Vlasta Vizek Vidović’s research while affiliated with University of Zagreb and other places

The aim of this study was to examine possible beneficial effects of pet ownership on the self-esteem of war-traumatized school children. The Croatian version of Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale was administered to three groups of elementary school children of both sexes, grades 5 to 8, all severely affected by war: dog or cat owners (n=295), owners of other kinds of animals (n=144), and non-pet owners (n=173). There were no differences between groups on basic socio-demographic variables. It was hypothesized that war-traumatized pet owners, especially owners of dogs and cats, would have higher self-esteem than war-traumatized non-pet owners. Sex and age differences in self-esteem were also examined. The results of the three-way ANOVA (Pet x Ownership x Sex x Age) showed that only age had a significant effect on self-esteem, with fifth and sixth graders having higher self-esteem than seventh and eight graders. Thus, the hypothesis that pet ownership could have beneficial effects on self-esteem of war-traumatized children was not supported. The importance of more precise measures of the pet-child relationship is emphasized.

The current study was designed to compare the socio-emotional characteristics of school children pet owners and children without pets and to examine whether the type of pet is a variable which can differentiate the socio-emotional development of their owners. The subjects, 425 girls and 401 boys, were students of fourth (n=265), sixth (n=295) and eighth (n=266) grade of elementary schools from the metropolitan area of Zagreb, Croatia. Socio-emotional variables assessed in the study were: child attachment to pet, child prosocial orientation, empathy, loneliness, perception of family climate and social anxiety. The data showed that 54.4% of children in the sample were pet owners (26.2% of children in the study had a dog, 9.2% had a cat, and 19.0% had some other pet). In order to answer the main research question, several analyses of variance (gender by grade by pet ownership) were computed for each criterion of socio-emotional development. Significant main effects were obtained for empathy, prosocial orientation and pet attachment, with dog owners being more empathic and prosocially oriented than non-owners, and dog owners and cat owners being more attached to their pets than owners of other kinds of pets. Additional analyses of variance were computed in order to examine the role of attachment in the socio-emotional functioning of the children. Subjects were divided in three sub-groups: non-owners, lower then average attached owners, and higher than average attached owners. Children who scored higher than average on the attachment to pets scale showed significantly higher scores on the empathy and prosocial orientation scales than non-owners and children who scored lower than average on the attachment to pets scale. It was also found that children with higher levels of attachment to pets rated their family climate significantly better than children who had lower attachment to pets.

The aim of this study was to examine whether motivational‐emotional variables such as intrinsic orientation toward schoolwork, Mathematics anxiety, academic self‐esteem, attribution of success and failure in Mathematics and situational interest in Mathematics could differentiate different groups of mathematically gifted pupils. The research was based, theoretically, on an interactional model of giftedness. The sample consisted of 147 selected primary school pupils (9‐10 years of age) who were assigned to the following groups for comparison: mathematically gifted achievers (n = 31), mathematically gifted under‐achievers (n = 31) and mathematically non‐gifted pupils (n = 85). The results of a discriminant analysis show that the gifted pupils differ from the non‐gifted ones in attaining higher levels of intrinsic orientation toward Mathematics, lower Mathematics anxiety, lower attribution of success to external factors and effort, as well as in lower attribution of failure to external factors and abilities. Also, gifted achievers have lower attribution of success to effort than gifted under‐achievers and non‐gifted pupils.