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Negli ultimi anni l'Ordine delle Psicologhe e degli Psicologi della Liguria ha indagato la salute psicologica dei cittadini liguri, a fronte di un crescente malessere psicologico e un eleva-to utilizzo di antidepressivi nella popolazione ligure rispetto alla popolazione nazionale (Rap-porti SISM 2015 ? 2018). Lo studio attuale riporta i dati di due rilevazioni su campioni indi-pendenti relative al benessere psicologico dei cittadini liguri prima e durante la pandemia da COVID-19, tramite l'utilizzo di una batteria di test psicometrici online. I risultati suggeriscono che la pandemia abbia avuto un impatto sul benessere dei cittadini. In particolar modo si è os-servato un aumento di possibili disturbi depressivi e la presenza di disturbo post-traumatico da stress. Nonostante una diminuzione del benessere psicologico percepito, non si è osservato un aumento della proporzione di individui che riferiscono di essersi rivolti a servizi di supporto psicologico, in particolare per quanto riguarda gli uomini, che si rivolgono a tali servizi in mi-sura nettamente minore rispetto alle donne. É stato inoltre rilevato che le fasce più scolarizzate della popolazione tendono a mostrare una intenzione maggiore di rivolgersi a professionisti della salute mentale.

This study investigates the relations of resilience with coping, personality traits, emotional intelligence, sense of coherence and maladaptive personality traits.The study employs network analysis techniques to the study of resilience, showcasing how these methods can estimate a model that is simple to interpret while still retaining the most important relations and that can even suggest the direction of causality despite using a cross-sectional design (N = 305).The results highlight several important variables that should be considered for fostering resilience, foremost among them the use of positive reappraisal coping, sense of coherence, and the social management aspect of emotional intelligence.The results successfully replicated known associations between resilience and other psychological constructs (emotional intelligence, personality, sense of coherence, coping) and shed light on relations between resilience and maladaptive personality traits. Network analysis considered all these constructs together, so as to take into account the complex pattern of relations between them and offer a bird's eye view of the whole network of associations centred on resilience. The resulting model is parsimonious and easy to interpret while still striving to preserve the complexity of the variables' interrelations.

This study reports the outcomes of a survey investigating the beliefs and self-reported behaviours of a sample of 238 in-service school teachers in Italy and Spain concerning their self-regulated professional learning about the design of learning interventions, an activity generally referred to as Learning Design (LD). The study adopts the lens of the 4C Framework for Self-Regulated Professional Learning, which distinguishes between Consume, Create, Connect and Contribute behaviours. The results indicate that all four Cs are deemed important by respondents, but there are statistically significant differences between perceived importance and behaviours, especially for the two Cs that can be termed 'altruistic' (Connect and Contribute). As for the 'individualistic' behaviours (Consume and Create), the gap between perceived importance and practice is narrower, especially for Create. The main conclusion is that, at least in the teaching populations of the two countries involved, the participatory culture of LD is far from being a reality, despite being strongly advocated in the literature. To this end, the authors believe that to achieve truly collaborative professionalism, responsive actions should be directed especially towards removing motivational and emotional barriers hindering 'altruistic' behaviours.

Digital technologies and social media platforms have been used in museum communication for over a decade now, and Holocaust museums have increasingly adopted them in their modes of commemoration and provision of educational content. Nevertheless, very limited research has been conducted into the potential of social media as new memory ecologies. In this exploratory study, we conceive social media platforms as socio-technical-ecological systems whereby users develop and engage with memory practices of the Holocaust. We adopt a networked socio-ecological approach to analyse how a sample of Holocaust museums (N = 69) develop practices of digital Holocaust memory in social media. The institutions are analysed in terms of "size" (small, medium, or large), how they differ in their attitudes towards these practices, and to what extent they circulate Holocaust memory on social media. The study adopts multiple quantitative approaches and combines the results of a survey with a set of social media metrics analysing how museums engage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube in terms of generated content, interactivity, popularity, and type of content. Results show that museums have an overall positive attitude towards social media although some concerns were expressed, mostly by smaller institutions; they tend to use mostly Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and to share educational content and information about the museum's activities. However, despite a tendency to aggregate a large number of fans and followers, especially in the case of larger institutions, interaction with users remains limited. Prospects for more interactive participation and its implications are also discussed.

