Franca Tani

Bullying and the Big Five: A Study of Childhood Personality and Participant Roles in Bullying Incidents.

Research on the social context of bullying includes children who help the victim, assist the bully or remain outsiders. 96 children from two public schools in Central Italy were classified according to an Italian version of the Participant Role Scale (Sutton and Smith, 1999) as Defenders of the Victim, Outsiders, Victims or Pro-bullies. Teacher reports indicated Friendliness and Emotional Instability as the strongest distinguishing personality factors among the participant roles, followed by Conscientiousness and Energy. Higher levels of Emotional Instability and lower levels of Friendliness typified both Pro-bullies and Victims, relative to their peers. Victims were also low in Conscientiousness. Defenders exhibited high levels of Friendliness, whereas Introversion and Independence characterized Outsiders. These results suggest that personality traits might contribute to childrens typical behaviour in bullying situations.

A distant mirror: Memories of parents and friends across childhood and adolescence

Memories that were easily accessible (i.e., quickly retrieved in a memory-fluency task) of Italian university students were assessed. They were from four periods of life: preschool, elementary school, middle school, and high school/university. Half of the participants were instructed to recall only memories involving parents, and the other half memories involving friends. Across age at the time of remembered events, only memories of friends increased in frequency. For parental memories (but not friend memories), the proportion with negative affect increased over age, especially for males. There were also differences related to whether memories were episodic or generic. It was concluded that memories of different periods of childhood and adolescence can serve as a reflective mirror for developmental changes in parent-child and friendship relationships.

Parental influences on earliest memories

Recently, independent lines of research have indirectly supported the notion that social variables, especially parent–child relationships, have a significant impact on adults’ memories of their early life. In order to directly assess this Italian students were asked to recall as many memories involving parents as they could from before the age of 6 in a 3-minute timed recall task (i.e., memory fluency). They also filled out assessments about parental involvement in their lives as well as the quality of their relationships with their mothers and fathers. We found that, for males, the more involved the parents and the warmer the relationships between sons and both their mothers and their fathers, the more early memories, the more positive early memories, and the more episodic memories men recalled. For women, the warmer the relationship with their mothers, the earlier their earliest memory. Results are discussed in terms of gendered parent–child interactions as well as McAdams emergent life-story theory.

A Measure for the Study of Friendship and Romantic Relationship Quality from Adolescence to Early-Adulthood

Friendship and romantic relationships are central to individual social life. These close relationships become increasingly significant during adolescence and early adulthood, promoting human development and well-being (1). Despite their importance, there are no equivalent measures for the study of the quality of these different types of close relationships. The main aim of the present study was to develop an equivalent self-report measure to assess the quality of friendships and romantic relationships from adolescence to early adulthood. In Study 1 we took the Friendship Qualities Scale (FQS) developed by Bukowski, Hoza and Boivin (2) and adapted it for Italian adolescents and early-adults. The FQS reveals, via confirmatory factor analysis, five main qualitative dimensions: Conflict, Companionship, Help, Security and Closeness. In Study 2 we developed an equivalent version of the FQS, the Romance Qualities Scale (RQS) in order to measure the same five dimensions for romantic relationships. Data analyses verified the multidimensional factorial structure, the factorial invariance, and the reliability of both scales. Our studies therefore verify that the FQS and RQS are reliable measures to assess friendship and romantic relationship quality from adolescence to early adulthood.

A Cross-National Comparison of Children’s Behavior with their Friends in Situations of Potential Conflict

Dyads of 8- and 9-year-old friends and nonfriends in Central Italy and English Canada were observed while participating in two structured tasks designed to simulate everyday situations of potential conflict. In discussing how they might share a single chocolate egg with a toy inside, Italian youngsters made fewer proposals in all, but nonetheless were able to achieve a greater discrepancy between initial and final negotiating positions. Friends spent almost twice as much time as nonfriends in these discussions; friends also displayed greater novelty and compromise in their counterproposals. Italian girls made significantly fewer proposals and counterproposals than other participants in the study. When participating in a fast-paced car race, Canadian children committed significantly more infractions of the rules. Italian friends were more involved in the race and maintained respect for the rules better than Italian nonfriends, but there were no significant differences between friends and nonfriends in Canada. These results are interpreted in light of known differences between the cultures.

