São Luís Castro

University of Porto | UP · Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences

A recent study showed that prior knowledge about object-color associations enhances detailed color representation in working memory. Participants studied colored objects where colors could be congruent with prior knowledge (e.g., a yellow banana), incongruent with it (a blue banana), or neutral (no association; a green book). Their color memory was...

Time perception in humans can be relative (beat-based) or absolute (duration-based). Although the classic view in the field points to different neural substrates underlying beat-based vs. duration-based mechanisms, recent neuroimaging evidence provided support to a unified model wherein these two systems overlap. In line with this, previous researc...

Objectives There is a growing interest in mindfulness-based programs. Yet, research in the area is limited, and little is known about the factors that moderate the effects of these programs. The two-fold aim of this study was (1) to examine the effects of a mindfulness-based program on dispositional mindfulness, inattention and emotional lability,...

Behavioral change has been increasingly recognized as a means for combating climate change. However, being concerned about climate problems and knowing the importance of individual actions in mitigating them is not enough for greater adherence to a more sustainable lifestyle. Psychological barriers such as (1) finding change unnecessary; (2) confli...

Children’s writing depends on strategic and self-regulated behaviors as well as on attention and transcription skills. Despite the well-established effectiveness of interventions based on the self-regulated strategy development model (SRSD), little is known about their effects when combined with the explicit teaching and systematic training of atte...

Background A patient’s knowledge of heart failure (HF) is associated with better outcomes. The more information patients have about their illness, the less likely they are to be readmitted to the hospital. Such knowledge includes the cause, symptoms, probable duration, and expected evolution of the clinical picture. In Portugal, a tool for testing...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.538194.].

Behavioral change has been increasingly recognized as a means for combating climate change. However, being concerned about climate problems and knowing the importance of individual actions in mitigating them is not enough for greater adherence to a more sustainable lifestyle. Psychological barriers such as (1) finding the change unnecessary; (2) co...

Rhythm and motor function are intrinsically linked to each other and to music, but the motor-rhythm interplay during music training, and the corresponding brain mechanisms, are underexplored. In a longitudinal training study with children, we inspected the role of rhythm skills in the fine motor improvements arising from music training, and which b...

Climate change presents risks for the natural environment and human populations. Yet, how people perceive these risks and how they factor this information when making decisions is still unknown. Reasoning about risks requires risk literacy which is the accurate interpretation and use of information about probabilistic events. However, risk literacy...

Abstract School classrooms within the EU are multilingual learning environments. The diversity of pupils in classrooms raises significant challenges for teachers, but to date, there are no data from large-scale surveys that compare views within and across European countries. A bespoke questionnaire was designed to examine views of current classroom...

Behavioral change has been increasingly recognized as a means for combating climate change. However, being concerned about climate problems and knowing the importance of individual actions in mitigating them is not enough for greater adherence to a more sustainable lifestyle. Psychological barriers such as (1) finding the change unnecessary; (2) co...

The classic advantage of audition over vision in time processing has been recently challenged by studies using continuously moving visual stimuli such as bouncing balls. Bouncing balls drive beat-based synchronization better than static visual stimuli (flashes) and as efficiently as auditory ones (beeps). It is yet unknown how bouncing balls modula...

In the last years, the teaching and learning of literacy has changed due to the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The use of ICT in the classroom depends largely on teachers, who are the key players in its integration. However, several factors influence teachers’ decisions to use ICT in their classroom, both internal...

ENGLISH: Climate change increased the risks for exposure to extreme weather events such as fires, storms, floods, cold and heat waves, among others. The subjective assessment of climate risk is relevant to the perception of climate emergency and the propensity to pro-environmental action. However, few studies have measured the factors that contribu...

A relação entre a preocupação com as alterações climáticas e a ação pró-ambiental não é linear. Uma maior preocupação não se manifesta, necessariamente, em mais ações pró-ambientais. Uma possível explicação para esta desconexão é a falta de conhecimento sobre o impacto dos comportamentos ambientais na mitigação das alterações climáticas. Neste estu...

Uma mitigação eficaz das alterações climáticas requer ações coordenadas não somente a nível político e social, mas também individual. Estima-se que o estilo de vida contribua direta e indiretamente para mais de 60% da produção dos gases de efeito estufa. Para motivar os indivíduos a adotar um estilo de vida mais sustentável, um dos primeiros passos...

