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Measuring Paranoid Beliefs in Adolescents:A Comparison of the Revised-Green et al.’s Paranoid Thoughts Scale (R-GPTS) and the Bird Checklist of Adolescent Paranoia (B-CAP)
Get PDFResearch on paranoid beliefs in adolescents is in its infancy. Valid and reliable assessments are essential to advancing the field, yet there is no current consensus as to which are optimal to use in this population. This study compared the psychometric properties of two measures of paranoia in a general population adolescent sample. A cross-sectional study with quota sampling (gender and age) recruited adolescents (14-17 years) from the UK (n=262) and USA (n=200), who completed the Revised Green et al. Paranoid Thoughts Scale (R-GPTS) and the Bird Checklist for Adolescent Paranoia (B-CAP). We assessed factor structures, intercorrelations, overlap of participants identified as at-risk for paranoid thoughts via both scales, convergent validity (scales with one another) and discriminant validity (distress, wellbeing, bullying and discrimination). Both scales performed equally well in terms of factorial validity. Intercorrelations between the subscales and with general distress were high for both measures. However, a substantial percentage of participants were identified as having paranoid beliefs according to the R-GPTS but not the B-CAP. Furthermore, the B-CAP showed a very high correlations (0.69≤r≤0.79) with self-reported bullying experiences, which bordered on multicollinearity. Findings highlight the possibility that B-CAP may risk confounding paranoid beliefs with exposure to bullying more so than R-GPTS, and that B-CAP may miss instances of elevated paranoia that are captured by the R-GPTS. Future research needs to further explore this by validating both scales with an external (e.g., interview-based) criterion for paranoia
Development of Next-Generation Scientific Platforms for Moonshot Quantum Technologies Research
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Finding a Paraguayan voice:the indigenous language Guarani in the interpretation, composition and transmission of Paraguayan popular song
Get PDFA Qualitative Exploration of Older Adult’s Experience of a Blended Digital Community Intervention for Social Connectedness
Get PDFLoneliness poses significant public health risks, especially for older adults susceptible tosocial isolation. While psychologically informed group interventions show promise, existingprograms often lack theoretical grounding and fail to address psychological barriers toforming meaningful connections. Digital interventions enhance accessibility but demonstratemixed efficacy and are often used to join older adults up with existing networks, failing toaddress the fact that many older adults become lonely due to their shrinking social networksin later life. This study aimed to explore the acceptability and feasibility of "Squiboon" - anovel blended digital intervention combining AI-facilitated group conversations with in-person interactions to cultivate social bonds and challenge maladaptive cognitionsperpetuating loneliness among older adults. An exploratory qualitative study was conductedusing thematic analysis. Data was collected through focus groups with older adult Squiboontrial participants (N=7) and semi-structured interviews with staff (N=3). Participants wererecruited from retirement villages involved in a prior Squiboon trial. Reflexive thematicanalysis adopted an inductive, critical realist approach to explore intervention acceptability,feasibility, and optimisation from participant perspectives.Five key themes indicated the blended format was acceptable and feasible to the participants,and it facilitated social connections and meaningful conversations: 1) Bringing PeopleTogether, 2) Engaging with Digital, 3) Evoking Joy, 4) Navigating Loss And Loneliness, 5)The Need for Session Lead. Facilitators centred around the supportive group environment,digital elements that facilitated deep and meaningful conversations, and the general positiveexperience had by all. Barriers involved reaching individuals that are chronically lonely maybe difficult, and a differing of opinion on the level of facilitation required to help older adultsuse the programme. Recommendations centred on simplifying technology, enablingpersonalisation, training, and balanced facilitation between staff and the older adultcommunity. This blended digital-in-person intervention demonstrated acceptability andfeasibility for reducing loneliness among older adults by fostering social belonging andmeaningful conversations. However, optimising technology accessibility, individualisation,facilitation models and implementation strategies are crucial for broader adoption andengagement of the most isolated individuals
Priorities for HIV and chronic pain research: results from a survey of individuals with lived experience
