Assessment of selective mutism (SM) is hampered by the lack of diagnostic measures. The Frankfurt Scale of Selective Mutism was developed for kindergarteners, schoolchildren, and adolescents, ...including the diagnostic scale (DS) and the severity scale (SS). The objective of this study was to evaluate this novel, parent-rated questionnaire among individuals aged 3 to 18 years (n = 334) with SM, social phobia, internalizing disorders, and a control group. Item analysis resulted in high item-total correlations, and internal consistency in both scales was excellent with Cronbach’s α = .90-.98. Exploratory factor analysis of the SS consistently yielded a one-factor solution. Mean sum scores of the DS differed significantly between the diagnostic groups, and the receiver operating characteristic analysis resulted in optimal cutoffs for distinguishing SM from all other groups with the area under the curves of 0.94-1.00. The SS sum scores correlated significantly with SM’s clinician-rated symptom severity.
•Higher social anxiety & reduced emotional competence in specific internet addicts.•Longer reaction times in EST for socially anxious words in internet gaming addicts.•Left middle and superior ...temporal gyrus hypoactivation in internet gaming addicts.•Social words may be less retrievable in semantic storage of internet gaming addicts.
Addicts to specific internet applications involving communication features showed increased social anxiety, emotional competence deficits and impaired prefrontal-related inhibitory control. The dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex (dACC) likely plays an important role in cognitive control and negative affect (such as social exclusion, pain or anxiety).
To assess (social) anxiety-related inhibitory control in specific internet addiction (addicted use of games and social networks) and its relation to altered dACC activation.
N=44 controls and n=51 specific internet addicts completed an anxious words-based Affective Go/No-Go task (AGN). A subsample of n=23 healthy controls and n=25 specific internet addicts underwent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while completing an Emotional Stroop Task (EST) with socially anxious, positive, negative and neutral words. Subgroups of internet gaming and social network addicts were exploratively assessed. Psychometric measures of social anxiety, emotional competence and impulsivity were additionally explored.
Specific internet addicts showed higher impulsivity, social anxiety and reduced emotional competence. Between-group differences in AGN and EST behavioral measures were not detected. No group differences were found in the dACC, but explorative analyses revealed decreased left middle and superior temporal gyrus activation during interference of socially anxious words in internet gaming and relative to social network addicts.
Given the function of the left middle temporal gyrus in the retrieval of words or expressions during communication, our findings give a first hint that social words might be less retrievable in the semantic storage of internet gaming addicts, possibly indicating deficiencies in handling speech in social situations.
Abstract
Background
Higher enrolment rates of cancer patients into clinical trials are necessary to increase cancer survival. As a prerequisite, an improved semiautomated matching of patient ...characteristics with clinical trial eligibility criteria is needed. This is based on the computer interpretability, i.e., structurability of eligibility criteria texts. To increase structurability, the common content, phrasing, and structuring problems of oncological eligibility criteria need to be better understood.
Objectives
We aimed to identify oncological eligibility criteria that were not possible to be structured by our manual approach and categorize them by the underlying structuring problem. Our results shall contribute to improved criteria phrasing in the future as a prerequisite for increased structurability.
Methods
The inclusion and exclusion criteria of 159 oncological studies from the Clinical Trial Information System of the National Center for Tumor Diseases Heidelberg were manually structured and grouped into content-related subcategories. Criteria identified as not structurable were analyzed further and manually categorized by the underlying structuring problem.
Results
The structuring of criteria resulted in 4,742 smallest meaningful components (SMCs) distributed across seven main categories (Diagnosis, Therapy, Laboratory, Study, Findings, Demographics, and Lifestyle, Others). A proportion of 645 SMCs (13.60%) was not possible to be structured due to content- and structure-related issues. Of these, a subset of 415 SMCs (64.34%) was considered not remediable, as supplementary medical knowledge would have been needed or the linkage among the sentence components was too complex. The main category “Diagnosis and Study” contained these two subcategories to the largest parts and thus were the least structurable. In the inclusion criteria, reasons for lacking structurability varied, while missing supplementary medical knowledge was the largest factor within the exclusion criteria.
Conclusion
Our results suggest that further improvement of eligibility criterion phrasing only marginally contributes to increased structurability. Instead, physician-based confirmation of the matching results and the exclusion of factors harming the patient or biasing the study is needed.
