Silvia Collado

Silvia Collado
University of Zaragoza | UNIZAR · Department of Psychology and Sociology

About

102
Publications
32,820
Reads
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3,525
Citations
Additional affiliations
October 2013 - September 2015
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Position
  • PostDoc Position
September 2015 - present
University of Zaragoza
Position
  • Profesor ayudante doctor (non-permanent assistant professor)

Publications

Publications (102)
Article
Full-text available
Previous systematic reviews have examined the effect of horticultural interventions (e.g., taking care of plants, planting, gardening) on individuals' depressive symptoms through analyses focused exclusively on randomized controlled trials, but that approach overlooks a majority of the potentially informative published research. To complement previ...
Article
Climate change (CC) has been listed as the greatest risk to humanity, and the most appropriate strategies to address the situation depend largely on how the problem is perceived. The purpose of this study is to analyse social perceptions of CC in two natural areas of Spain (Garajonay and Sierra Espuña). Participants ( N = 334) showed high levels of...
Article
Full-text available
Growing evidence suggests that engagement in nature-based recreation can improve people’s well-being. However, there is a lack of information regarding which specific nature-based recreation activities are related to specific well-being indicators. We conducted a cross-sectional study to explore how different types of nature-based recreation (i.e.,...
Conference Paper
This study aims to explore the efficacy of an innovative educational intervention designed to enhance university students’ proficiency in using the APA citation and reference guidelines employing Instagram as an educational platform. We evaluated the efficacy of the intervention through a quasi-experimental design with a sample of students from thr...
Thesis
Full-text available
Nature-based (NB) interventions have been used as a complementary or alternative way to reduce depressive symptoms. Three kinds of NB interventions that stand out in the literature are forest therapy, NB adventure, and horticulture. However, before the present work, no study had systematically synthesized the existing evidence on the effect of thes...
Article
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Aims This study explores the mediational role of resilience, experiential avoidance and emotion regulation in the levels of anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of healthcare workers during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Additionally, we explored the association of such levels with personal and professional variables. Design Cross‐...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) and its Short Form (PTGI-SF) are two instruments highly used in research on posttraumatic growth. They include a religious growth item that has been demonstrated to be problematic in cultures that are not very religious. Previous research has addressed this issue in other countries, but no atten...
Article
We conducted a systematic review to examine the effect of horticultural interventions (e.g., planting or taking care of plants) on people's depressive symptoms as assessed by depression outcome measures. On January 19 of 2022, the databases MEDLINE (PubMed), PsycArticles (APA), SCOPUS (Elsevier), Google Scholar, and ClinicalTrails.gov were searched...
Article
Full-text available
Background The paper presents the rationale and methods of the planned systematic review to understand the effects of nature-based interventions on individuals’ environmental behaviors. There is ample evidence that experiences in nature not only enhance human well-being but also help promote people’s pro-environmentalism. Nevertheless, synthesized...
Chapter
This chapter first summarizes how the consequences of global climate change (GCC) can harm young people's well-being through physical health impacts and awareness of GCC. We then outline how youth may cope with GCC by denying the problem, distancing themselves from it, or taking individual actions. However, the coping strategy shown to have the bes...
Article
We conducted a systematic review to synthesize evidence of the effect of nature-based adventure (NBA) interventions on depressive symptoms. Our search was conducted in April 2021 and utilized the following databases: MEDLINE (PubMed), PsycINFO, SPORTDiscus, CINAHL, Google Scholar, and Clinicaltrials.gov. Forty-two studies (n = 2,689 participants) w...
Article
Studies regarding the experience of children in schools’ outdoor environments report several benefits of nature on children’s cognitive, emotional, and physical development; thus, there is a need to systematically assess the characteristics of children’s place experience considering their own activities and social interactions. The present study in...
Chapter
We propose that environmental education could be defined as the process that fosters one or several behavior determinants (e.g., knowledge about environmental issues and pro-environmental attitudes) with the ultimate aim of increasing engagement in pro-environmental behaviors.
Article
Full-text available
Nature-based adventure (NBA) interventions can be broadly understood as any intervention of adventure occurring in a natural setting not necessarily involving a licensed mental health professional. Evidence suggests that some NBA interventions improve people’s health. Although encouraging, the strength of this evidence is often impaired by the non-...
