, before hospital discharge and at 3 months follow up. Additional data will be collected from patient files.

The study aims to understand how the effect of chronotype on learning changes according to the time-of-day CBM is administered and its utility for improving negative emotion processing biases and positive and negative affect in young adults. Healthy individuals with a late or early chronotype will complete online CBM in either a synchronous or asynchronous condition and CBM learning rate will be the primary outcome measure.

This proposed study is part of a larger project aimed towards elucidating the effects of minority stress on psychopathology in a sample of sexual minority adults. For the present study, we will evaluate the psychometric properties of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) in a sample of sexual minority adults from the U.S. This will include confirmatory factor analyses, internal consistency, and convergent validity. As a secondary aim, we will examine measurement invariance for the ERQ in male- and female-identifying sexual minority adults and potentially in gay/lesbian and bisexual participants.

Real-time fMRI neurofeedback is a method in which a person receives feedback about their neural activation with the help of fMRI, and should learn to control this activation consciously. We have developed a novel paradigm to deliver neurofeedback in which a virtual environment serves as a feedback modality. This feedback is presented through a virtual environment in which the participants see a greem meadow with trees in the background. This environment changes depending on the brain activity: it gets brighter (the sun rises) and flowers grow and bloom. In other words, the higher the brain activity in the target brain region, the brigher the environment and more flowers bloom. We want to examine the efficacy of this neurofeedback task by comparing three different conditions. In a double-blind, randomised study, the participants will reveice feedback from the target region (experimental condition), a control region (active control condition), or sham feedback. To evaluate efficacy of this paradigm we are using the following psychometric measures in our study. These will be assessed before the neurofeedback training. Questionnaires marked with a star (*) will be reassessed at 4 and 12 weeks after the neurofeedback. - *Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) - *Essener Trauma Inventory (ETI) - *Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) - *WHO Quality of Life - Brief version (WHOQOL-BREF) - *Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) - Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) - Internal External Locus of Control-4 (IE-4) - *Appetitive and Facilitative Aggression Scale (AFAS) - Facilitative aggression subscale

[Objective] To establish a multi-dimensional and standardized lexical database of COVID-19-related terms and words. The database may have facilitated COVID-19-related research in domains such as Psychology, Psychiatry, Neuroscience, etc. [Methods] This database referred to the established methods of the emotional lexical database at home and abroad, and used the dot-detection task and words in the database as experimental materials to test the attention bias of the subjects suspected of having COVID-19 phobia, so as to test the validity of the database. [Results] 196 COVID-19-related words and 99 neutral words were included in the word database. Then, we classified and evaluated the words through six dimensions, and established a standardized database of Chinese COVID-19-related terms. The words have good reliability and internal consistency. In addition, the validity was tested through the dot-detection task. Subjects with COVID-19 fear and those without COVID-19 fear showed a significant attentional bias toward COVID-19-related words [Limitations] The initial sample size is small and the database application needs further development. [Conclusions] The database of Chinese COVID-19 terms has good reliability, internal consistency, and reliability, and can be used as materials related to COVID-19-related research in the future.

The project aims to gain new knowledge about neural factors associated with psychosis risk and to compare the role of these factors for groups of individuals with genetic risk for psychosis and individuals with clinical risk for psychosis.