1,721,040 research outputs found
THE BEADS TASK AS A TOOL TO MEASURE INTOLERANCE OF UNCERTAINTY AND JUMPING TO CONCLUSION BIAS IN CLINICAL GROUPS: A REVIEW
No full textIntolerance of Uncertainty (IU) is a hierarchical construct influencing behaviors conceptualized
as a cognitive and emotional filter, through which the environment is viewed and uncertainty,
is regarded and experimented as unacceptable and unfair. IU is a critical transdiagnostic
personality factor associated with different psychopatologic conditions and Affective disorders like
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Depression (D).
Laboratory paradigms were devised to obtain in vivo measures of IU, by quantifying the
relationship between self-report IU and performance on behavioural tasks involving
uncertainty, capturing participants’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to actual
uncertain scenarios. One of such tool is the Beads Task, a probabilistic inference task to
assess uncertainty reactions. Participants are shown two jars each composed of 100 beads of
two different colours in a particular ratio (e.g., 85:15 red beads to blue beads vs. 85:15
blue to red). Participants are told that beads are drawn one by one from one of the jars,
which have the same probability to be chosen. The aim is to decide from which jar the beads
are being drawn. High IU is expected to be associated with greater requirement of pieces
of beads and time to decide. Beads Task, in addition to being a behavioural measure of IU, was
classically used in psychosis and delusion research area and allowed the measurement of the so
called Jumping to Conclusion (JTC) bias, ‘‘a tendency or biasto the early acceptance and, to a lesser
extent, the early rejection of hypotheses’’. A JTC style is considered to be only one of a number of
factors that potentially contribute in complex ways to the formation and retention of delusions.
Clinical implications and contemporary research state of the art are discussed
Revised environmental identity scale: Adaptation and preliminary examination on a sample of Italian pet owners
No full text: The Revised Environmental Identity (EID) Scale is a tool proposed by Clayton in 2021 to replace her 2003's EID Scale and aims to measure individual differences in a stable sense of interdependence and connectedness with nature. Since an Italian version of this scale was still missing, the present study presents an adaptation of the Revised EID Scale in Italian. The scale has been translated, back-translated, and administered online to 163 pet owners living in Italy in the context of a study about pet attachment. A parallel analysis suggested the existence of two factors. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) identified the same number of factors: "Connectedness to nature" (nine items) and "Protection of nature" (five items); the two subscales were found to be consistent. This structure explains more variance compared with the traditional one-factor solution. Sociodemographic variables do not seem to affect the scores of the two EID factors. This adaptation and preliminary validation of the EID scale have relevant implications for studies in the Italian context as well as on specific population groups such as pet owners, and more generally, for international studies on EID
Revised environmental identity scale: Adaptation and preliminary examination on a sample of Italian pet owners
Full text linkThe Revised Environmental Identity (EID) Scale is a tool proposed by Clayton in 2021 to replace her 2003's EID Scale and aims to measure individual differences in a stable sense of interdependence and connectedness with nature. Since an Italian version of this scale was still missing, the present study presents an adaptation of the Revised EID Scale in Italian. The scale has been translated, back-translated, and administered online to 163 pet owners living in Italy in the context of a study about pet attachment. A parallel analysis suggested the existence of two factors. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) identified the same number of factors: "Connectedness to nature" (nine items) and "Protection of nature" (five items); the two subscales were found to be consistent. This structure explains more variance compared with the traditional one-factor solution. Sociodemographic variables do not seem to affect the scores of the two EID factors. This adaptation and preliminary validation of the EID scale have relevant implications for studies in the Italian context as well as on specific population groups such as pet owners, and more generally, for international studies on EID
Users’ preferences toward an old prison reuse: the case of Buoncammino in the city of Cagliari.
No full textINTOLERANCE OF AMBIGUITY AND INTOLERANCE OF UNCERTAINTY AS PERSONALITY FACTORS IN PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND ADDICTIONS
No full textDespite the fact that Intolerance of Ambiguity (IA) and Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) may appear
as an overlapping construct, they tap into different personality characteristics. IU is a hierarchical
construct critical for the diagnosis of affective disorders. IA is a multidimensional construct that has
implications for social judgments and interpersonal behaviour. The tendency to view people and
situations as either "all good" or "all bad" is a hallmark of Borderline Personality Disorders (BPD).