The goal of this work is to provide evidence for the cognitive objectification of sexualized targets via a change blindness paradigm. Since sexual objectification involves a fragmented perception of the target in which individuating features (i.e., the face) have less information potential than sexualized features (i.e., body parts), we hypothesized that changes in faces of sexualized targets would be detected with less accuracy than changes in faces of nonsexualized targets. Conversely, we expected that changes in body parts would be detected with higher accuracy for sexualized than nonsexualized targets. These hypotheses were supported by the results of two studies that employed a change blindness task in which stimuli with changes both to faces and bodies of sexualized and nonsexualized images were presented. Unexpectedly, the hypothesized effects emerged both for female and male targets.

This paper presents an empirical study to investigate students’ perspectives and attitude towards distance-learning at the university level in Iraq. Universities were forced to convert from face-to-face (f2f) learning to fully virtual due to the coronavirus covid-19 pandemic. The transition was within two weeks, which probably causes some challenges students might encounter due to this rapid transition. This study aims to highlight any challenges students might face. This would help prevent such challenges in the future time, which could ensure a smooth and seamless learning process over the internet. A mixed methods approach was used with data being gathered using a questionnaire technique with 79 questions; multichoice, scales and open-ended questions; this paper focuses on the quantitative data only. 2746 students responded to this questionnaire from different age groups and different study levels. A set of four challenges’ themes is introduced in this paper, which was driven based on the results of this study. Themes include infrastructure related, pedagogy related, context related, and self-support related.

Stress is a physiological response to internal and external events we call &ldquo, stressors&rdquo, Response to the same daily stressors varies across individuals and seems to be higher for women. A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that women perceive sociality, relationships, and intimacy&mdash, important sources of both stress and wellbeing&mdash, differently from how men experience them. In this study, we investigate how gender, attachment, and touch avoidance predict stress responses on a sample of 335 Italians (216 females, age = 35.82 &plusmn, 14.32). Moreover, we analyze the network of relationships between these variables through multiple linear regression and exploratory network analysis techniques. The results recontextualize the role of gender in determining stress responses in terms of (lack of) confidence and touch avoidance toward family members, attitudes toward relationships seem to be the main determinants of stress responses. These results have implications for reducing stress in both clinical settings and at a social level.

This paper reports on usage and impact on learning achievements of a dashboard developed to help monitor self-regulated learning behaviours in an online professional development path. The design of the path as well as of the dashboard were grounded on a pre-existing conceptual framework distinguishing between four different types of self-regulated learning behaviours taking place in professional learning networks and underpinning professional practice sharing. One of the objectives of the path was to promote such behaviours among participants, and the dashboard was designed to support their self-monitoring. Data were collected through usage log files analysis, a survey, and pretest and posttest. The results shed light on participants' actual usage of the dashboard, their opinion regarding its usefulness in relation of its capability to measure and support their SRL processes, and the dashboard's actual impact on their learning achievements. Moreover, some limitations in the current configuration of the dashboard emerged, which can guide further development.

World Health Organization (WHO) reports emphasize the need to implement new healthcare models centred on Primary Health Care and in this context both WHO and EU recommendations identify the Family and Community Nurse (FCN) as a key actor. However, despite WHO recommendations, there is a lack of standardized Professional Profile for FCN at EU level in the main EU reference tools and classifications. In the effort to address this gap, the ENhANCE (EuropeaN curriculum for fAmily aNd Community nursE) project aims to elaborate a European Professional Profile for FCNs, along with a European Curriculum to become FCN. In this contribution, the Curriculum development process is described. This encompassed four main steps: (1) studying the current educational provision for FCN in Europe, (2) profiling FCN, (3) developing the actual European Curriculum, and (4) instantiating the EU Curriculum into national curricula and validating such localizations through piloting. The preliminary evaluation results of the Professional Profile, the European Curriculum, as well as the national curricula are presented. In the Discussion section, the main criticalities, challenges, as well as strong points are highlighted.

