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Previous research has found that individuals with social phobia differ from controls in their processing of emotional faces. For instance, people with social phobia show increased attention to briefly presented threatening faces. However, when exposure times are increased, the direction of this attentional bias is more unclear. Studies investigating eye movements have found both increased as well as decreased attention to threatening faces in socially anxious participants. The current study investigated eye movements to emotional faces in eight patients with social phobia and 34 controls. Three different tasks with different exposure durations were used, which allowed for an investigation of the time course of attention. At the early time interval, patients showed a complex pattern of both vigilance and avoidance of threatening faces. At the longest time interval, patients avoided the eyes of sad, disgust, and neutral faces more than controls, whereas there were no group differences for angry faces.

Although social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common mental disorder, it is often under diagnosed and under treated. The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence, severity, disability, and quality of life towards SAD among students of Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study was conducted among a stratified sample of 500 undergraduate students to identify the prevalence of SAD, its correlates, related disability, and its impact on the quality life. All participants completed the Social Phobia Inventory, Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale, Sheehan Disability Scale, and the WHO Quality of Life – BREF questionnaire. Of 476 students, 25.8% were screened positive for SAD. About 47.2% of the students had mild symptoms, 42.3% had moderate to marked symptoms, and 10.5% had severe to very severe symptoms of SAD. Students who resulted positive for SAD reported significant disabilities in work, social, and family areas, and this has adversely affected their quality of life as compared to those who screened negative for SAD. Students reported several clinical manifestations that affected their functioning and social life. Acting, performing or giving a talk in front of an audience was the most commonly feared situation. Blushing in front of people was the most commonly avoided situation. Since the present study showed a marked prevalence of SAD among students, increased disability, and impaired quality of life, rigorous efforts are needed for early recognition and treatment of SAD.

A disproportionate fear of vomiting, or emetophobia, is a chronic and disabling condition which is characterized by a tendency to avoid a wide array of situations or activities that might increase the risk of vomiting. Unlike many other subtypes of specific phobia, emetophobia is fairly difficult to treat. In fact, there are only a few published cases in the literature. This paper presents a case of a 46-year old woman with emetophobia in which a trauma-focused treatment approach was applied; that is, an approach particularly aimed at processing disturbing memories of a series of events which were considered to be causal in the etiology of her condition. Four therapy sessions of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) produced a lasting decrease in symptomatology. A 3-year follow up showed no indication of relapse.

This paper analyzes implied volatilities (IVs), which are computed from trading records of the KOSPI 200 index option market from January 2005 to December 2014, to examine major characteristics of the market pricing behavior. The data includes only daily closing prices of option transactions for which the daily trading volume is larger than 300 contracts. The IV is computed using the Black-Scholes option pricing model. The empirical findings are as follows;

Firstly, daily averages of IVs have shown very similar behavior to historical volatilities computed from 60-day returns of the KOSPI 200 index. The correlation coefficient of IV of the ATM call options to historical volatility is 0.8679 and that of the ATM put options is 0.8479.

Secondly, when moneyness, which is measured by the ratio of the strike price to the spot price, is very large or very small, IVs of call and put options decrease days to maturity gets longer. This is partial evidence of the jump risk inherent in the stochastic process of the spot price.

Thirdly, the moneyness pattern showed heavily skewed shapes of volatility smiles, which was more apparent during the global financial crises period from 2007 to 2009. Behavioral reasons can explain the volatility smiles. When the moneyness is very small, the deep OTM puts are priced relatively higher due to investors’ crash phobia and the deep ITM calls are valued higher due to investors’ overconfidence and confirmation biases. When the moneyness is very large, the deep OTM calls are priced higher due to investors’ hike expectation and the deep ITM puts are valued higher due to overconfidence and confirmation biases.

Fourthly, for almost all moneyness classes and for all sub-periods, the IVs of puts are larger than the IVs of calls. Also, the differences of IVs of deep OTM put ranges minus IVs of deep OTM calls, which is known to be a measure of crash phobia or hike expectation, shows consistent positive values for all sub-periods. The difference in the financial crisis period is much bigger than in other periods. This suggests that option traders had a stronger crash phobia in the financial crisis.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview on positive drivers and negative factors connected to the Covid-19 pandemic which can jointly shape wine tourism intentions.

The present study relies on a large sample of 399 US wine tourists. Partial least square structural equation modelling is adopted for data analysis.

Results reveal that willingness to avoid Covid risk while travelling negatively impacts wine tourism intentions and competitively mediates the effect of Covid phobia. Both situational and personal involvement with wine are key antecedents of future wine tourism intentions.

This research contributes to understand the role of willingness to avoid travel-related risks during health crises. Furthermore, it improves existing knowledge on the effect of wine involvement on wine tourism intentions, highlighting the predictive relevance of situational involvement in explaining this relationship.