Get PDFThe Global Task Force on Chronic Pain in HIV published seven research priorities in the field of HIV-associated chronic pain in 2019: (1) causes; (2) management; (3) treatment individualization and integration with addiction treatment; (4) mental and social health factors; (5) prevalence; (6) treatment cost effectiveness; and (7) prevention. The current study used a web-based survey to determine whether the research topics were aligned with the priorities of adults with lived experiences of HIV and chronic pain. We also collected information about respondents’ own pain and treatment experiences. We received 311 survey responses from mostly US-based respondents. Most respondents reported longstanding, moderate to severe, multisite pain, commonly accompanied by symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. The median number of pain treatments tried was 10 (IQR = 8, 13), with medications and exercise being the most common modalities, and opioids being viewed as the most helpful. Over 80% of respondents considered all research topics either “extremely important” or “very important”. Research topic #2, which focused on optimizing management of pain in people with HIV, was accorded the greatest importance by respondents. These findings suggest good alignment between the priorities of researchers and US-based people with lived experience of HIV-associated chronic pain
Self-supervised extracted contrast network for facial expression recognition
Get PDFSelf-supervised Contrastive learning has recently demonstrated significant performance in Facial Expression Recognition (FER). However, existing methods fail to address inherent challenges such as similar and blurred facial expressions, and low-quality semantic pairs from image cropping. To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes a Lightweight Self-supervised Distilled Contrastive network for FER (LSDC-FER), which consists of a center suppressed cropping module and a multi-scale feature joint distillation module. The former improves the quality of face expression semantic pairs by face image localization and center suppressed cropping. The latter learns fine-grained features using knowledge distillation and explores multi-scale contextual information to improve feature learning. Experimental results show that LSDC-FER achieves 75.65% and 61.16% recognition accuracy on RAF-DB and FER-2013 public facial expression datasets, respectively
Gene-Gene Interaction Between Factor-XI and ABO Genes in Cerebral Venous Thrombosis:The BEAST Study
Get PDFBackground and ObjectivesGene-gene interactions likely contribute to the etiology of multifactorial diseases such as cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) and could be one of the main sources of known missing heritability. We explored Factor XI (F11) and ABO gene interactions among patients with CVT.MethodsPatients with CVT of European ancestry from the large Bio-Repository to Establish the Aetiology of Sinovenous Thrombosis (BEAST) international collaboration were recruited. Codominant modelling was used to determine interactions between genome-wide identified F11 and ABO genes with CVT status.ResultsWe studied 882 patients with CVT and 1,205 ethnically matched control participants (age: 42 ± 15 vs 43 ± 12 years, p = 0.08: sex: 71% male vs 68% female, p = 0.09, respectively). Individuals heterozygous (AT) for the risk allele (T) at both loci (rs56810541/F11 and rs8176645/ABO) had a 3.9 (95% CI 2.74–5.71, p = 2.75e-13) increase in risk of CVT. Individuals homozygous (TT) for the risk allele at both loci had a 13.9 (95% CI 7.64–26.17, p = 2.0e-15) increase in risk of CVT. The presence of a non-O blood group (A, B, AB) combined with TT/rs56810541/F11 increased CVT risk by OR = 6.8 (95% CI 4.54–10.33, p = 2.00e15), compared with blood group-O combined with AA.DiscussionInteractions between factor XI and ABO genes increase risk of CVT by 4- to 14-fold
Healthy prison cultures:Factors influencing male prisoners’ engagement in exercise and subsequent healthy behaviours
Get PDFPurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the factors which influence male prisoners’ motivation for, and engagement in, exercise and subsequent healthy behaviours.Design/methodology/approachThe first authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with male prisoners inside an English medium-security male prison. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, themes were identified using thematic analysis and a critical realist perspective applied to understand objective processes behind prisoners’ experiences and shared meanings of exercise and engaging in healthy behaviours in prison.FindingsEmerging themes indicate that in the context of healthy behaviours male prisoners aspired to a masculine ideal that was characterised by a culture of either adaptive behaviours, or maladaptive behaviours. The former fostered an adaptive exercise culture which promoted psychological well-being through an autonomy-supportive environment, consequently internalising motivation and minimising perceived barriers to engaging in healthy behaviours. Conversely, a culture of maladaptive behaviours fostered a maladaptive exercise culture which led to negative psychological well-being, underpinned by external forms of motivation which emphasised barriers to engaging in healthy behaviours.Practical implicationsFindings emphasise the need for prisons to promote an internal perceived locus of control for male prisoners when engaging in healthy behaviours.Originality/valueThe authors adopt a rare interdisciplinary approach combining a psychological theory of motivation and criminological perspectives of prison culture to understand how best to minimise the impact of prisons as an institution on the psychological well-being of male prisoners.<br/
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