Career Adapt-Abilities Scale-Italian Form: Psychometric proprieties with Italian preadolescents

During preadolescence children start to give attention to the future, to formulate thoughts, and to wonder about what they want. They also acquire knowledge and experiment with strategies to assist them in designing their future career. Among the constructs that can now play a relevant role in life designing, the four resources of career adaptability have a prominent role. This article reports the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale-International Form 2.0 for a group of middle school students. Two different studies involving Italian preadolescents were conducted. The first study tests the instrument's multidimensional structure, internal consistency and discriminant validity. The second one verifies the factorial structure's across-gender invariance and the test–retest reliability. Results provide strong psychometric support for the CAAS-Italian Form with preadolescents as a valid measure for analyzing their career adaptability and for using it in career counseling and education.     

Perceived warmth and competence of others shape voluntary deceptive behaviour in a morally relevant setting

The temptation to deceive others compares to a moral dilemma: it involves a conflict between the temptation to obtain some benefit and the desire to conform to personal and social moral norms or avoid aversive social consequences. Thus, people might feel different levels of emotional and moral conflict depending on the target of the deception. Here we explored, in a morally relevant setting, how social judgements based on two fundamental dimensions of human social cognition – ‘warmth’ and ‘competence’ – impact on the decision to deceive others. Results revealed independent effects for warmth and competence. Specifically, while people are less inclined to deceive for self-gain those individuals they perceive as warm, they also tend to lie more to highly competent others. Furthermore, the perceived warmth and competence modulated the general tendency to reduce deceptive behaviour when there was a risk of disclosure compared to when the lying was anonymous, highlighting the importance of these judgements in social evaluation processes. Together, our results demonstrate that the emotional costs and personal moral standards that inhibit engagement in deceptive behaviour are not stable but rather malleable according to the target and the consequences of the deception.     

Psychotherapy Research Needs Theory. Outline for an Epistemology of the Clinical Exchange

This paper provides an analysis of a basic assumption grounding the clinical research: the ontological autonomy of psychotherapy—based on the idea that the clinical exchange is sufficiently distinguished from other social objects (i.e. exchange between teacher and pupils, or between buyer and seller, or interaction during dinner, and so forth). A criticism of such an assumption is discussed together with the proposal of a different epistemological interpretation, based on the distinction between communicative dynamics and the process of psychotherapy—psychotherapy is a goal-oriented process based on the general dynamics of human communication. Theoretical and methodological implications are drawn from such a view: It allows further sources of knowledge to be integrated within clinical research (i.e. those coming from other domains of analysis of human communication); it also enables a more abstract definition of the psychotherapy process to be developed, leading to innovative views of classical critical issues, like the specific-nonspecific debate. The final part of the paper is devoted to presenting a model of human communication—the Semiotic Dialogical Dialectic Theory–which is meant as the framework for the analysis of psychotherapy.     

Predicting the job and life satisfaction of Italian teachers: Test of a social cognitive model

This study tested a social cognitive model of work and life satisfaction (Lent & Brown, 2006, 2008) in a sample of 235 Italian school teachers. The model offered good overall fit to the data, though not all individual path coefficients were significant. Three of five predictors (favorable work conditions, efficacy-relevant supports, and positive affectivity) produced significant, direct paths to job satisfaction. Job satisfaction, progress at personal work goals, and positive affectivity were predictive of teachers' life satisfaction. Task self-efficacy was related indirectly both to job satisfaction (via work conditions) and life satisfaction (via goal progress). Implications of the findings for future research and efforts to promote teachers' job satisfaction are discussed.     

Recovering from conflict in romantic relationships: a developmental perspective

This study adopted a developmental perspective on recovery from conflict in romantic relationships. Participants were 73 young adults (target participants), studied since birth, and their romantic partners. A novel observational coding scheme was used to evaluate each participant's degree of conflict recovery, operationalized as the extent to which the participant disengaged from conflict during a 4-min "cool-down" task immediately following a 10-min conflict discussion. Conflict recovery was systematically associated with developmental and dyadic processes. Targets who were rated as securely attached more times in infancy recovered from conflict better, as did their romantic partners. Concurrently, having a romantic partner who displayed better recovery predicted more positive relationship emotions and greater relationship satisfaction. Prospectively, target participants' early attachment security and their partners' degree of conflict recovery interacted to predict relationship stability 2 years later, such that having a partner who recovered from conflict better buffered targets with insecure histories.     

Long- and short-term plastic modeling of action prediction abilities in volleyball

Athletes show superior abilities not only in executing complex actions, but also in anticipating others' moves. Here, we explored how visual and motor experiences contribute to forge elite action prediction abilities in volleyball players. Both adult athletes and supporters were more accurate than novices in predicting the fate of volleyball floating services by viewing the initial ball trajectory, while only athletes could base their predictions on body kinematics. Importantly, adolescents assigned to physical practice training improved their ability to predict the fate of the actions by reading body kinematics, while those assigned to the observational practice training improved only in understanding the ball trajectory. The results suggest that physical and observational practice might provide complementary and mutually reinforcing contributions to the superior perceptual abilities of elite athletes. Moreover, direct motor experience is required to establish novel perceptuo-motor representations that are used to predict others' actions ahead of realization.     

Career Adapt-Abilities Scale-Italian Form: Psychometric properties and relationships to breadth of interests,quality of life,and perceived barriers

The Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS)-Italian Form consists of four 6-item scales, which measure concern, control, curiosity, and confidence as psychosocial resources for managing occupational transitions, developmental tasks, and work traumas. The 24-item CAAS-Italian Form is identical to the International Form 2.0. The factor structure was similar to the one computed for combined data from 13 countries. Internal consistency estimate for the four subscale and total scores was good. Concurrent validity evidence was collected on perceived internal and external barriers, breadth of interests, and quality of life. Correlations resulted as predicted and showed adaptability related negatively to perceived barriers and positively to breadth of interests and quality of life. As expected, analyses of variance showed that adolescents with higher adaptability perceive fewer barriers, express a broader range of interests, and report a higher quality of life.     

Career adaptability,hope and life satisfaction in workers with intellectual disability

The unpredictable and unstable current work market is impacting in particular at-risk workers, such as individuals with disability. Based on Life Design approach, the present study focused on two variables, career adaptability and hope, relevant to coping with the current work context and their role in affecting life satisfaction. A partial mediational model between career adaptability and life satisfaction, through agency and pathway (hope), was tested. 120 (60 women and 60 men) adult workers with mild intellectual disability were involved. Results provided support for the model. Specifically, career adaptability indirectly, through agency and pathway, predicted life satisfaction. These results have important implications for practice and underscore the need to support workers with disability in their life design process.