- Rome, Lazio, Italy
- Psychology, Management, Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Race and Ethnicity, Personality Psychology, and 15 moreOrganizational Psychology, Personality, Stereotypes and Prejudice, Individual Differences, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, Power (social), Intergroup Relations, Intergroup Conflict (Psychology), Social Dominance Orientation, Taxonomy, Behavioral Ecology, Impulsivity, Intertemporal Choice, Big three, and Patienceedit
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Objective: Prolonged social withdrawal (PSW) or hikikomori and problematic internet use (PIU) have attracted the attention of mental health experts worldwide. The scientific literature suggests a complex relationship between these... more
Objective: Prolonged social withdrawal (PSW) or hikikomori and problematic internet use (PIU) have attracted the attention of mental health experts worldwide. The scientific literature suggests a complex relationship between these conditions and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) or disorders. In the present cross-sectional study, we tested the role of PIU symptoms as a moderator of the relationship between symptoms of PSW and PLEs in a sample of 238 Italian emerging adults. Method: Data was collected using the 25-item Hikikomori Questionnaire, the Internet Disorder Scale, the Brief Prodromal Questionnaire, and the Brief Symptom Inventory. In addition, lifetime psychological disorders and drug and alcohol use during the last month were explored. No participant reported a lifetime episode of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorder. Results: Symptoms of PSW and PIU were significantly associated with PLEs total distress and PLEs total number of symptoms endorsed, after adjustment for age and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Further, PIU symptoms moderated the relationship between symptoms of PSW and PLEs total distress (b= 2.745, s.e.= 1.089, p= 0.012). However, PIU symptoms did not moderate the relationship between PSW and PLEs total symptoms (b= 0.615, s.e.= 0.349, p= 0.078). This study is limited because the participants were most likely university students and because of the cross-sectional design. Conclusions: Findings from this study partially support the role of high symptoms of PIU as a risk factor in the relationship between symptoms of PSW and PLEs. Future longitudinal research is needed to confirm our findings examining the temporal relationship between PSW, PIU, and PLEs using both dimensional and categorical approaches.
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A valid tool that contributes to the diagnosis of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is represented by the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire 2007... more
A valid tool that contributes to the diagnosis of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is represented by the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire 2007 (DCDQ'07). Recently we developed the Italian version of DCDQ (DCDQ-Italian). The aim of this study was to further analyze the psychometric properties in a sample of Italian school children aged 5-12 years and to establish cut-off scores with respect to age groups. A total of 698 parents completed the DCDQ-Italian and 45 of them repeated it after 2 weeks for test-retest reliability. One hundred and seventeen children were tested using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children. Confirmatory factor analysis supported this version to be consistent with the original. Cronbach's alpha for the total score was 0.89 and test-retest reliability was 0.88. Two-ways ANOVA for total and single subscales showed a significant main effect for age group only and not for gender. Sensitivity and specificity for our community based sample were 59% and 65% respectively, considering the cut-off scores for the 15th percentile of M-ABC and increasing when age groups were taken into account (ROC curve=0.62). The agreement with the original was good if 15th is considered. This is the first study on the psychometric property of DCDQ in a community sample of Italian children. The DCDQ-Italian could be used as a screening tool for motor coordination difficulties in Italian children. Slight differences in cut-offs should be considered when using this version.
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ObjectivesThe Gaia program is a 12‐week mindfulness intervention based on cultivating body, emotional, and ecological self‐awareness, which has been shown to be effective in reducing children's and adolescents' internalizing... more
ObjectivesThe Gaia program is a 12‐week mindfulness intervention based on cultivating body, emotional, and ecological self‐awareness, which has been shown to be effective in reducing children's and adolescents' internalizing problems at school. This paper presents the results of a cluster randomized controlled trial aimed at assessing the effectiveness of this program on improving psychological well‐being, subjective well‐being, and psychological distress in early adolescents.MethodsA sample of 195 early adolescent students (boys, n = 99; girls, n = 96) with a mean age of 11.49 years (standard deviation = 0.80) attending 12 middle school classes participated in the study. Seven Gaia instructors belonging to six schools led the program. Measures were administered at three time points, approximately every 3 months: 1 week before treatment, 1 week after treatment, and 3 months after treatment. We used a multilevel regression model to test whether treatment was effective in incr...