Development of a new measure for assessing insight: Psychometric properties of the insight orientation scale (IOS)

INTRODUCTION Given the centrality of insight in promoting change, the relevance of measures for assessing this construct has become increasingly clear. This paper describes a new self-report measure for assessing some of the characteristics of insight, the insight orientation scale (IOS). AIMS In study 1, we evaluated the factor structure and the reliability of the scale. In study 2, we analyzed the concurrent and discriminant validity of the scale in patients with different clinical diagnoses. METHODS In study 1 participants were 600 individuals (41.1% male, 58.9% female) with a mean age of 33.95 years (SD = 13.04). In study 2 participants were 136 individuals divided into the following groups: 1) schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders (n = 26); 2) substance-related disorders (n = 55); 3) depressive disorders (n = 27); and 4) personality disorders (n = 28). INSTRUMENTS Instruments are the insight orientation scale (IOS) and the Beck cognitive insight scale. RESULTS The goodness-of-fit indices showed a satisfactory fit of a one factor model. We found also a good internal consistency (α = .77). CONCLUSIONS These findings support the dimensionality of the IOS and suggest that it may be useful as an assessment tool for use in guiding psychotherapy.

The use of Animal-Assisted Therapy in adolescents with acute mental disorders: A randomized controlled study

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to compare the effects of Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) with a standard treatment protocol in children and adolescents admitted to the psychiatry hospital for acute mental disorders. We used a methodology involving high quality standards for AAT research. DESIGN A pre-post experimental design with a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in 34 hospitalized patients (17 treatment, 17 control) was carried out. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The study focused on improvement in clinical status including, global functioning measured by the Children Global Assessment Scale (C GAS), format of care and ordinary school attendance measured by a rating scale. RESULTS Our results indicate a statistically significant improvement in global functioning, reduction in format of care and increased ordinary school attendance in the treatment group, but not in the control group. CONCLUSIONS Our results verify that AAT can have significant positive effects on therapeutic progress and the recovery process.

Parental Influences on Memories of Parents and Friends

ABSTRACT The authors evaluated the role parent–child relationship quality has on two types of memories, those of parents and those of friends. Participants were 198 Italian university students who recalled memories during 4 separate timed memory-fluency tasks about their preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school and university years. Half were instructed to recall memories involving parents and the remainder memories involving friends. Moreover, parent–child relationships were assessed by the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI; W. Furman & D. Buhrmester, 1985) and Adolescents’ Report of Parental Monitoring (D. M. Capaldi & G. R. Patterson, 1989). Results showed that men with positive parent–son relationships had more memories of parents and more affectively positive memories of friends, supporting a consistency model positing similarity between parent–child relationships and memories of friends. Women with positive parental relationship quality had more affectively positive memories of parents but for friends, positive relationship quality only predicted positive memories when young. At older ages, especially middle school-aged children, negative parent–daughter relationships predicted more positive memories of friends, supporting a compensatory model. The gender of parent also mattered, with fathers having a more influential role on affect for memories of friends.

Two-day-old newborn infants recognise their mother by her axillary odour

The aim of this study was to verify the influence of mother to child skin‐to‐skin contact and the ability of 2‐day‐old infants to recognise their own mothers axillary odour.

Empathy and autobiographical memory: are they linked?

Abstract. Autobiographical memory and empathy have been linked with social interaction variables as well as gender in independent bodies of literature. However a scarcity of research exists on the direct link between autobiographical memory and empathy. Exploring this link, in particular for memory of friendships and empathy, was the authors’ main aim. A total of 107 Italian undergraduates participated. A memory fluency task was used to assess accessibility of memories spanning their entire life (preschool through university) and an empathy scale (Italian version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) was employed to measure the participants’ level and dimensions of empathy. For men, empathy scores were related to how many memories they could recall. Specifically, men with higher scores on the fantasy and empathic concern scales and those with lower scores on the personal distress scales recalled more memories of friends. However, affective quality of their memories was unrelated to empathy. In contrast, for women there was no relationship between number of memories and empathy, but the emotional tone of their memories was related to empathy: those with higher scores on the personal distress scale had proportionately fewer affectively positive memories. Results are discussed in terms of gender differences in both empathy and parental socialization patterns.