Barbara Sini

Judging and coding facial expression of emotions in congenitally blind children.

We investigate the facial expression of emotions in very young congenitally blind children to ” nd out whether these are objectively and subjectively recognisable. We also try to see whether the adequacy of the facial expression of emotions changes as the children get older. We video recorded the facial expressions of 10 congenitally blind children and 10 sighted children (as a control group) in seven everyday situations considered as emotion elicitors. The recorded sequences were analysed according to the Maximally Discriminative Facial Movement Coding System (Max; Izard, 1979) and then judged by 280 decoders who used four scales (two dimensional and two categorical) for their answers. The results showed that all the subjects (both the blind and the sighted) were able to express their emotions facially, though not always according to the theoretically expected pattern. Recognition of the various expressions was fairly accurate, but some emotions were systematically confused with others. The decoders’ answers to the dimensional and categorical scales were similar for both blind and sighted subjects. Our ” ndings on objective and subjective judgements show that there was no decrease in the facial expressiveness of the blind children in the period of development considered.

School motivation: A comparison between Kenya and Italy

ABSTRACT The authors compare school motivation in Kenya and Italy, two countries that differ in terms of socioeconomic conditions, structure of the school system, and access to education. Free primary education is indeed a recent attainment for Kenyan students. The participants, 449 Kenyan and 480 Italian students, 9–14 years old and attending Grades 4–8, were asked to complete a questionnaire about learning motivation. A factor analysis revealed that school motivation can be described by five dimensions in both contexts: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, academic self-concept, causal attribution, and amotivation. Differences between countries and lower (Grades 4–5) and higher (Grades 6–8) grades emerged: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and academic self-concept were found to be higher in Kenyan than in Italian students, whereas amotivation was lower. Moreover, only Italian students showed less intrinsic motivation and more amotivation in higher grades than in the lower ones.