Social touch is essential in relationships and well-being, but the unique personal experience of touch is not assessed and taken into account in health and social care services. The pleasantness of gentle stroking is influenced by gender, toucher genre, toucher familiarity, culture, and age. Moreover, pleasantness is influenced by touch avoidance, the attitude toward interpersonal touch. The aim of this article is to present the translation, adaptation, and validation in Italian of two scales to measure touch avoidance. For translation and validation, we selected the most used scale, the Touch Avoidance Measure (TAM) and a more recent scale, the Touch Avoidance Questionnaire (TAQ). Confirmatory factor analyses reported good model fit for the TAM [comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.947, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.940, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.065] and excellent model fit for the TAQ (CFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.950, RMSEA = 0.058). Internal consistency was high for all subscales, except the TAQ "Stranger" subscale. One-month test-retest reliability ranged from 0.67 to 0.90 for each subscale. Lastly, convergent validity between the TAM and TAQ was also found to be high. We conclude that the TAM and TAQ can be used to assess touch avoidance with Italian samples. The instrument can be used to support healthcare professionals and to assess attitudes toward touch in individuals with interpersonal difficulties.

Questo contributo prende le mosse dai risultati di un progetto H2020, Gaming Horizons3, che ha indagato il ruolo dei giochi digitali nella società e, in particolare, ha approfondito il rapporto tra giochi e apprendimento in contesti formali e informali. Nell'ambito del progetto è stata analizzata la letteratura scientifica (Persico et al 2017), la documentazione ufficiale del programma H2020 per quanto riguarda le politiche adottate dalla Comunità Europea in merito ai giochi (Perrotta et al 2017), sono stati intervistati rappresentanti dei vari stakeholder interessati al trinomio giochi, apprendimento e società (Persico et al 2017b) e sono stati organizzati workshop finalizzati a far emergere esperienze e riflessioni di tutti gli attori coinvolti su questi temi (Persico et al 2019).

Research in the social sciences devotes a great amount of attention to investigating the impact of video games on the individual and on society. However, results generated by this research often fail to inform game development. The present study investigated the outreach of research conducted by the academic community by interviewing 30 game developers and 14 researchers, highlighting critical aspects in the relationship between game research and game industry. Specifically, we found that the difference in priorities, speed cycles, and dissemination practices between these two contexts hinder communication. Subsequently, we carried out a focus group for a set of developers and researchers (N=6) with the aim of eliciting recommendation for improving communication between academics and developers. Among the recommendations to emerge were calls to diversify dissemination channels, promote joint conferences and develop research-production partnerships. It was felt such measures could strengthen the influence of research results outside the academic community.

In questo articolo riportiamo gli esiti di un'indagine svolta tra i docenti della scuola italiana durante il periodo del COVID-19 in un momento in cui la didattica on-line era stata ormai avviata in tutte le scuole e i processi si potevano considerare allo stato stazionario, prima delle nuove fibrillazioni causate dall'avvicinarsi degli scrutini e degli esami. Lo scopo è stato quello di produrre un'istantanea di un'esperienza unica nella sua portata, di identificarne le criticità e, al contempo, i fattori in grado di modificare il punto di vista sull'uso dell'online nella didattica. Tra le criticità emerse, seppur con rilievo percentuale diverso: l'inadeguata connettività individuale alla rete, la mancanza di una preparazione specifica dei docenti, l'impiego di spazi casalinghi non sempre ottimali per lo svolgimento della didattica online. D'altro canto si è anche riscontrata una percentuale piuttosto elevata, 32%, di docenti che desidererebbero utilizzare in futuro la modalità mista nell'erogazione dei processi didattici. Tra i fattori positivi registrati: un contesto tecnologicamente pronto, la sensazione di empowerment e di competenza nell'utilizzo delle tecnologie, la possibilità di riprodurre le dinamiche educative più diffuse e utilizzate dai docenti (es. dinamiche d'aula). Da ultimo, ma non fattore secondario, una grande disponibilità dei docenti a passare sopra alle difficoltà per poter assicurare la continuità didattica. La scommessa per il futuro sembrerebbe essere quella di riuscire ad amplificare i fattori positivi e ridurre le barriere assicurando, al contempo, una formazione adeguata e mirata sia in ingresso che durante tutto il corso della vita lavorativa.

