Ughetta Moscardino

University of Padova | UNIPD · Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation

Effortful control (EC), defined as the ability to inhibit impulsive responses according to contextual demands, plays a key role in children’s socioemotional development. However, self-report measures of this ability are extremely scarce. The current study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the EC scale within the Temperament in Middle...

While both the classroom cultural diversity climate and curriculum-based interventions can promote cultural identity development, they have not been studied together. Drawing on theories of ethnic-racial identity development, the current study aimed to understand the dynamic interplay of a curriculum-based intervention (the Identity Project) with t...

Cultural identity formation is a complex developmental task that influences adolescents’ adjustment. However, less is known about individual variations in trajectories of cultural identity processes and how they relate to youth psychosocial outcomes. Using a person-centered approach, this study investigated patterns of change over a year in cultura...

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the Italian adaptation of the Identity Project (IP), a school-based intervention promoting cultural identity formation in adolescence. Method: Participants were 138 adolescents (Mage = 15.66 years, SD = 0.84, 63% female, 37% of immigrant descent) fr...

People differ in their responses to experiences with some showing a heightened Environmental Sensitivity (ES) for better and for worse. Highly sensitive people tend to get easily overwhelmed in adverse conditions but also to flourish in enriched environments. Yet, no studies have investigated whether people with a heightened ES may experience a pos...

Emotion Regulation and Parenting provides a state-of-the-art account of research conducted on emotion regulation in parenting. After describing the conceptual foundations of parenthood and emotion regulation, the book reviews the influence of parents' emotion regulation on parenting, how and to what extent emotion regulation influences child develo...

Introduction This cross‐sectional study used a convergent parallel mixed‐method design to investigate friendship attachment style, intolerance of uncertainty, and psychological distress among unaccompanied immigrant minors (UIMs) during the second wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Italy. Method Participants were 80 male UIMs (Mage = 17 years, stand...

Executive functions and social cognition (i.e., the mental operations that underlie social interaction) are essential for children’s successful interactions, yet their role in peer social competence among children with and without a migration background is still underexplored. This study investigated the influence of inhibitory control and two doma...

This registered report evaluated the efficacy of an Italian adaptation of the Identity Project, a school-based intervention promoting adolescents' cultural identity. Migration background and environmental sensitivity were explored as moderators. After adapting and piloting the intervention, a randomized controlled trial was conducted between Octobe...

Listening narrative comprehension is a complex process that requires the processing of explicit (i.e., information presented in the text) and implicit information (i.e., information inferable from the text) and involves several linguistic and cognitive skills. However, the specific role of these skills in children’s comprehension remains unclear. T...

A global challenge for developmental psychology is to better understand how young people around the world make sense of their identities growing up in pluralistic societies. The study of ethnic-racial identity provides an important lens for this process. This paper describes how five European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, and Sweden) a...

The COVID-19 outbreak caused a worldwide health emergency which disproportionately affected migrants and ethnic minorities. Yet, little is known about the psychosocial effects of the pandemic among refugees and asylum seekers. This study used a convergent parallel mixed-method design to explore knowledge and opinions concerning COVID-19 and the imp...

The aim of the present study was to examine parental experiences of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic in families with or without a child with a mental health condition across Europe. The study included 6720 parents recruited through schools, patient organizations and social media platforms (2002 parents with a child with a mental health c...

The interplay of parenting and environmental sensitivity on children’s behavioral adjustment during, and immediately after, the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions was investigated in two longitudinal studies involving Italian preschoolers (Study 1, N = 72; 43% girls, M years = 3.82(1.38)) and primary school children (Study 2, N = 94; 55% girls, M years...

Background Previous research has shown that young adults are more hesitant/resistant to COVID-19 vaccine uptake than older age groups, although the factors underlying this tendency are still under debate. The current study aimed to identify the sociodemographic and psychological correlates of vaccine hesitancy and resistance among young adults (18-...

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, both children and their parents experienced consequences related to distance learning (DL). However, positive and negative effects have varied greatly among families, and the specific factors explaining these differences in experiences are still underexplored. In this study, we examined children's executive...

