John L. Dennis

Parents’ Education Shapes, but Does Not Originate, the Disability Representations of Their Children

The present research tested whether children’s disability representations are influenced by cultural variables (e.g., social activities, parent education, custom complex variables) or by cognitive constraints. Four questionnaires were administered to a sample of 76 primary school aged children and one of their parents (n = 152). Questionnaires included both open-ended and closed-ended questions. The open-ended questions were created to collect uncensored personal explanations of disability, whereas the closed-ended questions were designed to elicit a response of agreement for statements built on the basis of the three most widespread disability models: individual, social, and biopsychosocial. For youngest children (6–8 years old), people with disabilities are thought of as being sick. This early disability representation of children is consistent with the individual model of disability and independent from parents’ disability explanations and representations. As children grow older (9–11 years old), knowledge regarding disability increases and stereotypical beliefs about disability decrease, by tending to espouse their parents representations. The individual model remains in the background for the adults too, emerging when the respondents rely on their most immediately available mental representation of disability such as when they respond to an open-ended question. These findings support that the youngest children are not completely permeable to social representations of disability likely due to cognitive constraints. Nevertheless, as the age grows, children appear educable on perspectives of disability adhering to a model of disability representation integral with social context and parent perspective.

West vs. West like East vs. West? A comparison between Italian and US American context sensitivity and Fear of Isolation

Easterners tend to process information more holistically than Westerners. Kim and Markman (J Exp Soc Psychol 42(3):350–364, 2006) suggest that these differences are rooted in higher chronic levels of Fear of Isolation (FOI) for those cultures that process information more holistically. The goal of this study was to determine if these differences and their suggested cause could be found with two different Western cultures. Testing Italian (IT) and US American (US) adults, we found that IT participants processed information more holistically and had a higher chronic level of FOI than US participants; furthermore, the manipulation of FOI affected context sensitivity more for IT than for US participants. The results demonstrate that IT participants were more similar to previous research with Eastern populations than with Western populations (Kim and Markman in J Exp Soc Psychol 42(3):350–364, 2006) and indicate a within-Western culture difference for reasoning styles and support the hypothesis that this difference is due to different chronic levels of FOI.

Key Educational Factors in the education of students with a medical condition.

The education of children with a medical condition represents a unique educational context. The key educational factors that can help these children continue their education despite the burdens associated with their illness were discussed and analysed by a pool of experts for an EU funded project. In this context, relationships, making sense and constructing knowledge, assuming roles in front of others, metacognition, individualities and inter-institutional communication emerged as the 6 Key Educational Factors (KEF) that are crucial for the education of this vulnerable population. The implications of the KEFs for home and hospital education are discussed, with a particular focus on practices that meet the relational and communicational needs of these children. Specific recommendations for the practice, policy, and research regarding these KEF within this unique educational context are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moodle my style: E-learning improves attributional style for cancer-diagnosed children

Metacognitive skills and a positive attributional style are extremely important for young cancer patients. The present research shows how attributional styles and metacognitive training via information and communication technologies (ICTs) can enhance a positive self-attributional style in young cancer patients. A quasi-experimental prospective study measured participant attribution style before and after metacognitive and attributional online training programs that last about six months. Results demonstrated a significant positive impact of training on metacognitive skills and attributional style. The program presented expands knowledge on the prevention of negative cognitive long-term side effects associated with the treatment of children with cancer.

Believing Is Seeing: Fixation Duration Predicts Implicit Negative Attitudes

A prototypical finding of social cognition is that social experiences influence later performance even though those experiences are not introspectively available. Building on social cognition research on implicit attitudes, we evaluate whether ethnic category/attribute pairs influence eye movements during the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz 1998). Results show that fixation duration predicted implicit attitudes such that when the category/attribute pairs disconfirmed ones implicit negative attitude fixation duration toward that pair increased. The present research provides evidence that eye movements and implicit processes inherent in the IAT are more broadly connected than previously thought.