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Why are people willing to denounce or, contrarily, to keep silent on others’ misconduct? We hypothesized that people would be more likely to cheat, and consequently less likely to blow the whistle, when among an ingroup (vs. outgroup). In... more
Why are people willing to denounce or, contrarily, to keep silent on others’ misconduct? We hypothesized that people would be more likely to cheat, and consequently less likely to blow the whistle, when among an ingroup (vs. outgroup). In two experiments, participants witnessed a same nationality or a different nationality group member cheating during a group task. Participants either had the opportunity to cheat themselves before witnessing this cheating act (Experiments 1 and 2) or did not have this opportunity (Experiment 2). In the ingroup condition, participants cheated more and denounced others’ cheating less than in the outgroup condition (Experiments 1 and 2). However, when participants were not allowed to cheat themselves, they equally denounced ingroup and outgroup cheaters (Experiment 2). This provides evidence that cheating mediates the group effect on whistleblowing and is reminiscent of omertà, that is, the code of silence among criminals. We provide suggestions for future research.
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Populism and Conspiracy beliefs seem to represent the zeitgeist of people depending on fast and simple information retrieved through social media. The Covid-19 emergency has simply catalyzed this process, not without consequences.... more
Populism and Conspiracy beliefs seem to represent the zeitgeist of people depending on fast and simple information retrieved through social media. The Covid-19 emergency has simply catalyzed this process, not without consequences. Supported by literature review, we hypothesize that the higher the populist attitude the higher the tendency in believing in conspiracies, and that both higher populist attitudes and conspiracist beliefs may induce people in underestimating health related risks that may be reflected in a lowered tendency in adopting preventive health behaviors against Covid-19 spread. Data collected during the quarantine (December 2020, March 2021) mainly supported our hypotheses. Results are discussed in accord with the dramatic consequences it may have overconfidence in undermining the adoption of preventive health behaviors.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Harm
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The present study investigated the moderating role of early communicative pointing on the developmental trends of word comprehension and production over the second year of life. Seventy-seven infants were involved in an experimental... more
The present study investigated the moderating role of early communicative pointing on the developmental trends of word comprehension and production over the second year of life. Seventy-seven infants were involved in an experimental pointing task (T-POINT) in sessions at 9 and 12 months, and the MB-CDI questionnaire was filled in by their parents at 15, 18 and 24 months. Based on the age at which the infants were seen to use pointing, they were classified into three groups: the ‘Early’ pointers, who first pointed during the 9-month session; the ‘Typical’ pointers, who first pointed in the 12-month session; and the ‘Late’ pointers, who never pointed in either of the sessions. Using multilevel modelling, we traced the developmental trajectories and individual differences for the two lexical domains of word comprehension and production according to the three pointing groups. The main results showed that compared to the Typical pointers: (i) the Early pointers were faster for word compr...
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The goal of this intensive longitudinal study was to trace the developmental trajectories of infant pointing production, through consideration of the modality (i.e. pointing alone vs pointing–vocal coupling) and the communicative... more
The goal of this intensive longitudinal study was to trace the developmental trajectories of infant pointing production, through consideration of the modality (i.e. pointing alone vs pointing–vocal coupling) and the communicative intention (i.e. imperative vs declarative). Multilevel analysis was used to model the normative trend and the individual differences in pointing trajectories. Eighteen Italian infants participated in this study and were followed monthly from 9 to 18 months of age. The infants were involved in a structured task designed to elicit imperative and declarative pointing (T-POINT). The proportion of pointing for each participant as a function of age, modality (pointing alone vs pointing–vocal coupling) and context (imperative vs declarative), and the interactional effects, were modelled. Random effects among participants for age trends were estimated. This analysis defined the following: (1) a significant linear increase in pointing production, without and with vo...
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Work engagement may be defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related psychological state characterized by the dimensions of vigor, dedication, and absorption. In this study, the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the... more
Work engagement may be defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related psychological state characterized by the dimensions of vigor, dedication, and absorption. In this study, the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) were investigated by using two samples of Italian (n = 668) and Dutch (n = 2213) white-collar employees. In addition to reliability analyses, we also conducted a series of multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses of the UWES-9. The validity of the UWES-9 was investigated by studying its correlations with the Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scale (JAWS) and with a measure of work performance. Results showed that a three-factor solution of the UWES-9 is invariant across the Italian and Dutch samples, with data supporting factor variance and covariance invariance in addition to metric invariance. Internal consistencies of the vigor, dedication, and absorption scales are good. The UWES-9 and its subscales show sign...
