Marco Colasanti

• University of Chieti-Pescara

Introduction The present systematic review aims to synthesize and critically analyze the use of serious games in the professional training and education of psychologists and psychology students. Methods Following PRISMA guidelines, database searches from inception to July 2023 (PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus) yielded 4,409 records, o...

Context: In high-stakes assessments, such as court cases or managerial evaluations, decision-makers heavily rely on psychological testing. These assessments often play a crucial role in determining important decisions that affect a person’s life and have a significant impact on society. Problem Statement: Research indicates that many psychological...

According to the main international guidelines, patients with obesity and psychiatric/psychological disorders who cannot be addressed to surgery are recommended to follow a nutritional approach and a psychological treatment. A total of 94 patients (T0) completed a battery of self-report measures: Symptom Checklist-90—Revised (SCL-90-R), Barratt Imp...

In recent years, there has been a growing trend in cognitive psychology research towards recreating experimental situations in virtual reality (VR). VR settings are thought to have higher ecological validity than laboratory settings using digital, two-dimensional (2D) pictures. Some studies have shown cognitive performance in VR settings to follow...

In civil and forensic evaluations of psychological damage, depression is one of the most commonly identified disorders, and also one of the most frequently feigned. Thus, practitioners are often confronted with situations in which they must assess whether the symptomatology presented by a patient is genuine or being feigned for secondary gains. Whi...

Previous studies with the eye-tracking technology have predominantly tracked eye parameters in response to a single simple stimulus, and have generated interesting - sometimes inconsistent - results in research on deceptive behavior. The present study analyzed visual patterns in response to a complex image, to investigate potential differences in e...

The present study tested the influence of stimuli emotional valence, emotional arousal, and typicality on memory recollection in three groups of participants exposed to the same environment through different modalities: in vivo exposure (i.e., real-life), 3D virtual reality (i.e., VR), and 2D pictures. Context-related free-recall, recognition accur...

The COVID-19 pandemic tremendously impacted people’s day-to-day activities and mental health. This article describes the dataset used to investigate the psychological impact of the first national lockdown on the general Italian population. For this purpose, an online survey was disseminated via Qualtrics between 1 April and 20 April 2020, to record...

Homicide–suicide is an event in which an individual murders one or more persons and then takes his/her own life. The present study aimed to assess the incidence of homicide-suicide in Italy over a 10-year period (between 2009 and 2018) and to compare its findings with national and international data. Furthermore, a time series analysis was carried...

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed changes on day-to-day activities and had a detrimental psychological effect on the population, especially among vulnerable individuals, such as adolescents and young adults. The current study aimed to explore variables associated with anxiety, depressive and somatic symptoms in a sample of 608 Italian young adults aged...

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Global study on homicide. Booklet 1: executive summary. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet1.pdf. Accessed 5 June 2022, 2019; Victims of intentional homicide. https://dataunodc.un.org/dp-intentional-homicide-victims. Accessed 5 June 2022, 2020), Italy has the secon...

The COVID-19 pandemic and its protective measures had a tremendous effect on the general population's mental health and deeply affected their lifestyle. The present study carried out a longitudinal analysis to evaluate the long-lasting psychological effects of the pandemic and its impact on the general population's day-today routine. Three points i...

Expressed Emotion (EE) describes the tone of a caregiver’s response to a patient with a mental disorder, and it is used to predict relapse. The Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) is a 5-min interview with a caregiver that evaluates only two EE dimensions. The present study aimed at evaluating HEE (High Expressed Emotion) as a predictor of relapse in...

Deliberate attempts to portray oneself in an unrealistic manner are commonly encountered in the administration of personality questionnaires. The main aim of the present study was to explore whether mouse tracking temporal indicators and machine learning models could improve the detection of subjects implementing a faking-good response style when a...

The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed healthcare professionals (HPs) to increased workloads and a high risk of contagion. The present study aimed at examining the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on the mental health of HPs in Italy, investigating the role of attachment style, personality traits, and sociodemographic variables. An online survey was adm...

The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has called for unprecedented measures, including a national lockdown in Italy. The present study aimed at identifying psychological changes (e.g., changes in depression, stress, and anxiety levels) among the Italian public during the lockdown period, in addition to factors associated with these chan...

In the wake of the sudden spread of COVID-19, a large amount of the Italian population practiced incongruous behaviors with the protective health measures. The present study aimed at examining psychological and psychosocial variables that could predict behavioral compliance. An online survey was administered from 18–22 March 2020 to 2766 participan...

BACKGROUND In the wake of the sudden spread of COVID-19, much of the Italian population practiced behaviors that were incongruous with the protective health measures promoted by the Italian government. OBJECTIVE The present study aimed at examining psychological and psychosocial variables that could potentially predict behavioral compliance. METH...

The uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has called for unprecedented measures, to the extent that the Italian government has imposed a quarantine on the entire country. Quarantine has a huge impact and can cause considerable psychological strain. The present study aims to establish the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms a...

The aim of the present study was to explore whether kinematic indicators could improve the detection of subjects demonstrating faking-good behaviour when responding to personality questionnaires. One hundred and twenty volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups (honest unspeeded, faking-good unspeeded, honest speeded, and...

In the context of legal damage evaluations, evaluees may exaggerate or simulate symptoms in an attempt to obtain greater economic compensation. To date, practitioners and researchers have focused on detecting malingering behavior as an exclusively unitary construct. However, we argue that there are two types of inconsistent behavior that speak to p...

Background and Purpose. The use of machine learning (ML) models in the detection of malingering has yielded encouraging results, showing promising accuracy levels. We investigated the possible application of this methodology when trained on behavioral features, such as response time (RT) and time pressure, to identify faking behavior in self-report...