Paula Vagos

University of Coimbra | UC · Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences

Developmental stages present challenges that prepare the individual for new roles. Self-compassion may be a protective factor across this process. The present study aims to: (1) compare self-compassion scores in adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, and older adulthood using a cross-sectional design and a continuous multigenerational sample; (2)...

Adolescence increases vulnerability to mental ill-health, particularly anxiety disorders like Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Still, the understanding of Psychological Flexibility/Inflexibility (PF/PI) as a transdiagnostic framework relevant to explaining these difficulties and the efficacy of Acceptance and Co...

Objectives Self-compassion is a valuable resource for positive ageing and should be measured in a reliable and valid manner. However, findings regarding the factor structure of the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) have been inconsistent and have been particularly lacking in older adults. Hence, the present study intended to investigate the factor struct...

The present study investigated the nature and meaning of the experiences of older adults who lived through the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown periods in Portugal. Narrative Research was used to explore the lived stories of two community--resident female older adults, recruited through convenience sampling. Data was collected through...

Objectives: The present study aimed at assessing psychological flexibility, the core construct of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy model, in the context of chronic illness. More specifically, the present study aimed at validating the 18-item Portuguese CompACT measure of psychological flexibility in a chronic illness sample (total n = 419; 83....

There are well-established benefits of social and emotional learning (SEL) programs for children within educational contexts. Combining social–emotional skills and compassion abilities has been seldomly done, and it may be valuable at individual and societal levels, for resilient, empathetic, and inclusive societies. This study explored the feasibi...

Introduction: Mother's bond to the infant in the postpartum period plays an important role in the subsequent mother-infant relationship and the infant's socio-emotional functioning. Several maternal characteristics, such as attachment style and psychological flexibility, may contribute to the quality of mother-infant bonding, though literature exa...

The goal of the present study was an initial validation of the Peer Conflict Scale (PCS) for Polish young adults (ages 18–30 years). The PCS measures two forms (overt and relational) and two functions (proactive and reactive) of aggression enabling multidimensional assessment of aggressive behavior in early adulthood. Study 1 (N =482) showed that t...

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) has its usual onset during adolescence when it is a highly prevalent and debilitating condition. Evidence regarding the processes that underline social anxiety and SAD is not compelling, especially in adolescents. Within an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) framework, the causal role of ACT processes on adolescen...

Introduction/Aims: The Brief Peer Conflict Scale (Brief PCS) measures aggressive behavior as a multidimensional construct associated with diverse forms (i.e., overt and relational) and functions (i.e., reactive and proactive). Its psychometric properties have been assessed in adolescent and young adult samples, but these groups have not been compar...

Clark and Wells' model for social anxiety proposed several maintenance factors for social anxiety (SA), which is assumed to exist in a continuum from normative to pathological levels (i.e., Social Anxiety Disorder-SAD). Based on these premises, we used a cross-sectional design to investigate pathways linking those maintenance factors to SA, in adol...

Clark and Wells’ model for social anxiety proposed several maintenance factors for social anxiety (SA), which is assumed to exist in a continuum from normative to pathological levels (i.e., Social Anxiety Disorder – SAD). Based on these premises, we used a cross-sectional design to investigate pathways linking those maintenance factors to SA, in ad...

Cognitive therapy has been established as the frontline treatment for adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD); its efficacy with socially anxious adolescents is incipient but promising. This work investigated change in social anxiety symptoms reported by adolescents and their therapist as they go through remotely delivered 10-session cognitive th...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a debilitating and chronic condition that usually arises in adolescence. Cost-effective interventions provided early on may alter its usually chronic trajectory. This study evaluated changes following a brief cognitive restructuring intervention with 14 adolescent girls, against a waitlist control group, on social a...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) usually develops in adolescence and is maintained by avoidance and safety seeking behaviors, which are the focus of behavioral therapy (BT). This work explored the outcomes of a brief group BT for SAD in adolescence, combining exposure with skills training. Fourteen adolescents (aged 14-18 years old) diagnosed with SAD...

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by marked and persistent fear in social situations in which one may be exposed and/or anticipates being exposed to external evaluation and in which embarrassment/humiliation may occur. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been showing promising results in several disorders, including adult SAD....

