1,720,969 research outputs found
Improving children’s attitudes towards older people’s competences: a weekly intergenerational summer camp
Full text linkBackground: Older people are the object of negative stereotypes, especially regarding their competences. As intergenerational activities are a good practice of reducing ageism, an intergenerational summer camp at the premises of a local association became a pilot study to verify whether children’s attitudes towards older people, especially those regarding competences, improved after a week of intergenerational activities. In addition, to ensure the effectiveness of this project, the impact of intergenerational activities on the well-being of older people was also investigated. Methods: For this purpose, 26 children and 10 older people responded to an in-person survey on their attitudes towards older people (children) and their well-being (older people) at the beginning and at the end of their summer camp experience. As the summer camp is a weekly event, the children participated in the final survey after one week, whereas the older people, as they were volunteers for the entire summer camp, participated in the final survey after one month. Descriptive analysis and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test were performed. Results: Results showed an improvement in children’s attitudes towards older people, including stereotypes about their competences, and an increase in older people’s well-being. Conclusions: Findings from this study confirmed the positive effects of intergenerational projects and proposed the design of short-term ones in community settings. Future studies and considerations for intergenerational programmes suggested by this study are discussed
Imagining a friend with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Inclusion strategies for social relations
No full textWeight-based teasing, body dissatisfaction, and eating restraint: Multilevel investigation among primary schoolchildren
Full text linkObjective: Weight-based teasing is a form of weight-based stigmatization that is especially prevalent in middle childhood, and is associated with undesired health outcomes, including body dissatisfaction and eating restraint. To date, this relation has been mainly investigated at individual level only. This study aimed to examine whether body dissatisfaction and eating restraint among primary schoolchildren relate not only to personal experiences of weight-based teasing, but also to the prevalence of weight-based teasing episodes in the classroom. Method: A sample of 744 primary schoolchildren (52.04% girls; M-age = 9.82 +/- .95) from 84 classes completed a survey regarding weight-based teasing, body dissatisfaction and eating restraint. Parent-reported anthropometric data were used to compute standardized Body Mass Index (zBMI). Results: Multilevel structural equation models highlighted that, at the individual level, weight-based teasing is indirectly associated with body dissatisfaction and eating restraint through weight-based teasing. A contextual effect of weight-based teasing at the classroom level also emerged in relation to eating restraint, but not to body dissatisfaction. Specifically, the prevalence of weight-based teasing in the classroom is associated with children's eating restraint-above and beyond personally experienced teasing episodes. Conclusions: Findings showed that weight-based teasing may be negatively associated with health and psychological wellbeing not only among children who experience weight-based teasing episodes, but also among other members of a class in which weight-based teasing is more prevalent. Programs to reduce weight-based stigma in middle childhood should consider the classroom as a primary target of intervention
Evaluating interventions with victims of intimate partner violence: a community psychology approach
Full text linkPurpose. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is one of the most common forms of domestic violence, with profound implication for women's physical and psychological health. In this text we adopted the Empowerment Process Model (EPM) by Cattaneo and Goodman (2015) to analyse interventions provided to victims of IPV by a Support Centre for Women (SCW) in Italy, and understand its contribution to women’s empowerment.
Method. We conducted semi-structured interviews with ten women who had been enrolled in a program for IPV survivors at a SCW in the past three years. The interviews focused on the programs’ aims, actions undertaken to reach them, and the impact on the women’s lives, and were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological approach.
Results. Results showed that the interventions provided by the SWC were adapted according to women's needs. In the early phases, women’s primary aim was ending violence, and the intervention by the SCW was deemed as helpful to the extent it provided psychological support, protection and safe housing. Women’s aims subsequently moved to self-actualisation and economic and personal independence which required professional training, internships, and social support. Although satisfying the majority of the women’s expectations, other important needs (e.g., economic support or legal services) were poorly addressed, and cooperation with other services (e.g., police or social services) was sometimes deemed as critical.
Conclusions. By evaluating a program offered by a SCW to IPV survivors through the lens of the EPM model, we found that women deemed the program as effective when both individual resources and empowerment processes were promoted. Strengths, limitations and implications are discussed
L'autore e l'autrice di episodi di cyberbullismo: il punto di vista in adolescenza
No full textLa diffusione del cyberbullismo e l’importanza di coinvolgere studenti e studentesse nella risoluzione del problema, hanno portato all’implementazione di una ricerca-azione volta a conoscere il punto di vista degli/delle adolescenti circa l’identità dell’autore e dell’autrice di episodi di cyberbullismo. A tale scopo, 601 ragazzi/e di scuola secondaria hanno risposto alle domande di un questionario volto a individuare interessi, amicizie, modi di agire e di parlare, paure e divertimenti del ragazzo e della ragazza cyberbullo/a. I dati raccolti hanno permesso di individuarne una rappresentazione condivisa e di riflettere sulle loro differenze. Implicazioni teoriche e applicazioni progettuali sono discusse
How is weight stigma related to children's health-related quality of life? A model comparison approach
No full textPurpose. Obesity is a highly stigmatizing condition for both adults and children, and
both obesity and stigma experiences are negatively related with Health-Related Quality
of Life (HRQoL). However, the relations among these constructs have been modeled in
different and sometimes inconsistent terms in past research, and have been the object
of surprisingly few studies in pediatric populations. The present study addresses this
gap by comparing, in a sample of pre-adolescent children, four competing models (i.e.,
additive, mediation, moderation, and moderated-mediation models) accounting for the
role of stigma experiences in the concurrent relation between body weight and HRQoL.