Language scientists have broadly addressed the problem of explaining how language users recognize the kind of speech act performed by a speaker uttering a sentence in a particular context. They have done so by investigating the role played by the illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs), i.e., all linguistic elements that indicate the illocutionary force of an utterance. The present work takes a first step in the direction of an experimental investigation of non-verbal IFIDs because it investigates the role played by facial expressions and, in particular, of upper-face action units (AUs) in the comprehension of three basic types of illocutionary force: assertions, questions, and orders. The results from a pilot experiment on production and two comprehension experiments showed that (1) certain upper-face AUs seem to constitute non-verbal signals that contribute to the understanding of the illocutionary force of questions and orders; (2) assertions are not expected to be marked by any upper-face AU; (3) some upper-face AUs can be associated, with different degrees of compatibility, with both questions and orders.

Formative assessment is regarded as one of the main challenges in MOOC research and practice. While MOOC participants need formative assessment and feedback to self-regulate their own learning, providing timely and personalised feedback to large cohorts of students poses issues in terms of scalability and sustainability that require designers to work out technological solutions to produce effective feedback. This paper puts forward a proposal for a type of feedback which is particularly suited to assess non declarative knowledge, like critical thinking about a complex subject. The feedback proposed relies on the power of comparison with peers' opinions and practice, and is complementary to the most well-known technique of peer review, which requires some degree of synchronicity between participants. The proposed feedback consists in visualising a table containing the answers and behaviours of individual participants side-by-side to descriptive statistics of the analogous data concerning the whole cohort. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected to investigate self-reported usefulness and potential of the feedback. While usefulness was statistically higher the mid-point of the scale, no significant difference was found when considering the nature of data (answers to surveys vs actions carried out) as an independent variable. A few suggestions on how to improve this feedback were also identified.

This paper explores the relationship between digital games and learning along the continuum from formal to informal learning. Games are an increasingly important component of our learning ecologies but their potential can prove difficult to fully harness due to the downsides of gaming in informal contexts and to the limitations games can present when adopted in formal learning contexts. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of games for learning, and to gather stakeholder recommendations for the main actors in the field. The adopted research approach is qualitative and participatory, involving players, teachers, parents, researchers and developers. Data from 25 interviews and 11 focus groups yielded insights into the educational, psychological and ethical aspects of play. Results suggest that gameplay influences individuals in a very personal manner, and that its effects cover a wide range of skills, extending to identity development. Hence, to harness this potential, all actors in the ecology need strong awareness of both the affordances and the risks of games, and deep respect for individuals' LEs. The study has implications for a wide range of actors, including educators, players, researchers, parents, game developers and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] uracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

University ranking systems are being implemented with the aim of assessing and comparing higher education institutions at a global level. Despite their being increasingly used, rankings are often strongly criticized for their social and economic implications, as well as for limitations in their technical implementation. One of these limitations is that they do not consider the specific characteristics of online education. This study used a participatory approach to define a set of criteria and indicators suitable to reflect the specific nature of distance education. This endeavour will help evaluate and rank online higher education institutions more appropriately than in current practice, where indicators are devised for traditional universities. To this end, several stakeholders and informants were involved in a Delphi study in an attempt to reach the broader higher education institutions (HEI) community. According to the study participants, apart from students’ achievements and general quantitative measures of HEI performance, which are quite common in traditional ranking systems, teaching and student learning experience turned out to be the most important criteria. Student support, teacher support, technological infrastructure, research and organization were deemed middle ground criteria, while sustainability and reputation were regarded as the least important criteria.

