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Access to youth culture by adolescents has changed as new communication technologies have found new ways of offering media content to viewers. Adolescents today access more content more frequently. However, the greater their exposure, the higher the likelihood of this leading to risk behaviors such as access to pornography, plagiarism, piracy and copyright violation. The aim of the present study is, therefore, to determine the frequency of these risk behaviors linked to the Internet content accessed and downloaded by minors, analyzing this variable in accordance with gender, age and context (Spain, Italy and Greece). We analyzed the responses provided by 2,529 adolescents (1,264 girls/1,262 boys) aged between 10 and 17 years from Spain, Italy and Greece. In general, adolescent boys, especially those aged 16 and 17 years, reported engaging more frequently in risk behaviors, particularly in reference to accessing youth culture content. Likewise, in terms of context, the highest means were observed among participants from Attica (Greece) and the Madrid Region (Spain), whereas the lowest means were observed in the Marche Region (Italy) and Navarre (Spain). The results revealed statistically significant differences in terms of gender, age and context. Thereby, they highlight the importance of focusing on media education from a gender perspective.

Accumulating literature suggests that the risk of perpetrating bullying is greater among those who have been bullied. The association between the transition from victim to bully and revenge aggression suggests the critical role of forgiveness. However, evidence on the mediating role of forgiveness on the victimisation-bullying association is still sparse. The aim of this study was to investigate the mediating effect of person's dispositional forgiveness (DF) on the relationship between cyber-victimisation (CV) and cyber-bullying (CB) and to explore the moderating effect of gender on this relationship. Four hundred eighty-one upper secondary students (n = 481, 47.8% females, mean age = 17.2, SD = 1.5) completed the Florence Cyber-Bullying -- Cyber-Victimisation Scales and the Heartland Forgiveness Scale. Statistical analysis reveals significant direct and indirect effects between CV, DF, and CB latent variables. CV has a negative influence on DF and positive influence on CB behaviour. Furthermore, there was an indirect influence of CV on CB behaviour following the path through DF only in females. The results suggest that DF seems to decrease CB behaviours by buffering the adverse outcomes of being CV, particularly among female victims. The findings underline the relevance of forgiveness within preventative interventions against bullying and cyberbullying.

School bullying and cyberbullying are serious public health problems that negatively affect the lives of school-aged children. We examined the correlation between risk behaviors and lack of resiliency factors with bullying and cyberbullying across seven Mediterranean countries. The sample consisted of 33,399 adolescents (51.1% girls) aged 11, 13, and 15 years who participated in the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey in 2018 in Greece, Israel, Italy, Macedonia, Malta, Portugal, and Spain. Bivariate logistic regressions were conducted to test the relationship between risk behaviors, resilience, and bullying. All risk behaviors and lack of resiliency factors examined were related to involvement in bullying as a victim, perpetrator, or bully-victim, both in school and cyberbullying. Moreover, the odds of involvement in school bullying and cyberbullying increased as the number of risk behaviors and the lack of resiliency factors grew. Our results may contribute to the development and implementation of anti-bullying programs.

Background: Italy was one of the first European countries to be affected by COVID-19. Due to the severity of the pandemic, the Italian government imposed a nationwide lockdown which had a great impact on the population, especially adolescents. Distance-learning, moving restrictions and pandemic-related concerns, resulted in a particularly stressful situation. Objective: This cross-sectional study aims to analyse substance consumption and its associated factors during the COVID-19 lockdown imposed by the Italian government. Methods: ESPAD is a questionnaire that is administered yearly in Italian high schools. In 2020, it was administered online during dedicated hours of distance learning, collecting data from 6027 Italian students (52.4% were male) aged 15-19. Data collected from the 2020 questionnaire was matched with that collected in 2019, in order to make them comparable. Results: The prevalence of consumption of each substance decreased during the restriction period, and the most used substance during the lockdown period was alcohol (43.1%). There were some changes in factors associated with psychoactive substance use, especially painkillers and non-prescription drugs. For instance, unlike what was observed in the 2019 model, in 2020 spending money without parental control was associated with painkillers and non-prescription drug use while risk perception was not. Conclusions: The restrictions and the increased difficulties in obtaining psychoactive substances did not prevent their consumption, and students with particular risk factors continued to use them, possibly changing the substance type of substance. This information is useful in order to better understand adolescents' substance use during the ongoing pandemic.

