Emotional dysregulation features and problem gambling in university students: a pilot study.

Undergraduate students typically cope with various changes in their lives and experience many stressors associated with academic issues. Distress can make them more vulnerable to particular behavioral patterns in order to cope with negative affect. The association of problematic gambling with particular emotion regulation characteristics-some of which are developmentally dependent-becomes a recent focus of research with clinical and preventive implications. We carried out a pilot study enrolling voluntarily young adults of a public university in the Lisbon area, and 117 Portuguese-speaking individuals were interviewed. Participants, mainly female (M = 20.6; SD = 3.9), were investigated taking into consideration their gambling practices, characteristics of impulsivity and alexithymia, along with the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Portuguese versions of the South Oaks Gambling Scale (SOGS) and Short-Version of Impulsive Behavior Scale (S-UPPSP) were prepared (i.e., translation and back-translation of the original versions were performed). The prevalence of gambling problems in this sample is modest, although they were associated with negative urgency and sensation-seeking, as well as with depression symptoms. Multiple correspondence analysis, a particular multivariate model associating gambling problems with socio-demographic and psychological variables, allowed identifying different profiles of individuals. Trace and state emotional dysregulation features are selectively associated with distinctive gambling patterns, according to some previous findings in studies with other groups. Results may address new findings in terms of morbidity, risk factors and the design of future preventive strategies among such individuals.

Feature extraction for psychophysiological load assessment in unconstrained scenarios.

The relevance of psychophysiological measurements for affective computing and emotion analysis applications has been widely recognized. However, and although several authors have studied the informative content of parameters derived from cardiovascular and other modalities, feature extraction remains an open topic in the field. This is particularly relevant in scenarios where the autonomic nervous system triggering stimuli are unknown. In this paper, we analyze a set of features extracted from multimodal biosignal data, applicable to the assessment of psychophysiological load in unconstrained settings. Experimental evaluation is performed on real world data, collected both from control subjects and subjects with a strong clinical background, in a context of questionnaire-based clinical history reporting. The devised feature set has shown promising properties, making it prone to complement the more traditional measurements.