Learning to write is one of the great challenges children face in primary grades, requiring both transcription skills (handwriting and spelling) and executive functions (EFs; working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility). Although this claim is widely accepted, the field suffers from some limitations, including few longitudinal stu...

Objectives Research into the effectiveness of mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) in school settings has grown substantially. However, studies in the field are still scarce, present methodological limitations, and fail to examine how children’s characteristics influence MBPs’ effects. The twofold aim of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of...

Despite abundant evidence that music skills relate to enhanced reading performance, the mechanisms subtending this relation are still under discussion. The Temporal Sampling Framework (TSF) provides a well-defined explanation for the music-reading link: musical rhythm perception would relate to reading because it helps to encode speech units, which...

It is often claimed that music training improves auditory and linguistic skills. Results of individual studies are mixed, however, and most evidence is correlational, precluding inferences of causation. Here, we evaluated data from 62 longitudinal studies that examined whether music training programs affect behavioral and brain measures of auditory...

What is the hallmark of a good speller? Spelling is a critical component in learning to become literate, but how it works in literate adults remains poorly explored. We examined word and pseudoword spelling in 214 adults in relation to general cognitive abilities, vocabulary, reading history, reading performance, phonological processing and rapid a...

Human beings are born with several abilities which are amenable to change. A growing number of studies have focused on the relations between musical and cognitive abilities but research with children from disadvantaged communities is scarce. This study explored the relations between musical and cognitive abilities in disadvantaged children. Partici...

In this study, we validated a set of audio stimuli addressing emotional lexico-prosodic congruence. Positive, neutral and negative words classified as such in European Portuguese lexical databases were recorded with matching and mismatching emotional prosodic patterns (positive, neutral and negative). The produced set was submitted to behavioral va...

The importance of individual behavioral change has been increasingly recognized for combating climate change. However, being concerned about climate problems and knowing the importance of individual actions in combating them is not enough for greater adherence to a more sustainable lifestyle. In this project, we examine psychological factors such a...

It is often claimed that music training improves auditory and linguistic skills. Results of individual studies are mixed, however, and most evidence is correlational, precluding inferences of causation. Here, we evaluated data from 62 longitudinal studies that examined whether music training programs affect behavioral and brain measures of auditory...

Prosociality improves with interpersonal synchronization—the temporal coordination of movement across individuals. We tested whether the benefits of interpersonal synchronization extend to temporary circumstances of induced frustration, where negative changes in prosociality are expected as a result. Participants performed two joint tasks—synchroni...

Background Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) systems to aid writing learning and instruction in primary and secondary education are growing increasingly popular. However, their effectiveness is hardly known. We conducted a systematic review focusing on the effects of these systems providing writing feedback to students in school settings. Objecti...

The human voice is a primary channel for emotional communication. It is often presumed that being able to recognise vocal emotions is important for everyday socio-emotional functioning, but direct empirical evidence for this remains scarce. Here, we examined relationships between vocal emotion recognition and socio-emotional adjustment in children....

The human voice is a primary channel for emotional communication. It is often presumed that being able to recognize vocal emotions is important for everyday socio-emotional functioning, but evidence for this assumption remains scarce. Here, we examined relationships between vocal emotion recognition and socio-emotional adjustment in children. The s...

There is evidence for the positive impact of mindfulness in children. However, little is known about the techniques through which mindfulness practice results in differential outcomes. Therefore, this study intended to systematically review the available evidence about the efficacy of meditation techniques used by mindfulness-based programs on cogn...

Brain correlates of reading ability have been intensely investigated. Most studies have focused on single-word reading and phonological processing, but the brain basis of reading fluency remains poorly explored to date. Here, in a voxel-based morphometry study with 8-year-old children, we compared fluent readers (n = 18; seven boys) with dysfluent...

As a demanding task that requires the orchestration of multiple processes, writing is an adept candidate to the ravages of old age. Yet writing is also an overlearned skill of which some components are especially resistant to use and decay. This chapter focuses on the ageing writer in health and disease. It reviews age-related changes in writing an...

Writing is a complex task that requires the activation and coordination of several processes. In addition to the research on the domain-specific factors that contribute to school achievement, there is an increasing interest on general variables, such as mindfulness. Here, we aimed to test the contribution of middle-grade students’ trait mindfulness...

