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Remedial activities are considered by many authors as an effective strategy for preventing and reducing school dropout. In recent years however, numerous studies showed evidence that we cannot point to one factor that influences the decision to leave school and to only one strategy to prevent or reduce it. Meanwhile the results in the field of social and emotional development emphasize the essential role of these skills in school success. This is way more and more researchers and practitioners recommend that school dropout must be looked at and addressed from a more complex perspective. In the present study we aimed to evaluate the impact of a complex intervention program, developed in order to prevent and reduce school dropout for 242 students from disadvantaged backgrounds in Vâlcea County. The children were tested at the beginning and at the end of the program using 6 scales selected from BASC and ASEBA evaluation systems. Due to the pandemic situation, the questionnaires measuring adaptability, social skills, learning abilities, affective problems, anxiety problems and ADHD problems have been completed by teachers, using google forms application. Using ANOVA with repeated measures, the data collected emphasize that the proficiency profile of primary school and secondary-school children, changes significantly between the results obtained in pre- and post-test, for all variables evaluated. The data collected showed that the program increases adaptability to the school environment and learning skills, and anxiety, loneliness and inattention decrease significantly. Even though, we considered it necessary to identify demographic factors that may impact the effectiveness of such an intervention. Practical implications for similar future projects, are further discussed in the article.

Deception is a common phenomenon in everyday life, yet some people generally lie more than others and some people consider lying more acceptable than others do. Current knowledge about lie acceptability across development or about the individual differences in emotion or personality which shape it is still in an incipient stage. We aimed to expand this emerging body of knowledge by investigating lie acceptability across three educational stages (primary school, middle school and high school) in a sample of 821 children and adolescents, ages 7 to 18. We also examined several predictors of lie acceptability assessed with the Behavioural Assessment System for Children and Adolescents (BASC): anxiety, sensation seeking, social desirability, attitudes towards school and teachers, and relationships with peers and parents. Lower anxiety and lower sensation seeking predicted middle school children's reduced lie acceptability. We showed that positive attitudes towards school and teachers predicted lower lie acceptability for primary and middle school children, but were not significant predictors for high school children. For middle school children, better peer relationships also predicted lower lie acceptability. This suggests that various predictors contribute differently to shaping lie acceptability across development, which can prove instrumental in designing age-appropriate interventions to reduce deceptive behaviour.

The intensity of healthy positive emotions could determine our ability to savour our lives fully. Focused reappraisal strategies which are effective in reducing negative unhealthy emotions could also have the effect of down-regulating positive emotions. Objective: The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of the extensive use of reappraisal strategies on changes in overall levels of emotional intensity. Methods: Our sample consisted of 108 subjects. Based on our experimental design, images from NAPS were used as positive and negative emotional stimuli. The valence and arousal of the emotional responses were measured. The subjects' responses were categorised on the basis of which of the eight focused reappraisal strategies they applied. We used Linear Regression in order to test our hypothesis. Results: Based on our data, we identify justification and humour as reappraisal strategies that can lead to a decrease in the valence of positive emotions, with acceptance having an effect on the arousal of both negative and positive emotions. Conclusions: Our results suggest that in order to decrease unhealthy negative emotion, without at the same time reducing our ability to savour our lives by also decreasing the level of positive emotions, optimum levels of justification, humour and acceptance, used as reappraisal strategies, are needed. Limitations and recommendation for future research regarding emotional self-regulation interventions are identified and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study investigated the effect of moral stories on children's honesty during a temptation resistance paradigm in a large sample of 3 to 6-year-olds (N = 296). Both children and their parents were also asked to anticipate if a child vignette protagonist would confess to a minor misdeed and also to predict the consequences of this potential confession. Research Findings: Moral stories emphasizing positive or negative consequences for confessions of a misdeed did not significantly alter children's deceptive behavior. Moreover, the protagonist's expected confession in the vignette also proved unrelated to children's own transgression (peeking), subsequent lying behavior, or to their subsequent confession of the transgression in the temptation resistance paradigm. Parents and children concurred in anticipating that the vignette protagonist would confess. However, while most children expected aversive consequences for the protagonist confession (punishment), most parents expected non-aversive, positive ones (mainly praise and encouragement). Practice or Policy: Our results do not support the benefits of reading moral stories about fictional characters for promoting honesty. Children and parents had divergent interpretations of the consequences of confessions. Practices encouraging honest behavior should reduce punitive behaviors and reward children's truth telling, which is not what most children consider to be the case, despite their parents' views on the topic.

