1,721,032 research outputs found
Social Functions in Autistic Children and Interaction with/through Object: A Brief Report
No full textThe aim is to analyse the social functions of pointing, of imitation and of joint attention in presence of the object for the autistic children. We have built an ad-hoc observation check-list and we have conducted 43 observations with verbal ASD-affected children aged between 2 years and 6 years. The results show that a better use of the object is correlated to the manifestation of social functions analysed
L'intervento terapeutico nelle strutture semiresidenziali e residenziali
No full textI disturbi dell'alimentazione vanno considerati come disturbi di natura psichiatrica ma le imponenti complicanze organiche, talvolta devastanti per il paziente, incrementano non solo il tasso di mortalità ma anche di cronicità e d'invalidità e li pongono in una terra di confine per il sovrapporsi di aspetti psichiatrici e internistici che ne rendono difficoltoso non solo l'inquadramento nosografico ma anche l'approccio terapeutico. Inoltre, non si deve dimenticare che il cibo, e le modalità con cui ci si relaziona a esso, non esprime semplicemente un valore nutrizionale ma è un elemento fondante della nostra cultura, della nostra civiltà e della nostra struttura mentale. Questo libro cerca di vagliare tutte le varie e possibili opzioni terapeutiche e illustra le principali linee di ricerca attraverso una trattazione focalizzata su specifici filoni di indagine. Ogni capitolo è svolto da colleghi qualificati ed esperti nel trattamento dei DA appartenenti a varie specialità mediche e psicologiche... Il libro è principalmente indirizzato a chi si accinge ad affrontare i DA, medici di medicina generale, pediatri di libera scelta, specializzandi, psicologi, psichiatri o internisti anche senza una particolare esperienza in merito ma desiderosi di ampliare il proprio bagaglio culturale e umano
My Body and Me: Self-Injurious Behaviors and Body Modifications in Eating Disorders—Preliminary Results
No full textWe investigated self-injurious behaviors and body modification practices in eating disorder patients, considering different ED diagnoses and illness severities. Of the total sample, 50.9% showed at least one form of self-injury and 50.9% reported at least one tattoo, piercing, or both. Patients reporting only body modifications showed more positive feelings toward their bodies, higher levels of self-esteem, less impulsivity, depression, and anxiety, and lower levels of social dysfunction than those reporting only self-injury or both self-injury and body modifications. Self-injury was influenced by both diagnosis and severity of disorders
Theory of mind and humanoid robots from a lifespan perspective
No full textThis review focuses on some relevant issues concerning the relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and humanoid robots. Humanoid robots are employed in different everyday-life contexts, so it seems relevant to question whether the relationships between human beings and humanoids can be characterized by a mode of interaction typical of the relationships between human beings, that is, the attribution of mental states. Because ToM development continuously undergoes changes from early childhood to late adulthood, we adopted a lifespan perspective. We analyzed contributions from the literature by organizing them around the partition between "mental states and actions" and "human-like features." Finally, we considered how studying human-robot interaction, within a ToM context, can contribute to our understanding of the intersubjective nature of this interaction
Objects as Communicative Mediators in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
Full text linkIn recent years, the socio-material perspective has informed an important
interdisciplinary debate concerning the role of the physical world (i.e., the objects)
in human psychological development. Several studies in the field of developmental
psychology showed positive achievements in explaining the relationship between the
subject and the social context through a socio-material approach, in particular in the
early development. The importance of objects was also recognized in children with
autism spectrum disorder (ASD), showing that these children are characterized by
alterations in the use of the objects from early development. Some studies highlighted
that objects could be a facilitator in the interactions between children with ASD and
peers. However, the role of objects was not sufficiently investigated in interactions