Executive functions are a set of cognitive processes we use to act on information, manage resources, and plan and monitor our own behaviour, all with the aim of achieving an end goal. These are skills that develop from infancy. While ‘reading’ has been extensively studied in psychology literature, ‘writing’ has been somewhat neglected, despite a la...

Reading comprehension is an important skill throughout all stages of education. However, Portuguese pupils still demonstrate difficulties in understanding what they read. In addition to cognitive and psychological factors, it is important to understand how this skill is addressed in textbooks. Here, we examined how reading comprehension is targeted...

Research suggested that developing mindfulness skills in children improves proximal outcomes, such as attention and executive functions, as well as distal outcomes, such as academic achievement. Despite empirical evidence supporting this claim, research on the benefits of mindfulness training in child populations is scarce, with some mixed findings...

Heart Failure (HF) has a disabling diagnosis with an unfavourable prognostic, being considered a worldwide public health problem and the first cause of death when compared to other cardiovascular diseases¹. Anxiety and depression are the most common psychological symptoms in this population. De-spite this, these disorders have received little atten...

Resumo O artigo trata da elaboração, análise e aplicação do Modelo Epistemológico de Referência (MER) para o conceito de função que foi aplicado na disciplina de Funções I da licenciatura em Matemática da Educação do Campo. Para a sua elaboração foram utilizadas algumas informações preliminares sobre o conceito de função, tais como: uma breve evolu...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-021-00539-z

Brain correlates of reading ability have been intensely investigated. Most studies have focused on single-word reading and phonological processing, but the brain basis of reading fluency remains poorly explored to date. Here, in a voxel-based morphometry study with 8-year-old children, we compared fluent readers ( n = 18; 7 boys) with dysfluent rea...

Psychological studies of poetry have focused on the responses to written text, and little is known on how choices made by reciters affect listeners’ responses. We hypothesized that syntax-compatible prosodic cues – pauses and pitch breaks – would increase preference by increasing comprehension. Participants rated different declamations of the same...

Objective The ability to recognize others’ emotions is a central aspect of socioemotional functioning. Emotion recognition impairments are well documented in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, but it is less understood whether they are also present in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Results on facial emotion recognition are mixed, and crucia...

Heart failure (HF) is a disabling diagnosis with an unfavorable prognosis, which is considered a worldwide public health problem and the first cause of death when compared with other cardiovascular diseases. Research showed that the relationship between psychological disorders and cardiovascular diseases increases the risk and worsens the prognosis...

School classrooms within the EU are multilingual learning environments. The diversity of pupils in classrooms raises significant challenges for teachers, but to date, there are no data from large-scale surveys that compare views within and across European countries. A bespoke questionnaire was designed to examine views of current classroom learning...

School classrooms within the EU are multilingual learning environments. The diversity of pupils in classrooms raises significant challenges for teachers, but to date, there are no data from large-scale surveys that compare views within and across European countries. A bespoke questionnaire was designed to examine views of current classroom learning...

Writing is a highly complex and demanding task, that requires the activation and coordination of several processes. In addition to the extensive research on the domain-specific factors that contribute to school achievement, there has been an increasing interest on general variables, such as mindfulness. This study aimed to test the contribution of...

A stroke is a life-threatening event which has physical, emotional and cognitive consequences. Thisstudy aimed to identify differences between participants who suffered a stroke and healthy controls,concerning cognitive performance, depressive symptoms, social support and quality of life; to examinethe associations between these variables among par...

There is a growing body of research showing that writers are influenced by motivation-related aspects. This study documents the translation process of the Portuguese version of the Writing Motivation Questionnaire and the construction of two scales to measure self-efficacy for handwriting and story writing. The psychometric properties of these inst...

Literature on the effects of passive music listening on cognitive performance is mixed, showing negative, null or positive results depending on cognitive domain, age group, temporal relation between music and task (background music vs. music before task, the latter known as Mozart effect), or listener-dependent variables such as musical preference....

Objectives The use of mobile applications (apps) for the practice of mindfulness is becoming more and more popular. However, little is known about the mindfulness-based apps that are available for children. The present study aimed to overcome this gap. We identified and characterized mindfulness apps for children and provided an expert-based evalua...