This paper reports the results from a school-based intervention for primary and elementary children evaluating the AWAKE project. The AWAKE intervention is a universal program that can be applied by teachers and is designed to improve children's executive functions and well as their social and emotional well-being. 141 children aged from 6 to 14 from Romania and Austria were involved in the study and 50 teachers implemented the intervention. Out of the 141 children 37 of them had some learning difficulties, 25 children had a difficult social background, and 39 of them had some social and emotional problems as identified by their teachers. The intervention program lasted for 10 weeks with sessions implemented twice a week. Our results showed that children improved their working memory, inhibitory control, planning and behaviour regulation. Moreover, they showed great reduction of their emotional problems, as well as decreased behaviour problems and increased social behaviours. Future studies should investigate the potential of such activities for improving children's academic performance, as well as the benefits of including them in the school curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional arousal can both enhance and impair memory. Considering that both emotional memory and trait anxiety (TA) have been associated with adrenergic activity, the authors investigated whether there is an association between 2 opposite emotional memory biases and the TA. The authors used a procedure recently put forward by B. A. Strange, R. Hurlemann, and R. J. Dolan (2003) to elicit an emotion-induced retrograde amnesia (ERA) coupled to an emotional memory enhancement (EME). The authors contrasted the association between these emotional memory biases and the TA in several conditions involving different levels of encoding and types of recall. The results presented here indicated a significant interaction of the TA with EME and ERA and the dependency of these biases on the consciously controlled use of memory.

Accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) has been reported in healthy older individuals, and is a possible early marker for risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Verbal Associative Learning and Memory Test (VALMT) addresses methodological weaknesses in existing clinical tests and has detected ALF in epilepsy within an hour. We used VALMT to investigate learning and forgetting in healthy Older participants. Older (60–69 years) and Younger (19–31 years) participants were compared. Using VALMT, unrelated word pairs were learnt to criterion, then cued-recall tested at delays of 5, 30, and 55 min. Unique pairs were tested at each delay. Subjective memory complaints data was gathered, and the Wechsler Memory Scale Logical Memory test (WMS-LM; a standard clinical measure) was administered. VALMT identified a significant difference in delayed recall between Younger and Older groups by 55 min (d = 1.32). While "fast-learning" Older participants scored similarly to Younger participants, "slow-learning" Older participants were impaired at all delays. Forgetting rates suggested degradation of memory starts during early synaptic consolidation rather than later system-level consolidation. Increased subjective memory complaints were associated with reduced VALMT scores. By contrast, WMS-LM failed to identify significant differences between any groups, and did not correlate with memory complaints. We conclude that VALMT may be better able than WMS-LM to identify subtle impairments in healthy older adults within a single clinical visit, and VALMT results better reflect subjective experience. Older slow-learners forget faster and report more subjective memory complaints, which may indicate a group at risk of developing AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main developmental tasks of emerging adulthood is finding the answer to the question "Who am I"? This quest can be guided directly and indirectly by parents, culture, faith, and social context. Finding the answer before starting adulthood can contribute to the individuals' well-being later on in life. By using inductive thematic analysis, we aim to explore and capture the personal view of religious faith in a sample of Orthodox Christian religious emerging adults from Romania. The in-depth interviews allowed for a theme relating to identity and religious teachings from parents to emerge in an organic manner. Following the protocol for our inductive analysis, we reviewed the research literature on these topics. We begin by presenting the review of the literature on the main concepts that relate to our data. We continue by presenting the data from a small segment of an extended qualitative research. Finally, we discuss the implications on a theoretical level both from a psychological and theological perspective, and also on a practical one by referring to psychological and theological aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive and behavioral interventions are widely used in dealing with anxiety problems. Many musicians face high anxiety levels when they have to perform in front of an audience, thus requiring efficient interventions. Studies investigating interventions for music performance anxiety (MPA) are highly heterogeneous, making it difficult to implement a meta-analytic analysis for all the intervention types investigated. However, there are several studies that investigate the effects of cognitive and behavioral interventions. Thus, the main aim of our study was to investigate the efficacy of cognitive and behavioral interventions in managing MPA symptoms in musicians. We reviewed 14 studies which included musicians (N = 392) who were confronted with high/dysfunctional levels of MPA. Overall, findings indicated a positive medium effect size (Cohen's d = 0.53). We also tested the influence of several moderators related to intervention characteristics (e.g., type of intervention, type of control group, selection criteria) or participant characteristics (age, percentage of women). Although the differences we found were not statistically significant, the trend of the results was in line with previous research. Theoretical and practical implications for MPA are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In times of pandemic and afterwards, online platforms and settings have been intensively used. With the purpose of investigating how this setting affected our memory, recent studies have found that memory distortions are present in online environments as well. Therefore, the objective of the present research was to assess misinformation effect in online context, more specifically to assess misinformation effect using leading questions and suggestibility techniques in online format. Our results indicate the presence of misinformation effect through suggestibility, but not through leading questions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, a total of 17,804 participants from 62 cultural regions completed the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ), a self-report measure of adult romantic attachment. Correlational analyses within each culture suggested that the Model of Self and the Model of Other scales of the RQ were psychometrically valid within most cultures. Contrary to expectations, the Model of Self and Model of Other dimensions of the RQ did not underlie the four-category model of attachment in the same way across all cultures. Analyses of specific attachment styles revealed that secure romantic attachment was normative in 79% of cultures and that preoccupied romantic attachment was particularly prevalent in East Asian cultures. Finally, the romantic attachment profiles of individual nations were correlated with sociocultural indicators in ways that supported evolutionary theories of romantic attachment and basic human mating strategies. Keywords: romantic attachment; culture; internal working models; human mating strategies

Cognitive psychology attempts to understand the nature of the human mind by using the information-processing approach. In this article, the fundamentals of the cognitive approach will be presented. It will be argued that the human mind can be described at three levels--computational, algorithmic-representational, and implementational--and that the cognitive approach has both important theoretical and practical/clinical implications. Finally, it will be suggested that the study of cognitive psychology can provide a foundation for other fields of social science, including the field of clinical psychology. Keywords: cognitive psychology; information-processing approach; human mind

Faith and meaning-making are essential for improving well-being and building healthy personalities. Through inductive thematic analysis, we aimed to capture the particular nuances of meaning-making in a sample of Orthodox Christian religious emerging adults from Romania. The present research takes into consideration cultural and social aspects, that were explored through in-depth interviews. By following a thematic analysis protocol, we immersed ourselves in the religious and spiritual reality of these emerging adults. Following the protocol for our inductive analysis, we reviewed the research literature on these topics. Thus, we begin with the presentation of the existing literature on the main concepts and the implications of our focus on emerging adulthood. We continue with the qualitative research and the presentation of the main theme and subthemes that have emerged. Lastly, connections were made between positive and negative religious coping and the implications for psychological well-being during emerging adulthood and the impact later in life. The practical implications are discussed both for psychological aid specialists (e.g., psychological counselors, psychotherapists) and theological aid professionals (e.g., confessor priest or spiritual director). We argue that this research could further develop the dialogue and collaboration between psychological and theological specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]