The purpose of the present study was to use a biopsychosocial approach to investigate the role of body image concerns and appearance-related evaluation stress in the relationship between adiposity and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery. Participants included 106 Caucasian female undergraduates at the University of South Florida. The laboratory procedure consisted of resting baseline, speech preparation and delivery, and recovery phases. Participants also completed a variety of body image questionnaires. To manipulate appearance-related evaluation stress, participants were randomly assigned to present their speech to a video camera or an audio recorder. Overall adiposity was measured as body mass index (BMI) and central adiposity was measured as waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Greater adiposity was associated with more weight-related anxiety during the speech task, regardless of speech condition (BMI: r = .54, p < .001; WHR: r = .44, p < .001). Additionally, those in the video condition reported more weight-related anxiety (M = 9.28, SD = 7.74) during the speech task than those in the audio condition (M = 3.31, SD < 5.61; F(1,99) = 19.73, p < .001). Significant relationships between adiposity and CVR and recovery emerged for several outcome measures with central and overall adiposity predicting different CVR patterns (all ps < .05). There was no main effect of speech condition on CVR or recovery (all ps > .05). Significant interactions between adiposity and speech condition emerged for some of the outcome variables as well (all ps < .05). Additionally, body image concerns mediated the relationship between adiposity, speech condition, and CVR for SV and CO reactivity. The results suggest that adiposity may have a robust effect on physiological reactivity and recovery independent of psychological processes that co-occur. The results also suggest that those with high adiposity experience more weight-related anxiety during evaluation, even when the evaluation is not intended to induce body image concerns. Finally, the results suggest that body image concerns may act to suppress reactivity among those with high levels of weight-related anxiety. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.

This diploma thesis focuses on the automated diagnosis of hypokinetic dysarthria in the multilingual speech corpus, which is a motor speech disorder that occurs in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. The automatic speech recognition approach to diagnosis is based on the acoustic analysis of speech and subsequent use of mathematical models. The popularity of this method is on the rise due to its objectivity and the possibility of working simultaneously on different languages. The aim of this work is to find out which acoustic parameters have high discriminative power and are universal for multiple languages. To achieve this, a statistical analysis of parameterized speech tasks and subsequent modelling by machine learning methods was used. The analyses were performed for Czech, American English, Hungarian and all languages together. It was found that only some parameters enable the diagnosis of the hypokinetic disorder and are, at the same time, universal for multiple languages. The relF2SD parameter shows the best results, followed by the NST parameter. When classifying speakers of all the languages together, the model achieves accuracy of 59 % and sensitivity of 72 %.

It has been suggested that psychosocial stress influences situational fluctuations of tic frequency. However, evidence from experimental studies is lacking. The current study investigated the effects of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-C) on tic frequency in 31 children and adolescents with tic disorders. A relaxation and a concentration situation served as control conditions. Patients were asked either to suppress their tics or to “tic freely.” Physiological measures of stress were measured throughout the experiment. The TSST-C elicited a clear stress response with elevated levels of saliva cortisol, increased heart rate, and a larger number of skin conductance responses. During relaxation and concentration, the instruction to suppress tics reduced the number of tics, whereas during stress, the number of tics was low, regardless of the given instruction. Our study suggests that the stress might result in a situational decrease of tic frequency.

It has been suggested that psychosocial stress influences situational fluctuations of tic frequency. However, evidence from experimental studies is lacking. The current study investigated the effects of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-C) on tic frequency in 31 children and adolescents with tic disorders. A relaxation and a concentration situation served as control conditions. Patients were asked either to suppress their tics or to “tic freely.” Physiological measures of stress were measured throughout the experiment. The TSST-C elicited a clear stress response with elevated levels of saliva cortisol, increased heart rate, and a larger number of skin conductance responses. During relaxation and concentration, the instruction to suppress tics reduced the number of tics, whereas during stress, the number of tics was low, regardless of the given instruction. Our study suggests that the stress might result in a situational decrease of tic frequency.