1,720,964 research outputs found
Childhood obesity and parental reflective functioning: which connections?
No full textStudies on childhood obesity has shown that parents’ body mass index (BMI) represents an important risk factor for the development of childhood obesity. As biological and environmental factors account for the transgenerational transmission of obesity only in part, more attention has been paid to psychological mechanisms explaining the effects of parental weight on children’s weight. The issue of parents’ dysregulated emotional response has received increasing support in studies and parallels have been drawn between how children develop emotion and energy-intake regulation, but little is still known about how parental responses to children's emotions are related to eating.
As parental reflective functioning (PRF), which lays the foundation for the children’s ability to regulate emotions, has not yet been investigated, the present study aims to evaluate whether mothers’ and fathers’ BMI and PRF are associated with children’s weight. With a sample of 120 parents (60 mothers + 60 fathers) of 60 children aged 6-11 (M=8.77, SD=1.68) with normal-weight (n = 30) and with an obesity onset before 3 years of age (n = 30), a hierarchical regression was performed in order to determine the predictive power of PRF (assessed with Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire – PRFQ) on children’s BMI z-score, above and beyond the mothers’ and fathers’ BMI. Data shows that the best model includes parents’ BMI and mother’s low PRF. The model is significant (F=6.71, p < .001) and explains over 27 % of the variance of child’s weight. The effect of the mother’s tendency to be overly certain of child’s mental states is significant (b= .44, p < .05), above and beyond the parents’ BMI. The current exploratory findings, if confirmed by future studies, shows an interesting effect of PRF on children’s weight, with important implications on both clinical and research field
Individualism/collectivism and personality in Italian and American Groups
No full textItalian (n = 129) and American (n = 86) samples were evaluated with the Five Factor Inventory of personality and a measure of individualism/collectivism. Greater individualism was seen in the American group than the Italian group, as in the Hofstede (2019) data. For the Italian sample only, greater individualism was associated with greater neuroticism and greater collectivism was associated with lower neuroticism. This may reflect poor culture fit for Italians with a very individualistic orientation given that Italy falls between the United States and Asian countries in terms of the individualism/collectivism dimension. Other studies have shown better personal adjustment being associated with having a personality that fits with the culture in which one is embedded. For both Italian and American groups, higher collectivism was associated with higher extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness consistent with other reports. Additional findings included higher openness in the Italian group and higher conscientiousness in the American group
Emerging Adults and COVID-19: The Role of Individualism-Collectivism on Perceived Risks and Psychological Maladjustment
No full textThe outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has dramatically changed our habits and routines. Uncertainty, insecurity, instability for the present and future, and reduced autonomy and self-directedness, are common feelings at the time of COVID-19. These aspects are very important during emerging adulthood. In spite of the fact that medical reports suggest that youth are less prone to experience COVID-19 infections, emerging adults might be at higher risk for their psychological adjustment. Emerging adults showed higher concerns about their role as a possible asymptomatic carrier than being positive with COVID-19 themselves. Both worries and concerns about COVID-19 and psychological maladjustment may be related to cultural factors. Individualism, collectivism, equality, and hierarchy seem to be meaningful perspectives to take into account. A total of 1183 Italian emerging adults were asked to fill out an online survey during the second week of the national lockdown in Italy. Results showed they reported an accurate perceived knowledge about COVID-19. At the same time, they showed higher worries and concerns about COVID-19 for their relatives, followed by more general/social worries. The lowest score included worries about COVID-19 related to themselves. State anxiety and stress levels were above the normal cutoff, confirming the challenges that emerging adults are facing during the pandemic. On one hand, emerging adults’ collectivistic orientation was related to higher perceived risks of infection; on the other hand, it predicted lower psychological maladjustment, controlling for socio-demographic variables. The study suggests that to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and decrease levels of psychological maladjustment in emerging adulthood, individuals’ cultural orientation such as the wish of sharing common goals with others, interdependence, and sociability, have to be emphasized and promoted as protective factors
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Personality Features in Obesity
No full textObesity is a widespread and broadly consequential health condition associated with numerous medical complications that could increase mortality rates. As personality concerned individual's patterns of feeling, behavior, and thinking, it may help in understanding how people with obesity differ from people with normal-weight status in their typical weight-relevant behavior. So far, studies about personality and BMI associations have mainly focused on broad personality traits. The main purpose of this study was to explore the personality and health associations among a clinical group composed of 46 outpatients with overweight/obesity (mean age = 55.83; SD = 12.84) in comparison to a healthy control group that included 46 subjects (mean age = 54.96; SD = 12.60). Both the clinical and control groups were composed of 14 males and 32 females. Several personality and psychopathological aspects were assessed with the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI). The results of the analysis of variance of aligned rank transformed (ART) showed that patients with overweight/obesity reported higher scores for Somatic Complaints, Depression, and Borderline Features than the control group. Logistic regression highlighted specifically that the subscales of the Borderline Features assessing the Negative Relationship contributed to the increased risk of belonging to the clinical group. For the purpose of this study, the role of gender was considered. The present findings highlight the importance of focusing on assessing personality functioning in the health context and on specific characteristics of interpersonal relationships to promote more tailored treatments
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