Methods: A community sample of 600 children aged 8-to-11 years completed the
Perception of Teasing Scale to assess weight-based teasing experiences, and the
PedsQL 4.0 to assess HRQoL. Parent-reported height and weight were used to
calculate age- and gender-adjusted zBMI. Log-likelihood Test, BIC Difference, and
Wald Test were used for model comparisons. Results: The mediation model
outperformed both additive and moderation models, and was found to be equally
informative (but more parsimonious) as compared to the moderated-mediation
account. The same pattern of results was replicated for both global HRQoL and
domain-specific quality of life domains (i.e., physical, emotional, social, and scholastic).
Conclusions: The mediation model provided the best fitting and more parsimonious
representation of the relations between body weight, stigma experiences, and HRQoL,
meaning that an increased likelihood of experiencing weight-based teasing episodes,
rather than excess weight per se, is associated with reduced quality of life in middle
childhood
Children’s sense of reality: The development of orbitofrontal reality filtering
No full textOrbitofrontal reality filtering denotes a memory control mechanism necessary to keep thought and behavior in phase with reality. In adults, it is mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex and subcortical connections and its failure induces reality confusion, confabulations, and disorientation. Here we investigated for the first time the development of this mechanism in 83 children from ages 7 to 11 years and 20 adults. We used an adapted version of a continuous recognition task composed of two runs with the same picture set but arranged in different order. The first run measures storage and recognition capacity (item memory), the second run measures reality filtering. We found that accuracy and reaction times in response to all stimulus types of the task improved in parallel across ages. Importantly, at no age was there a notable performance drop in the second run. This means that reality filtering was already efficacious at age 7 and then steadily improved as item memory became stronger. At the age of 11 years, reality filtering dissociated from item memory, similar to the pattern observed in adults. However, performance in 11-
year-olds was still inferior as compared to adults. The study shows that reality filtering develops early in childhood and becomes more efficacious as memory capacity increases. For the time being, it remains unresolved, however, whether this function already depends on the orbitofrontal cortex, as it does in adults, or on different brain structures in the developing brains of children
Math anxiety interferes with learning novel mathematics contents in early elementary school
Full text linkWhereas some evidence exists that math anxiety may interfere with math performance from the very beginning of primary school, no study to date has attempted to investigate whether math anxiety may also interfere with early math learning (i.e., the encoding of new math knowledge) and not only with recalling already mastered contents in test situations. Across 2 experiments carried out in 2 different countries (Study 1: N = 115, conducted in Italy; Study 2: N = 120, conducted in the United Kingdom), we addressed this question by presenting 6-year-old children with 2 math contents that had not been covered by their school curriculum before the study. Children were tested immediately before and immediately after the learning phase, and after a 1-week delay. Longitudinal models revealed that math anxiety was negatively related to initial level of knowledge in the case of 3 out of 4 math contents. More importantly, math anxiety was also negatively related to rate of learning in 2 out of 4 tasks (1 task in Study 1 and 1 in Study 2). These studies provide the first evidence that math anxiety may reduce the encoding of novel math contents in memory in very young children, potentially leading to cumulative gaps in math proficiency for children with math anxiety from the very beginning of their formal education
Aging with board games: fostering well-being in the older population
Full text linkIntroductionThe increase in the average age of the population has resulted in a greater focus on interventions designed to facilitate successful Ageing. Notwithstanding its potential, the strategy of the board game remains relatively underexplored. This study aims to ascertain its role in fostering older people’s well-being. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the level of well-being associated with the gaming experience is greater than overall well-being, particularly when the level of difficulty is low.MethodsFrom an initial number of 164 participants, a total of 132 older people made up the final sample (Mage = 74.05; SD = 5.62). They were divided into groups of four or five individuals and engaged in a gaming session of varying levels of difficulty: low (N = 44), medium(N = 49) and high (N = 36). Prior to each game session, participants completed a questionnaire regarding their general well-being. After the game session, they filled out a similar questionnaire regarding their well-being while gaming.ResultsThe results showed that the level of well-being experienced while playing was significantly higher than that observed in daily life, F(1,131) = 14.604, p = 0.000, η2 = 0.100, particularly with board games with a low or medium level of difficulty, [F(2,126) = = 10.982, p = .001, η2 = 0.148].DiscussionBoard games with an appropriate level of difficulty can be useful tools for promoting wellbeing in the older population. Future studies and possible interventions for people in the third and fourth ages will be discussed
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