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October 2002 - present
Publications
Publications (79)
The study examined adolescents’ emotional separation and detachment from parents, analyzing their relations with some aspects of adolescents’ psychological functioning associated to the process of self-other boundary regulation and problematic behavior. The participants were 331 Italian adolescents, aged from 16 to 19 years (mean age = 17.40, SD =...
The Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS; Doherty in J Nonverbal Behav 21(2):131–154, 1997) is a self-report instrument assessing susceptibility to emotional contagion. The study was aimed at examining its dimensionality, reliability, and validity in the Italian context. It was completed by 541 young adults (45 % men) in Study 1 and 649 young adults (40...
The study examined the relations between perceived emotional support from parents and peers, self-concept and social functioning among a sample of school-aged children. “The study had three main purposes”: firstly, the study was
aimed at evaluating the association between emotional support perceived from parents and peers, and self-concept. Secondl...
The study examined adolescents’ emotional separation and detachment from parents, analyzing their relations with connectedness and agency, with some aspects of self—other boundary regulation and with problem behavior. The participants were 331 Italian adolescents, aged from 16 to 19 years (mean age = 17.40, SD = 1.14). Separation and detachment wer...
This study investigated how Italian emerging adults coped during COVID-19 from a Positive Youth Development framework. Five hundred sixty-five 18- to 29-year-olds completed surveys measuring personal (cognitive reappraisal, optimism), ecological (support and emotional connection with community) assets, and adaptation outcomes (anxiety and future so...
Climate change is one of the greatest global threats that has ecological, economic, social, and psychological consequences. Nowadays, young people are the target of political agenda since they represent potential future policymakers. Consequently, it is crucial to identify the psychological features that contribute to engagement of young people in...
Support for children's rights is greater among children raised in democratic environments. The present two studies examined children's endorsements and predictors of children's rights. Five democratic competences taken from the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture served as predictors. We tested the models i...
This study was aimed at evaluating the associations between maternal parenting practices (positive, negative/inconsistent, and punitive), children's difficulties (such as conduct problems, emotional symptoms, peer problems, and hyperactivity), and prosocial behaviors. Participants were 131 Italian mothers of primary school children; mothers were ag...
The COVID‐19 pandemic may be considered a unique mass‐trauma experience. This study examined the relations between Italian late adolescents' emotion regulation strategies, their anxiety states, and their experience of the lockdown (in terms of discomfort related to restrictions, capacities to create new functional daily routines, and to find positi...
Since COVID-19 pandemic started, schools had to face environmental changes, one was shifting from a face-to-face educational approach to online learning. It represented an unfavourable learning environment, especially for children with Specific Learning Disabilities (SpLD). Following the Self Determination Theory (SDT) framework, the current study...
Importance: Impaired sensory processing is associated with eating problems. There seem to be no previous studies that compare those who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with eating problems (ASD–W) and those with ASD without eating problems (ASD–WO) with typically developing (TD) groups. Comparisons are expected to provide further knowledge to g...
The present study investigated the longitudinal associations of self-control and parental involvement with prosociality and internalizing problems from early to mid-to-late adolescence, within a risk and resilience and a developmental cascade framework. We used a panel design (i.e., four measurement times at 2-year intervals from 2008 onwards) to e...
The extant literature has identified some variables that are associated with sport coaches’ coaching style, like their basic psychological need satisfaction, their motivation for coaching, and their psychological well-being. Framed from a conceptual framework based on Self-Determination Theory applied to sport coaches, the current study explored ho...
The main goal of the current study was to examine the direct and moderating effects of civic discussions with parents and environmental sensitivity using both the total score and its specific dimensions (i.e., Aesthetic Sensitivity, AES; Ease of Excitation, EOE; Low Sensitivity Threshold, LST) on youth civic engagement (attitudes and behaviours). T...
