The case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a kinematic study on social intention

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of social intentions on action. Participants (N=13) were requested to reach towards, grasp an object, and either pass it to another person (social condition) or put it on a concave base (single-agent condition). Movements' kinematics was recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics is sensitive to social intention. Movements performed for the 'social' condition were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the 'single-agent' condition. Results are discussed in terms of a motor simulation hypothesis, which assumes that the same mechanisms underlying motor intention are sensitive to social intentions.     

Presence and emotions in virtual environments: the influence of stereoscopy.

This study investigates how stereoscopy (the illusion of depth and 3D imaging) affects the sense of presence and the intensity of the positive mood that users feel in virtual environments (VEs). A between-group design was used, and 40 volunteers were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (stereoscopy vs. no stereoscopy) and to one of two emotional VEs (relaxation or joy). The participants' emotions were assessed before and after the VR experience. Presence was measured with two postexperiment questionnaires (ITC-SOPI and SUS). Results show that there were no differences between stereoscopic and monoscopic presentations in VEs (neither subjective sense of presence nor emotional reactions). Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed herein.     

Affective interactions using virtual reality: the link between presence and emotions.

Many studies showed the ability of movies and imagery techniques to elicit emotions. Nevertheless, it is less clear how to manipulate the content of interactive media to induce specific emotional responses. In particular, this is true for the emerging medium virtual reality (VR), whose main feature is the ability to induce a feeling of "presence" in the computer-generated world experienced by the user. The main goal of this study was to analyze the possible use of VR as an affective medium. Within this general goal, the study also analyzed the relationship between presence and emotions. The results confirmed the efficacy of VR as affective medium: the interaction with "anxious" and "relaxing" virtual environments produced anxiety and relaxation. The data also showed a circular interaction between presence and emotions: on one side, the feeling of presence was greater in the "emotional" environments; on the other side, the emotional state was influenced by the level of presence. The significance of these results for the assessment of affective interaction is discussed.     

Teachers facing school failure: the social valorization of effort in the school context

This paper describes two studies concerning teachers’ classroom interventions facing school failure. The role of two main variables is investigated: the lack of effort as a cause of failure students are held responsible for by teachers, and teacher’s social representations of intelligence. The first study (Study 1) explored the impact of “lack of effort” causal attribution for student’s failure on the intervention strategies adopted by 122 high school teachers. Study 2 analyzed the impact of social representations of intelligence, held by 202 high school teachers, on “lack of effort” causal inference and on behavioral interventions. Results highlight that teachers mostly choose more severe educational interventions with retributive purpose when failure is ascribable to an absence of effort expenditure by the student. Moreover, the findings support the role of teachers’ social representations of intelligence in failure explanations and in educational practices, showing that “lack of effort” attribution and practices with retributive purpose are predicted by the social representation of intelligence “as a gift”. Results are analyzed and discussed by considering the effort as a normative parameter of the school environment. This research was supported financially in part by MURST “University funds, 2004 (Ex 40%)”. Portions of these results were presented at the 8th International Conference on Social Representations, Rome.     

Children and adults represent proper names as referring to unique individuals

Adults represent proper names (e.g. ‘Katharine Hepburn’) as referring to unique individuals (i.e. Katharine Hepburn), and studies of children’s proper name learning have been taken to show that children represent proper names in like manner. However, almost all of these studies leave open the possibility that children represent proper names as referring to restricted kinds of highly similar animals. We provide direct evidence against this possibility: both adults and 3‐year‐old children presented with a novel word for a toy animal (e.g. ‘daxy’) assumed that the animal continued to be referred to with the word, despite a change in the animal’s appearance and location, and despite the introduction at the old location of an animal identical in appearance to the original animal at the time the word was introduced. Participants presented with a simple artifact (e.g. a bottle) did not interpret the word as a proper name, consistent with previous work.     

Dewey in postwar-Italy: The case of re-education

After the end of the Second World War, Italy was the first Axis country (followed by Germany and Japan), to undergo a process of “reeducation” by the allied troops, focusing initially on the education system. Under the direction of American scholars and school innovators, school syllabi and textbooks were rewritten in order to replace the ideological indoctrination exerted by the Fascist regime from 1923 to 1943 with democratic ideas. This article reconstructs different phases of the influence of John Dewey’s progressive education in Italy. This influence was predominant in policy and experimental schools, as well as in educational theory in the period immediately following the War, but it was almost eliminated from policy documents in a restorative backlash of the Cold War. From the sixties on however, Dewey’s pedagogical thinking, which never lost ground within the liberal, laicist and Marxist circles, gradually and selectively regained influence in policies and reforms.     

Proposition 187 reexamined: Attitudes toward immigration among California voters

The purposes of this study were to examine socio-demographic predictors of attitudes toward immigration in a community-based sample (N = 494) from the Los Angeles area; and to explore the relationship between attitudes toward immigration and the providing of educational and health services to the children of undocumented immigrants. Not providing services to the children of undocumented immigrants was a key element of California's Proposition 187. Attitudes toward immigration were measured with the Attitudes Toward Immigration Scale (ATIS). The providing of services was measured through the participants' evaluations of a school scenario and a health care scenario. Results indicated that participants who were middle-aged or older, less educated, identified as Republican, and were third generation or greater were more likely to hold negative attitudes toward immigration. Furthermore, participants holding negative attitudes toward immigration were less likely to provide education and health care services to the children of undocumented immigrants.     

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARENT‐CHILD PLAY SCALE FOR USE IN CHILDREN WITH FEEDING DISORDERS

The Parent‐Child Play Scale was developed as a scale that complements the Parent‐Child Feeding Scale, created by I. Chatoor et al. (1997), to evaluate mother–infant/toddler interactions in two different caregiving contexts of a young child's everyday life, specifically play and feeding. This Play Scale can be used with infants and toddlers ranging in age from 1 month to 3 years and provides reliable global ratings of mother–child interactions during 10 min of videotaped free‐play in a laboratory setting. The scale consists of 32 mother and infant/toddler interactive behaviors which are rated by trained observers from videotaped observations. Four subscales are derived: Dyadic Reciprocity, Maternal Unresponsiveness to Infant's/Toddler's Cues, Dyadic Conflict, and Maternal Intrusiveness. Construct validity and interrater and test‐retest reliability of the Play Scale have been demonstrated. This Play Scale discriminates between children with and without feeding disorders as well as between children with different subtypes of feeding disorders as defined by the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood, Revised (DC:0–3R) (Feeding Disorder of State Regulation, Feeding Disorder of Caregiver‐Infant Reciprocity, and Infantile Anorexia). It can be used for research or clinical practice in the diagnosis and treatment of early feeding problems, to assess the pervasiveness of mother–infant/toddler difficulties and to monitor changes following therapy.