António José Santos

ISPA Instituto Universitário | ISPA · Departamento de Ciências Psicológicas

Shy‐withdrawn behaviours place preschoolers at increased risk of experiencing adverse developmental outcomes. Positive teacher‐child relationships play a protective role against these negative socioemotional outcomes. This study aimed to understand, in‐depth, the beliefs, practices and support needs of preschool teachers toward shy‐withdrawn childr...

High and stable behavioral inhibition (BI) during early childhood may place individuals at increased risk of experiencing anxiety during the COVID-19 crisis. Prior knowledge syntheses showed that selective prevention interventions were effective in reducing child BI and anxiety. However, the effectiveness of preschool-based universal and selective...

Teachers’ tolerance toward children’s social behaviors is, in part, guided by teachers’cognitions and emotions. Few studies have examined the associations between teachers’ cognitions,emotions, and tolerance toward children’s social behaviors. This study aimed to (1) describe thecognitions, emotions, and tolerance of Portuguese preschool teachers t...

High and stable behavioral inhibition (BI) during early childhood place children at increased risk of experiencing anxiety, depression, peer exclusion, victimization, and academic difficulties. The bioecological developmental framework and existing limitations in the scope of the few available interventions targeted at behavioral inhibition during...

Studies conducted with children and adolescents suggest that long-term exposure to adverse events and the lack of emotional and psychosocial support can lead to complex traumatizing conditions (C_PSPT), providing difficulties that affect emotional regulation, cognition, interpersonal relationships and the constitution of identity. The aim of this e...

Preschool teachers' perceptions about relationships with students (teacher–child relationships [TCRs]) predict children's subsequent social competence (SC) and academic progress. Why this is so remains unclear. Do TCRs shape children's development, or do child attributes influence both TCRs and subsequent development? Relations between TCRs and oth...

Children’s self-imposed isolation in the company of others (social withdrawal due to shyness or unsociability) and active isolation due to direct aggressive behaviors can challenge successful engagement in the peer group. The developmental attributional perspective acknowledges that children’s intended affiliative responses are, in part, guided by...

Previous studies suggest that mental representations of attachment can show moderate stability across childhood but none of these considered the child’s use of the Secure Base Script (SBS). This study tested the longitudinal stability of attachment representations from early to middle childhood, providing data that will allow us to determine whethe...

Introduction Behavioral inhibition during early childhood is one of the strongest risk factors for the development of later anxiety disorders. Recently developed in-person interventions that target both young children who are highly inhibited and their parents (e.g., the Turtle Program), have decreased children's anxiety and have increased social p...

Memória e Transtorno do Estresse Pós-Traumático (TEPT): narrar estórias e ressignificar a história autobiográfica Memory and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Telling stories and refraiming one's autobiographical history * 1, 2 ISPA-Instituto Universitário (Lisboa, Portugal). O Transtorno de Estresse Pós-Traumático (TEPT) é caracteri-zado como...

Loneliness is a complex feeling associated with socio-emotional adjustment difficulties, particularly during adolescence. Such construct is often treated as unidimensional rather than multidimensional, moreover, studies consisting of both peer and family contexts, are very scarce. Adopting a multidimensional and person-centered approach, our study...

Previous research identified emotion dysregulation, non-responsive feeding practices, and unhealthy food consumption as risk factors for childhood obesity. However, little is known about the relationships between these factors. This study examined associations between children’s emotion regulation, parental feeding practices, and children’s food co...

There is a lack of knowledge regarding the connection between parental emotional responsiveness and children’s executive functioning (EF). This study aimed to explore the relations between caregivers’ reactions to their children’s distress and children’s EF. Mothers of 136 preschoolers reported their reactions to their children’s negative emotions...

Background: Few researchers have examined young adolescents' perceived qualities and satisfaction in their relationships with their mothers, fathers and best friends simultaneously, using a cross-cultural perspective. This study aimed to compare the perceived qualities and satisfaction of USA and Portuguese adolescents in their relationships with...