Purpose
Orthorexia nervosa (OrNe) is a potentially pathological condition characterized by a fixation on healthy diet. An increasing number of studies have been conducted on this mental preoccupation, but the validity and reliability of some of the psychometric instruments employed in its assessment are still under debate. Among these measures, the...
Today, more than ever before, awareness of our ability to interact with others through and use social network sites (SNSs) is of fundamental importance, in light of the fact that we are connected to the Web 24 h a day, 7 days a week. Studies of social media in recent decades have shown that self-efficacy is one of the key variables affecting indivi...
Previous research reported that positive parenting and parenting stress might impact children’s psychosocial adjustment. The current longitudinal study aimed at evaluating the associations over time between mothers’ positive parenting, their parenting stress, and their preschoolers’ social–emotional competence and emotional–behavioral difficulties....
Filial piety is a Confucian concept that guides how children treat and take care of their parents. The Filial Behaviour Scale (FBS) is a 25‐item instrument developed in the Chinese context measuring behavioural manifestations of filial piety. Although the components of filial piety have been found to be relevant across cultures, little research has...
Background: Despite the growing number of organ transplants, there is still a significant difference between the number of donated organs and the number of people waiting for them. Knowing the reason people decide to donate is the first step to increasing organ donation rates. Aims: The main aim of the present study was to develop and validate a ne...
This pilot study is the first to examine whether a novel curriculum based on the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) could increase children’s endorsement and knowledge of children’s rights. We conducted a pre-test-post-test design with an intervention and a comparison school. Pupils (n = 172) from Bulgaria, Italy, Nor...
Emotional competence (EC) is a key component of children's psychological, cognitive, and social development, and it is a central element of learning. The primary goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing a psycho-educational group intervention aimed at improving children's emotional competence (EC), quality of integration...
Background: The present study examined the relations between maternal parenting stress and preschoolers' psychosocial adjustment, using both a variable-centred and a person-centred approach. Methods: The study had three main purposes: (a) evaluating the associations of maternal parenting stress with children's social-emotional competence and behavi...
The Positive Youth Development (PYD) model suggests that when individual resources are aligned with growth-promoting ecological resources (i.e., developmental assets), positive development can be observed in youth. Considering this model within the perspective of ecological development systems, this process could be even more relevant when the refe...
The current study was aimed at contributing to the understanding of the role of perceived parental monitoring, psychological control, and coping strategies on adolescents’ problem behaviors, in terms of anxiety and drinking behavior. Participants were 541 high school students, 17 to 19-year old (M = 17.09, SD = 0.80) high school students in Sicily...
Homonegativity refers to a series of prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes towards individuals perceived as homosexuals. Previous studies indicated that some personality traits (i.e., neuroticism, low openness to experience), as well as specific ideological attitudes (i.e., conservatism, authoritarianism) and higher levels of psychopathology mak...
Background: This multistudy report was aimed at examining the psychometric properties in the Italian context of the Student Adaptation College Questionnaire (SACQ) that represents the most important self-report measure for assessing how students adjust to university. Methods: Three studies were conducted in order to revise and improve the instrumen...
This study investigated the relations of emerging adults' personal (civic competence and interdependent self‐construal) and community‐based (sense of community and civic engagement) resources as predictors of appraisal of COVID‐19 Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) and attitudes toward preventing contagion in Italy. Participants were 2873 It...
Physical activity could play a key role in improving the quality of life, particularly in patients with nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Through lactacid anaerobic training, this study aims to investigate the effects at a bio-psycho-physical level to counteract the chronic fatigue associated with the pathology, and to improv...
Framed from Self-Determination Theory and Family Systems Theory, the present multi-informant study sought to contribute to a better understanding of the relations between discrepancies in parents' and adolescents' perceptions of parental psychological control and satisfaction of adolescents' needs for autonomy and relatedness. Participants were 190...
Background: COVID-19 pandemic has been spreading worldwide causing considerable psychological stress to all people. The general lockdown, one of the most drastic provision adopted by the Government for containing the spread of contagion, could represent a very stressful event for people, especially if prolonged over time. The purpose of this qualit...