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Adolescent, Anxiety, Humans, Business and Management, and 15 moreHigh School, Female, Confirmatory factor analysis, Construct Validity, Checklist, Developmental disabilities, Interpersonal Relations, Aged, Functional Neurology, Adult, ANXIETY, Factor structure, Cognition disorders, Avoidance Learning, and Confirmatory factor analyses
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Literature shows that people having their peak performance in the evening (as opposed to morning) tend to experience greater sleep inertia during working days because they accumulate a sleep debt that it is compensated only during the... more
Literature shows that people having their peak performance in the evening (as opposed to morning) tend to experience greater sleep inertia during working days because they accumulate a sleep debt that it is compensated only during the weekend (also known as "social jet-lag" effect). Such sleep inertia not only determines lower efficiency but also lower alertness during morning, a condition that favors the increase of both thought suppression and ruminative processes. The present study is aimed to investigate whether the relationship between sleep inertia and the increase in ruminative processes is mediated by thought suppression. A sample of university students was involved in a cross-sectional study. Results support the mediation effect of thought suppression. The present study, even if with all the limits of the cross-sectional design, discuss results supporting the hypothesis that people with greater sleep inertia in their attempt to deal with negative mood tend to recu...
☯ These authors contributed equally to this work.
Description The Function performs a parallel analysis using simulated polychoric correlation matri-ces. The nth-percentile of the eigenvalues distribution obtained from both the randomly gener-ated and the real data polychoric correlation... more
Description The Function performs a parallel analysis using simulated polychoric correlation matri-ces. The nth-percentile of the eigenvalues distribution obtained from both the randomly gener-ated and the real data polychoric correlation matrices is returned. A plot compar-ing the two types of eigenvalues (real and simulated) will help determine the number of real eigen-values that outperform random data. The function is based on the idea that if real data are non-normal and the polychoric correlation matrix is needed to perform a Factor Analysis, then the Par-allel Analysis method used to choose a non-random number of factors should also be based on ran-domly generated polychoric correlation matrices and not on Pearson correlation matrices. Ran-dom data sets are simulated assuming or a uniform or a multinomial distribution or via the boot-strap method of resampling (i.e., random permutations of cases). Also Multigroup Parallel analy-sis is made available for random (uniform and mu...
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Videogaming is an increasingly popular activity among teenagers and adults around the world. The present study aims to adapt and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Assessment of Internet and Computer Game... more
Videogaming is an increasingly popular activity among teenagers and adults around the world. The present study aims to adapt and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Assessment of Internet and Computer Game Addiction Scale (AICAs-Ita), a scale recently developed and validated in Germany. Three separate studies were conducted: the first to confirm the factorial structure of the scale, the second to evaluate the validity of the construct, and the third to assess whether AICAs-Ita scores can predict levels of depression and anxiety among gamers. To this end, three different samples of Italian adolescents were involved (aged between 14 and 19) who were asked to complete the AICAs-Ita, in addition to the GAMS and BIS-11 scales for study 2, and CESD and STAY for study 3. The results underlined the psychometric quality of AICAs-Ita in terms of reliability and validity. The Italian version of the scale therefore appears to be a useful tool for assessing video g...
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The association among alexithymia, somatic symptoms and clinical correlates has been scantly investigated in children. The present study examined alexithymic features and somatic symptomatology in schoolchildren with high and low levels... more
The association among alexithymia, somatic symptoms and clinical correlates has been scantly investigated in children. The present study examined alexithymic features and somatic symptomatology in schoolchildren with high and low levels of depression, testing the role of depressive symptoms in mediating the associations between alexithymia and somatic symptoms. Seven-hundred schoolchildren were involved in this study and divided into two subgroups (8–10 years and 11–14 years) in order to test differences according to the age. Participants completed the Children’s Somatization Inventory-24 for the assessment of somatic symptoms, the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children to evaluate alexithymic features and the Children’s Depression Inventory-2 to investigate depressive symptoms. Results showed that children with high levels of depression reported both higher alexithymia and somatic symptoms levels. Despite a direct effect of alexithymia on somatic symptoms, the mediation analyses also highlighted an indirect effect of alexythimia on somatic symptoms through depressive symptoms. Findings suggested that a depressive symptomatology may clarify why schoolchildren with high alexithymia scores tend to report higher levels of health problems. Results also support the possibility that depressive symptoms may contribute to the development of somatic symptomatology among schoolchildren in the presence of high levels of alexithymia.
