1,721,109 research outputs found
La Media Education. Analisi critica e buone pratiche
No full textQuesto testo nasce sia dal lavoro di ricerca accademico svolto dai curatori che dalle attività formative e di sensibilizzazione sui temi della Media Education svolte negli ultimi otto anni nel mondo della scuola, del Terzo Settore e dell’associazionismo. Il tentativo è stato quello di raccogliere le diverse pratiche utilizzate, mettendole a sistema e facendole dialogare con le diverse discipline, i contesti professionali e gli approcci metodologici. Il lettore troverà uno strumento di riflessione e di lavoro sugli ambiti del rapporto tra educazione, comunicazione e tecnologie
Sport Practice, Fluid Reasoning, and Soft Skills in 10-to 18-Year-Olds
Full text linkEngaging in physical activity and sports has been associated with various cognitive abilities and other personal characteristics. The contemporary link between doing sports and personal attributes such as soft skills and an individual’s cognitive abilities have yet to be investigated, however. This study aims to analyze the association between years of practicing a sport, cognitive abilities (in terms of fluid reasoning), and personal attributes (in terms of soft skills). A large sample of 1,115 individuals (10–18 years old) completed the Cattell test (measuring fluid reasoning) and answered a questionnaire measuring six soft skills (adaptability, curiosity, initiative, leadership, perseverance, and social awareness). A multivariate regression analysis show that, after controlling for age and gender, participants’ years of practicing a sport were positively associated with three soft skills (i.e., initiative, leadership, and perseverance) and with fluid reasoning. No differences emerge..
Knowledge of familiar environments: Assessing modalities and individual visuo-spatial factors
No full textFamiliarity enables us to form elaborate mental representations of environments, which are usually assessed
with tasks that involve managing spatial information (such as pointing and locating landmarks). The present
study also examines the role of familiarity using a “field” task that involved finding the shortest way to a
destination, and the contribution of individual visuo-spatial factors (a set of abilities, preferences and strategies).
Undergraduates more or less familiar with their university campus (45 in each group) performed pointing and
landmark-locating (spatial information managing) tasks, and a shortest path finding task, and were administered
several visuo-spatial measures. The results showed that familiarity had no effect on spatial information managing
performance, but did influence shortest path finding. Individual visuo-spatial factors variously supported
pointing accuracy, and shortest path finding performance. These results broaden our knowledge of how individual
factors (familiarity and visuo-spatial abilities, preferences and strategies) jointly support the knowledge
of an environment
Mental rotation training: transfer and maintenance effects on spatial abilities
No full textOne of the aims of research in spatial cognition is to examine whether spatial skills can be enhanced. The goal of the present study was thus to assess the benefit and maintenance effects of mental rotation training in young adults. Forty-eight females took part in the study: 16 were randomly assigned to receive the mental rotation training (based on comparing pairs of 2D or 3D objects and rotation games), 16 served as active controls (performing parallel non-spatial activities), and 16 as passive controls. Transfer effects to both untrained spatial tasks (testing both object rotation and perspective taking) and visual and verbal tasks were examined. Across the training sessions, the group given mental rotation training revealed benefits in the time it took to make judgments when comparing 3D and 2D objects, but their mental rotation speed did not improve. When compared with the other groups, the mental rotation training group did show transfer effects, however, in tasks other than those practiced (i.e., in object rotation and perspective-taking tasks), and these benefits persisted after 1 month. The training had no effect on visual or verbal tasks. These findings are discussed from the spatial cognition standpoint and with reference to the (rotation) training literature
Do Strengths Converge into Virtues? An Item-, Virtue-, and Scale-Level Analysis of the Italian Values in Action Inventory of Strengths-120
No full textThe Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) is a widely-used measure for character. Its factorial structure is still debated, however, and previous validation studies usually failed to examine the unidimensionality of the single character strengths. In addition, no studies to date have examined its Italian version. We validated the structure of the Italian short form of the VIA-IS in a sample of 16722 participants. Using confirmatory factor analysis and treating items as ordinal variables, we followed three simple, but too often neglected, steps: we studied the unidimensionality of the single strengths first, then their convergence into second-order virtues, and then fitted a hierarchical model that includes items, strengths and virtues, as originally proposed by Peterson and Seligman. All strengths except “love of learning” were unidimensional, and both the virtues and the final hierarchical models showed acceptable fit indices, unlike three models derived from an exploratory factor analysis. The same findings emerged for a smaller sample of 1035 participants. Finally, both character strengths and virtues showed positive relations with general mental health and negative relations with psychological distress. These results are discussed considering previous studies on the factorial structure of the VIA-IS
