Natale Salvatore Bonfiglio

A Systemic Proposal on the Use of a New Technology as a Learning Tool in School Context

The spreading within scientific world of General Systems Theory (GST), proposed by L. Von Bertalanffy since 1950, revolutionized the theoretical apparatus of several disciplines, including the humanistic ones.

The resilience scale for adults in italy: A validation study comparing clinical substance abusers with a nonclinical sample.

This article reports a validation study of the Italian version of the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA), a measure designed to assess individual, family, and social resilience protective resources. The RSA was administered to a clinical (i.e., substance use disorders, or SUD; N = 437) and a nonclinical sample (N = 337). A confirmatory factor analyses supported the original 6-factor structure of the RSA in both samples. The RSA correlated positively with functional coping strategies and negatively with perceived stress and dysfunctional coping strategies. Moreover, the RSA subscales discriminated between SUD and non-SUD individuals. Factorial invariance testing also confirmed comparable psychometric properties across gender. The results confirm good psychometric properties of the Italian RSA and provide support for the construct validity of the scale. The RSA may be suited for use in studies examining natural course and intervention trials. (PsycINFO Database Record

Challenges raising a gifted child Stress and resilience factors within the family

The research on families of the gifted is extremely limited. In the past, families of the gifted have been studied mainly for two reasons: to discover how family life creates or supports giftedness or eminence, or to understand how one gifted child affects siblings. Few studies, however, have examined the impact of gifted children on the lives of parents. Most studies highlight that many gifted have unique needs and vulnerabilities. Although there is limited empirical research on the experience of parenting a gifted child, there is clinical and anecdotal evidence that the role presents unique parenting challenges. This article presents preliminary research data on the experiences of parenting a gifted child within the family. The authors embrace a risk and resilience model, supported by clinical data obtained from families with a gifted child seen at a leading center for gifted children in Milan.

Influence of motion on face recognition

The influence of motion information and temporal associations on recognition of non-familiar faces was investigated using two groups which performed a face recognition task. One group was presented with regular temporal sequences of face views designed to produce the impression of motion of the face rotating in depth, the other group with random sequences of the same views. In one condition, participants viewed the sequences of the views in rapid succession with a negligible interstimulus interval (ISI). This condition was characterized by three different presentation times. In another condition, participants were presented a sequence with a 1-sec. ISI among the views. That regular sequences of views with a negligible ISI and a shorter presentation time were hypothesized to give rise to better recognition, related to a stronger impression of face rotation. Analysis of data from 45 participants showed a shorter presentation time was associated with significantly better accuracy on the recognition task; however, differences between performances associated with regular and random sequences were not significant.

DECISION MAKING MODELS WITHIN INCOMPLETE INFORMATION GAMES

According to Evolutionary Game Theory decision making in games with incomplete information should be viewed as an emergent phenomenon. However, the adoption of this framework tells us nothing about the concrete modeling of the emergence of decisions within specific games. In this paper we took into consideration the case of Iterated Prisoner Dilemma Game (IPDG). In this regard we compared the outcomes of computer simulations of three different decision making models, two of which implemented through particular neural network architectures, with experimental data coming from observations about the behavior in IPDG of human players. The comparison was based on the use of a Genetic Algorithm, which let us know the best parameter values, for each kind of model, granting for the best reproduction of the observed pattern of experimental data. We found that the best fit was obtained by a model directly taking into account the inner expectancies of each player. This result suggests that the emergence of decision cannot be described by resorting to the simplest models of selforganization. More complex models are needed, including a detailed account of the operation of player’s cognitive system.

Prisoner Dilemma: A Model Taking into Account Expectancies

This paper introduces a new neural network model of players’ behavior in iterated Prisoner Dilemma Game. Differently from other models of this kind, but in accordance with theoretical framework of evolutionary game theory, it takes into account players’ expectancies in computation of individual moves at every game step. Such a circumstance, however, led to an increase of the number of model free parameters. It was therefore necessary, to search for optimal parameter values granting for a satisfactory fitting of data obtained in an experiment performed on human subjects, to resort to a genetic algorithm.

A Multivariate Contribution to the Study of Mobbing, Using the QAM 1.5 Questionnaire

The aim of this work was to study the phenomenon of mobbing by adopting a systemic approach. This, in turn, implies a multivariate framework, relying on a structural equation model. In this regard several variables were taken into consideration and their consistence was evaluated through the QMP 1.5 questionnaire. We hypothesized the existence of a difference between victims and non-victims, related to variables like: isolation, exclusion, communication, overload, disheartenment, enthusiasm, and inadequacy. The model obtained in this study evidenced the systemic nature of the interrelations between the different variables: some of them, taken alone or summed together, could not predict the occurrence of mobbing, while this prediction could be based only on their reciprocal relations.