Parental attitudes toward child socialization influence their child-rearing practices, the quality of parent-child relationships, and children’s developmental outcomes. The Modified Child Rearing Practices Questionnaire (CRPR-Q) has been widely used to assess parenting practices across children’s development. However, the few studies investigating...

In human fission–fusion societies, ritualized non-linguistic signal exchanges that include gestures, vocalizations, and facial expressions are regularly observed at both arrivals (greetings) and departures (leave-takings). These communicative events play an important role in the formation and maintenance of social relationships. Wild chimpanzees al...

Background Oxytocin (OXT) has attracted research interest for its potential involvement in many of the behavioural problems observed in childhood. Due to its logistical advantages, saliva is an attractive fluid to quantify neuropeptides in children. Salivary OXT has been suggested as a potential biomarker for psychopathology during childhood. Howev...

O processo de (re)subjetivação do trauma consiste na (re)significação da vivência do evento traumático a partir da experiência de cada indivíduo. Quando o insuportável da dor do indivíduo que vivenciou o acontecimento traumático não pode ser introjetada e simbolizada inviabiliza-se a condição de inscrição e subjetivação da experiência. Desta forma,...

Comparative psychology provides important contributions to our understanding of the origins of human language. The presence of common features in human and nonhuman primate communication can be used to suggest the evolutionary trajectories of potential precursors to language. However, to do so effectively, our findings must be comparable across div...

Adolescents’ dyadic relationships are likely influenced by the cultural context within which they exist. This study applied a person‐oriented approach to examine how perceived support and negativity were manifested across youths’ relationships with mothers, fathers, and best friends, simultaneously, and how distinct relationship profiles were linke...

Behavioral inhibition (BI) during the preschool years can be defined as a biologically-based wariness when exposed to novel people, situations and activities, and has been associated with an increased risk of developing anxiety symptoms. Although BI is not a unitary concept, to date, few studies aimed to characterize different subgroups of children...

Interpersonal adversity such as peer victimization has been shown to have complex associations with other socio-emotional difficulties, particularly during adolescence. We used a multidimensional peer nomination measure on a sample of 440 (52% girls) 11- to 17-year-old (M = 13.14 years, SD = 1.26) Portuguese youths to identify three groups, classif...

Children acquire and develop emotional regulatory skills in the context of parent-child attachment relationships, nonetheless empirical studies have focused mainly on mother and less information is available regarding the role of both parent-child attachment relationships. Furthermore, despite its importance, there is no information regarding presc...

Although there is a large body of research connecting emotion to eating behaviors, little is known about the role of caregivers’ responses to children’s emotions in the context of child feeding. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relation between caregivers’ emotional responsiveness and feeding responsiveness. The mothers of 137 children...

High and stable behavioral inhibition during early childhood is a risk factor for later anxiety disorders. The few available interventions targeted at behav-ioral inhibition have not yet been implemented in European countries. Evaluating intervention acceptability is essential when introducing interventions in new cultures. This study aimed to expl...

Background: Oxytocin (OXT) has attracted research interest for its potential involvement in many of the behavioural problems observed in childhood. Due to its logistical advantages, saliva is an attractive fluid to quantify neuropeptides in children. Salivary OXT has been suggested as a potential biomarker for psychopathology during childhood. Howe...

The increase in women’s labor market participation emphasizes the importance of understanding maternal separation anxiety, that is, the unpleasant maternal emotional state, due to the actual or anticipated short-term separation from the child. Drawing on the insights of the attachment and psychoanalytic perspectives, the Maternal Separation Anxiety...

The main goal of this study was to explore the contributions of early father–child and mother–child attachment relationships to children’s later social competence with their preschool peers; possible unique and shared contributions were tested. Using a multi-method design and focusing on direct observation, attachment was assessed at home at age 3...