Comorbilità di ansia e depressione nei pazienti con tumori carcinoidi Comorbility between anxiety and depression in patients with carcinoid tumors

BACKGROUND People who have malignant cancer are plagued with a variety of symptoms that often severely limit their lives. In the case of carcinoid tumors, symptoms of anxiety and depression are two manifestations often associated with disturbances produced by the tumor itself and the chemicals that the tumor secretes. The aim of this study was to compare the incidence of these symptoms for gastro-entero-pancreatic (GEP) tumors and non-gastro-entero-pancreatic (non-GEP). METHODS Patients with GEP and patients with non-GEP completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). HADS and all of its subscales were analyzed. RESULTS Patients with GEP tended to have higher average total scores on the HADS-D than those with non-GEP (p<0.08), and items in which the difference between GEP and non-GEP were statistically significant were anhedonia (p<0.05), a reduced ability to laugh and have fun (p<0.05), and the feeling of hopelessness (p<0.05). No significant differences emerged, however, in HADS-T and HADS-A scores. CONCLUSIONS On the basis of these findings, patients with GEP are affected more than patients with non-GEP with increased levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms. What is difficult to determine, however, is whether these symptoms are related to hormone overproduction, or whether they are related to tumor-related emotional distress.

Some observations on the puzzling world of self-regulation and depletion

Abstract This paper identifies problems with ego depletion theory including failures to replicate, non-support for glucose as a mediator, the stress on single replication studies rather than replication with variation, the failure to document generalizability, the stress on physical as opposed to psychological moderators and mediators, and the overemphasis on deduction as the core scientific method.

Monolithic Western Mind? Effect of Fear of Isolation on Context Sensitivity in us Americans, Italians and Chinese

Culture influences what we attend to, encode, remember and think about. Easterners are said to attend more to the relationship between focal objects and their context while Westerners disentangle focal objects from their context. Simply put, Easterners process information holistically and Westerners analytically. Psychosocial factors, like Fear of Isolation, have been proposed as a possible mechanism for cultural differences in terms of information processing. While East vs. West cultural differences are well researched, the monolithic notion that all Westerners process information analytically was questioned in the research presented below. In this paper, we present a study conducted with two Western cultures (Italian and us American) and one Eastern (Chinese) where we induced the chronic psychosocial factor: Fear of Isolation (foi), and measured its influence on information processing. We found that Italian participants processed information more holistically than us Americans, and that Italians were more similar to Chinese than us Americans.

Premesse filosofiche per uno studio scientifico del pensiero riflessivo

Lo studio scientifico del pensiero si e incentrato soprattutto sull’aspetto procedurale, piuttosto che sull’aspetto attuale. L’atto di pensiero e stato interpretato come intuizione, la quale, in ambito psicologico, viene descritta come insight. Il presente lavoro si propone di mostrare che l’atto di pensiero puo venire inteso come atto noetico, come visione del noema che emerge oltre il noema stesso. In tal modo, e possibile fornire una descrizione scientifica del pensiero riflessivo, che evidenzi la capacita del pensiero di pensare se stesso e il suo valere come l’implicazione reciproca di atto noetico, che e oggettivante, e di procedura dianoetica, che rappresenta le forme oggettivate di pensiero (il linguaggio). Se le procedure dianoetiche, evocate e orientate dall’atto noetico, sono intenzionali e, pertanto, critiche, di contro le procedure implicite o automatiche si caratterizzano per l’assenza di intenzionalita nonche per un’accettazione acritica di assunti e regole.

Avanti e indietro nello spazio/tempo: come il priming dell'agentività cambia il movimento

Questa ricerca ha preso in esame come il priming che induce una rappresentazione subconscia di maggiore/minore agentivita puo influire sull’interpretazione di oggetti/eventi dinamici che si collocano nello spazio (Studio 1) e nel tempo (Studio 2). Nello Studio 1, i partecipanti sottoposti al priming della maggiore agentivita sono stati indotti a pensare il movimento verso alto, come se l’oggetto fosse dotato di una forza interna (secondo quanto accade agli esseri viventi), mentre i partecipanti sottoposti al priming della minore agentivita sono stati indotti a pensare il movimento verso il basso, come se l’oggetto subisse una forza esterna (ad es., la forza della gravita). I partecipanti allo Studio 2, sottoposti al priming della maggiore agentivita sono stati indotti a pensare se stessi come se si muovessero attivamente attraverso il tempo, in linea con la metafora dell’ego-moving, mentre i partecipanti sottoposti al priming della minore agentivita sono stati indotti a pensare se stessi come se fossero meno attivi nel loro muoversi attraverso il tempo, in linea con la metafora del time-moving. Questi risultati sono stati messi a confronto con quelli di una nostra ricerca precedente, che ha usato lo stesso priming, ma con compiti diversi.