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In the last years, intimate partner violence (IPV) became a relevant problem for community and for social life, particularly in young people. Its correct assessment and evaluation in the popula-tion is mandatory. Our objectives were:... more
In the last years, intimate partner violence (IPV) became a relevant problem for community and for social life, particularly in young people. Its correct assessment and evaluation in the popula-tion is mandatory. Our objectives were: Confirm factor structure of Dating Violence Question-naire (DVQ) and investigate its convergent and divergent validity. The DVQ along with other personality measures were filled by a sample of 418 university students (Females = 310) of av-erage age of 23 y.o. (SD = 4.71). A subsample of participants (223 students) consented in being involved also in retest and filled also the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (short form) and a brief scale for describing the behavior of the (past) partner after the breaking of the relationship (BRS). The 8-factor structure, with respect to the two other competing mod-els, reported better fit indexes and showed significant correlations with other personality mea-sures. Personality traits, both Neuroticism and Psy...
The aims of the study were to investigate factor structure and reliability of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC), originally validated by Rieffe et al. (2006), on an Italian population. A total sample of 1265 participants,... more
The aims of the study were to investigate factor structure and reliability of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC), originally validated by Rieffe et al. (2006), on an Italian population. A total sample of 1265 participants, ranging in age from 8 to 14 years, filled in the Italian version of the AQC and 160 children also completed the Youth Self Report (YSR), during school time. A sub-sample (N = 60) was retested after eight weeks for an assessment of the measure’s stability. The three-factor model reported good fit indices on the total sample, even though not all items loading on the Externally Oriented Thinking (EOT) factor appeared statistically relevant. Moreover, the model was only partially invariant across gender and age groups: analysis indicated developmental gender-specific differences on Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF) and EOT factors. Significant correlations were found between AQC scores and the YSR internalizing and externalizing symptomatology scales...
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Description The Function performs a parallel analysis using simulated polychoric correlation matrices. The nth-percentile of the eigenvalues distribution obtained from both the randomly generated and the real data polychoric correlation... more
Description The Function performs a parallel analysis using simulated polychoric correlation matrices. The nth-percentile of the eigenvalues distribution obtained from both the randomly generated and the real data polychoric correlation matrices is returned. A plot comparing the two types of eigenvalues (real and simulated) will help determine the number of real eigenvalues that outperform random data. The function is based on the idea that if real data are non-normal and the polychoric correlation matrix is needed to perform a Factor Analysis, then the Parallel Analysis method used to choose a non-random number of factors should also be based on randomly generated polychoric correlation matrices and not on Pearson correlation matrices.
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Since the diffusion of recent models of mobile phones, anyone with an internet connection can communicate continuously and search for information. This raises some questions about the possible consequences of problematic mobile phone use... more
Since the diffusion of recent models of mobile phones, anyone with an internet connection can communicate continuously and search for information. This raises some questions about the possible consequences of problematic mobile phone use (PMPU) in a complex life phase such as adolescence. Therefore, we performed a psychometric analysis of the brief version of the Test of Mobile Phone Dependence (TMD) in Italy. The sample comprised 575 Italian adolescents aged 11 to 18 years. Data were collected using the TMD-brief, the Personality Inventory for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Sleep Disturbance Short Form. Regarding test dimensionality, the best-fit measurement model included four factors: “Abstinence”; “Abuse and interference with other activities”; “Tolerance”; and “Lack of control” (Satorra–Bentler χ2 (48) = 185.96, p < 0.01; robust root mean square error of approximation...
The literature on bullying victimization shows that bullying among children and adolescents has increased dramatically. Several studies have explored the distinctive features of those who bully other children and those who are victimized... more
The literature on bullying victimization shows that bullying among children and adolescents has increased dramatically. Several studies have explored the distinctive features of those who bully other children and those who are victimized by bullies. The aim of the present study was to explore whether somatic complaints may play a mediational role in the relationship between shyness and aggressive behaviors. One hundred and eighty children (Mean age = 9.11; SD = 0.86) attending primary and middle public schools of the centre of Italy were involved in this study. Participants were asked to complete the following measures: Olweus Bullying Questionnaire; Children’s Shyness Questionnaire (CSQ); Children’s Somatization Inventory (CSI-24). Findings confirm the presence of a relation between shyness and bullying victimization when somatic complaints are also considered. The mediating model shows that the direct effect of shyness on bullying victimization is not significant, however, its ind...