This qualitative investigation explored the social and academic experiences of socially anxious adolescents and young adults in Portugal and the US as they lived through the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 10 Portuguese adolescents (mean age = 16.9 years; 50% female) and 7 young adults in the US (mean age = 19.67 ye...

Currently, the gold standard measure to assess loneliness is the University of California, Los Angeles Loneliness scale version 3 (UCLA v3). Objective. The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of UCLA v3 for the European Portuguese population. Method: A sample of 282 participants was surveyed in Portugal. Results: Confirmato...

Social fears arise when fearing to be judged in social events. When these fears are intense, persistent, and debilitating, the individual may suffer from social anxiety disorder (SAD), which has its most frequent onset during adolescence and tends to be chronic. Still, evidence on the prevalence of social fears and SAD in adolescence is scarce. Thi...

The use of serious games may be an appealing and complementary way to motivate curriculum-based social and emotional learning (SEL); still, investigation into this potential usefulness is scarce. This study aims to address the usefulness of serious games within the program ‘Me and Us of Emotions’. Specifically, we analyzed the differences in childr...

This study aims to assess the efficacy of the PSYCHOPATHY.COMP in promoting a compassionate motivation among male detained youth, also testing its role as a potential mechanism of change on the reduction of psychopathic traits. A treatment group (n = 58) and a control group (n = 61) answered a set of self-report measures on psychopathic traits, sha...

Purpose: Self-compassion is associated with healthy ageing and may be a protection factor of older adults' mental health in face of negative life events and other factors such as insecure attachment. However, fear of self-compassion may constitute an obstacle to promoting self-compassion. The role of self-compassion on the psychological (mal)adjus...

An 18-item Portuguese-language version of the CompACT scale has recently been proposed for the Portuguese population. This study aims at conducting the first Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Portuguese CompACT in participants from two different samples (community adults and women in the post-partum period; total N = 1090). Given that the CompACT...

This research explored a taxonomy combining social anxiety and assertiveness and further applied a cognitive approach for predicting those constructs in adolescents. Participants were 679 adolescents (mean age = 16.68; 61.3% female) who self-reported on interpersonal assertive schemas, negative automatic social thoughts, social anxiety, and asserti...

SAD is an intense fear or anxiety associated with past, current, or future social situations. The Clark and Wells (1995) cognitive model for SAD has been proved to be clinically effective in adults, and its developmentally sensitive adaptations for adolescents have recently shown promising results. Given this evidence and considering that adolescen...

Anxiety has become more prevalent in recent years, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, although it remains largely unrecognized and untreated. Thus, there is a need for effective, short, and accessible forms of intervention. Externalizing Metaphor Therapy (EMT) is a post-modern brief treatment for mild to moderate anxiety. Its efficacy is herein...

The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire-Kids (CERQ-Kids) is a self-report questionnaire that assesses cognitive emotional regulation strategies that children may employ when they face traumatic or stressful events. However, its psychometric properties were only analyzed among participants from the general community. The goal of this study is...

Worldwide, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) has become the most widely used measure of life satisfaction. Recently, an authorized Vietnamese-language version has been introduced. Using a convenience sample comprising community volunteers from Ho Chi Minh City (N = 1073), confirmatory support was found for the cross-national constancy of the...

The student-teacher relationship (STR) has been consistently associated to positive and generalized outcomes, though its quality seems to be questioned in online teaching, which in turn has had a negative impact on students and teachers’ wellbeing during school closures forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The current work compared students and teacher...

Este trabalho investigou a eficácia da Terapia Focada na Compaixão (TFC) nos sintomas da perturbação de ansiedade social (PAS) na adolescência, com base em dados recolhidos ao longo da intervenção. A TFC contribuiu para o bem-estar psicológico em várias populações, mas é escassa a evidência sobre a sua eficácia no tratamento da PAS em adolescentes....

Social anxiety is significantly prevalent among college students and frequently leads to school dropout and academic underachievement. Since university counseling services are often overburdened, a mobile-based cognitive behavioral intervention was designed to support students attending therapy for social anxiety and therapists. Our main goals are...