Correlated trait-correlated method minus one was used to evaluate convergent and discriminant validity of Social Competence Behavior Evaluation questionnaire (Social Competence, Anger-Aggression, Anxiety-Withdrawal) between multiple raters. A total of 369 children (173 boys and 196 girls; M age = 55.85, SD age = 11.54) were rated by their mothers,...

Given the high prevalence of anxiety disorders, there has been an increasing need to intervene on the early risk factors for their development, namely behavioral inhibition and social withdrawal (BI/SW) during early childhood. However, the participation rates in preventive evidence-based interventions targeted at BI/SW have been modest, due to the...

We examine the factorial structure of the Security Scale Questionnaire (SSQ), exploring measurement invariance across mother-father-child attachment relationships, child sex, and country. We used the new 21-item SSQ version that integrates both safe haven and secure base behaviors in a two factors structure. Participants were 457 children (224 girl...

Níveis elevados e estáveis de inibição comportamental em idade pré-escolar associam-se a um risco acrescido de desenvolver perturbações de ansiedade e dificuldades com os pares. O desenvolvimento de intervenções baseadas na evidência para prevenir estas trajetórias inadaptativas têm merecido um interesse crescente. Todavia, estas intervenções ainda...

To test the hypothesis that social engagement is a foundational aspect of other peer social competence indicators during early childhood, 160 Portuguese preschool children (“3‐year‐olds”) were observed at least in two different school years, using a battery of validated social competence assessments based on direct observations and child interviews...

Invited Symposium in Robert Coplan Paper Symposium: A Good Time to Be Alone? New Directions in the Study of Social Withdrawal in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood. 2019 ECDP Biennial Meeting , 29 Aug – 1 Sep. Athens, Greece.

The present study assesses the factor structure, psychometric adequacy, and invariance across sex and age of the Relational Provisions Loneliness Questionnaire (RPLQ). Discriminant validity with an external criterion was also tested. In a sample of Portuguese adolescents, from 7th to 9th grade (N ¼ 817), Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) were cond...

This study investigated the network dynamics of affiliative ties in Portuguese preschool children, over three consecutive school years, using stochastic actor-based models. Our first goal was to test the extent to which different criteria to identify ties from observational data lead to different theoretical interpretations of model estimates. Cont...

The links between attachment security and multiple aspects of emotional development have been studied for several decades. Although these studies are valuable insofar some answers related to representations of attachment and emotion knowledge are still open. Preschool aged children (N=40) participated in this study. We used the Attachment Story Com...

There has been an increasing interest in the development of evidence-based parent interventions aimed at reducing the early risk factors for the development of anxiety disorders, namely behavioral inhibition (BI) during the preschool years. However, these interventions are not yet available in European countries with a high prevalence of anxiety di...

Recent meta-analyses have reported significant effects of attachment quality on social competence, mostly using observational assessments of attachment behavior to assess security. We analyze the associations between attachment security – assessed as a secure base script, and social competence with peers – measured by teachers’ ratings on two self-...

Anxious withdrawal has been associated consistently with adverse peer experiences. However, research has also shown that there is significant heterogeneity among anxiously withdrawn youth. Further, extant research has focused primarily on negative peer experiences and outcomes; little is known about the more successful social experiences of anxious...

SCBE-30 questionnaire (LaFrenière & Dumas, 1996) analyses affective quality of the children's relationships with adults and peers, providing a standardized description of affect and behavior in context, discriminating behavioral-emotional problems and children's social adjustment. Knowing that parents and teachers have different access to the same...

The goal of this study was to test how changes in perception accuracy of affiliative networks (i.e., the ability to accurately identify who affiliates with whom) are related to an important structural feature of peer groups- the likelihood of children to affiliate with mutual partners (transitivity). Data from three longitudinal samples (two from e...

Friendships in adolescence are fundamental for social, emotional and cognitive development. However, differences in the quality of the relationship with a best friend may also be associated with adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment. The goal of this study was to identify different profiles of friendship quality, contrasting them regarding positive...