Abstract Aims MMORPG addiction has been associated with self-concept impairments and increased identification with the own avatar. Yet, the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of ...self-identification with avatars, especially reflected in the left angular gyrus (AG), have only been assessed in regular gamers. Therefore, the study aims to examine neurobiological processes in addicted MMORPG players while evaluating their own and their personal avatar's body image (physical self-concept). Methods Sixteen addicted and seventeen non-addicted gamers underwent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while viewing images of themselves, their own avatar and unfamiliar persons. The Body Image Questionnaire (FKB-20) and Visual Analog Scales (VAS) assessing the degree of attractiveness, sympathy and gender identity of the self, of the avatar as well as of the unfamiliar persons were applied. Results Addicts showed a significantly extended negative body image and lower gender identity levels as well as decreased bilateral brain activations in the AG and the middle occipital gyrus during self-perception. They further exhibited higher activations in the left AG during avatar-perception. Regression analyses in the overall group and in addicted gamers indicated a significant positive correlation between gender identity and brain activation in the left AG during self-perception. Conclusions Our results confirm addicted MMORPG players to have physical self-concept deficits which may be related to hypoactivations in the AG. The findings further indicate addicted gamers to have a tendency to identify themselves easier with their own avatar than with their real self. Lower gender identity levels might be associated with physical self-concept deficits in MMORPG addiction.
Psychometric studies suggest that observed self-concept deficits in addicted massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) are compensated through the replacement of their ideal (i.e., how ...an individual would like to be) by their own avatar (i.e., graphical agent in the virtual world). Neurobiological studies indicate that increased identification with their own avatar in regular MMORPG gamers is possibly reflected by enhanced avatar-referential brain activation in the left angular gyrus (AG). However, the neurobiological correlates reflecting the relations of the avatar to addicted gamers' self and ideal are still unexplored. Therefore, we compare these relations between addicted and nonaddicted MMORPG gamers. A sample of n = 15 addicted and n = 17 nonaddicted players underwent functional MRI (fMRI) while completing a Giessen-Test (GT)-derived paradigm assessing self-, ideal-, and avatar-related self-concept domains. Neurobiological analyses included the comparisons avatar versus self, avatar versus ideal, and avatar versus self, ideal. Psychometrically, addicts showed significantly lower scores on the self-concept subscale of 'social resonance,' that is, social popularity. In all avatar-related contrasts, within-group comparisons showed addicted players to exhibit significantly higher brain activations in the left AG. The between-groups comparisons revealed avatar-related left AG hyperactivations in addicts. Our results may suggest that addicted MMORPG players identify significantly more with their avatar than nonaddicted gamers. The concrete avatar might increasingly replace the rather abstract ideal in the transition from normal- controlled to addictive-compulsive MMORPG usage.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
Internet gaming addiction appears to be related to self-concept deficits and increased angular gyrus (AG)-related identification with one’s avatar. For increased social network use, a few existing ...studies suggest striatal-related positive social feedback as an underlying factor. However, whether an impaired self-concept and its reward-based compensation through the online presentation of an idealized version of the self are related to pathological social network use has not been investigated yet. We aimed to compare different stages of pathological Internet game and social network use to explore the neural basis of avatar and self-identification in addictive use. Methods: About 19 pathological Internet gamers, 19 pathological social network users, and 19 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while completing a self-retrieval paradigm, asking participants to rate the degree to which various self-concept-related characteristics described their self, ideal, and avatar. Self-conceptrelated characteristics were also psychometrically assessed. Results: Psychometric testing indicated that pathological Internet gamers exhibited higher self-concept deficits generally, whereas pathological social network users exhibit deficits in emotion regulation only. We observed left AG hyperactivations in Internet gamers during avatar reflection and a correlation with symptom severity. Striatal hypoactivations during self-reflection (vs. ideal reflection) were observed in social network users and were correlated with symptom severity. Discussion and conclusion: Internet gaming addiction appears to be linked to increased identification with one’s avatar, evidenced by high left AG activations in pathological Internet gamers. Addiction to social networks seems to be characterized by emotion regulation deficits, reflected by reduced striatal activation during self-reflection compared to during ideal reflection.
In the biomedical sector not only the amount of information produced and uploaded into the web is enormous, but also the number of sources where these data can be found. Clinicians and researchers ...spend huge amounts of time on trying to access this information and to filter the most important answers to a given question. As the formulation of these queries is crucial, automated query expansion is an effective tool to optimize a query and receive the best possible results. In this paper we introduce the concept of a workflow for an optimization of queries in the medical and biological sector by using a series of tools for expansion and transformation of the query. After the definition of attributes by the user, the query string is compared to previous queries in order to add semantic co-occurring terms to the query. Additionally, the query is enlarged by an inclusion of synonyms. The translation into database specific ontologies ensures the optimal query formulation for the chosen database(s). As this process can be performed in various databases at once, the results are ranked and normalized in order to achieve a comparable list of answers for a question.
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