This cross-sectional study explored whether the association between perceived family support and child well-being was moderated by the individual trait of Environmental Sensitivity (the ability to register, process, and respond to stimuli) and cardiac vagal tone (CVT, an index of self-regulation) in a sample of children living in socioeconomically...

Objectives: Intestinal parasitic infections (IPIs) are related to poverty and socio-economic disparities. In rural Nepal, IPIs are highly endemic and gender inequality is still deeply-rooted. This sudy provides a novel epidemiological assessment of IPIs in the country, juxtaposing spatial, age and sex stratification of prevalence. Methods: A PRI...

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, school closures have affected over 1.5 billion children worldwide. Many countries implemented a rapid transition to distance education (DE), but the effects of such transition on family life remain largely underexplored. The current study used a cross-sectional, correlational survey design to explore the role of DE and...

Although conscious aspects of attachment representations can be effectively assessed in middle childhood, the few available self-reports are based on different operationalizations of attachment and do not always show adequate psychometric properties. The current study aimed to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Attachment in Mi...

The aim of the present study was to examine parental experiences of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic in families with or without a child with a mental health condition across Europe. The study included 6720 parents (2002 parents with a child with a mental health condition and 4718 without) from seven European countries: the United Kingdom...

The aim of the present study was to examine parental experiences of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic in families with or without a child with a mental health condition across Europe. The study included 6720 parents (2002 parents with a child with a mental health condition and 4718 without) from seven European countries: the United Kingdom...

To better understand how media exposure to terrorism‐related images can lead to perceiving immigrants as more threatening, in the present study we manipulated participants’ exposure to media coverage of terrorist attacks and investigated how this may influence people's perception of Arab immigrants. Considering the important role of regulatory abil...

Although children's school success is a parental goal in most cultures, there is wide cultural variation in the qualities that parents most wish their children to develop for that purpose. A questionnaire contained forty‐one child qualities was administered to 757 parents in seven cultural communities in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, S...

This exploratory study compared sensitivity to facial emotional expressions (happiness, anger, sadness, and fear) between rural‐to‐urban migrant early adolescents and their non‐migrant counterparts, and examined whether migration status moderated the expected link between such sensitivity and peer relationship problems. Furthermore, we assessed the...

The current study examined levels of implicit and explicit independent and interdependent self-construals (SCs) in early adolescents with and without a migration background in Italy and assessed whether SCs were linked to youths' positive adjustment in terms of self-esteem and prosocial behavior. Chinese early adolescents of immigrant background (n...

Executive functions (EFs) are crucial for academic success and have recently been linked to the ability to self-regulate in terms of cardiac vagal tone. The current study used a sample of 131 first-and second graders to examine whether the expected association between cardiac vagal tone (indexed by rMSSD) and EFs (inhibitory control and cognitive f...

The present study used a sample of Chinese rural-to-urban migrants in early adolescence to examine whether emotional awareness (EA) moderated the expected association between status-based discrimination and emotional-behavioral problems and whether patterns of associations differed across informants (self-report vs. teacher-report). A total of 169...

The current study aimed to investigate whether the expected association between parent–child cultural orientation gaps and externalizing problems was moderated by impulse control (IC) among Chinese early adolescents in immigrant families. Ninety-one first- and second-generation Chinese immigrant youths (58% girls) aged between 11 and 13 years and t...

Increasing evidence suggests that immigrant youths’ social integration varies widely across national contexts, but the factors explaining this variation at the individual and societal levels are still under debate. Drawing upon developmental and community psychology approaches, the current study aimed to investigate psychological adaptation in term...

The short form of the Preoccupied and Avoidant Coping Questionnaire (PACQ; Younger, Corby, Perry, 2005) is a widely used self-report questionnaire measuring insecure attachment toward mother and father in middle childhood. However, its factorial structure has not yet been examined, and evidence concerning its concurrent and convergent validity is e...

In two Bayesian meta-analyses, we investigated associations between Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) and the Big Five personality traits (MA1) as well as both Positive and Negative Affect (MA2). Moderators were age and the three SPS subscales. In MA1 (8 papers, 6790 subjects), SPS in children correlated with Neuroticism (r = 0.42) but did not w...