Peer victimization is one of the most prominent problems during adolescence. Research has distinguished aggressive and non-aggressive victims; however, there are still significant drawbacks in understanding the social and family functioning of these different groups of victimized adolescents. This study aimed to compare social behavior and perceive...

The hypothalamic nonapeptides oxytocin and vasopressin are important modulators of socio-affective behaviours in a wide variety of animal species, including humans. Nevertheless, there is little research addressing their possible roles on socio-affective dimensions of human behaviour across development, during which considerable behavioural and phy...

Parental and peer socialization experiences provide crucial, formative inputs during infancy and early childhood, and by 6 years of age, the child’s brain develops into its full size; the brain’s basic connectivity architecture is laid out, both within and between 'regional' brain areas. Peer affiliation and play, in particular, are extremely impor...

A capacidade das crianças para compreender as emoções e as intenções sociais dos outros relaciona--se com a qualidade das interações com os pares. Os comportamentos de brincadeira não-social durante o pré-escolar poderão estar associados a dificuldades no desenvolvimento do conhecimento emocional. O presente estudo teve como objetivos: (1) identifi...

Recent empirical studies reporting sex differences in attachment relationships have prompted investigators to consider why and under what conditions such results might be observed. This study was designed to explore possibilities of identifying sex differences in the organization of attachment-relevant behavior during early childhood. Observations...

This study was designed to explore whether children's representations of attachment contribute to the co-construction of positive teacher–child relationships. An assessment of verbal intelligence was included as a predictor on the assumption that teachers might perceive themselves as having better relationships with more verbally competent children...

There has been a rapid growth of studies focused on selection and socialization processes of peer groups, mostly due to the development of stochastic actor-based models to analyze longitudinal social network data. One of the core assumptions of these models is that individuals have an accurate knowledge of the dyadic relationships within their netw...

Playing with peers is one of the most important contexts for the acquisition of social competencies in early childhood. This study examined the relation between children’s play behavior, social acceptance in the peer group, and number of reciprocal friendships. One hundred and twenty eight children, aged between three and five years, participated i...

A Preschool Play Behavior Scale é um instrumento constituído por 18 itens que expressam diferentes tipos de comportamentos das crianças, em contexto de brincadeira livre com os pares, procurando diferenciar, em particular, tipos de comportamentos não-sociais. O presente estudo teve como objetivo traduzir e analisar a estrutura fatorial do instrumen...

Social Withdrawal, Attachment and Depression in Portuguese Adolescents.

Parent-adolescent attachment and peer victimization at school

Our aim is to investigate links between attachment representations and teachers-rated social adjustment (specifically, anger, anxiety, and responsiveness to peers). The sample included 99 preschool children’s (49 boys and 50 girls) between 49 – 76 months-of-age. Mental representations of attachment were assessed using the Attachment Story Completio...

Measurement invariance of a Multidimensional Loneliness Scale _ Relational Provision Loneliness Questionnaire

Loneliness in Adolescence: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Relational Provision Loneliness Questionnaire in a Portuguese Sample.

This study examined the relations between preadolescents’ perceptions of parent-child attachment, the number of reciprocal friendships and preadolescent’s sense of self-worth.

Father-child and Mother-child Attachment

f Pre-School Children’s Social Behavior

We used stochastic actor-based models to test whether the developmental dynamics of friendships and antipathies in preschool peer groups (followed throughout three school years) were co-dependent. We combined choices from three sociometric tasks of 142 children to identify friendship and antipathy ties and used SIENA to model network dynamics. Our...

This study tested the hypothesis that social engagement (SE) with peers is a fundamental aspect of social competence during early childhood. Relations between SE and a set of previously validated social competence indicators, as well as additional variables derived from observation and sociometric interviews were assessed using both variable-center...

In Paper Discussion Symposium: Behavioral Inhibition and Social Withdrawal: Peer Interactions and Relationships during Early Adolescence. Chair: Kenneth H. Rubin. Discussant: Nathan A. Fox.