This study explored the profiles of Longitudinal Life Environmental Satisfaction (LLES) during the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluating their predicting role in social-emotional adjustment in children and early adolescents. 488 children (M[subscript age] = 8.54; SD = 0.63), and 129 early adolescents (M[subscript]age = 11.08, SD = 0.48) completed two questionnaires, pre-COVID-19 (T1) and in June 2021 (T2). Results showed two profiles, the risk profile characterized by a decrease in LLES and the second profile with stable, high levels of satisfaction. LLES profiles moderated the impact of time on children and adolescents' social-emotional adjustment. Specifically, children prosocial behaviour decreased in the risk profile, while independent participation remained stable. Self-efficacy decreased in both profiles for early adolescents, but only in the risk profile for children. Findings suggested that only children were able to benefit from systems wellbeing stability during the pandemic, improving their social-emotional adjustment. Findings supported the impact of the pandemic on social-emotional adjustment, especially for those who showed a disruption of systems satisfaction.

The use of the Internet among children and adolescents is now a norm in many parts of the world. As the Internet offers a wide range of benefits to these ones, so does it expose them to possible various risks and harm. Researchers in different countries across the world have engaged in the production of relevant research-based knowledge in order to make the virtual world a safe place for the younger ones. However, while studies have been carried out on the subject of Internet risk among children and adolescents, there is a dearth of information on the assessment of research activities across different parts of the world. The present study employed Bibliometric techniques to determine research productivity patterns across the different regions and countries of the world. All relevant publications indexed in Google Scholar were collected between November and December, 2018. The findings of the study reveal that while countries in the American and European regions of the world have been very productive in researching on the subject, the same is not the case with their African counterparts.

The aim of this article is to explore how drama activities can provide an opportunity for adult migrants to develop their competence in the language of the host community, in this case Italian, in a protected and anxiety-free space. Language anxiety has been classified as a specific feeling of apprehension due to the risks language learners may be required to take during the learning process, and which they may perceive as threatening. When it is adult migrants who are engaged in the learning of a new language, such anxiety might easily be aroused by specific socio-cultural factors, such as power relationships, the awareness of belonging to a minority, and the need to use an unknown language to demonstrate their skills. The article will describe how the Process Drama approach -- which includes drama-based activities that can be adapted to the needs and preferences of learners -- can be used to enable migrants to gain greater self-confidence in their foreign language knowledge and skills. The task-based nature of Process Drama engages learners through the pleasure of creation, self-expression and discovery, and promotes interaction and cooperation among the members of the group. The paper includes observations gathered in the field: it will describe how Process Drama activities were adopted during two workshops for migrants in the city of Padova in northern Italy, conducted in 2018 and early 2019. The workshops were facilitated by the authors themselves and the data analyzed consists of teacher logs and focus group discussions.