Self-report questionnaires based on Harter’s response format (“Some kids . . . but other kids . . . ”) are commonly used in developmental and clinical research settings, but the reliability and validity of this format in middle childhood are still under debate. The current study aimed to test the psychometric proprieties of Harter versus Likert res...

A large body of research has shown that parental divorce is linked to youths' psychological adjustment in Western societies, but less is known about how this life event may impact on adolescents living in the Chinese cultural context, which highlights losing face and dignity. The current study aimed to examine the relationship between parental auto...

Introduction Previous research suggests that supportive parenting is positively related to adolescents' academic and psychological functioning. However, most extant research has focused on parenting styles observed in Western countries, whereas less is known about the role of culturally specific parenting dimensions in Eastern countries such as Chi...

This cross-sectional study aimed to compare student wellbeing operationalized as learning engagement, satisfaction with peer relations, and school satisfaction between urban stay-behind early adolescents and their non-stay-behind counterparts in Mainland China. Furthermore, we tested whether the expected relationship between perceived teacher-stude...

The current study aimed to examine whether executive functioning (EF) moderates the expected association between poor parental supervision and emotional-behavioral problems among early adolescents with and without a migration background in Italy. In total, 97 Chinese immigrant and 165 Italian nonimmigrant early adolescents, aged 11 to 13 years (52%...

The current study investigated profiles of vagal withdrawal in response to a challenging task in preschoolers. Also, the association between those profiles and conceptual shifting ability was assessed. Electrocardiogram of 43 four‐year‐olds was registered during a sequence of games including a win phase and a lose phase, while conceptual shifting a...

Introduzione. Numerosi studi suggeriscono che il benessere psicologico del bambino è influenzato sia da caratteristiche temperamentali, quali l’effortful control (EC), sia dalla qualità delle relazioni che il bambino instaura con le figure di attaccamento (DeKlyen & Greenberg, 2008). Queste ultime rappresentano il primo contesto in cui il bambino s...

This study investigated early adolescents’ psychophysiological response to a school-related stressor (SRS) as indexed by heart rate variability and examined the unique and interactive effects of heart rate variability and temperament on academic achievement. A total of 91 seventh graders watched an SRS video-clip while their heart rate variability...

The recently developed short form of the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale-Revised Child version (ECR-RC) is a promising tool to assess anxious and avoidant attachment in children and adolescents. Yet, evidence concerning its validity in middle childhood is limited. This study aimed to test the psychometric properties of the 12-item ECR-RC f...

Background Children's well‐being in terms of physical, emotional, social, and academic outcomes is largely influenced by environmental characteristics, with the presence of childhood adversities constituting a risk factor, and support provided by the family working as a protective factor. Yet the role of individual differences in children's sensiti...

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies refer to individuals’ attempt to “influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how these emotions are experienced and expressed” (Gross et al. 2006, p. 14). There is abundant evidence showing that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors play a role in the use of ER strategies. However, while some auth...

The present study aimed to investigate the role of classroom climate and self‐regulation in terms of cardiac vagal tone and inhibitory control in primary school students' focused attention. A combination of direct and indirect measures was used to assess classroom climate, sustained and selective attention, and inattention behaviors among 62 first...

Background: Children's ability to remain focused on a task despite the presence of emotionally salient distractors in the environment is crucial for successful learning and academic performance. Aims: This study investigated first-graders' allocation of attentional resources in the presence of distracting emotional, school-related social interac...

Objective: Although discrimination is a common stressor in the everyday life of immigrant youth, individuals are not equally susceptible to its adverse effects. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine whether cultural orientation preferences and impulse control (IC) moderate the association between perceived discrimination and externalizing pro...

Terrorist attacks have a destabilizing impact on the general population, causing distress and fear. However, not all individuals are equally susceptible to the effects of terror threat. This study aimed to examine whether exposure to terrorism-related pictures interacted with individual differences in environmental sensitivity and psychophysiologic...

Internationalization of higher education is a priority in the political-cultural agenda of many European and extra European countries. What is the state of internationalization of Psychology in Italy? What are the main actions undertaken in this perspective? The present study aimed at tackling these issues through an exploratory investigation. Twen...

