How is anxiety related to math performance in young students? A longitudinal study of Grade 2 to Grade 3 children

Both general and math-specific anxiety are related to proficiency in mathematics. However, it is not clear when math anxiety arises in young children, nor how it relates to early math performance. This study therefore investigated the early association between math anxiety and math performance in Grades 2 and 3, by accounting for general anxiety and by further inspecting the prevalent directionality of the anxiety–performance link. Results revealed that this link was significant in Grade 3, with a prevalent direction from math anxiety to performance, rather than the reverse. Longitudinal analyses also showed an indirect effect of math anxiety in Grade 2 on subsequent math performance in Grade 3. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of monitoring anxiety from the early stages of schooling in order to promote proficient academic performance.     

Systemic-Oriented Psychological Counselling for Caregivers of People with Severe Brain Injury: Reflections on a Clinical Case

Severe brain injuries can have dramatic consequences on family life, often changing rules and routines and fostering intense and prolonged caregiving duties. People affected by the injuries have to face relevant restrictions in their activities and a loss of independence. Thus, primary caregivers are often involved in their assistance, which can entail the help for self-care, movements and many activities of daily living. Furthermore, cognitive and behavioural symptoms can complicate communication, disrupt previous relationships and put an additional strain on all family members. Indeed, caregiving relationships take place in wider familial and societal contexts and are obviously influenced by previous characteristic of such relationships, as they were before the onset of the pathological condition. Therefore, a thorough examination of typical emotions, feelings and thoughts that can emerge during caregiving must be paralleled by an ecological and developmental perspective, in order to appraise the complexity of these cases and provide effective interventions. The present work aims to address such topics taking inspiration from a clinical case.     

How Diverse Is This Community? Sense of Community,Ethnic Prejudice and Perceived Ethnic Heterogeneity

In this paper, the relationship between territorial sense of community (SoC), perceived ethnic heterogeneity within the community and ethnic prejudice was analyzed. Specifically, the moderating role of perceived ethnic heterogeneity within the community on the SoC–prejudice relationship was tested in a sample of residents (N = 603) of the Salento region, Italy. Results showed that the relationship between SoC and prejudice was moderated by perceived contextual heterogeneity. For blatant and subtle prejudice, when perceived ethnic heterogeneity was low, SoC was negatively associated with prejudice. In the case of modern prejudice, SoC was positively associated with prejudice when perceived ethnic heterogeneity was high. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Similarity among tasks is the key to show generalization of cognitive training effects in Alzheimer’s disease: a case study

Cognitive training can allow patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to reinforce individual cognitive abilities. In the present case study, we investigated the generalizability of trained cognitive skills to novel tasks, and their stability over time.

One AD patient underwent a structured cognitive training using the GEO (Geographical Exercise for cognitive Optimization) task, whereas eight AD patients underwent a control cognitive intervention. Participants’ performances on the GEO task, on a similar untrained cognitive task, and on a different untrained cognitive task were recorded before and after the intervention, and at the follow-up. On both the trained and the similar untrained tasks patients’ and controls’ performance significantly differed from one another. Our preliminary evidence shows that a cognitive training could allow patients to improve and maintain their performance not only on the trained task, but also on a similar task.     

Eudaimonic Well-Being in Transsexual People,Before and After Gender Confirming Surgery

Gender confirming surgery (GCS) and cross-sex hormones (CSH) are crucial steps in the self-realization of a transsexual individual. However, no study has analyzed the outcome of GCS in a eudaimonic perspective, nor explored eudaimonic well-being before GCS. The study compares the eudaimonic well-being of trans men (N = 56) and women (N = 89) before and after GCS; in the MtF sample, a further comparison was carried out between those who never started any medical intervention and those who were already taking CSH. Finally, the impact of experiences of harassment, discrimination and violence on eudaimonic well-being in the post-surgery sample was explored. All participants completed the Psychological Well-being Scales (Ryff in J Pers Soc Psychol 57:1069–1081, 1989) and, only the post-surgery sample, a questionnaire to assess previous experiences of harassment, discrimination and violence. Both in MtF and FtM participants, those who already received GCS showed higher scores on self-acceptance; in the MtF sample, higher scores were also found on environmental mastery and lower scores on personal growth. The association between experiences of discrimination on well-being was limited and positive, with higher scores in personal growth only in FtM participants who reported being victims of such experiences. Our results suggest that both MtF and FtM transsexuals show higher levels of eudaimonic well-being after GCS.     