Mind-mindedness (MM) refers to caregivers' proclivity to treat a child as having an active and autonomous mental life. It has been shown to be a powerful predictor of many developmental outcomes and to mitigate the impact of risk conditions. However, longitudinal studies on MM reporting changes over time and individual differences among mothers have been scant and quite inconclusive, mainly due to the investigation of changes between only two time points. The current study analyzes MM's developmental trajectories across four time points (3, 6, 9, and 12 months of infants' age) along with the moderating effects of four variables (maternal sensitivity, age, education, and family income). The sample included healthy mother-infant dyads (N = 93, 46 female infants), belonging to monolingual Italian predominantly middle-class families, with 15% (n = 14) classified as low income (below the relative poverty threshold). The dyads were videotaped during semistructured play interactions and transcripts were coded for appropriate mind-related comments (AMRCs) and nonattuned mind-related comments (NAMRCs). Mothers' AMRCs, compared to NAMRCs, showed more temporal stability. Both AMRCs and NAMRCs showed a linear decrease with individual differences across dyads decreasing over time, and dyads becoming increasingly similar one with the other. Low income moderated the normative trend of appropriate mind-related comments. These findings suggest that MM, while depending largely on an individual trait at earlier ages, when infants' mental states are less intelligible, adapts to the increase of infants' sociocommunicative repertoire over time. They also highlight the importance of ecological constraints on the quality of caregiving.

The pandemic has highlighted and accentuated some potential risks and critical issues already present in several educational contexts: the widening of educational poverty, the increase in the digital and cultural divide and the expansion of learning loss and of the implicit and explicit early school leaving. In this regard, the case study developed in a period just prior to the pandemic, on the one hand, has highlighted some critical issues of the teaching-learning relationship, while, on the other hand, it has deepened the strengths concerning the teaching-learning relationship in order to improve learning to learn and learning to teach for students and teachers in contemporary complexity. The results show that facing the current complexity means understanding the cultural aspects that guide today's ways of learning and teaching based on technologies. The relevance of these aspects concerning meanings and practices of teaching and learning is understandable, taking into account the rapid and profound changes in the current world in which we live. In summary, the results of this educational research on the analysed teaching and learning practices can be useful both to treasure today's lessons learned and to copy the unexpected changes that each crisis proposes like the current one.

In recent years, bullying and cyberbullying against teachers by students have been recognized as problems affecting educators teaching in different grades. Few studies to date have addressed explanatory risk factors related to the perpetrators (students) rather than the victims (teachers) in a longitudinal design, in order to establish the possible causes of this antisocial behavior to better develop prevention and intervention programs to reduce teacher victimization. The main aim of the present study is to analyze the effect on teacher victimization of individual and interpersonal risk factors, including empathy, moral disengagement, peer and parent support, awareness of online risks, and school climate. A total of 251 Italian students (aged 11-19) participated in a longitudinal study. The results showed that, for girls, high moral disengagement, low awareness of online risks and poor school climate were risk factors for later teacher victimization. For boys, high moral disengagement and low awareness of online risks were also risk factors, in addiction to low parental support and high peer support. The findings are discussed along with possible applications for prevention and intervention.

This study explores the relation between risk of job automation and participation in adult education and training (AET) and examines variation in that relation across welfare regimes distinguishing between situational and institutional barriers. Using microdata of PIAAC, we analyze participation in formal or nonformal AET for job-related reasons in relation to the risk of automation of the respondents' occupation after controlling for main sociodemographic characteristics. Logistic regression models are run on respondents from 14 European countries representing different welfare regimes: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (Scandinavian countries); Italy, Greece, and Spain (Southern European); Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland (Central and Eastern Europe), Belgium, France, and Germany (Continental); and United Kingdom and Ireland (Anglo-Saxon countries). Our findings confirm that workers in occupations at high risk of automation were found to be consistently less likely to participate in job-related AET, quite irrespective of welfare regime. [The paper was presented at XIII Conferenza Espanet Italia--Il welfare state di fronte alle sfide globali (Venezia, 17 September 2020).]

Safety of minors is one of the focus of parents and any social media company. Companies strive to design and improve safety policies to combat online abuse involving minors. However, parents play a much more critical role in the online safety of their children. The study explores parents' perception of social media risks and their level of awareness about minor safety on these platforms based on qualitative interviews conducted with 25 Italian parents. The results indicate that mothers are keener to use restrictions compared to fathers, most educated parents display more awareness as well as more trust in institutions and schools, whilst older parents are less likely to use mitigation strategies on their children, admitting their lack of ability to approach new technologies. For this reason, more support should be provided by institutions or social media platforms to parents less technical savvy, who do feel left behind new technological trends.

