Automatic evaluation of body-related words among young women: an experimental study

Background: Sociocultural models of body image disturbance have linked the development of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders to exposure to media messages depicting the unrealistically slender female physique. Previous research has demonstrated that exposure to images depicting the thin female ideal has negative effects on some females’ levels of body dissatisfaction. Much of this research, however, has utilised relatively long stimulus exposure times; thereby focusing on effortful and conscious processing of body-related stimuli. Relatively little is known about the nature of females’ affective responses to the textual components of body-related stimuli, especially when these stimuli are only briefly encountered. The primary aim of the current research was to determine whether young women automatically evaluate body-related words and whether these responses are associated with body image concerns, including self-reported levels of appearance schematicity, thin internalisation, body dissatisfaction, and dietary restraint. Methods: An affective priming task was used to investigate whether females automatically evaluate body-related words, and whether this is associated with self-reported body image concerns. In a within-participants experimental design, the valence congruence of the prime and target pairs was manipulated. Participants selected body words as primes in Experiment 1 (N = 27), while normatively selected body words were primes in Experiment 2 (N = 50). Each prime was presented briefly, followed by a target word which participants judged as “good” or “bad”. The dependent variable was response latency to the target. Results: Automatic evaluation was evident: responding to congruent pairs was faster than responding to incongruent pairs. Body image concerns were unrelated to automaticity. Conclusions: The findings suggest that brief encounters with body words are likely to prompt automatic evaluation in all young women, and that this process proceeds unintentionally and efficiently, without conscious guidance. The potential implications for higher order, conscious information processing is discussed

Understanding how adherence goals promote adherence behaviours: a repeated measure observational study with HIV seropositive patients

Background The extent to which patients follow treatments as prescribed is pivotal to treatment success. An exceptionally high level (> 95 %) of HIV medication adherence is required to suppress viral replication and protect the immune system and a similarly high level (> 80 %) of adherence has also been suggested in order to benefit from prescribed exercise programmes. However, in clinical practice, adherence to both often falls below the desirable level. This project aims to investigate a wide range of psychological and personality factors that may lead to adherence/non-adherence to medical treatment and exercise programmes. Methods HIV positive patients who are referred to the physiotherapist-led 10-week exercise programme as part of the standard care are continuously recruited. Data on social cognitive variables (attitude, intention, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and outcome beliefs) about the goal and specific behaviours, selected personality factors, perceived quality of life, physical activity, self-reported adherence and physical assessment are collected at baseline, at the end of the exercise programme and again 3 months later. The project incorporates objective measures of both exercise (attendance log and improvement in physical measures such as improved fitness level, weight loss, improved circumferential anthropometric measures) and medication adherence (verified by non-invasive hair analysis). Discussion The novelty of this project comes from two key aspects, complemented with objective information on exercise and medication adherence. The project assesses beliefs about both the underlying goal such as following prescribed treatment; and about the specific behaviours such as undertaking the exercise or taking the medication, using both implicit and explicit assessments of patients' beliefs and attitudes. We predict that i) the way people think about the underlying goal of their treatments explains medication and exercise behaviours over and above the effects of the behaviour-specific thinking and ii) the relationship between adherence to exercise and to medical treatment is stronger among those with more favourable views about the goal. Results from this study should identify the key contributing factors to inform subsequent adherence research and afford a more streamlined assessment matrix. The project also aims to inform patient care practices. UK Clinical Research Network registration number: UKCRN 7842

Plateau 'pop-up' in the great 1897 Assam earthquake.

The great Assam earthquake of 12 June 1897 reduced to rubble all masonry buildings within a region of northeastern India roughly the size of England, and was felt over an area exceeding that of the great 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Hitherto it was believed that rupture occurred on a north-dipping Himalayan thrust fault propagating south of Bhutan. But here we show that the northern edge of the Shillong plateau rose violently by at least 11 m during the Assam earthquake, and that this was due to the rupture of a buried reverse fault approximately 110 km in length and dipping steeply away from the Himalaya. The stress drop implied by the rupture geometry and the prodigious fault slip of 18 +/- 7 m explains epicentral accelerations observed to exceed 1g vertically and surface velocities exceeding 3 m s-1 (ref. 1). This quantitative observation of active deformation of a 'pop-up' structure confirms that faults bounding such structures can penetrate the whole crust. Plateau uplift in the past 2-5 million years has caused the Indian plate to contract locally by 4 +/- 2 mm yr-1, reducing seismic risk in Bhutan but increasing the risk in northern Bangladesh