between children with ASD and adults. The main purpose of the present study was
to investigate in children with ASD the communicative function that the activities with
objects assume in the interactions with adults, highlighting the mediator role of objects
in these interactions. More generally, this study also aims to highlight the relevance
of adopting a socio-material perspective to explore some neglected aspects of the
psychological activity of children with ASD. To test this hypothesis, we conducted an
extensive exploratory study, collecting data from a sample of 3-year-old (N = 18; F = 3)
and 4-year-old (N = 26; F = 3) with ASD. Children were observed in a free-play situation
with an adult. They were free to choose an object from a predefined set. Through
quantitative data, we have described the general characteristics of the manipulation
of objects; through qualitative data, we aimed to capture and describe, in microgenetic
sequences, some characteristics of children’s activities, defined as socio-material. The
analysis of the socio-material activities suggested the role of objects as mediator of the
interactions between children with ASD and adults
Artificial Intelligence and the Illusion of Understanding: A Systematic Review of Theory of Mind and Large Language Models
No full text: The development of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked significant debate regarding their capacity for Theory of Mind (ToM)-the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. This systematic review examines the extent to which LLMs exhibit Artificial ToM (AToM) by evaluating their performance on ToM tasks and comparing it with human responses. While LLMs, particularly GPT-4, perform well on first-order false belief tasks, they struggle with more complex reasoning, such as second-order beliefs and recursive inferences, where humans consistently outperform them. Moreover, the review underscores the variability in ToM assessments, as many studies adapt classical tasks for LLMs, raising concerns about comparability with human ToM. Most evaluations remain constrained to text-based tasks, overlooking embodied and multimodal dimensions crucial to human social cognition. This review discusses the "illusion of understanding" in LLMs for two primary reasons: First, their lack of the developmental and cognitive mechanisms necessary for genuine ToM, and second, methodological biases in test designs that favor LLMs' strengths, limiting direct comparisons with human performance. The findings highlight the need for more ecologically valid assessments and interdisciplinary research to better delineate the limitations and potential of AToM. This set of issues is highly relevant to psychology, as language is generally considered just one component in the broader development of human ToM, a perspective that contrasts with the dominant approach in AToM studies. This discrepancy raises critical questions about the extent to which human ToM and AToM are comparable
Sociomateriality in Children with Typical and/or Atypical Development
Full text linkThe idea of sociomateriality mainly originates from the vast area of perspectives on psychological development related to empiricism. In simple terms, it could be said that sociomateriality stresses the contribution of individual and collective experience by putting more emphasis on the role that corporeity, physical contexts, and objects play in the development or emergence of psychological functions. Unfortunately, like any simplification, this one has objective limits. What makes it difficult to establish a unified framework to define sociomateriality, and above all to determine its relationship to psychological development, is first of all an epistemological question that is still the subject of a wide debate in several scientific areas, including philosophy (Searle, 2007) archaeology and material cultures (Malafouris, 2013), ergonomics (Geslin, 2017), anthropology and sociology (Latour, 2005), cognitive sciences (Clark, 2008), psychotherapy (Searles, 1960), developmental psychology (Moro and Rodríguez, 1998; Moro, 2016; Iannaccone et al., 2018) and learning itself (Engeström, 2015; Iannaccone, 2017; Cattaruzza et al., 2019). Within the limited extent of this introduction to the variegated Topic hosted by Frontiers in Psychology, we can identify the heart of the epistemological problem in two fundamental questions: (a) what are the boundaries of the mind with respect to corporeity and the context in which it operates? and (b) what could be the real contribution that artifacts give to the development of psychological functions, particularly learning?