The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the physical and mental health of citizens worldwide. Older adults are categorized as an at-risk group due to their age, but some literature has demonstrated that the senior population has not necessarily lived through the pandemic crisis in a negative manner. This perspective that all older adul...

Although psychopathy has historically been associated with a lack of emotion, recent research has suggested that psychopathy may represent a tendency to externalize the experience of unpleasant emotions, including shame, which could be seen as an adaptive strategy within an evolutionary framework. However, more empirical research is needed to build...

Given the challenges of the modern world, specifically at schools, and the alarming increase in mental health difficulties in young people, it is crucial to universally foster social and emotional skills in the school context. This study aims to present the development and preliminary results of a program to promote socioemotional skills for childr...

Objective: To assess the efficacy of the PSYCHOPATHY.COMP program in reducing psychopathic traits among male detained youth. Method: In this controlled trial, a treatment group (n = 58) and a control group (n = 61) answered the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory-Short (YPIS) and the Proposed Specifiers for Conduct Disorder (PSCD) at baseline, p...

This work reports a preliminary validation of the Peer Conflict Scale (PCS) for Portuguese young adults (ages 18–30 years). This instrument assesses aggression considering two of its forms (overt and relational aggression) and its two functions (reactive and proactive aggression). The initially proposed 4-factor model provided the best fit for our...

Serious mental health disorders are increasing among college students and university counseling services are often overburdened. Mobile applications for mental health have been growing exponentially in the last decade and they are emerging in university settings as a promising tool to promote and intervene in college students' mental health. Additi...

This work evaluated the cross-sectional and longitudinal (i.e., over four months) impact of attachment to mother, father, and peers on three psychopathic traits (i.e., grandiose-manipulative, callous-unemotional, and impulsive-irresponsible) using a community adolescent sample, and if that impact was differentiated by gender. Though there is eviden...

This short-longitudinal study analyzed the cross-sectional and longitudinal pathways linking adolescent’s quality of attachment to parents and peers and their practice of aggressive and prosocial behavior; it also explored the moderation effect of gender on those pathways. A total of 375 secondary school students (203 girls and 172 boys), aged betw...

When attending and participating in Higher Education, students face a multitude of personal, social, and work-related challenges, which may increase the risk of devel- oping psychopathological symptomatology. To date, there is no instrument that grasps the non-technical skills that may help prepare students to respond to these challenges. This pape...

This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Child Post-Traumatic Cognitions Inventory (CPTCI) in a sample of Portuguese children and adolescents, following the exposition to a wildfire disaster. The sample included 533 children and adolescents living in regions exposed to the wildfire disaster (non-clinical sample: n = 483; clini...

Natural disasters are potentially traumatic events due to their disruptive nature and high impact on social and physical environments, particularly for children and adolescents. The present study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES‐13) in a sample of Portuguese children and adolescents...

Background The identification of protection factors regarding older adults’ mental health is essential. Self-compassion, the capacity to be kind towards the self during challenging times, may be one such factor. Although still scarce, some research in this field has already been conducted with older adults. Our research question was the following:...

This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties and to investigate the cross-cultural equivalence of the Brief Form of the Young Schema Questionnaire for Adolescents (B-YSQ-A) in a sample of Portuguese (n = 453) and Brazilian (n = 560) adolescents. A total of 1013 adolescents aged 14–19 years old (M = 16.61, SD = 1.18) completed the B-YSQ-A...

Shame plays a central role in social and self-development, particularly throughout childhood and adolescence. Nonetheless, shame can also be harmful if it involves unbearable and persistent feelings of being inferior, inadequate, and worthless. Gender differences in endorsing either internalizing/externalizing symptoms may reflect different ways of...

Assertiveness, as the ability to adequately express oneself while maintaining social gains, can be applied to various social contexts and concomitant social demands, but the cognitive and emotional correlates underlying assertive behaviour in diverse social events has not been considered. We tested a cognitive-behavioral framework for understanding...

The 10-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) has been presented as a valid measure to assess psychological distress levels in population surveys but its dimensional structure was not consensual. Our main objective was to provide a Portuguese version of the K10 exploring the reliability and factor structure of this measure. This cross-sect...