Purpose: This study aims to test the role that organizational sociopsychological variables may play in influencing job stress and work engagement in an organizational identity change scenario. Design/methodology/approach: On a sample of 118 employees of an Italian company in the personnel training services sector, multivariate statistical analysis tests a pattern where organizational variables such as work support (by supervisors and coworkers, independent variables) -- moderated by corporate identification (moderating variable) -- and mediated by organizational trust (mediating variable) -- boosts employee work engagement and lowers psychosocial risks (dependent variables). Findings: The mediating effect of "organizational trust" is significant in the relationships of "supervisor social support" and "coworker social support" with the "absence of psychosocial risks." Moreover, an increase in supervisor social support can lead to a statistically significant increase in work engagement. This occurs only for employees with low or medium identification and not in highly identified individuals. Originality/value: The findings from the analysis on moderation are of primary importance because they show us a new perspective that can play the role of a guiding and practical principle on how to act on an organization's human resources, specifically targeting those with lower or medium corporate identification.

The paper explores the opportunities and challenges of combining media literacy and social-emotional literacy to promote mental health and well-being in school curricula. It describes the implementation of an experimental module within the program "Crescere insieme What's Up" (Growing up together What's Up). This upstream prevention and health promotion program, from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region (north-eastern Italy) is designed to harness the protective effects of developing and strengthening life skills to move beyond risk factors to prevent youth suicide, fostering connections and support between school and mental health institutions, peers and adults. The program activities involved role plays and reflection activities, collaborating in project group work, consulting and producing media (such as articles, YouTube videos and PowerPoint presentations) for peer-to-peer education. It adopted an experiential approach enabling active engagement of high school students, their parents and teachers, and 'learning by doing' with agency and responsibility. Qualitative feedback from students and teachers, study limitations and further implications are discussed.

The lockdown due to COVID-19 in Italy resulted in the sudden closure of schools, with a shift from traditional teaching to the online one. Through an online questionnaire, this survey explores teachers' experience of online teaching, the level of risk factors (e.g., stress) and protective factors (e.g., locus of control) and their impact on satisfaction levels during the social distancing. One hundred seven high school teachers from Lombardy, an Italian region very affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, participated. Results show that depression and stress are the main predictors of satisfaction levels for online teaching. In addition, coping, locus of control and self-efficacy emerge as important protective factors. Finally, although there is great satisfaction with the online teaching experience, critical elements emerged. This study is relevant because it describes the critical elements of the online teaching experience, and identifies some protective factors and the main risk factors in teachers operating in an area strongly marked by social restrictions imposed by the pandemic. High school teachers emerge as a sub-group of the general population with specific psychological reactions. Considering the results, it is possible to suggest providing high-quality educational support and crisis-psychological oriented services to teachers, and help to maintain the psychological well-being.

Knowledge about the role of empathy, emotional self-efficacy, and loneliness on early adolescents' depressive symptoms is scarce. The main aims of the study were to investigate the following: (a) the role of empathy and emotional self-efficacy (additive and interactive) on loneliness and depressive symptoms, taking into account gender differences and (b) the possible mediating role of loneliness in the relationship between emotional predictors and depressive symptoms. Three hundred forty-eight Italian early adolescents (48% girls; mean age, 13; SD = 0.3) completed an anonymous self-report questionnaire at two time points (1 year apart). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze data. Results indicated the following: (a) high empathy and low emotional self-efficacy were related to higher subsequent loneliness and depressive symptoms; (b) emotional self-efficacy moderated the relationship between empathy and loneliness and, only for girls, between empathy and depressive symptoms; (c) no mediation role of loneliness between emotional predictors (empathy and emotional self-efficacy) and depressive symptoms was found. Results are discussed in relation to preventive interventions targeting early adolescents.

