Despite the many positive outcomes, excessive mobile phone use is now often associated with potentially harmful and/or disturbing behaviors (e.g., symptoms of deregulated use, negative impact on various aspects of daily life such as relationship problems, and work intrusion). Problematic mobile phone use (PMPU) has generally been considered as a behavioral addiction that shares many features with more established drug addictions. In light of the most recent data, the current paper reviews the validity of the behavioral addiction model when applied to PMPU. On the whole, it is argued that the evidence supporting PMPU as an addictive behavior is scarce. In particular, it lacks studies that definitively show behavioral and neurobiological similarities between mobile phone addiction and other types of legitimate addictive behaviors. Given this context, an integrative pathway model is proposed that aims to provide a theoretical framework to guide future research in the field of PMPU. This model highlights that PMPU is a heterogeneous and multi-faceted condition.

BackgroundBehavioral addiction research has been particularly flourishing over the last two decades. However, recent publications have suggested that nearly all daily life activities might lead to a genuine addiction.Methods and aimIn this article, we discuss how the use of atheoretical and confirmatory research approaches may result in the identification of an unlimited list of “new” behavioral addictions.ResultsBoth methodological and theoretical shortcomings of these studies were discussed.ConclusionsWe suggested that studies overpathologizing daily life activities are likely to prompt a dismissive appraisal of behavioral addiction research. Consequently, we proposed several roadmaps for future research in the field, centrally highlighting the need for longer tenable behavioral addiction research that shifts from a mere criteria-based approach toward an approach focusing on the psychological processes involved.

Following the recent changes to the diagnostic category for addictive disorders in DSM-5, it is urgent to clarify what constitutes behavioral addiction to have a clear direction for future research and classification. However, in the years following the release of DSM-5, an expanding body of research has increasingly classified engagement in a wide range of common behaviors and leisure activities as possible behavioral addiction. If this expansion does not end, both the relevance and the credibility of the field of addictive disorders might be questioned, which may prompt a dismissive appraisal of the new DSM-5 sub-category for behavioral addiction. We propose an operational definition of behavioral addiction together with a number of exclusion criteria, to avoid pathologizing common behaviors and provide a common ground for further research. The definition and its exclusion criteria are clarified and justified by illustrating how these address a number of theoretical and methodological shortcomings that result from existing conceptualizations. We invite other researchers to extend our definition under an Open Science Foundation framework.

Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying, differentiating and describing feelings. A high prevalence of alexithymia has often been observed in clinical disorders characterized by low social functioning. This review aims to assess the association between alexithymia and the ability to decode emotional facial expressions (EFEs) within clinical and healthy populations. More precisely, this review has four main objectives: (1) to assess if alexithymia is a better predictor of the ability to decode EFEs than the diagnosis of clinical disorder; (2) to assess the influence of comorbid factors (depression and anxiety disorder) on the ability to decode EFE; (3) to investigate if deficits in decoding EFEs are specific to some levels of processing or task types; (4) to investigate if the deficits are specific to particular EFEs. Twenty four studies (behavioural and neuroimaging) were identified through a computerized literature search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2010. Data on methodology, clinical characteristics, and possible confounds were analyzed. The review revealed that: (1) alexithymia is associated with deficits in labelling EFEs among clinical disorders, (2) the level of depression and anxiety partially account for the decoding deficits, (3) alexithymia is associated with reduced perceptual abilities, and is likely to be associated with impaired semantic representations of emotional concepts, and (4) alexithymia is associated with neither specific EFEs nor a specific valence. These studies are discussed with respect to processes involved in the recognition of EFEs. Future directions for research on emotion perception are also discussed.