Trajectories of change in mothers' parenting confidence and relationship with baby: a 15-month qualitative longitudinal study.

Background: Parents' experiences and their relationship to their baby undergo various changes over the course of the first year. This is particularly the case for mothers, who still tend to take on the primary caregiver role in most families in the UK. Better understanding the changes mothers experience in the first year is of importance given the impact of the parent-infant relationship for children's socio-emotional development.

Developing a new measure of retrospective body dissatisfaction: links to postnatal bonding and psychological well-being.

Background: Pregnancy is a transformative time for women and their bodies, and therefore thoughts and feelings about the body understandably change during this period. While previous research has established the impact of body dissatisfaction on factors like antenatal attachment and maternal mental health, there is a notable gap in understanding its long-term effects on postnatal factors. This is often due to high attrition rates in longitudinal studies.

Greater Risk Taking in Cosmetic Surgery Acceptance and History: An Experimental and Computational Study.

Cosmetic surgery is ever more affordable and accessible, but carries physical and psychological risks. Yet, no study to date has directly examined risk-taking behaviour under controlled conditions, beyond self-report and in relation to cosmetic surgery attitudes. We used the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and advanced computational modelling to measure decision-making behaviour and identify the latent parameters driving behaviour associated with cosmetic surgery attitudes in women with no cosmetic surgery history (N = 265) and a subsample of women with a cosmetic surgery history (N = 24).

Body appearance values modulate risk aversion in eating restriction.

The understanding of eating disorders is hindered by the lack of integration between existing psychosocial and neurobiological approaches. We address this problem by developing a novel transdiagnostic and computational approach to eating restriction decisions. We first validated a novel paradigm which extends an established monetary risk task to involve body stimuli with psychosocial values.

Apps targeting anorexia nervosa in young people: a systematic review of active ingredients.

Evaluating the presence of behavior change techniques (BCTs) in mHealth apps could be used to better understand what "active ingredients" contribute to outcomes. Despite the early onset of Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and the increasing use of mobile apps to seek mental healthcare among young people, BCTs underpinning mHealth apps targeting AN have never been systematically examined. This review systematically identified and analyzed BCTs underpinning apps targeted at reducing AN in young people in an attempt to understand their active components.

Identifying with the beautiful: Facial attractiveness effects on unisensory and multisensory self-other distinction.

People tend to evaluate their own traits and abilities favourably and such favourable self-perceptions extend to attractiveness. However, the exact mechanism underlying this self-enhancement bias remains unclear. One possibility could be the identification with attractive others through blurring of self-other boundaries.

Barriers and facilitators to mood and confidence in pregnancy and early parenthood during COVID-19 in the UK: mixed-methods synthesis survey.

Background: Parental well-being during pregnancy and early parenthood is critical for child development. Environmental stressors can significantly challenge parental well-being.

Aims: To investigate how COVID-19 and associated restrictions influence mood and parenting confidence of expectant parents and those in early parenthood, identifying barriers and facilitators.

Behavior change techniques in mobile apps targeting self-harm in young people: a systematic review.

Despite the high prevalence of self-harm among young people, as well as their extensive use of mobile apps for seeking support with their mental healthcare, it is unclear whether the design of mobile apps aimed at targeting self-harm is underpinned by behavior change techniques (BCTs). To systematically analyze and identify (a) what BCTs and (b) what theories are present in self-harm apps for young people in an attempt to understand their active components. Systematic searches in Apple store, followed by thorough screening, were conducted to identify free mobile apps targeting self-harm in young people.

Self-other distinction and borderline personality disorder features: Evidence for egocentric and altercentric bias in a self-other facial morphing task.

Self-other distinction (SOD) refers to the ability to distinguish one's own body, actions, and mental representations from those of others. Problems with SOD are considered to be a key feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, empirical studies on SOD in BPD are scarce.

Dissociable sources of erogeneity in social touch: Imagining and perceiving C-Tactile optimal touch in erogenous zones.

Previous research points to two major hypotheses regarding the mechanisms by which touch can be experienced as erotogenic. The first concerns the body part to which touch is applied (erogenous zones) and the second the modality of touch (sensual touch optimal in activating C Tactile afferents). In this study, we explored for the first time the relation between those two mechanisms in actual and imagined social touch.

Affective Touch Enhances Self-Face Recognition During Multisensory Integration.

Multisensory integration is a powerful mechanism for constructing body awareness and key for the sense of selfhood. Recent evidence has shown that the specialised C tactile modality that gives rise to feelings of pleasant, affective touch, can enhance the experience of body ownership during multisensory integration. Nevertheless, no study has examined whether affective touch can also modulate psychological identification with our face, the hallmark of our identity.

Active Interpersonal Touch Gives Rise to the Social Softness Illusion.

Social touch plays a powerful role in human life, with important physical and mental health benefits in development and adulthood. Touch is central in building the foundations of social interaction, attachment, and cognition, and early, social touch has unique, beneficial neurophysiological and epigenetic effects. The recent discovery of a separate neurophysiological system for affectively laden touch in humans has further kindled scientific interest in the area.