Background and objectives Fixation on another person's eye-region may be an effective measure of one's level of empathy. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that this type of empathy measure may not be appropriate for individuals with high levels of social anxiety, since avoidance or hypervigilance attentional biases towards emotional fa...

Music training is widely assumed to enhance several nonmusical abilities, including speech perception, executive functions, reading, and emotion recognition. This assumption is based primarily on cross-sectional comparisons between musicians and nonmusicians. It remains unclear, however, whether training itself is necessary to explain the musician...

The interest in computer-assisted interventions to promote literacy has increased over the years. In this study, we developed the Portuguese version of the GraphoGame Fluent and tested its effects on reading, spelling, and phonological awareness. Second graders struggling to read were randomly assigned to two groups: GraphoGame Fluent group (n = 15...

This study investigates spelling abilities of 189 second, third, and fourth graders using a word and pseudoword dictation task in European Portuguese. We analyzed the effect of orthographic complexity on spelling accuracy and the moderating role of length (two vs. three syllables), lexicality (words vs. pseudowords), and grade (second, third, and f...

The interest in computer-assisted interventions to promote literacy has increased over the years. In this study, we developed the Portuguese version of the GraphoGame Fluent and tested its effects on reading, spelling, and phonological awareness. Second graders struggling to read were randomly assigned to two groups: GraphoGame Fluent group (n = 15...

Writing is an important activity that involves many demanding processes. Given the complexity and goal-directed nature of writing, this activity is heavily dependent on executive functions (EFs). This study aimed to examine the longitudinal contribution of EFs (i.e., inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and planning) to text q...

This special issue was born within the M2S Project (Mindfulness to students’ success: Relating executive functions and writing through a mindfulness app to promote children’s cognitive, social, and health-related outcomes) to call researchers and practitioners’ attention to the role that executive functions play on the acquisition and development o...

Art therapy has become known by its psychosocial and affective impact, but not so much by its effects on cognitive functioning. Based on a comparison between art therapy and music-making programs, we hypothesized that guided methods—dominant in music-making programs and characterized by an emphasis on execution (play the piece, produce the visual o...

There is consensus among researchers that misspellings are something to avoid. However, misspellings also convey relevant information for researchers and educators. The present study is a first effort toward the analysis of misspellings produced by Portuguese children. Specifically, we aimed to examine the association between misspellings in dictat...

Mobile health applications are increasingly numerous and varied. However, despite high expectations and large budgets involved in their development they are often rejected by potential users, and little is known on why this happens. This study aimed to fill this gap by investigating the determinants of technology acceptance and its moderators. Alig...

A Europa é uma realidade linguística diversa e heterogénea que enfrenta o desafio de educar uma população cada vez mais multicultural e multilingue. Os professores de língua(s) são atores nesta realidade, promovendo o multilinguismo e integrando a diversidade. Portugal não foge ao paradigma do multilinguismo e as escolas e professores portugueses v...

Resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) is a promising technique for language mapping that does not require task‐execution. This can be an advantage when language mapping is limited by poor task performance, as is common in clinical settings. Previous studies have shown that language maps extracted with rsfMRI spatially match t...

Europe is a diverse and heterogeneous linguistic community that faces the challenge of educating an increasingly multicultural and multilingual population. Language teachers are key players on this regard as they may foster multilingualism and contribute to students’ inclusion in their classrooms. Portugal is no exception and Portuguese schools and...

Executive functions are affected differently in healthy aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD), and evaluating them is important for differential diagnosis. The INECO Frontal Screening (IFS) is a brief neuropsychological screening tool, developed to assess executive dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders. Goals: W...

A prominent question in timing research is whether meter perception is possible without attention to meter. So far, research has probed attention effects on meter perception with a surface-based approach that may create confounds between meter and rhythm, and not with a structural approach requiring abstraction from surface patterns. The available...

The acoustic cues that guide the assignment of phrase boundaries in music (pauses and pitch movements) overlap with those that are known for speech prosody. Based on this, researchers have focused on highlighting the similarities and neural resources shared between music and speech prosody segmentation. The possibility that music-specific expectati...

Voices are a primary source of emotional information in everyday interactions. Being able to process non-verbal vocal emotional cues, namely those embedded in speech prosody, impacts on our behaviour and communication. Extant res