Psychiatric Symptoms and Quality of Life in Patients Affected by Epidermolysis Bullosa

The aim of our study was to provide a psychosocial and psychiatric evaluation of patients with epidermolysis bullosa (EB; a rare genetic disorder characterized by skin fragility), to assess psychological status, ascertain the presence of any psychiatric disorders and understand the impact of EB on quality of life. Twenty-five patients were assessed using a case record form and several standardized instruments. In 82% of patients, EB had a negative impact on quality of life and 80% of patients experienced psychiatric symptoms. Our findings revealed a high prevalence of psychosocial problems and psychiatric symptoms in patients with EB and suggested that a combined bio-psychosocial approach is the most appropriate therapeutic intervention.     

Perceived social support from significant others,family and friends and several socio‐demographic characteristics

The first aim was to explore the relationship between socio‐demographic characteristics and perceived support from significant others, family and friends. Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, and Farley's Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) (Journal of Personality Assessment, 52, 1988, 30–41) was administered to 418 males and 623 females between 18 and 77 years of age. The results indicate that family support is higher in males, and the support of friends decreases with age as does the support of significant others. Significant interactions also emerged between gender and age and between gender and marital status. No differences were found for educational level. The second aim was to discover which persons are identified as ‘special persons’ on the items of the ‘Significant others’ sub‐scale of the MSPSS. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE GAP IS SEMANTIC,NOT EPISTEMOLOGICAL

This paper explores an alternative to the metaphysical challenge to physicalism posed by Jackson and Kripke and to the epistemological one exemplified by the positions of Nagel, Levine and McGinn. On this alternative the mind‐body gap is neither ontological nor epistemological, but semantic. I claim that it is because the gap is semantic that the mind‐body problem is a quintessentially philosophical problem that is not likely to wither away as our natural scientific knowledge advances. ¹ 1 I would like to thank my colleague James Tartaglia for a number of fruitful discussions on the explanatory gap.
     

Age-Related Changes in Smoothness of Gait of Healthy Children and Early Adolescents

Abstract

In this study, we acquired and processed trunk accelerations during level walking in 85 children aged 8-13?years to calculate spatio-temporal parameters and Harmonic Ratio (HR), which is a metrics representative of gait smoothness and step-to-step symmetry. The results show that while spatio-temporal parameters remain unchanged once normalized considering individuals’ anthropometry, significantly higher values of HR for both the antero-posterior and vertical directions were found in participants aged 12–13 with respect to those of 8–9. This indicates an improvement of gait symmetry, which suggests that the gait maturation process is still ongoing for the age ranges tested here.     

Processing of Prosody and Semantics in Sepedi and L2 English

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - A phoneme-detection task shows that listeners of Sepedi use semantic information in processing but not prosody (Experiment 1). Sepedi is a language with no...     

The Two Faces of Familism: A Cross-Cultural Research in India and Italy

In the present research, we developed a familism scale comprised of two dimensions, namely support obligations and traditional norms, in order to examine cross-cultural and gender differences in a group of Indian (n = 107) and of Italian students (n = 106). We hypothesised and found that support obligations were judged more important than traditional norms in both groups. Moreover, the Indian participants considered both dimensions of familism more important than did their Italian counterparts. Indian women gave greater importance to traditional norms than Indian men did, while Italian women gave greater importance to support obligations than Italian men did. The social implications of cross-cultural and gender differences in familism are discussed.     

Classroom justice and psychological engagement: students’ and teachers’ representations

This article presents the results of a study carried out with the aim to: (1) analyze secondary school students’ and their teachers’ ideal representations of classroom justice, (2) deepen the topic of students’ sense of injustice, and (3) explore the links between students’ perceived injustice and their psychological engagement in school, measured on different aspects (identification with one’s own class, learning motivation, dialogue with teachers). A questionnaire was distributed to 400 Italian secondary school students and their 79 teachers. Results show that the representations of ideal classroom justice refer to communication, principle of equality and principles of effort/need, and that the positions of teachers and students on these representations differ. Moreover, students report a rather diffuse and shared feeling of being treated in an unjust manner by their teachers, and this affects their psychological engagement in school. Results are commented on their theoretical, methodological and applicative implications.     

The touch of King Midas: Collingwood on why actions are not events

It is the ambition of natural science to provide complete explanations of reality. Collingwood argues that science can only explain events, not actions. The latter is the distinctive subject matter of history and can be described as actions only if they are explained historically. This paper explains Collingwood’s claim that the distinctive subject matter of history is actions and why the attempt to capture this subject matter through the method of science inevitably ends in failure because science explains events, not actions. It argues that Collingwood’s defence of the methodological autonomy of history vis-à-vis natural science is not based on a commitment to human exceptionalism, i.e. the exclusion of human beings and their doings from the rest of nature, but on the view that explanations which appeal to norms are different in kind from explanations which appeal to empirical regularities. Given the close relationship between the method and the subject matter of a form of inquiry, actions elude any attempt to explain them through the scientific method because the application of this method entails that what is thus explained is not an action but an event.     

The Challenges of the Schooling from Cultural Psychology of Education

Education is in the core of societal change in all its different forms—from kindergartens to vocational schools and lifelong learning. Education—understood as goal-oriented personal movement—re-structures personal lives both inside school and outside the school. This special issue stems from the Cultural Psychology of Education (Marsico Culture & Psychology, 21(4), 445–454, 2015a, b, Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 40(4), 754–781, 2017)—a new approach to the field of education that examines how educational experience is culturally organized. This special issue is focused on the work of schooling as a crucial scientific arena to investigate. It is the follow up of an international workshop host by the Centre for Cultural Psychology (at Aalborg University, Demark) that was very thought provoking and from where several outcomes came out. Some of them are the papers here presented that tried to illuminate the different dimensions of the educational context in the East and West society with specific attention to the Chinese and Scandinavian educational practices. The dialogue between Chinese, European and North American scholars offered a complex view of the current educational challenges in the age of globalization. In this paper I try to focus on some of the most debated and challenging aspects in educational psychology worldwide: diversity, values and practical usability of psychology at school. I re-read these “hot topics” with the help of the themes developed by the authors of this special issue and in light of Cultural Psychology of Education. Then, I conclude by proposing a new agenda for the education of the future.     

Straight to heaven: Rectitude as spatial representation of morality

Abundant literature in cognitive sciences has shown that morality is grounded in bodily experience. Four studies tested the perceptual association between the spatial dimension of straightness and the abstract concept of morality. Study 1 (n = 61) employed an IAT and revealed an association between straight figures and moral related words. Study 2 (n = 83) employed a similar paradigm and further revealed that the effect we found in Study 1 cannot be attributable to the general association between straight figures and positivity. Study 3 (n = 64) revealed that participants showed a stronger preference for straight figures after recalling moral (vs. immoral) deeds. Study 4 (n = 183) showed the specific role of morality, in this sense, as recalling sociable (vs. unsociable) deeds had no significant influence on figure preferences. A small‐scale meta‐analysis confirmed the robustness of our findings. Results are discussed in light of the embodiment theory.