La pandemia por el COVID-19 tomó al mundo por sorpresa en muchos aspectos. Uno de los campos más afectados es la educación, en México millones de estudiantes cambiaron alaprendizaje en línea de un día para otro. En este documento se presentan los resultados de un cuestionario aplicado a profesores universitarioscon la finalidad de entender su percepción acerca de este cambio. Participaron 187 maestros, principalmente del estado de Jalisco (51%) y al menos un profesor de 25 de los 32 estados de la República Mexicana. Los principales resultados muestran que, con esta experiencia, los profesores han cambiado su perspectiva acerca de la educación en línea, mostrando su interés por utilizar esta modalidaden el futuro, y considerándolasustentable y viable. Sin embargo, también extrañan el salón de clase; la falta delaboratorios y la interacción personal, y la desigualdad económica son las principales desventajasde la educación a distancia.

Detecting the emotional state of others from facial expressions is a key ability in emotional competence and several instruments have been developed to assess it. Typical emotion recognition tests are assumed to be unidimensional, use pictures or videos of emotional portrayals as stimuli, and ask the participant which emotion is depicted in each stimulus. However, using actor portrayals adds a layer of difficulty in developing such a test: the portrayals may fail to be convincing and may convey a different emotion than intended. For this reason, evaluating and selecting stimuli is of crucial importance. Existing tests typically base item evaluation on consensus or expert judgment, but these methods could favor items with high agreement over items that better differentiate ability levels and they could not formally test the item pool for unidimensionality. To address these issues, the authors propose a new test, named Facial Expression Recognition Test (FERT), developed using an item response theory two-parameter logistic model. Data from 1,002 online participants were analyzed using both a unidimensional and a bifactor model, and showed that the item pool could be considered unidimensional. The selection was based on the items' discrimination parameters, retaining only the most informative items to investigate the latent ability. The resulting 36-item test was reliable and quick to administer. The authors found both a gender difference in the ability to recognize emotions and a decline of such ability with age. The PsychoPy implementation of the test and the scoring script are available on a Github repository. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Human factors are the most relevant issues contributing to adverse events in obstetrics. Specific training of Crisis Resource Management (CRM) skills (i.e., problem solving and team management, resource allocation, awareness of environment, and dynamic decision-making) is now widespread and is often based on High Fidelity Simulation. In order to be used as a guideline in simulated scenarios, CRM skills need to be mapped to specific and observable behavioral markers. For this purpose, we developed a set of observable behaviors related to the main elements of CRM in the delivery room. The observational tool was then adopted in a two-days seminar on obstetric hemorrhage where teams working in obstetric wards of six Italian hospitals took part in simulations. The tool was used as a guide for the debriefing and as a peer-to-peer feedback. It was then rated for its usefulness in facilitating the reflection upon one’s own behavior, its ease of use, and its usefulness for the peer-to-peer feedback. The ratings were positive, with a median of 4 on a 5-point scale. The CRM observational tool has therefore been well-received and presents a promising level of inter-rater agreement. We believe the tool could have value in facilitating debriefing and in the peer-to-peer feedback.

The business of a sentence is not only to describe some state of affairs but also to perform other kinds of speech acts like ordering, suggesting, asking, etc. Understanding the kind of action performed by a speaker who utters a sentence is a multimodal process which involves the computing of verbal and non-verbal information. This work aims at investigating if the understanding of a speech act is affected by the gender of the actor that produces the utterance in combination with a certain facial expression. Experimental data collected show that, as compared to men, women are less likely to be perceived as performers of orders and are more likely to be perceived as performers of questions. This result reveals a gender bias which reflects a process of women’s subordination according to which women are hardly considered as holding the hierarchical social position required for the correct execution of an order