Affective disorders like Depression (D) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are
characterized by worrying about future uncertain events. It might be tenting to speculate that IA
factors (e.g., rigid dichotomizing into fixed categories and resorting to “black-white solutions”)
might be higher among BPD. By contrast, IU is supposed to be lower for BPD patients. The present
study explored how IU and IA differently characterized BPD, OCD, and D. To this purpose a mixed
clinical sample wasrecruited (75 patients with Substance Use Disorder, 33 of which had a comorbid
BPD; 34 patients with Depression; 55 patients with OCD). A control group of 164 University
students was also included. The groups completed the IA scale (MAAS), the IU scale (IUS), and
the Borderline Personality Disorder Checklist (BPDCL). The groups were compared using
parametric and non-parametric analyses. Depressed individuals were the highest IU group, followed
by BPD. Unexpectedly, IU was lower than the average for OCD patients. Regarding IA, all clinical
groups were higher than controls on dichotomous thinking. IA and IU are separate non-overlapping
constructs. The inability to contemplate "shades of gray" was a generalized cognitive bias among
all clinical groups. This latter finding calls for further investigations of mental rigidity and
stereotyping processes across different psychopathologies
Intolerance of uncertainty: A temporary experimental induction procedure
Full text linkBackground and Objectives
Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is a trans-diagnostic construct involved in anxiety and related disorders. Research focused on cross-sectional reporting, manipulating attitudes toward objective and impersonal events or on treatments designed to reduce IU in clinical populations. The current paper presents an experimental procedure for laboratory manipulations of IU and tests mediation hypotheses following the Intolerance of Uncertainty Model.
Methods
On pre-test, undergraduate volunteers (Study 1, n = 43;68% women. Study 2, n = 169;83.8% women) were asked to provide an idiosyncratic future negative life event. State-IU, Worry, Positive and Negative Affect were assessed after that a standardized procedure was used to identify event’s potential negative consequences. The same variables were assessed on post-test, after that participants were asked to read-through increasing and decreasing IU statements.
Results
Temporary changes on IU were consistently reproduced in both studies. Participants receiving increasing IU instructions reported greater state-IU, Worry and Negative Affect than those receiving decreasing IU instructions. However, this latter condition was not different from a control one (Study 2). Both studies revealed significant indirect effects of IU induction instructions on Worry and Negative Affect through state-IU.
Limitations
Both studies used undergraduate psychology students samples, younger than average population and predominantly female. Experimental manipulation and outcome measures belongs to the same semantic domain, uncertainty, potentially limiting generalizability.
Conclusions
Results supported the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed IU manipulation for non-clinical sample. Findings parallel clinical research showing that state-IU preceded Worry and Negative Affect states
The influence of design and socio-psychological features on bicycle use in the city of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy)
No full textThis study aims to identify those environmental features that could influence the perception of safety and comfort, and subsequently the behavioral intention, from the perspective of a bike user. Participants, whose recruitment starts in January 2024, will be residents of Cagliari. Referring to the evidence on the effects of green spaces, affordances, social norms, and proenvironmental values, an online questionnaire was set up, including a set of pictures that depict a real road in the city of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy). Each picture presents a combination of levels of different attributes, i.e. presence/absence of trees or public transportation infrastructure, density of cars or bicycles (high vs. low). For each picture, respondents are asked to indicate their comfort, safety, and pleasantness in experiencing the road by bike. Then, there are items on social norms and intention to use the bicycle on the most and least preferred picture. At the end of the survey, biospheric values and bicycle use behavior are detected. Research outcomes should provide useful information for the urban planners, in relation to which design and socio-psychological elements could increase the proportion of citizens who use the bicycle (instead of their own car) for different mobility goals, understanding which attitudes and perceptions related to urban environments, with the goal of contributing to urban design and development practices oriented toward the bio-psycho-social well-being of individuals and sustainability
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
Cross-validation of the Biofuels Beliefs Scale (BBS) on a European sample: A tool to measure the perception of the technological and contextual features of biofuels
Full text linkStudies on the acceptance of renewable and sustainable energy technologies have grown exponentially over the past few decades. While there are a large number of technology acceptance models, none of them includes belief-related variables. Developed within the EC H2020 ABC-Salt project, this contribution focuses on the cross-validation, in a large sample (N = 1016), across eight European countries, of the Biofuels Beliefs Scale (BBS). The BBS is composed of 26 items, organized into six factors (i.e., Policy Making Legitimation, Emissions Sustainability, Global Environmental Sustainability, Technology Compatibility, Local Socio-Economic Sustainability, and Cost Savings). Factors are distinct, reliable, and each one composed of a psychometrically acceptable number of items. The validation procedure fulfilled the adequacy requirements regarding convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. The BBS could be useful both for testing models on technology acceptance in future studies and for communication campaigns on biofuel-related issues in applied contexts (e.g., pre-/post-assessment, monitoring, etc.)
- …