While accumulating literature is demonstrating the role of the dopamine transporter (DAT) in predicting emotional-behavioural difficulties in adults of at risk populations, only few studies have focused on the possible association between the methylation status of the DAT promoter and the psychopathological risk of mothers, fathers and children in normative samples. The pattern of methylation of M1-M7 loci present in the 5'-untranslated promoter region (5'-UTR) of DAT1, and parental and offspring psychopathological risk were assessed in a sample of 152 families with 5-year-old-children, employing principal components (PCAs) and cluster analyses. Parents' psychopathological symptoms were assessed through SCL-90/R; children's emotional-behavioural functioning was evaluated through C-TRF. Cluster analysis allowed to form three clusters; cluster 1 is primarily composed by children with low-/middle-risk profiles; most of children with high-risk are in this cluster, and had parents with mild/high psychopathological risk; children in cluster 2 showed low-risk profiles and their parents had low/mild psychopathological risk; children in cluster 3 were predominantly at middle risk and had parents with low psychopathological risk. Analysis of results shows that DNA methylation occurs in different loci of DAT1 according to patterns of psychopathology and that psychopathological risk is specifically associated with hyper-methylation or hypo-methylation of these loci.

The study is aimed at exploring, through lexical analysis, the courageous actions performed by elementary school students. Five hundred ninety-two Italian children were interviewed about the most courageous action that they had ever performed during their life. Exploratory cluster analysis with Iramuteq was run to analyse the children's answers and four clusters were found. The first cluster referred to actions performed with physical risks (physical courage). The second cluster referred to actions to protect or defend others, especially peers, in difficult and unpleasant social situations (moral courage). The third cluster referred to courageous actions in dealing with threats concerning personal well-being (psychological courage) and the fourth cluster referred to physically and psychologically courageous actions. Gender differences were found for the first and third cluster with girls reporting more physical courage and boys more psychological courage. The study has important implications for research and practice.

The article presents preliminary findings from a family survey about children's experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown, which was administered through the pediatric network SICuPP (Italian Society of Primary Care Pediatricians -- Lombardy) in Northern Italy. The study involved 3443 parents with children aged from 1 to 5 years and from 6 to 10 years living in Lombardy region, the earliest and most severely affected by the COVID-19 emergency. All participants completed an online questionnaire and provided informed consent. Respondents generally displayed confidence and a sense of self-efficacy in relation to how they had coped with the COVID-19 emergency, despite the many difficulties encountered during the lockdown. They reported having observed some unexpected improvements and resources (e.g. parent/child and sibling relationships, adaptiveness and autonomy on the part of children). Parent-to-parent solidarity was commonly reported, although a small percentage of parents had experienced a greater sense of isolation and anxiety. Finally, the study indicated 'key areas of vulnerability' (concerning, for example, eating, rules, sleeping, use of technological devices, fears …) that should be monitored in future by strengthening the territorial network linking families, educational services, and health services.

Framed within an ecological perspective of the onset of adolescent problem behaviors, the current study explored the joint role of parent-adolescents' relationships and youth's individual factors in binge eating and drinking. Firstly, in line with pieces of research highlighting the beneficial impact of effective parenting on youth development, the present paper sought to enhance the knowledge about the positive influence of parental monitoring on youth's binge drinking and eating. Moreover, since literature evidenced that the explanatory mechanisms of the association between parental monitoring and binge behaviors are not fully explored, the study focused on the potential intervening role of sensation seeking and life satisfaction as mediators. The study design was cross-sectional and self-report questionnaires were administered among a population of 944 high school students (M = 16.35, SD = 1.31) living in Palermo (Italy). Path analysis showed that parental monitoring was directly and negatively related to both binge eating and binge drinking. Moreover, sensation seeking negatively mediated the relationships between parental monitoring and both binge behaviors, whereas life satisfaction only mediated between parental monitoring and binge eating. The current study provided data useful to understand the complex interrelations between intrapersonal (life satisfaction and personality trait, i.e. sensation seeking) and contextual factors (parent-child relationships) that may discourage or cause eating and alcohol use disorders among youth. Finally, implications for parents and practitioners working with youngsters were discussed.

