Jenny Marcionetti

IMPAIRED FACIAL EMOTION RECOGNITION AND PRESERVED REACTIVITY TO FACIAL EXPRESSIONS IN PEOPLE WITH SEVERE DEMENTIA

The ability of decoding the emotional facial expressions may be early damaged in frontotemporal dementia, but relatively well preserved in the Alzheimers disease (AD). Nevertheless, the data about the relationship of the dementia severity with the ability of recognizing the face emotions are conflicting and insufficient, mainly for the moderate-severe stage of the disease. The present study extends to the existing literature by: (1) assessing people in the moderate and severe stage of dementia, compared with people without cognitive impairment; (2) assessing not only recognition but also reactivity to the facial expression of emotion. The capability of understanding the facial emotions has been evaluated in 79 patients with dementia compared to 64 healthy elderly people. The test consisted in showing them 14 photographic representations of 7 emotions both from male and from female faces, representing happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, boredom, anger and surprise. Patients were asked to observe the face and to recognize the emotion either with a denomination or a description. Then the spontaneous reactivity to the face expressions was videotaped and classified as a congruous or incongruous reaction by two independent observers who showed a good inter-rater reliability. Of the patients, 53% with dementia recognized up to 5 emotions out of 14, while in the healthy controls this number of mean recognition raised to 8.4, a value reached by the patients who scored 16 at MMSE. The most identified emotion is happiness both for the patients and for the controls. In general, positive emotions are better recognized than the negative ones, confirming the literary data. About the reactions to face emotion stimuli, there is no significant difference for any of the face emotion between the control group and the people with dementia. These data show that patients with dementia can recognize and react to facial emotions also in the severe stage of the disease, suggesting the usefulness of a non-verbal, emotional communication and supporting the need for more emotional education for care givers, both relatives and professionals.

Career Adaptability, Hope, Optimism, and Life Satisfaction in Italian and Swiss Adolescents:

The consequences of economic crisis are different from one European context to the other. Based on life design (LD) approach, the present study focused on two variables—career adaptability and a positive orientation toward future (hope and optimism)—relevant to coping with the current work context and their role in affecting life satisfaction. A partial mediational model between career adaptability and life satisfaction, through a positive orientation toward future (hope and optimism), was tested across Italian and Swiss countries. Seven hundred twenty-six Italian and 533 Swiss young people between the ages of 12 and 16 years were involved. Results provided support for the model in the Italian group and a full mediation model for the Swiss one. The data suggest that the context may have an effect on how career adaptability has an impact on general life satisfaction. These results have important implications for practice and underscore the need to support adolescents in their LD process.

The mediating impact of parental support on the relationship between personality and career indecision in adolescents

In the Swiss education system, approximately 55% of adolescents are required to make their first vocational choice at the end of mandatory school. This can induce transitory or long-lasting career indecision that is recognized as being influenced by personal and contextual factors. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationships between career decision-making difficulties and the five-factor model of personality traits, parental support, and self-esteem in 448 Grade 9 Swiss adolescents. We then proceeded to test if these relationships vary according to the adolescent’s educational choice (i.e., whether they attend high school or if they choose an apprenticeship or vocational training). Results have highlighted the importance of neuroticism, conscientiousness, and parental support to predict career decision-making difficulties. Moreover, parental support mediated the relationships between extraversion and agreeableness (fully) and between conscientiousness (partially) and career decision-making difficulties. Finally, the educational choice had no impact on the overall pattern of relationships. Implications for career counselor practices were further discussed.

Validation of a Short Scale in Italian to Measure Teacher Burnout

This study creates and validates a short, Italian-language scale to measure teacher burnout. To this end, we used two scales from the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory which had already been translated into Italian in a previous study. We administered this measure to two samples of teachers (n1 = 2688 and n2 = 676) in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland. The final scale consisted of 10 items that measure teacher burnout on the dimensions of work- and student-related burnout. We performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the psychometric properties of the instrument as well as conducting analyses of invariance between the sexes and across school sectors. Results showed that work- and student-related burnout were significantly correlated with the constructs of perceived workload, optimism, and life satisfaction. Moreover, neither dimension of burnout was associated with sex, age, seniority, or family status, although both dimensions of burnout were significantly correlated with professional status and percentage of working hours per week. Overall, the analyses show that the final short scale is a valid instrument for measuring teacher burnout. Because of its brevity, this scale can easily be integrated into surveys conducted by public health institutions and education departments.

Life Designing and Positive Youth Development

According to the European Commission (2015), in 2014 the rate of school dropout in Switzerland was 6.7% compared to 9.8% in Belgium, and 15% in Italy. The reasons for these discrepancies can be partially explained by or related to different social, political and economic contexts, characterized by different migration rates, financial situations, etc. In this fast changing global economy, it is important to help youth, regardless of their origin, deal with career and work-related difficulties. Based on Positive Youth development and Life Design approaches, the present chapter focused on variables relevant to cope with the current training and work context and their role in affecting youth’s life satisfaction. Specifically, we focused on career adaptability, hope, optimism, future orientation and resilience. The relations between career adaptability, positive youth variables and life satisfaction have been analyzed over different presented studies. Specifically, we described European project collaboration between the University of Padova, Italy, KU Leuven, Belgium and Lausanne, Switzerland that started during the first ECADOC Summer School. The findings of the studies are reported and discussed and practical implications to implement preventive career education activities to increase life satisfaction among adolescents are presented.