This study examined whether executive functions (EFs) moderate the association between independent and interdependent self-construals and social adjustment in 488 Moroccan, Romanian, and Italian preadolescents (ages 11–13) in Italy. Participants were assessed using self-report questionnaires and standardized EF tasks. Better working memory was rela...

Using a dot-probe detection task, this longitudinal study investigated whether adolescents show an attentional bias for academic stressors at the beginning of the school year (T1), and if such allocation of attention interacts with classroom climate (CC) to predict grades and socioemotional functioning at the end of the term (T2). Among 133 eighth-...

The Security Scale (SS) is a widely used questionnaire measuring attachment towards mother and father in school-aged children. Whilst existing evidence supports concurrent and discriminant validity of the SS, its factorial structure remains largely underexplored. The current study examined the factorial structure of the SS, explored its measurement...

Ethnic discrimination is one of the most important risk factors for problem behaviors in immigrant youth (Garcia-Coll et al., 1996), but increasing evidence suggests that individuals are not equally susceptible to the adverse effects of this environmental stressor. Based on risk and resilience perspectives, scholars have started to emphasize the ro...

Previous research has shown that a warm and caring parental style is associated with better psychological adjustment in adolescents from diverse cultural contexts. Yet, the differential role of mothers and fathers in adolescents’ depressive symptoms is still understudied, especially among immigrant populations. This study examined the relationship...

The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure – Revised (MEIM-R) is an extensively used questionnaire assessing ethnic identity. However, studies on its measurement characteristics in the European context are lacking. The current study addressed this gap by investigating the MEIM-R psychometric proprieties across multiple ethnocultural groups in Italy. Pa...

Introduction. Depressive symptoms are a relatively common phenomenon in adolescence, and therefore represent a major public health concern (Thapar, Collishaw, Pine, & Thapar, 2012). Immigrant youth have been shown to be particularly at risk for such symptoms due to their frequent exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage, acculturative stress, and per...

Introduction. Prosocial behavior has been defined as a set of voluntary acts designed to help or benefit others (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989). Previous research indicates that adolescents exhibiting high levels of prosocial behavior have greater empathy, better self-esteem, and more positive relationships with peers (Wentzel, 2014). Thus, identifying...

Factors related to grade point average ( GPA ) are of great importance for students' success. Yet, little is known about the impact of individual differences in emotional reactivity on students' academic performance. We aimed to examine the emotional reactivity– GPA link and to assess whether self‐esteem and psychological distress moderate this rel...

Background: Previous research indicates that children can display different attention allocation patterns in response to threat. However, data are lacking on the possible existence of an attentional bias in response to academic stressors, and whether variables related to school well-being (SWB) and students' individual characteristics may influenc...

Previous research has shown that a positive marital functioning represents a resource in adoptive families, leading to a decrease in parenting stress, but little is known about the factors mediating such a relationship. This study aimed to explore whether adult attachment avoidance and anxiety mediate the effect of dyadic functioning on parenting s...

Previous research indicates that externalizing problems and negative mood can impair learning. However, the interaction between these variables in predicting learning from text is not well understood. This study examined the moderating role of negative mood in the association between externalizing behaviors and learning from text in primary school...

Previous research has shown that self-blame predicts increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in youth exposed to terrorism, but little is known about the factors mediating such relationship. This study aimed to explore whether school connectedness (SC) mediates the effect of self-blame on PTSD in 60 adolescents (aged 14–18 years) who...

Children and youths living in areas of political conflict are at increased risk of mental health problems, but little is known about psychosocial adjustment among ethnic minorities living in war-afflicted settings. This cross-sectional study used an ecological approach to investigate the unique contributions of child, family/social, and minority re...

This study investigated whether the parenting stress-child externalizing behavior link is moderated by children's emotional reactivity, as indexed by skin conductance responses (SCRs). Participants were 61 children aged 9-12 years and their mothers. Mothers completed measures of parenting stress and their children's externalizing symptoms; children...

The present study aimed to evaluate posttraumatic stress symptoms, psychological distress, and emotional and behavioral problems in former Ugandan child soldiers in comparison with civilian children living in the same conflict setting. Participants included 133 former child soldiers and 101 never-abducted children in northern Uganda, who were inter...

