Previous research suggests that lower interoceptive awareness is associated with more negative body image during adolescence. However, studies have not distinguished between adaptive and maladaptive modes of attention toward interoceptive signals, and relationships between interoceptive awareness and positive body image remain unexplored. To address these issues, a sample of 265 British adolescents (140 girls, 125 boys) aged 13-16 years completed measures of interoceptive awareness, body appreciation, functionality appreciation, body pride, body shame, and body surveillance. Correlational analyses broadly indicated that greater interoceptive awareness was significantly associated with more positive body image. Multiple regressions revealed significant predictive relationships between interoceptive awareness and all facets of body image in both girls and boys, except body surveillance, which was not statistically significant for girls. At the univariate level, the interoceptive awareness facets of Attention Regulation, Body Listening, Self-Regulation, and Trusting emerged as significant predictors for at least one facet of positive body image, whilst the Noticing and Emotional Awareness facets did not. These findings broadly align with previous research with adults, which has indicated that the way interoceptive stimuli are appraised and responded to might be more closely associated with facets of body image than the tendency to notice interoceptive stimuli.
Reading decoding ability is a fundamental skill to acquire word-specific orthographic information necessary for skilled reading. Decoding ability and its underlying phonological processing skills have been heavily investigated typically among developing students. However, the issue has rarely been noticed among students with intellectual disability who commonly suffer from reading decoding problems. This study is aimed at determining the contributions of phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, and rapid automated naming, as three well known phonological processing skills, to decoding ability among 60 participants with mild intellectual disability of unspecified origin ranging from 15 to 23 years old. The results of the correlation analysis revealed that all three aspects of phonological processing are significantly correlated with decoding ability. Furthermore, a series of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that after controlling the effect of IQ, phonological awareness, and rapid automated naming are two distinct sources of decoding ability, but phonological short-term memory significantly contributes to decoding ability under the realm of phonological awareness.
Previous research has identified a relationship between interoception and body image, where lower interoceptive awareness (IA) is associated with negative body image. However, relationships between facets of interoception and positive body image remain unexplored, and men and older adults remain underrepresented. To overcome these limitations, we assessed relationships between multiple dimensions of interoceptive awareness (IA) and multiple facets of body image in community adults. An online sample of 646 British adults (447 women) aged 18-76 years completed the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA), the Body Appreciation Scale-2, the Functionality Appreciation Scale, the Authentic Pride subscale from the Body and Appearance Self-Conscious Emotions Scale, and the Appearance Orientation and Overweight Preoccupation subscales from the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire. Hierarchical regressions revealed significant predictive relationships between IA and all five facets of body image after controlling for sex, body mass index, and age. In the final models, the MAIA subscales emerged as significant predictors for at least one facet of body image, with the exception of the MAIA Body Listening subscale. These findings extend previous work by demonstrating significant relationships between IA and previously unexplored facets of body image, which may hold promise for practitioner-based interventions.
Seasonal influenza is a highly contagious viral respiratory disorder. Prior knowledge of flu among general community is of paramount importance in order to mitigate its growing burden. In a pandemic, young adults are more likely to be infected increasing the potential for universities to be explosive disease outbreak centers. In this context, current study aims to assess the knowledge and perception of flu among university students from health sciences (HS) and non-HS background. Questionnaire-based cross sectional (August-December 2015) study was conducted among students of 65 universities across Pakistan. The students willing to participate were requested to fill out the self-administered questionnaire and responses were recorded and descriptively analyzed by SPSS. A total of 1694 students (age: 21.12 ± 2.13 years), 95% which belonged to age group 18-25 years, participated in the current study. Most of the participants (91.7%) had suffered from influenza during their life but only 55.7% correctly answered virus as causative agent of flu, while majority of participants, primarily from non-HS disciplines were not aware of flu cause. Very few participants (8.1%) believed that flu can cause death. About 20% students, mainly from non-HS disciplines reported that antibiotic can kill viruses. Similarly, 47.1% respondents agreed on the effectiveness of antibiotic in flu. A large proportion of study population preferred self-medication for influenza. Only 20.1% students were aware of influenza vaccine while majority of students (79.9%) from both disciplines reported that there is no such vaccine. Awareness and health literacy regarding seasonal influenza is poor among university students, especially from non-HS disciplines. These findings necessitate dire need to appropriately structured awareness programs in educational institutes to curb the growing burden of influenza.