Pedro F. S. Rodrigues

Universidade Portucalense · Department of Psychology

Several studies have reported subtle differences in cognition between individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) compared to those with normal cognition. This study aimed to (i) identify these differences using discrepancy scores (e.g., categorial-phonemic verbal fluency performance) derived from neuropsychological tests in three cognitive...

This study aimed to investigate the synchrony/asynhrony effect on eyewitness memory. Forty-four participants (24 evening-types and 20 morning-types) performed, individually, two online sessions: one in the morning and another in the evening. In each session, each participant visualized two videos (crime and neutral scenes), answered questions relat...

Contexto e Objetivo: Compreender a satisfação com a vida, o bem-estar subjetivo e a felicidade é importante para obter uma visão aprofundada da qualidade de vida dos idosos. Embora estes conceitos tenham sido amplamente investigados, ainda existem lacunas na compreensão de como variam entre idosos a viver em diferentes contextos. Este estudo teve c...

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are two of the most used non-pharmacological interventions for Alzheimer's Disease (AD). However, most of the clinical trials have focused on evaluating the effects on global cognition and not on specific cognitive functions. Therefore, considerin...

The main goal of this study was to establish the psychometric characteristics of the Stress-Inducing Factors and Coping Scale for Children (SICoS–C). This work also identified stress-inducing situations and coping mechanisms within educational settings, as reported by professionals working with children aged 3–10 years. The study surveyed 215 profe...

Breast cancer is one of the most diagnosed cancers among women. Its effects on the cognitive and wellbeing domains have been widely reported in the literature, although with inconsistent results. The central goal of this review was to identify, in women with breast cancer, the main memory impairments, as measured by objective and subjective tools a...

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...

Introduction/Aims: Normative deficits in memory capacity are usually associated with subjective memory complaints, however, the relationship between the declines of objective memory and the subjective memory complaints is not clear. This cross-sectional study aimed to understand the relationship between subjective memory complains frequency (i.e.,...

Ageing entails different functional brain changes. Education, reading experience, and leisure activities, among others, might contribute to the maintenance of cognitive performance among older adults and are conceptualised as proxies for cognitive reserve. However, ageing also conveys a depletion of working memory capacity, which adversely impacts...

Considering the current state of the worldwide pandemic, it is still common to encounter people wearing face protection masks. Although a safety measure against COVID-19, face masks might be compromising our capacity for face recognition. We conducted an online study where 140 participants observed masked and unmasked faces in a within-subjects des...

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...

https://ria.ua.pt/handle/10773/32675

No contexto de isolamento social em que a infância se insere, na atualidade, potenciamos cada vez mais os conhecimentos epistemológicos da psicologia da educação, como resposta ao stress que ela vivência. O presente estudo teve como objetivo identificar as situações indutoras de stress em crianças dos 3 aos 10 anos, junto de profissionais que traba...

Research on human memory has increased in the last decades. However, some studies have showed that several misconceptions about memory functioning still present in college students and practitioners of (Forensic) Psychology. We surveyed a large sample of undergraduate students from several areas (e.g., Psychology, Law) about their knowledge and bel...

This study investigated how the characteristics of the visual surrounding environment influence older- and young-adults’ cognitive performance. Sixty-four older adults and 64 young adults performed four visual cognitive tasks (attention and memory tasks) in two independent sessions while being exposed to a high-load and a low-load visual surroundin...

We present an initial validation of the State Anxiety Scale for Children (SASC) for Portuguese children and adolescents. No significant differences were found between sexes and among school cycle groups. The data revealed good psychometric properties and the ‘anxiety-absent’ and ‘anxiety-present’ factors were confirmed. Potential applications of th...

O consumo de álcool faz parte do ritual de integração da vida académica, sendo considerado um veículo de inclusão no grupo, estando também associado a comportamentos de risco, como condução sob o efeito de álcool e sexo desprotegido. O Projeto Giros surge neste âmbito com o objetivo de reduzir os riscos e minimizar os danos relacionados com o consu...

Eyewitness memory is widely studied in the forensic context, due to their proneness to make unreliable testimonies. Understanding which factors may impact memory is determinant to avoid wrongful convictions in court. In this exploratory study, the relation between stress and anxiety and memory errors (spontaneous and induced) was analyzed being hyp...

