Veränderung von Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen im Verlauf einer stationären Therapie

Background: The Freiburger Personality Inventory (FPI-R) is a well established and proven instrument for the assessment of personality traits. Although personality is conceived as a stable trait, clinical experience indicates that impressive changes are found on personality scales during intensive treatment. Method A large sample of inpatients which were treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy for bulimia nervosa, tinnitus or anxiety disorder was evaluated concerning the question which items of the FPI-R were answered differently or identically before and after intensive therapy. Results: It could be found that items which cover aspects that are central to the therapy more often show changing answers. The use of conditional form and indefinite frequency adjuncts in the formulation of items evidently allowed a more differentiated weighting of pros and cons at the end of therapy. Effects of regression to the mean could be excluded as an explanation by empirical data. Conclusion: It can be concluded that changes in answering items before and after intensive therapy can be explained as specific effects of therapy

Internet-based relapse prevention for anorexia nervosa: nine- month follow-up

To study the longer term effects of an internet-based CBT intervention for relapse prevention (RP) in anorexia nervosa

Das Strukturierte Interview für Anorektische und Bulimische Ess-Störungen nach DSM-IV und ICD-10 zur Expertenbeurteilung (SIAB-EX) und dazugehöriger Fragebogen zur Selbsteinschätzung (SIAB-S)

Background: The Structured Inventory for Anorexic and Bulimic Syndromes according to DSM-IV and ICD-10 consists of the Structured Expert Interview for Anorexic and Bulimic Syndromes (SIAB-EX) and the corresponding self report questionnaire (SIAB-S). These instruments assess symptoms of eating disorders and other symptoms often found in eating-disordered individuals (e.g. anxieties, symptoms of OCD, depression, substance abuse and impairment of sexuality and social integration). Thus, parallel forms for self-report and expert rating are available. Separate factor analyses resulted in very similar factor structures for self-report and interview as well as for both time points assessed: current (last 3 months before the interview) and past (time from puberty up to 3 months before the interview). Both assessments can be used for diagnosing eating disorders according to DSM-IV and ICD-10 and a total score can be computed. Method: Test criteria were assessed using a sample of 377 inpatients treated for an eating disorder. For the expert interview, SIAB-EX data were collected in a community sample of 202 young women without eating disorders. Results: Test criteria were satisfying or better. Interrater reliability (kappa) for the expert interview SIAB-EX was 0,81 (current) and 0,85 (past). Sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value were very good for the SIAB-EX (ppv = 0.91 lifetime) and the SIAB-S (ppv = 0.98 lifetime). Means for SIAB-EX and SIAB-S for the inpatient sample are reported. For the expert interview SIAB-EX norms for 202 young non-eating disordered women are given. Conclusion: The expert interview SIAB-EX can be seen as a `gold standard' for the assessment of eating disorders. The SIAB-EX is available in German, English, Italian and Spanish

The Headscarf Effect Revisited:Further Evidence for a Culture-Based Internal Face Processing Advantage

© 2015 a Pion publication. Encoding the internal features of unfamiliar faces poses a perceptual challenge that occasionally results in face recognition errors. Extensive experience with faces framed by a headscarf may, however, enhance perceivers’ ability to process internal facial information. To examine this claim empirically, participants in the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America completed a standard part-whole face recognition task. Accuracy on the task was examined using a 2 (perceiver culture: Emirati vs American) × 2 (face race: Arab vs white) × 2 (probe type: part vs whole) × 3 (probe feature: eyes vs nose vs mouth) mixed-measures analysis of variance. As predicted, Emiratis outperformed Americans on the administered task. Although their recognition advantage occurred regardless of probe type, it was most pronounced for Arab faces and for trials that captured the processing of nose or mouth information. The findings demonstrate that culture-based experiences hone perceivers’ face processing skills

Invariant recognition of polychromatic images of Vibrio cholerae O1

7 pages, 5 figures.-- ©2002 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.Cholera is an acute intestinal infectious disease. It has claimed many lives throughout history, and it continues to be a global health threat. Cholera is considered one of the most important emergence diseases due its relation with global climate changes. Automated methods such as optical systems represent a new trend to make more accurate measurements of the presence and quantity of this microorganism in its natural environment. Automatic systems eliminate observer bias and reduce the analysis time.We evaluate the utility of coherent optical systems with invariant correlation for the recognition of Vibrio cholerae O1. Images of scenes are recorded with a CCD camera and decomposed in three RGB channels. A numeric simulation is developed to identify the bacteria in the different samples through an invariant correlation technique. There is no variation when we repeat the correlation and the variation between images correlation is minimum. The position-, scale-, and rotation-invariant recognition is made with a scale transform through the Mellin transform. The algorithm to recognize Vibrio cholerae O1 is the presence of correlation peaks in the green channel output and their absence in red and blue channels. The discrimination criterion is the presence of correlation peaks in red, green, and blue channels.Peer reviewe

Exploring the Neural Correlates of Social Stereotyping

Judging people on the basis of cultural stereotypes is a ubiquitous facet of daily life, yet little is known about how this fundamental inferential strategy is implemented in the brain. Using fMRI, we measured neural activity while participants made judgments about the likely actor (i.e., person-focus) and location (i.e., place-focus) of a series of activities, some of which were associated with prevailing gender stereotypes. Results revealed that stereotyping was underpinned by activity in areas associated with evaluative processing (e.g., ventral medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala) and the representation of action knowledge (e.g., supramarginal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus). In addition, activity accompanying stereotypic judgments was correlated with the strength of participants' explicit and implicit gender stereotypes. These findings elucidate how stereotyping fits within the neuroscience of person understanding.Psycholog