Results constitute critical information to practitioners and destination management operators for improving their resilience under similar circumstances. Updated information on wine tourists’ profile is also provided.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies exploring how positive and negative drivers act synergically in affecting wine tourism intentions after the Covid-19 outbreak.

Using a mobile phone is increasingly becoming recognized as very dangerous while driving. With a smartphone, users feel connected and have access to information. The inability to access smartphone has become a phobia, causing anxiety and fear. The present study’s aims are as follows: first, quantify the association between nomophobia and road safety among motorists; second, determine a cut-off value for nomophobia that would identify poor road safety so that interventions can be designed accordingly.

Participants were surveyed online for nomophobia symptoms and a recent history of traffic contraventions. Nomophobia was measured using the nomophobia questionnaire (NMP-Q).

A total of 1731 participants responded to the survey; the mean age was 33 ± 12, and 43% were male. Overall, 483 (28%) [26–30%] participants received a recent traffic contravention. Participants with severe nomophobia showed a statistically significant increased risk for poor road safety odds ratios and a corresponding 95% CI of 4.64 [3.35-6.38] and 4.54 [3.28-6.29] in crude and adjusted models, respectively. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC)-based analyses revealed that NMP-Q scores of = 90 would be effective for identifying at risk drivers with sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of 61%, 75% and 72%, respectively.

Nomophobia symptoms are quite common among adults. Severe nomophobia is associated with poor road safety among motorists. Developing screening and intervention programs aimed at reducing nomophobia may improve road safety among motorists.

This study was conducted to investigate the Social Physique Anxiety (SPA) level in adolescent and young women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).

This is a descriptive study. It was conducted in Turkey. The study was conducted from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017. It was completed with a total of 150 young women – 75 of them had PCOS and 75 of them were healthy. Study data were collected using demographic information form and Social Physique Anxiety Scale (SPAS).

The study was found that the adolescent and young women with PCOS had higher subscales and total scores for total SPAS at a statistically significant level than healthy adolescent and young women (p < 0.05).

The findings of this study may be used for planning and implementing interventions in health-care practice such as screening and early treatment of SPA of women with PCOS.

It was found that PCOS in adolescent and young women increased the SPA level. In line with these results, health professionals must be particularly aware of the potential psychosocial and health needs of adolescent and young women with PCOS.

The purpose of this study is to investigate artificial intelligence (AI) as enabler of future library services, with consideration to how prepared are librarians in African university libraries.

This study applied the interpretive content/document analysis of literature harvested from different databases of Scopus and Web of Science. AI could be used to perform daily routines in circulation, serial, reference and selective dissemination of information among others. It could also be applied to the provision of innovative services of recognition of library activities such as answering research quarries, cataloguing and classification of library materials and management of library system software of different databases within the library systems.

It could be deduced from the study that AI would continue to serve as a panacea to future library services irrespective of its geographical context. Due to the evolving nature of knowledge growth, AI having its roots in the field of engineering has been found useful to support future library services. The support accrued from library service delivery in the library profession has made librarians continue to interact with other intelligent machines that can demonstrate human behaviour even though they are not real human beings. The behaviour of machines and AI where human beings play a significant role has brought many renovations in the management of complex tasks of processing, communication, knowledge representation, decision making and suggestions, on potentials of diverse work operations.

The understanding that the present paper portrays in the context of future library services is that there is no way the AI could function without a human interaction perspective when drawing an analogy from computer science, information science and information systems fields of study.

The interest of users across their background would be strengthen if AI advances transformed the handling complex tasks of processing, communication, knowledge representation, decision-making and giving suggestions, among other things. The possibilities of diverse work operations from empirical evidence of studies consulted in recent times gave the authors the impetus to consider AI as the enabler of future library services.

The increasing demands from library patrons have prompted librarians to adapt their methods of delivering services. These emerging technologies have also brought about shifts in approaches to teaching and learning. Consequently, the recent surge in digital technology-driven service innovations has ushered in a fresh paradigm for education and research. In response to these changes, librarians are actively seeking novel and innovative technologies to enhance user experiences within their libraries. They serve as catalysts for introducing modern and advanced technologies, consistently adapting to contemporary tools that enhance their offerings.

Exposure therapy is a widely used treatment for patients with post-traumatic stress dis -order. It involves reduction of fear through progressive exposure to frightening stimuli in a therapeutic environment. Here we propose a new method designed to improve the effectiveness of exposure therapy. We hypothesized that device-guided breathing during exposure therapy can increase the capability of the patient to undergo effective exposure. The successful application of the method is described for a single patient. Using a device to slow and regularize breathing, the patient was calmed and experienced a greater sense of control and a profound effect of the exposure. The use of the breathing-guiding device is believed to reduce arousal level and excitability of sympathetic “fight-flight” behaviors. The present study suggests that device-guided breathing integrated with exposure therapy may provide a practically feasible and potentially promising non-pharmacological treatment after trauma.