The promotion of citizen's democratic and intercultural competence is one of the main actions that European societies may take against some of the most significant challenges they are facing nowadays. The paper is aimed at briefly describing the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, some actions that can be...
During the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the experience of quarantine has been an undesirable condition for people and it can have a negative impact on mental health and psychological wellbeing. Social isolation has led to an increase in time spent on social network sites, with people interacting more frequently with each other, and comparing online th...
Objective:
Self-esteem is a core aspect of eating disorder symptomatology. This study aims to examine whether method effects associated with negatively worded items of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) may interact the negative self-evaluations experienced by patients with obesity and binge eating disorder (BED). We also examined whether nega...
This article explores the relationship between internalized homophobia and three main variables: attachment to mother, father, and peers; ego resiliency; and self-esteem. We recruited 51 Italian gay men and 54 lesbian women aged between 18 and 30, and asked them to complete self-report measures. The results showed that internalized homophobia negat...
Among the measures assessing peer reputation, the Extended Class Play (ECP) is now used extensively in North American settings. Little information is available in other cultural contexts. Furthermore, practical considerations suggest developing a shorter form of the ECP to be used in socio-educational environments. This study examined the ECP dimen...
Background and Objectives: The main aim of this study is to test the intergenerational transmission of the relations between coping strategies to well-being from parents to adolescents through the modeling of the coping strategies of the parents to those of the child.
Methods: 154 cohabitating families composed by father, mother, and adolescent in...
Framed from a framework based on the integration of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000 ) and Endler and Parker's (1990) conception of coping strategies, the authors analyzed the relationships between peer pressure and binge behaviors (binge eating and binge drinking) in adolescence. Moreover, the authors explored the mediating role of sat...
According to a person-oriented approach, the study was addressed to inquire the existence of different groups of emerging adults (EAs) each characterized by distinct configurations of parental psychological control and autonomy support conceptualized in terms of promotion of volitional functioning (PVF) and in terms promotion of independence (PI)....
The Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS) is a self-report instrument assessing the satisfaction and frustration of the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness defined by self-determination theory. The aim of this study was to examine the dimensionality, the predictive validity, and th...
Framed from Basic Psychological Needs Theory (Ryan and Deci in American Psychologist 55:68–78; Ryan, Deci, American Psychologist 55:68–78, 2000) and Kağitçibaşi’s Autonomous-Related Self Theory (Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 36:1–20; Kağitçibaşi, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 36:1–20, 2005), the study examined the relationships of ado...
Título: El rol de las funciones ejecutivas en la competencia social y en los problemas de conducta en educación infantil. Resumen: Diversos estudios han encontrado relaciones entre las funciones ejecutivas, los problemas de conducta y la competencia social. Sin embargo, hasta la fecha, hay pocos estudios que hayan investigado el papel de los dis-ti...
In the last few decades, particular attention has been paid to the role of personality specific traits that can affect the loss of health, i.e., Type D personality and Alexithymia. They have been conceptualized in a different period, this means that they are different both for their theoretical positions and their empirical studies. Some authors ha...
The Self-Other Differentiation Scale (Olver, Aries, & Batgos, 1989 Olver, R. R., Aries, E., & Batgos, J. (1989). Self-other differentiation and the mother-child relationship: The effects of sex and birth order. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 150, 311–321. doi:10.1080/00221325.1989.9914600[Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar]) is a self-rep...
The purpose of this multistudy report was to adapt the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS) to the Italian context. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, we investigated the dimensionality, reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity of the instrument in a sample of 544 participants (males = 41%) from 16...
The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between the quality of attachment relationships with parents and peers on the one hand, and ego-resiliency and self-esteem on the other hand. The present research was conducted with a group of 218 students (male = 101) aged from 11 to 19 years (M = 14.43, DS = 2.60). The results emphasize that (...