Of course, these two problems not only have an abstract philosophical meaning, but also constitute a real methodological puzzle, because they question the notions of “object of analysis” and “unity of analysis.” To these important problems, researchers have given varied answers that are arranged along an axis with what we could define as “strong sociomateriality” on the one end and “weak sociomateriality” on the other. Concerning the explanations of psychological phenomena, this continuum depends substantially on the more or less decisive role that researchers assign to both the physical characteristics (materialities) of objects or contexts and to the communicative and semiotic interactions between humans and non-humans (social and cultural mediations). Even within this Topic, which is specifically dedicated to the role of objects in psychological development (affective, cognitive, and social), the contributions collected do not refer to a single notion of sociomateriality. On the positive side, these contributions present a rich landscape of theoretical and empirical positions requiring the reader to seriously reconsider sociomateriality in psychology. In summarizing the 14 contributions, we identified some common general aspects of the Topic that can help the reader organize his or her “journey”: Mental activities are not considered as decontextualized and isolated, but are interwoven in the interactions among individuals on one hand and the physical and social worlds on the other; and objects seem to actively contribute to typical and atypical psychological development (cognitive, affective, and social), influencing to several degrees the way that people experience the world. The contributions to the Topic are briefly presented below, organized according to their contribution to the issue of sociomateriality in psychology
Editorial: Sociomateriality in Children With Typical and/or Atypical Development.
Full text linkL'idea di sociomaterialità ha origine principalmente dalla vasta area di prospettive sullo sviluppo psicologico legate all'empirismo. In termini semplici, si potrebbe dire che la sociomaterialità sottolinea il contributo dell'esperienza individuale e collettiva ponendo maggiormente l'accento sul ruolo che la corporeità, i contesti fisici e gli oggetti giocano nello sviluppo o nell'emergere di funzioni psicologiche. Purtroppo, come ogni semplificazione, anche questa ha dei limiti oggettivi. Ciò che rende difficile stabilire un quadro unificato per definire la sociomaterialità, e soprattutto per determinare la sua relazione con lo sviluppo psicologico, è prima di tutto una questione epistemologica che è ancora oggetto di un ampio dibattito in diverse aree scientifiche, tra cui la filosofia (Searle, 2007) archeologia e culture materiali (Malafouris, 2013), ergonomia (Geslin, 2017), antropologia e sociologia (Latour, 2005), scienze cognitive (Clark, 2008), psicoterapia (Searles, 1960), psicologia dello sviluppo (Iannaccone et al. 2018; Moro e Rodríguez, 1998; Moro, 2016) e l'apprendimento stesso (Engeström, 2015; Iannaccone, 2017; Cattaruzza et al., 2019). Nella misura limitata di questa introduzione al variegato Topic ospitato da Frontiers in Psychology, possiamo identificare il cuore del problema epistemologico in due domande fondamentali: (a) quali sono i confini della mente rispetto alla corporeità e al contesto in cui opera? e (b) quale potrebbe essere il contributo reale che gli artefatti danno allo sviluppo delle funzioni psicologiche, in particolare l'apprendimento?The idea of sociomateriality mainly originates from the vast area of perspectives on psychological development related to empiricism. In simple terms, it could be said that sociomateriality stresses the contribution of individual and collective experience by putting more emphasis on the role that corporeity, physical contexts, and objects play in the development or emergence of psychological functions. Unfortunately, like any simplification, this one has objective limits. What makes it difficult to establish a unified framework to define sociomateriality, and above all to determine its relationship to psychological development, is, first of all, an epistemological question that is still the subject of a wide debate in several scientific areas, including philosophy (Searle, 2007) archaeology and material cultures (Malafouris, 2013), ergonomics (Geslin, 2017), anthropology and sociology (Latour, 2005), cognitive sciences (Clark, 2008), psychotherapy (Searles, 1960), developmental psychology (Iannaccone et al. 2018; Moro and Rodríguez, 1998; Moro, 2016) and learning itself (Engeström, 2015; Iannaccone, 2017; Cattaruzza et al., 2019). Within the limited extent of this introduction to the variegated Topic hosted by Frontiers in Psychology, we can identify the heart of the epistemological problem in two fundamental questions: (a) what are the boundaries of the mind with respect to corporeity and the context in which it operates? and (b) what could be the real contribution that artefacts give to the development of psychological functions, particularly learning
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