Facilitating ambulation and activity in persons with profound multiple disabilities through a visual orientation system

A visual orientation system was employed to help two adults with profound multiple disabilities ambulate to programmed activity destinations and carry out familiar activities. The system consisted of a portable control device and light sources. The person participating in experiment 1 was to operate the control device for activating the programmed destinations (and turning on light sources showing the way to them). The person participating in experiment 2 did not need to operate the control device; this activated each programmed destination automatically. A new destination was activated after a preset time had elapsed from the person reaching the previous destination. Results indicated that both persons used the visual orientation system successfully and thus could reach the destinations and carry out activities on their own. General implications of the findings are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book Review: Allocating Scarce Medical Resources

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Gratitude as a Variable of Mediation between Parental Support and Self-Esteem in Adolescence

Despite there has been a growing interest in the study of gratitude, few studies have investigated which factors support and promote it; notably, no study has yet addressed ways in which parents could promote gratitude in their children. The present study aims to investigate the relation between parental emotional support and self-esteem through the mediation of gratitude. The analyses have been conducted considering both the maternal and the paternal roles. To that end, an explorative model has been proposed of these relations. A self-report questionnaire was administered to 279 15–19 year-old adolescents (M?=?16.83, SD?=?.85) living in Northern Italy. Findings show that (a) the mother’s emotional support, but not the father’s, sustains gratitude, and (b) gratitude completely mediates the relation between maternal emotional support and self-esteem. Limitations and research implications are discussed.     

Validity and Reliability of the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire: Empirical Evidence from an Italian Study

Interpersonal competence is crucial to human life, and poor social functioning is a typical feature of various psychopathological conditions. Given the relevance of the construct, increasing attention has recently been paid to the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire (ICQ; Buhrmester et al. 1988), a 40-item self-report measuring five domains of interpersonal competence. To provide additional data on the cross-cultural adaptability of the ICQ, we developed an Italian version and investigated its psychometric properties with two independent student samples. Respondents were mostly women (about three quarters), ranging in age from 18 to 57. Study 1 (n?=?408) tested factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent validity. Study 2 (n?=?59) investigated test-retest reliability. Taken together, the results of both these studies provided support for the cross-cultural applicability of the ICQ, and revealed interesting associations between interpersonal competence and constructs such as well-being, emotion dysregulation and empathy.     

Emotions at primary school: Negative achievement emotions and their relation with emotional competencies in ethnic minority and majority students

Scarce attention has been paid to ethnic minority students' emotions and related competencies at school. Nevertheless, theoretical frameworks such as the control–value theory underline the importance of achievement emotions for students' performance and well‐being. We involved minority (n = 63) and majority (n = 103) students attending the first, third, and fifth grade of primary school. We assessed negative achievement emotions (anxiety, anger, embarrassment, boredom, and hopelessness), emotion understanding, and emotion regulation. Factorial analyses supported the goodness of the structure of a questionnaire measuring the five achievement emotions in Italian and mathematics and its invariance across minority and majority students. Analyses of variance indicated that minority students felt more intense anger, embarrassment, and boredom for Italian and anxiety and embarrassment for mathematics. Path analyses revealed that emotion understanding and emotion regulation were significantly related to achievement emotions. Findings are discussed for their theoretical and applied relevance in promoting well‐being at school among minority and majority students.     

Delayed search for a concealed imprinted object in the domestic chick

Five-day-old chicks were accustomed to follow an imprinted object (a small red ball with which they had been reared) that was moving slowly in a large arena, until it disappeared behind an opaque screen. In experiments, each chick was initially confined in a transparent cage, from where it could see and track the ball while it moved towards, and then beyond, one of two screens. The screens could be either identical or differ in colour and pattern. Either immediately after the disappearance of the ball, or with a certain delay, the chick was released and allowed to search for its imprinted object behind either screen. The results showed that chicks took into account the directional cue provided by the ball movement and its concealment, up to a delay period of about 180 s, independently of the perceptual characteristics of the two screens. If an opaque partition was positioned in front of the transparent cage immediately after the ball had disappeared, so that, throughout the delay, neither the goal-object nor the two screens were visible, chicks were still capable of remembering and choosing the correct screen, though over a much shorter period of about 60 s. The results suggest that, at least in this precocial bird species, very young chicks can maintain some form of representation of the location where a social partner was last seen, and are also capable of continuously updating this representation so as to take into account successive displacements of the goal-object. Received: 17 January 1998 / Accepted after revision: 29 March 1998     

Quality of Relationship with Parents and Emotional Autonomy as Predictors of Self Concept and Loneliness in Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: The Moderating Role of the Relationship with Teachers

The present study aims to investigate the impact of family-level variables (emotional autonomy and the quality of the parents-adolescent relationship) on socio-emotional adjustment (loneliness and self-esteem) in adolescents with learning disabilities (LDs) and the role of the quality of the teacher-adolescent relationship in moderating the effects of these impacts. The participants are 293 typically developing adolescents (TD group) and 50 adolescents with learning disabilities (LD group), aged between 13 and 20. The following measures were administered: the Emotional Autonomy Scale (EAS), the Loneliness and Aloneness Scale for Children and Adolescents (LACA), the Assessment of Interpersonal Relations (AIR), and the Multidimensional Self Concept Scale (MSCS). The data showed that adolescents with LDs display significantly higher levels of peer-related loneliness, and lower levels of self-concept and perceived quality of relationships with parents and teachers. No significant differences emerged between the groups in emotional autonomy and in parent-related loneliness. Path analysis indicated that, in adolescents with LDs, emotional autonomy was more closely related to self-concept than in typically developing adolescents. A positive teacher-adolescent relationship could have a moderating effect on the relationships between the dimension considered only in the LD group. The findings have important implications for the implementation of intervention programs focused on social and emotional competences in young people with LDs.     

From individual to social and relational dimensions in asylum-seekers’ narratives: A multidimensional approach

Taking a psychodynamic perspective, the present exploratory study proposes an integrated approach to explore the forced migratory experience, focusing simultaneously on mental health risk and protective factors and on the quality of the subjective experience of migration. We aimed to evaluate trauma and protective factors and to explore in-depth representations and meanings asylum seekers hosted in Italy attribute to their experiences. Levels of trauma and resilience were first evaluated for twenty asylum seekers hosted in two Reception Centres; then, in-depth interviews were administered. Six out of twenty participants presented with symptoms of trauma and all presented with moderately high resilience levels. The interviews were analysed using a quality-quantitative methodology via T-Lab software, and showed four thematic clusters: A godforsaken place; From death to life across the sea; Memories from the past; Searching for a land of care. In line with the identity fracture highlighted in psychodynamic literature, our results show a breakdown between the deeper and original aspects of participants’ identity and their new cultural identity as migrants, which has many social components. Reflections on the implications of the study will be outlined.     

Thought Experiments and Actual Causation

Topoi - Philosophical works on actual causation make wide use of thought experiments. The principal aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments are used in the contemporary debate over...