Article
This letter discusses common challenges observed in the development and use of measures in environmental psychology. These challenges include insufficient delimitation of the construct of interest, lack of evidence that the content of the measure matches the content of the construct, lack of information regarding the interpretation of the items by...
Article
Full-text available
Writing and defending a thesis is a requirement to earn a university degree. Previous findings indicate that self-efficacy is related to academic performance. However, no existing tools register students’ perception of efficacy towards writing and defining academic texts. Our purpose was to develop and validate such a scale. Scale scores content, s...
Article
One of the most documented effects of exposure to nature is physical and psychological restoration. Restoration refers to the recovery or strengthening of adaptive resources (e.g., attentional capabilities, positive emotions, etc.) that are being spent in meeting the demands of everyday life. The restorative process has been widely studied in adult...
Article
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The COVID-19 crisis has generated a severe and negative psychological impact worldwide. Despite this, it is also possible to experience post-traumatic growth (PTG). This study aimed to longitudinally explore the prevalence of PTG in the Spanish population and test a predictive model for PTG from resilience, post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), an...
Article
The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale adapted for use with children (NEP-C) is one of the most frequently used measures of children’s environmental beliefs. Though widely utilized, the limitations of the NEP-C instrument are often overlooked. Based on a systematic synthesis of existing literature examining the NEP-C, we argue that the scale asses...
Article
Full-text available
People can experience posttraumatic growth (PTG) when faced with potentially traumatic events. One of the most widely-used instruments to measure PTG is the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGI-SF). However, it has not been validated for the Spanish population. This study explored the psychometric properties of the PTGI-SF in adults livi...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Although education for sustainable development (ESD) is a key tool in the transition to a more sustainable society, its integration in higher education remains scarce. One reason for this is that more evidence is needed about the effectiveness of ESD interventions. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the immed...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Introduction and objective. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a severe psychological impact worldwide. This study aims 1) to explore the evolution of psychopathology symptoms (psychological impact, anxiety, and depression) and posttraumatic growth (PTG) in the Spanish population between March 2020 and December 2020 and 2) to identify the variables t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Este trabajo estudia los efectos de la inclusión de prácticas informatizadas (PI), en la asignatura Evaluación Psicológica del Grado en Psicología. Las PI son una metodología docente de apoyo a los estudiantes que consiste en enfrentar al alumno con problemas y casos que tienen que ir resolviendo paso a paso en formato online. En este proceso el al...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Presentamos los resultados de un proyecto de innovación docente cuyo objetivo fue aumentar la autoeficacia y el rendimiento en redacción académica de los estudiantes de magisterio. La motivación situacional también fue analizada. Se realizó en la Universidad de Zaragoza. Después de un diseño experimental pre-post intervención, se evaluó la autoefic...
Conference Paper
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A partir de marzo de 2020, cuando la Organización Mundial de la Salud pasó a considerar la enfermedad por Covid-19 como pandemia, se impone el confinamiento general de la población en España para frenar su avance. Esta situación estresante y potencialmente traumática, además de las constatadas consecuencias negativas psicológicas, es posible que ll...
Article
The current research asks whether children’s judgments of harmful actions toward animals depend on animals’ perceived attractiveness. In Study 1, primary school children ( N = 359) rated the perceived attractiveness of six animals and judged how severe it is to hurt them, as compared to moral transgressions, social-conventional transgressions, and...
Article
Full-text available
The New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale is the most widely used instrument to assess environmental attitudes (EA). However, the validity of its use in developing countries has been overlooked. Considering the importance of Brazil for the future of the environment, we present two complementary studies to examine how the NEP scale has been used in...
Article
Forest therapy involves engaging in a combination of forest-based activities to improve one’s health or wellbeing. We conducted an overview of systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses of primary studies to provide the most comprehensive summary of the effect of forest therapy on depression. We included 13 primary studies that matched our eligibil...
Article
Full-text available
The evidence about the effects of nature-based instruction on pro-environmentalism is uncompelling, mainly due to a lack of controlled experiments. This hinders causal claims and the provision of intervention guidelines. We present an experiment examining the impact of a nature-based environmental education (NBEE) program included in the school cur...