Background Shame has been found to relate to several psychopathologies, but the way the individual copes with experiences of shame may determine specific expressions of psychopathology, making it essential to rigorously address such coping styles. Objective This study evaluated the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of the Compass of...

Psychopathy has been historically associated with a lack of emotion. However, some authors argue that psychopathy may represent a tendency to externalize the experience of unpleasant emotions, including shame, what could be seen as an adaptive strategy within an evolutionary framework. Nevertheless, empirical research investigating this hypothesis...

Assessing morningness-eveningness preferences (chronotype), an individual characteristic that is mirrored in daily mental and physiological fluctuations is crucial given their overarching influence in a variety of domains. The current work aimed to investigate the best factor structure of an instrument recently presented to asses this variable: the...

Psychological dysregulation is a complex and multidimensional construct encompassing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions. Research on psychological dysregulation emphasizes its importance in relation to several psychological disorders. However, assessing psychological dysregulation is often problematic because many of the existing instr...

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and related constructs (experien-tial avoidance, cognitive defusion and committed action) have recently been applied to psychosis. However, with a few exceptions, this application has not resulted in symptom-specific assessment instruments. The current work intends to develop a measure for assessing experiential ac...

This work reports the initial psychometric characterization of the Morningness-Eveningness-Stability-Scale improved (MESSi) for Portuguese young-adults (N=466). A Confirmatory Factor Analysis confirmed a three-factor model (i.e., Morning Affect, Eveningness and Distinctness) in our data, as originally proposed. Furthermore, construct validity evide...

The current work aims to develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Brief form of the Young Schema Questionnaire for Adolescents (B-YSQ-A), so that Early Maladaptive Schemas can be accurately measured in younger populations. Early Maladaptive Schemas are self-defeating core themes underlying maladaptive cognition, affect, and behavior....

Tendo em conta o interesse recente nas intervenções baseadas na aceitação para a psicose, tem sido recomendado que os mecanismos de coping com as vozes, nomeadamente a aceitação experiencial, sejam avaliados no contexto clínico e de investigação. A Escala de Aceitação e Ação em relação às Vozes (VAAS-12) é um instrumento de autorresposta especifica...

O presente estudo teve como objetivo analisar de que forma os níveis de autoaversão (sentimentos de repulsa dirigidos para o próprio) podem influenciar a memória para estímulos emocionais e os correlatos psicofisiológicos deste processo, através do registo de ECG. Era pedido aos participantes que memorizassem e posteriormente recordassem faces de a...

O presente estudo teve como principal objetivo explorar a influência da autoaversão na proporção de respostas corretas e no tempo de reação na identificação de expressões faciais de emoção dinâmicas. Numa amostra comunitária foram recrutados 49 participantes, categorizados consoante o seu nível de autoaversão, para uma tarefa laboratorial de reconh...

O Cenas para Processamento de Informação Social na Adolescência (SSIPA) propõe avaliar diversos passos cognitivos sugeridos pelo modelo de processamento de informação social, além de considerar estados emocionais que podem interferir com este processamento racional. A avaliação psicométrica deste instrumento aponta para a sua validade de constructo...

Compassion has been proposed as relevant to psychological functioning and mental health, involving being compassionate and caring towards others in times of difficulty. The Compassion Scale (CS) proposes to assess compassion for others considering its different dimensions (Kindness; Common humanity; Mindfulness; Indifference; Separation, and Diseng...

Os jovens com problemas de comportamento representam um dos grupos mais desafiantes para intervenção em psicoterapia. Habitualmente, demonstram grande resistência ao tratamento e negam ou minimizam os seus problemas. No entanto, a patologia do comportamento tende a associar-se a défices ao nível do sucesso académico, ao consumo de substâncias psico...

Key practitioners messages: The Early Memories of Warmth and Safeness Scale (EMWSS), assessing early memories of warmth and safeness, was studied across community, referred for behavioural problems and detained Portuguese adolescent samples. A brief version of this instrument was also developed and studied in these same samples. Both versions of t...