Adaptability favors positive academic responses and posttraumatic growth under COVID-19: a longitudinal study with adolescents
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic prompted an abrupt adoption of online learning worldwide challenging students’ scholastic engagement and their ability to self-regulate their learning. Under these unexpected conditions, adaptability (one’s capacity to adjust thoughts, behaviors, and emotions in new and uncertain situations) might have sustained students to maintain high engagement and find new learning solutions. Students with high adaptability might also interpret COVID-19-related novelty as an opportunity and show higher posttraumatic growth levels. A longitudinal path analysis showed that in a sample of 435 Italian students (11–18 years old), adaptability at Time 1 positively related to engagement, self-regulated learning, and posttraumatic growth at the end of the school year, indirectly favoring academic achievement, through the mediation of engagement and self-regulated learning. These findings highlight the unique role that adaptability could play in supporting students in unexpected and stressful situations. Fostering students’ adaptability could therefore have beneficial effects on their personal growth and academic success
Spatial mental representations derived from survey and route descriptions: When individuals prefer extrinsic frame of reference
No full textThe present research investigates the role of individual differences in preference for adopting extrinsic frame
of reference (EFR) in ability to represent mentally spatial information learned through survey and route
descriptions. A sample of 191 participants (100 females and 91 males) was categorized as four groups with
high (H-EFR), medium-high (MH-EFR), medium-low (ML-EFR) and low (L-EFR) preference. The groups
listened to two spatial descriptions in survey and route perspectives, subsequently performing true/false
verification and map drawing tasks. They also performed a number of visuo-spatial, verbal and geographical
pointing tasks. Results showed a general better performance of the H-EFR group and of males – in comparison
with lower-ability counterparts and females respectively – in spatial text recall tasks and in other spatial
measures. Moreover, spatial ability interacts with text perspective: in verification test the H-EFR group
outperformed the lower groups in survey and route inferential sentences and in map drawing the superiority
of H-EFR group was shown with survey (but not with route) text. Overall, the results suggest that individuals
with high preference for extrinsic frame of reference are able to manage environment information in both
spatial perspectives even if they prefer to express it in survey format. That preference is specifically sustained
by spatial abilities
Character strengths sustain mental health and post-traumatic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. A longitudinal analysis
No full textObjective: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought negative and positive changes in the general population, with some people experiencing post-traumatic growth after the first wave. Little research has focused, however, on personal factors potentially helping individuals cope with COVID-related difficulties. This study investigates the relations between character strengths, mental health, and post-traumatic growth. Design: Longitudinal (T1: April 2020; T2: December 2020–January 2021). Main outcome measures: 254 Italian adults (54 males; mean age = 36.05, SD = 14.04) completed questionnaires on character and mental health at T1, and on mental health and post-traumatic growth at T2. Results: General mental health was worse at T2 than at T1. Structural equation modelling showed that character, as a whole, had a significant direct effect on post-traumatic growth and mental health at T2, and an indirect effect mediated by post-traumatic growth. Furthermore, regression analyses evidenced that the virtue of transcendence was uniquely related to mental health at T2, while humanity was specifically associated with post-traumatic growth (after accounting for the other virtues). Conclusion: Individuals’ character strengths related to their mental health and post-traumatic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, with evidence of post-traumatic growth mediating the relation between character and mental health
The role of personality in route learning in young and older adults
No full textThis study newly explored the relationship between personality (also considering its facets) and an environmental ability as crucial to day-to-day living, and sensitive to age-related decline, as route learning, in young and older adults. Thirty-five young adults (Mage = 24.06, SD = 3.29) and 35 older adults (Mage = 68.34, SD = 3.26) completed the Big Five questionnaire, learned a new route from a video and were then asked to recall the order and the location of the landmarks encountered along the path (i.e., the landmark ordering and the landmark locating tasks). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that age negatively predicted performance in both landmark ordering and landmark locating tasks. For the landmark locating task, an additional significant part of the variance was also explained by some personality facets: Perseverance, Emotion Control and Openness to Experience. As well as confirming an age-related decline in route learning ability, our findings also highlight the protective effect of certain personality facets on route learning performance in a task that demands a major manipulation of previously-acquired environmental information
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