Article
Nature-based recreation (NBR) can enhance human health and promote conservation. As a result, there is a growing interest in the drivers of NBR. In two separate surveys of college students in Brazil (N = 224) and the United States (N = 207), we found that young adults with stronger connection to nature (CN) have a greater preference for outdoor env...
Article
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The outbreak of COVID-19 in Spain started at the end of February. By 9th April 2020 Spain was the second country in confirmed cases and in deaths. On March 14, 2020, the Spanish Government declared the state of alarm to limit viral transmission. During such state, citizens must stay confined at home with few justified exceptions. This whole situati...
Article
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This commentary reports early data on the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related experiences (e.g. home confinement) in a sample of over 3,000 people in Spain. Nearly a third of the population showed severe distress as measured by the Impact of Event Scale-Revised. Moreover, women and young adults seem to be the ones most affecte...
Article
Full-text available
Living in rural areas has been described a driver for behaving in a pro-environmental way, mainly due to the more frequent contact with nature that people from rural areas have. However, the processes that link living in a rural area and behaving in a more ecological manner have not been systematically studied. Moreover, most studies have focused o...
Article
Hasta fechas muy recientes, el estudio de las creencias y actitudes ambientales se ha centrado en muestras de participantes adultos. Sin embargo, conocer el nivel de conciencia ambiental infantil es relevante, ya que facilitará que las generaciones futuras asuman las exigencias de la proambientalidad. Este trabajo destaca la importancia de las expe...
Article
Full-text available
El TFM es una tarea difícil para los estudiantes de Máster, que se enfrentan a él con ansiedad, poca autoeficacia y sin las competencias necesarias para su correcta realización. Teniendo esto en cuenta, nuestro trabajo refleja los resultados de un proyecto de innovación docente destinado a lograr un mejor rendimiento en la redacción y defensa oral...
Article
Full-text available
Most research about the promotion of pro-environmental behaviours has focused on actions conducted at home (e.g. energy saving). While acknowledging their relevance, the effect of such behaviours on the mitigation of two of the most relevant global environmental problems (climate change and biodiversity loss) is relatively small. We present a liter...
Article
We investigated the possible restorative effects of exposure to awe-evoking scenes (natural/built) compared with mundane scenes (natural/built). A careful selection of visual stimuli was carried out, followed by an experiment with 250 participants. We included a mentally fatigued condition and a not mentally fatigued condition (i.e., control group)...
Article
There is growing evidence that nature-based recreation (NBR) during childhood promotes connectedness to nature, which in turn fuels NBR during adulthood. In addition to providing a number of health benefits, NBR participation may enhance leisure satisfaction, an important predictor of happiness and life satisfaction. In this exploratory study, we t...
Article
Full-text available
There is empirical evidence suggesting a positive link between direct experiences in nature and people’s environmental attitudes (EA) and behaviors (EB). This has led researchers to encourage more frequent contact with nature, especially during childhood, as a way of increasing pro-environmentalism (i.e., pro-EA and pro-EB). However, the associatio...
Article
Pro-environmental behavioral patterns are influenced by relevant others’actions and expectations. Studies about the intergenerational transmission of environmentalism have demonstrated that parents play a major role in their children’s pro-environmental actions. However, little is known about how other social agents may shape youth’s environmentali...
Article
Identifying mechanisms that lead children to behave in a pro-environmental way is an important conceptual and practical concern. Empirical evidence suggests that contact with nature (CN) is positively associated with environmental behavior (EB). However, this relation is usually low to moderate suggesting the operation of other factors in this rela...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Los alumnos de Máster se enfrentan a la redacción y la defensa oral del Trabajo Fin de Máster (TFM) con ansiedad, y con un nivel bajo de competencias necesarias para su correcta realización. El presente trabajo muestra los resultados de un proyecto de innovación docente que tiene por objetivo aumentar la autoeficacia y el rendimiento del alumnado e...
Article
Full-text available
This cross-sectional study aims to improve our understanding of the psychological pathways behind the commonly reported link between experiences in nature and pro-environmentalism. Particularly, we explore whether nature experiences lead to self-reported pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) and whether this relation is mediated by connectedness to na...