Parental bonding and personality disorder: the mediating role of alexithymia

This study explored whether alexithymic features mediate the effect of perceived adverse parenting during childhood on being diagnosed with a PD in adulthood. Two hundred sixty-five psychiatric outpatients were evaluated with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), the Structured Interview for DSM-IV Personality, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders, the Clinical Global Impression scale, and the Global Assessment of Functioning scale. The statistical model for mediation proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986) was employed to detect whether the TAS scores account for the relation between PBI scores and a PD diagnosis. The results indicated that although altered parental bonding (and specifically, excessive maternal protection) may enhance the risk of PD, its effect is completely mediated by the alexithymic feature Difficulty Describing Feelings to Others (DDF), after controlling for gender, age, educational level, type, severity and age of onset of Axis I disorders. Therefore, this study suggests that the presence of DDF accounts for the effect of maternal overprotection as a risk factor for PD.     

Working memory failures in children with arithmetical difficulties.

A large body of literature has examined the relationship between working memory and arithmetic achievement, but results are still ambiguous. To examine this relationship, we compared the performance of third and fifth graders with arithmetic difficulties (AD) and controls of the same age, grade, and verbal intelligence on a battery of working memory tasks, differentiating between different aspects of working memory. Children with AD scored significantly lower on active working memory tasks requiring manipulation of the to-be-recalled information (Listening Completion task, Corsi Span Backwards, Digit Backwards), but not in passive working memory tasks, requiring the recall of information in the same format in which it had been presented (Digit, Word, and Corsi Forwards Span tasks), nor in tasks involving word processing (word articulation rate, forwards and backwards word spans). A regression analysis showed that the best predictors of differences between AD children and the control group were the Corsi Span Backwards, the Listening Completion task, and the rate of articulation of pseudowords. The analysis of strategies used by children in mental calculation revealed the greater tendency of children with AD to rely on more primitive strategies: finger use never appeared as the most frequent strategy in skilled children, whereas it was the most used strategy in children with AD. Verbal and visual strategies appeared associated with successful performance in third graders, but in fifth grade, the most successful strategy was verbalization.     

Poor readers but compelled to read: Stroop effects in developmental dyslexia.

We studied a group of 24 children with dyslexia in second to fifth primary school grades by using a discrete-trial computerized version of the Stroop Color-Word Test. Since the classic Stroop effect depends on the interference of reading with color naming, one would expect these children to show no interference or, at least, less interference than normal readers. Children with dyslexia showed, however, a Stroop effect larger than normal readers of the same age. This suggests that reading, although difficult and slow, is an inescapable step that precedes naming both in poor and in normal readers.     

Newborns’ preference for up–down asymmetrical configurations

The present study was aimed at investigating whether, because of a differential sensitivity between the upper and the lower visual fields, in a visual preference task newborns would orient more frequently and look longer at patterns with a great number of high–contrast areas in the upper or lower visual field. Newborns were presented with three pairs of geometrical stimuli, each composed of a pattern with a greater number of elements in the upper part or a pattern with more elements in the lower part. The results showed a reliable preference for the stimuli that had more elements in the upper than in the lower part. The evidence obtained suggests the possibility that, at birth, the visibility of a stimulus depends not only on its sensory properties, but also on its structural characteristics.     

Beliefs in Equality for Women and Men as Related to Economic Factors in Central and Eastern Europe and the United States

Do economic indicators predict the general level of support for gender equality? This question was investigated in a sample of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a region that has been undergoing rapid economic changes since the early 1990s. In this overall sample of male and female college students from ten countries, including the United States as a comparison, the predicted association between stronger beliefs in gender role egalitarianism and positive economic factors was generally supported. Also, consistent with other research, women were more in support of gender equality than men were. There was no support for a predicted trend in less support for gender equality over the time period of the present study.