Theoretical perspectives and research in sociology, anthropology, sociolinguistics, and cultural psychology converge in recognizing the significance of children's time spent in various activities, especially in the family context. Knowing how children's time is deployed, however, only gives us a partial answer to how children acquire competence; th...

This longitudinal study aimed to assess the course of psychological symptoms and coping behaviors in 33 adolescents directly and indirectly exposed to the 2004 terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia. We also investigated the role of coping in the development of posttraumatic stress. At 1.5 and 3 years postattack, youths' psychological distress was meas...

This study compared mother-infant interaction and childrearing patterns across Romanian families in Romania, first-generation Romanian immigrant families in Italy, and Italian families. The relations between acculturation and maternal beliefs and behaviors were also examined. Ninety-five mothers and their infants aged between 0 and 12 months partic...

As a consequence of a terrorist attack, children may experience trauma-related internal and external reminders that are directly linked to their physical and psychological health. We assessed PTSD and trauma reminders in 58 school-age children three years after the terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia in 2004, as well as their association with degree...

This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the influence of socio-contextual variables on depressive symptoms in 158 adolescent survivors of the 2004 terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia, based on an ecological perspective. Participants were assessed 18 months after the traumatic event. Adolescents aged 14-17 years completed self-reported measur...

This exploratory study aims at investigating the effects of terrorism on children's ability to recognize emotions. A sample of 101 exposed and 102 nonexposed children (mean age = 11 years), balanced for age and gender, were assessed 20 months after a terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia. Two trials controlled for children's ability to match a facial...

Little is known about the impact of terrorism on children's cognitive functioning and school learning. The primary purpose of this study was to report on cognitive functioning among school-age children 20 months after a terrorist attack against their school. Participants included 203 directly and indirectly exposed children from Beslan and 100 none...

Although a common goal for parents is to promote their children's successful development in a respective society, there is considerable cross-cultural variation in the beliefs parents hold about children, families, and themselves as parents. Previous research suggests that in traditional rural areas across the world, parents highly appreciate inter...

Children exposed to terrorism are at high risk for developing emotional and behavioral problems, but only a few studies have examined adolescents' long-term psychological adjustment after a terrorist attack. We aimed to assess psychological distress, problem behaviors, and coping in adolescents who survived the terrorist attack on School No. 1 in B...

This study explores parental ethnotheories of children’s temperament through mothers’ responses to McDevitt and Carey’s Behavioral Style Questionnaire (1978) for 299 children aged 3 to 8 years and interviews with their parents, in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. We first established a standardized, "...

The developmental niche, a theoretical construct for the study of the child in cultural context, has been usefully applied to the analysis of environments of disabled individuals. In this article, the authors review the three components of the niche (settings of daily life, customs of care, and the psychology of the caretakers), with particular ref...

Acts of terrorism have an extremely negative impact on the mental health of children and families. The school siege in Beslan, Russia, in 2004, represents a particularly traumatizing event as it was directed specifically at children and involved the entire community. This qualitative study aims to: (a) examine caregiver reactions to the terrorist a...

It has been hypothesized that maternal characteristics may affect infants' experience of pain during stressful medical procedures. To investigate the role of maternal depressed mood on infants' response to vaccination, and to determine the effectiveness of different soothing behaviours in reducing infant distress. Twenty-eight mothers and their hea...

This paper explores teachers' ethnotheories of the ‘ideal student’ in five western societies: Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the US. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to derive culture‐specific profiles of the ‘ideal student’ as described by kindergarten and primary school teachers in semi‐structured interviews (sample n's =...

This study examined the cultural beliefs and practices related to infant health and development in a group of first-generation, immigrant Nigerian mothers in Italy. Twenty-nine mothers of infants aged 2–12 months participated in a semi-structured interview conducted at their homes, with the collaboration of a female Nigerian informant. Maternal res...

This report describes symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among a group of Beslan's children (N=22) and their primary caregivers (N=20) 3 months after the children had been taken hostage in their school by a group of terrorists. Attention and memory were also measured. Children and their caretakers showed high levels of ongoing PTSD sy...