A mysterious sensation about sleep and health: the role of interoception

BACKGROUND: Interoception is mental awareness, recognition and acknowledgement of physiological body signals. Understanding the role of sleep and interoception may provide a better understanding surrounding the sleep-health connection. Our primary objective was to examine the potential relationships between subjective sleep quality and multiple dimensions of interoceptive abilities in a large sample of young adults, a group who are vulnerable to sleep impairment and its widespread health consequences. METHODS: We conducted an online cross-sectional survey targeting young adults, aged 18-25 years. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to identify subjective sleep quality and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness Version 2 was used to assess eight domains of interoception. We conducted a series of Spearman\u27s bivariate correlations to assess the relationships between global sleep quality as well as the seven PSQI sub-components in relation to the eight interoception outcomes. We then conducted quantile regression to assess if global PSQI score was an independent predictor of interoception. Participants (n = 609) consented and provided data. RESULTS: After adjustment, the global PSQI was a significant predictor of \u27Non-Distracting\u27, \u27Emotional Awareness\u27 and \u27Trusting\u27, where β = - 0.10 (95% CI: - 0.14, - 0.07), β = 0.05 (0.01, 0.09), and β = - 0.10 (- 0.14, - 0.05), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings reveal a small, significant relationship between sleep quality and interoceptive abilities amongst young adults. Sleep impairment may inhibit interoceptive skills, thus adding value to the mechanistic explanation of the sleep-health relationship. Experimental and prospective studies are needed to determine temporal associations

Arabic version of the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (PID-5) in a community sample of United Arab Emirates nationals

Background: Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) proposes a model for conceptualizing personality disorders in which they are characterized by impairments in personality functioning and maladaptive personality traits. The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) is a self-report measure that assesses the presence and severity of these maladaptive personality traits. Objective: The current study examined the reliability and validity of the Arabic version of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) to measure maladaptive personality traits in the Emirati population of the United Arab Emirates. Methods: The Arabic version of the PID-5 was administered to a community sample of 1,090 United Arab Emirates nationals (89.5% female and 10.5% male, mean age = 22.44 years old). The descriptive measures, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent validity with NEO – Five Factor Inventory, as well as PID-5’s factor structure, were all addressed. Results: The PID-5facets and domains mean scores were higher in the Emirati sample compared to the original US sample. Internal consistency of the PID-5 scales was acceptable to high and test-retest coefficients ranged from 0.84 (facets) to 0.87 (domains). As expected, the five domains of the Arabic version of the PID-5 correlated significantly with all Five-Factor Model domains of personality. Additionally, the Arabic version of the PID-5 confirmed a five-factor structure that resembles the PID-5 domains. Conclusion: The findings of this study provided initial support for the use of the Arabic version of the PID-5 to assess maladaptive personality traits in the Emirati population of the United Arab Emirates.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The arabic version of the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (PID-5) in a clinical sample of United Arab Emirates (UAE) nationals

Objectives: We aimed to test the potential of the Arabic version of the PID-5 to distinguish between clinical and non-clinical participants, as well as to examine its convergent validity and factor structure in an Emirati clinical sample. Methods: The Arabic version of the PID-5 was administered to a clinical sample comprised of 156 participants (Mage = 31.38, SD = 8.99, 37.8% male, 62.2% female) and a community sample also comprised of 156 participants (Mage = 31.43, SD = 9.52, 37.2% male, 62.8% female). We addressed the descriptive measures, internal consistency, mean rank scores differences, convergent validity with SCL-90-R, and PID-5's factor structure. Results: As expected, the clinical sample presented statistically significantly higher scores than the non-clinical sample, with medium to high effect sizes. In addition, all the PID-5 domains showed positive correlations with most of the symptomatic constellations of the SCL-90-R as well as the PID-5 facets with all their SCL-90-R counterparts. However, our findings did not entirely replicate the PID-5 original 5-factor structure, as only a 4-factor solution was retained. Conclusions: Future studies with the Arabic PID-5 in clinical samples are needed to understand its relevance and clinical utility in Arabic countries.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Effects of word predictability on eye movements during Arabic reading

Contextual predictability influences both the probability and duration of eye fixations on words when reading Latinate alphabetic scripts like English and German. However, it is unknown whether word predictability influences eye movements in reading similarly for Semitic languages like Arabic, which are alphabetic languages with very different visual and linguistic characteristics. Such knowledge is nevertheless important for establishing the generality of mechanisms of eye-movement control across different alphabetic writing systems. Accordingly, we investigated word predictability effects in Arabic in two eye-movement experiments. Both produced shorter fixation times for words with high compared to low predictability, consistent with previous findings. Predictability did not influence skipping probabilities for (four- to eight-letter) words of varying length and morphological complexity (Experiment 1). However, it did for short (three- to four-letter) words with simpler structures (Experiment 2). We suggest that word-skipping is reduced, and affected less by contextual predictability, in Arabic compared to Latinate alphabetic reading, because of specific orthographic and morphological characteristics of the Arabic script

Teaching About Psychological Disorders:A Case for Using Discussion Boards in the Classroom

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. This study compares the traditional use of case studies against the novel use of discussion boards to teach naive students in the United Arab Emirates about anxiety disorders. Sixty-six female students from an abnormal psychology class were randomly assigned to either the case study condition (CSC) or the discussion board condition (DBC). Students read about anxiety disorders and at the end of the class rated their experience based on four learning outcomes. In each instance, students in the DBC rated their learning outcomes significantly higher than students in the CSC. This suggests that incorporating discussion boards as a pedagogical tool can add a new dimension for engaging student interest, fostering knowledge development, and increasing empathy