Background Young offenders are known to be a population with high prevalence of mental health disorders. In most cases, these disorders are neither identified nor treated properly, with the majority of them being chronic and difficult to treat. In many countries, the prevalence rates of psychopathology in male young offenders are still unknown and...

The goal of this research was to develop and psychometrically evaluate the Portuguese version of the Revised Peer Experience Questionnaire, which assesses aggression, victimization and prosocial behavior. Victimization and aggression among adolescents in school settings is a growing problem, not yet fully understood or properly evaluated, particula...

The Halstead Category Test (HCT) is a neuropsychological test that measures a person’s ability to formulate and apply principles. Performance must be adjusted based on feedback after each trial and errors are common until the underlying rules are discovered. Event-related potential (ERP) studies associated with the HCT are lacking. This paper demon...

We explored the measurement model of the adolescent version of the Centrality of Event Scale and its invariance across community (n = 1,079; 42.8% male), referred for foster care (n = 205; 58.0% male), and detained (n = 206 male) adolescent participants. Results indicated a three-factor measurement model, including all three functions that memories...

Victimization and aggression among adolescents in schools is a growing problem. Findings concerning the gender-based expressions of these occurrences have been inconsistent, tough boys are suggested to experience higher levels of overt aggression and victimization whereas girls are expected to experience higher levels of relational aggression and v...

Empathy is the heightened ability to cognitively perceive and/or affectively share the emotions of others, which has been consistently associated with desirable social interactions. This paper aimed to test the bi-factorial structure of a Portuguese version of the Basic Empathy Scale and examine its variation by gender and age using a large communi...

Assertiveness has for long been considered an optimal way of expressing oneself while at the same time maintaining and/or enhancing social rewards, leading to the conclusion that it should be promoted as an intra and interpersonal protective factor. Yet, few researchers have tried to provide a comprehensive model on assertiveness that may better su...

Relatively little is known about measures used to investigate the validity and applications of social information processing theory. The Scenes for Social Information Processing in Adolescence includes items built using a participatory approach to evaluate the attribution of intent, emotion intensity, response evaluation, and response decision step...

Modified measures of Fear of Negative Evaluation and Fear of Positive Evaluation were examined among Portuguese adolescents. These measures demonstrated replicable factor structure, internal consistency, and positive relationships with social anxiety and avoidance. Gender differences were found. Implications for evaluation and intervention are disc...

Não considerar as características individuais pode prejudicar a deteção da mentira, uma vez que algumas pessoas, devido ao seu comportamento aparentam naturalmente maior honestidade ou desonestidade do que outras. Neste estudo considerámos a influência do nível de ansiedade social na deteção da mentira, pois pessoas com elevada ansiedade social ten...

Abstract Social fears are common among adolescents and may considerably impair their lives. Even so, most adolescents do not seek professional help for these difficulties, making it important to promote evidence-based and preventive interventions in community samples. This research presents the effectiveness of an intervention with a group of five...

Aggression in adolescence may assume different forms and functions, and is often associated with maladjustment. To adequately assess aggression in adolescence, instruments need to evaluate both its forms and its functions, as is the case with the Peer Conflict Scale. This research presents and evaluates the Portuguese version of this instrument, an...

The specificity of early childhood educational contexts as mediators of socio-emotional development of the child through positive interactions is critical to their involvement in the kindergarten and in turn for their holistic development. The quality of the teacher-child interactions promotes the self-concept, self-esteem and autonomy of the child...

Este trabalho apresenta a adaptação linguística para português da Escala de Comportamento Interpessoal - versão reduzida, e a avaliação das suas características psicométricas, em uma amostra de adolescentes tardios (dos 16 aos 21 anos; N = 872). Foi encontrada uma organização interna em quatro dimensões e uma medida geral para os dois componentes a...

RESUMO: O presente estudo pretende avaliar e identificar o tipo de problemas de comportamento de crianças na educação pré-escolar, na perspetiva dos Educadores de Infância. A amostra é constituída por 581 crianças, com idades compreendidas entre os 2 e 7 anos, que frequentam a educação pré-escolar, em média há 18 meses. Foi aplicada a subescala Pro...