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by a complex maturation process of various cognitive abilities. Cognitive control, which includes response inhibition and working memory, is one of them. A typical study on response inhibition to visual stimuli presents distractors and targets on the same display (e.g., the computer screen). Howev...

http://www.abpj.org.br/downloads/da2c24d7cd414b6ff67d10ace786dd70.pdf

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...

Our work aimed to provide a validated reduced form of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire to Portuguese adolescents (ages: 12-14 years). Using the dataset from the initial validation study of the full questionnaire (19 items) to Portuguese adolescents, we derived a 10-item reduced form – aMEQ-R (Phase 1); this was the smallest set of items th...

Visual distraction is widely studied in children, particularly in visuospatial cognitive tasks. In these studies, targets and distractors are usually shown in the same display (e.g., the computer screen). However, children are constantly exposed to visually enriched environments (e.g., elementary school classrooms), and little is known about their...

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), included in the category of anxiety disorders, is characterized by the presence of dysfunctional thoughts (obsessions) and/or dysfunctional behaviors (compulsions). This is a common problem and it shows clear psychological distress for people. It’s estimated that it affects from 2% to 3% of the world population....

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 State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children is a self-report instrument inspired on the State-Trait theory extended by Spielberger that measures a momentary state of anxiety (state) and a stable tendency to experience anxiety (trait). This study presents an exploratory adaptation of the Trait Scale and provides its psychometric properties for Eu...

Our work aimed to investigate how the presence of visual elements in the surrounding environment influences cognitive performance measured by four cognitive tasks in elderly and in young-adults.

OUR AIM: To contribute to the understanding of the relation between chronotype, sleep and sports performance in elite football players.

Our aim was to study the influence of the load of the external environment (high vs. low-load external environment) in two cognitive tasks performed by a group of young-adults, and to explore if the position in which tasks are performed influences this effect.

RESUMO-Nesta revisão de literatura, abordamos a importância da atenção seletiva, da inibição e da memória de trabalho na aprendizagem das crianças. Começamos por apresentar as suas definições e principais mecanismos funcionais. Apresentamos igualmente conclusões de vários estudos que abordam a importância desses processos, sobretudo em tarefas visu...

AIM: To investigate the influence of the visual external environment in specific cognitive tasks in children.

AIM: To propose a validated reduced version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire for European Portuguese adolescents aged 12-14 years.

Throughout development individuals vary in their circadian preferences. One of the most notable changes occurs during adolescence when individuals tend to become progressively more evening-oriented. This is a critical age period to be studied given that eveningness preferences seem to relate with physical, psychological and social problems, whereas...

This work investigated the effect of a distracting environment in the performance of visuospatial attentional and memory tasks in 56 elderly. Overall, the results revealed better performance in the cognitive tasks when these were done in the non-distracting environment, as compared to when they were done in the distracting environment.

O crecente envelhecimento populacional, nomeadamente em Portugal, exige dos psicólogos uma atenção particular a esta população que carece de cuidados acrescidos. Os idosos apresentam habitualmente declínios cognitivos, nomeadamente ao nível atencional e mnésico, e urge perceber que outros elementos podem debilitar o seu funcionamento nestes domínio...

The present work investigated the effect of a distracting environment in the performance of attentional and working memory (WM) tasks in elderly participants. To this end, forty elderly performed two attentional tasks (simple reaction time and go/no-go tasks), and three WM tasks (arithmetic, memory for digits and sequences of letters and numbers)....

The excessive alcohol consumption in college students has been the focus of enormous concerns, not only because alcohol has negative effects on people’s health, but also because it frequently leads to risky behaviors, for instance, drinking and driving or having sexual relations without any protection. Another aspect that has been identified in col...

As queixas mnésicas são muito frequentes na população, particularmente nos idosos. Contudo, a sua significância clínica não é consensual. Este trabalho apresenta dados comparativos de idosos e adultos relativos a um método objetivo de avaliação mnésica e a um método subjetivo. Para tal, 30 idosos e 30 adultos preencheram o Questionário de Lapsos de...

The present work aimed to study the effect of distracting environments in attention tasks and working memory tasks in elderly. To this end, thirty elderly performed two attention tasks (simple reaction time task and go/no-go task), and three working memory tasks (arithmetic, memory for digits and sequence of letters and numbers). Each participant p...