Although several studies have investigated the factor structure of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), there are still disagreements about it. The present study assessed: a) the goodness of fit of nine competing factor models for the RSES using data from a clinical sample of 855 women with eating/weight disorders; and b) its measurement invaria...
Although different studies have investigated career choices as cognitive acts of decision-making, non-cognitive components also play an important role. The study tries to develop an empirically based model of career decision-making process linking cognitive (search for work self-efficacy - SWSE) and non-cognitive (psychological well-being - PWB) co...
The present study aimed to investigate the relations among perceived parental psychological control (PPC), autonomy and relatedness, and negative outcomes during emerging adulthood in two cultural contexts: Italy and the USA. More specifically, we explored the mechanisms through which dependency-oriented PPC (DPPC) and achievement-oriented PPC (APP...
Our study investigated the associations among two expressions of perceived parental psychological control (dependency-oriented parental control [DPC] and achievement-oriented parental control [APC]), identity, and internalizing difficulties among college-attending emerging adults. In particular, our aim was to examine the potential role of identity...
The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) is a standardized self-report measure of disposition to empathic responsiveness for the general adult population (the domain for which it was developed), and for the general adolescent population. The IRI has a number of problems, however, including some uncertainty about its factor structure, low reliabilit...
Focus groups were used in order to develop a new measure of adolescents' emotional autonomy from parents.The procedure started from an in depth analysis of the literature concerning the construct and a definition of the dimensions which characterize it. Following our idea of the construct, we developed a list of 60 items, getting some of them from...
The study examined the association among mothers’ parenting stress, adolescents’ emotional separation and self-orientation toward connectedness. Participants were 194 Italian adolescents, aged from 15 to 19 years (mean age = 17.39, SD = 1.18), and their mothers, aged from 33 to 64 years (mean age = 44.35, SD = 5.40). General findings showed that ad...
The present study examined the associations between emerging adults’ perceived parental psychological control and autonomy support, and their autonomy, relatedness and internalizing difficulties in Italy and the U.S. The participants included 494 Italian and 414 U.S. college students, between 18 and 28 years of age (Mean = 21.58, SD = 2.18). Our fi...
Autonomy and relatedness are fundamental needs both in adolescence and in emerging adulthood which are affected by parental support and are linked to children’s psychological distress. The study investigated autonomy and relatedness in late adolescents and emerging adults living in Italy, analyzing the relationships with perceived parental support...
The study examined the applicability of the observational technique developed by Allen and colleagues (Allen, Hauser, Bell, & O'Connor, 1994; Allen, Hauser, et al., 2003) to investigate the issues of autonomy and relatedness in parent-adolescent relationship in the Italian context. Thirty-five mother-adolescent dyads participated to a task in which...
The aims of the present study were to provide a contribution to the validation of the Adult Sibling Relationship Questionnaire (ASRQ; Stocker, Lanthier, & Furman, 1997) with a population of Italian emerging adults. The ASRQ measures individuals' current perceptions of their own behavior and feelings toward their sibling, as well as their perception...
The study examined adolescents' emotional separation and detachment from parents, analyzing their relations with some aspects of adolescents' psychological functioning associated to the process of self-other boundary regulation and problematic behavior. The participants were 331 Italian adolescents, aged from 16 to 19 years (mean age = 17.40, SD =...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations among parent and friend perceived support and behavioral problems during adolescence. In addition, sex differences were examined. Participants were 338 Italian adolescents (M=47%) aged from 13 to 16 year old. They were administered (a) the Relational Support Inventory, evaluating the percei...
The purpose of this study was to study in deep Detached and Connected adolescents in order to examine their profiles with regards to internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. The participants were 705 adolescents (39% males), aged from 14 to 19 years. They were administered (a) the Inclusion of Other in the Self to assess adolescents’ pe...
749 adolescents were administered a series of measures in order to individuate
patterns of autonomy and connection in the relationships with parents and to analyse the association
between cluster’s belonging and psychosocial adjustment. The results showed that the majority
of adolescents were detached or connected with parents while very few subjec...