This study aims to evaluate the influence of fathers' negative feelings, parenting stress and post-traumatic symptomatology experienced after the premature birth of their infant on mother-child interaction and on infant's development in the perinatal period. Forty-five fathers and 45 mothers of preterm infants (GA = 30.25 ± 2.95; birth weight = 1288.02 ± 488.76) filled out:Impact of Event Scale Revised, Profile of Mood States and Parenting Stress Index Short Form. At 3 months of infants' corrected age, mother-child interactions were assessed by Global Rating Scales (GRS) and the development of the preterms was tested by Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Higher scores in paternal feelings, stress and post-traumatic symptomatology predicted lower scores in Global Rating Scales dimensions and in the Bayley Scales of Infant Development scales. Feelings and stress experienced by fathers of preterms should be considered risk factors for the building of mother-child interaction and for the early language development of preterms.

The link between identity and creativity has received surprisingly little attention from developmental psychology researchers, although flexibility and the ability to generate multiple solutions to problems are key competences for contemporary society based on continuous innovation and de-standardization of development trajectories. These competences are critical for identity formation processes, mainly during late adolescence when young people have to explore and commit to defining themselves. This study was concerned with exploring the relationships between creative and identity processes to identify typologies of 'creativity-identity interplay' in late adolescence. The participants comprised 315 late adolescents attending the last 2 years of Italian high schools. Two self-report measures were used: Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale and Test of Divergent Feeling. Participation was voluntary and anonymity was guaranteed. Our findings confirm the relationship between identity and creativity, identify six identity statuses (moratorium, critical exploration, achievement, early closure, diffusion, and searching moratorium), and they describe differences in terms of creativity processes involved in identity formation. Suggestions for future research and limitations are discussed.

Online exchange of sexual content ("sexting") is associated with potentially negative consequences, especially for girls. We investigated possible associations between family functioning and girls' sexting. Italian teenage girls (N = 250; M[subscript age] = 16.36 years; SD[subscript age] = 1.88) completed online surveys that evaluated family functioning (communication, flexibility, cohesion, disengagement, chaos, enmeshment, and rigidity) and five sexting behaviors: (a) engaging in sexting, (b) sexting with a partner, (c) number of people with whom girls share sexts, (d) nonconsensual forwarding of sexts, and (e) sexting for emotion regulation. We found that engaging in sexting, sexting for emotion regulation, and the number of people with whom girls share sexts were predicted by age and low family communication. Sexting with a partner was predicted by age and high flexibility, and nonconsensual forwarding of sexts was positively predicted by enmeshment.

In this paper we draw attention to people who journey from one temporal and spatial setting towards another in the 'South', who aspire to a reconfigured sense of belonging, prosperity and wellbeing, and their multilinguality and multilingualisms. Through three vignettes of journeys we illustrate how in changing of place that linguistic diversities are encountered and mediated. During moments of North-South and South-South entanglement and exception we argue that multilingualisms re-ecologise along horizontal axes of conviviality, and / or re-index along vertical axes of exclusion. We suggest that 'rooting' and 'rerouting' multilingualisms are not only multidimensional, but they are also multifaceted as people who choose or are obliged to experience dis-placement, undertake journeys of anticipation of replacement into regulated or unregulated situations. Multilingualisms in the memories, dreams, complex selves, materiality and complicities of coping have yet to receive sufficient attention from linguists. We attempt to capture these aspects and suggest that southern multilingualisms have much to offer and entice northern multilingualisms. We illustrate how closely integrated are multilingual repertoires with mobilities and temporalities of dislocation and change; with loss, nostalgia and the anticipation of new beginnings; and with multi-scaled complicities between individuals as they re-calibrate lives in turbulent and changing circumstances.