Article
Although research suggests parents influence the development of their children's environmental attitudes (EA) and behaviors (EB), the possible impact of other socialization agents is largely unknown. This article takes a closer look at how parents and friends may shape 9 to 13 year-olds’ EA and EB. Parents' EA and EB were registered via questionnai...
Article
Full-text available
This study intends to find a relation between children´s perceived restoration and their environmental orientations. In order to do that, a designed perceived restoration scale adapted from the PRCS-C II was used as well as an adapted version of the Children´s Environmental Perceptions Scale (CEPS). A total of 832 children aged between 6 and 13 par...
Article
Full-text available
The study shows empirical evidence of the moderator effect that school and nearby nature at home has on children. A total of 172 children were interviewed and data about their stress level, the amount of nature they perceived around them and frequency of exposure to adversity, was collected. The nearby nature at home and in the school for each of t...
Article
Full-text available
This article offers an overview of what has been done until now on restorative research with children and opens up new inquires for future research. Most of the work has studied children's exposure to nature and the restorative benefits this contact provides, focusing on the renewal of children's psychological resources. The paper begins with an in...
Article
Research on psychological restoration has mainly focused on how exposure to certain physical characteristics of the environment leads to restorative benefits. However, restorative processes are inherently relational, and more attention should be paid to qualities of human-environment transactions in restorative experiences. We developed and tested...
Chapter
The vast majority of people live in urbanized areas. These offer numerous advantages, such as access to a great variety of entertainment and cultural events, services such as educational and medical centers, and opportunities for mixing with different kinds of people in lively public places. Urbanized areas also challenge residents, however, with p...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines young children’s concepts of nature, paying attention to the role played by types of daily experiences with nature on 832 children’s constructions of the natural world. We observed the roles of three types of experiences, as determined by the children’s place of residence (urban, rural mountain range, and rural agricultural) in...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role of small urban spaces (or pocket parks) in cities as an opportunity to access nature and restorativeness. The study was performed in nine squares located in the central zone of the city of Madrid. A total of 537 people were interviewed in situ about their preferences, as well as the perceived qualit...
Book
Full-text available
El estilo de vida infantil en la sociedad actual se caracteriza por un alejamiento físico y psicológico de la naturaleza. La apretada agenda de los niños y niñas está cargada de tareas. Además, la percepción de la ciudad como un espacio inseguro hace disminuir las actividades autónomas al aire libre. Por último, la disponibilidad de recursos audiov...
Article
Little is known about the developmental course of young children's acquisition of pro-environmental practices. This study takes a closer look at the relationship between age on 6-12 year-olds (N = 107) and pro-environmental behaviors (EB). Using a well-validated game format tool based on the Rasch model to collect the data, children's EB were regis...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Children's pro-ecological behaviors are usually registered using scales based on the idea of a simple connection between attitudes and behaviors. However, this relationship seems to be more complicated. The Children's Ecological Behavior (CEB) Scale has been proposed as an alternative. Based on the Rasch model, it considers the differe...
Article
The relationship between spending time in nature and behaving in an ecological manner seems to be contingent on various factors. This cross-sectional study evaluates the association of Frequency of Contact with Nature (FCN) on children’s Environmental Attitudes (EA) and self-reported Ecological Behaviors (EB) considering three different types of da...
Article
Positive experiences in nature relate to children’s environmental behaviors. The reasons for this link remain unknown. One possibility is that children behave more ecologically because they obtain benefits from spending time in nature. In the present study, we looked at positive experiences in nature, specifically restoration, as a motivational fac...
Article
Full-text available
The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale has been extensively used to measure adults' environmental attitudes. However, it has only recently been adapted for use with children. This paper presents a Spanish version of the NEP Scale for Children, examines children's ecological beliefs according to socio-demographic variables as well as the relationsh...
Article
The present study evaluates how a stay in a summer holiday camp changes children's willingness to display ecological behaviour and the affective and cognitive factors that may be responsible for this change. The study included two types of nature camps, one with an Environmental Education (EE) program and one without it, with an urban camp without...