In this study, we analyse the relationship between competition and programmatic diversification in 75 Italian universities from the academic years of 2003/2004 to 2011/2012. Results show that local competition, rather than national competition, influences programmatic diversification. The relationship between local competition and programmatic diversification is found to be quadratic such that when competition increases, diversification decreases and specialisation increases, and both relationships are reversed after a certain threshold. We argue that under moderate levels of competition, universities tend to respond to local competition for students by differentiating their programmatic offerings from their competitors. However, when the level of competition is minimum or extreme, universities tend to follow an isomorphic strategy. After the reduction in student demand and the reform of the higher education system in 2008/2009, the relationship was no longer curvilinear because universities operating in extremely competitive environments began to adopt more risk-taking behaviour by engaging in diversification strategies.

In the European academic systems, the public funding to single universities depends on many factors, which are periodically evaluated. One of such factors is the rate of success, that is, the rate of students that do complete their course of study. At many levels, therefore, there is an increasing interest in being able to predict the risk that a student will abandon the studies, so that (specific, personal) corrective actions may be designed. In this paper, we propose an innovative temporal optimization model that is able to identify the earliest moment in a student's career in which a reliable prediction can be made concerning his/her risk of dropping out from the course of studies. Unlike most available models, our solution can be based on the academic behavior alone, and our evidence suggests that by ignoring classically used attributes such as the gender or the results of pre-academic studies one obtains more accurate, and less biased, models. We tested our system on real data from the three-year degree in computer science offered by the University of Ferrara (Italy).

A considerable literature in economics and psychology observes substantial gender differences in risk aversion, confidence, and responses to high pressure. In the educational measurement literature, it has been argued that these differences could disadvantage female students when taking multiple-choice tests, especially if there is a penalty for wrong answers. Using a dataset of multiple-choice exams, the author investigates this issue by analyzing the number of unanswered questions. Since most individuals take this exam repeatedly, differences after a failure also can be observed. The results in this article show that there are significant differences between men and women: in the second and third attempts women omit more questions than men. However, this is also the case in the first attempt after excluding the best students.

Background: Children with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT) frequently show problems in language development. However, a clear description of the communicative patterns of these children is still lacking. Aims: To describe the first stages of language development in children with SCT in comparison with those in typically developing (TD) children. The purpose was to verify the existence of possible differences in communicative skills (in both vocal and gestural modality) and identify the presence of possible early predictors (i.e., low vocabulary size and low gesture production) of later language impairment in children with SCT. Methods & Procedures Fifteen 24-month-old children with SCT (eight males with Klinefelter syndrome (KS) and seven females with triple X syndrome (TX)) and fifteen 24-month-old TD children (eight males and seven females) participated in the study. Their spontaneous communicative productions were assessed during a semi-structured play session in interaction with a parent. In addition, their vocabulary size was assessed using a parental report (the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories). Outcomes & Results: With regards to their vocabulary size, 60% of children with SCT (75% of children with KS and 43% of children with TX) were at risk for language impairments (i.e., they had a vocabulary size smaller than 50 words). In addition, TD children showed better lexical and syntactic skills than children with SCT in their spontaneous communicative productions. However, the production of communicative gestures was higher in children with SCT than in TD children. Boys with KS appeared to differ from TD males in more aspects of communication than girls with TX differed from TD females. Conclusions & Implications The study showed the importance of early detection of language risk factors in children with SCT, while also considering the use of compensatory strategies (e.g., the use of communicative gestures).

'Gender Ideology' ('GI'), as an expression, appeared at the beginning of this century within documents of the Catholic Church with the aim of delegitimising what had been produced in the field of Gender Studies. That intent was strongly clarified, being coincident with the discussion in France about the law on equal marriage, during the protests of Manif pour Tous. Likewise, in Italy, oppositions to draft laws about homophobia and civil unions generated movements unified by the denouncing of 'GI'. This essay presents research conducted between 2014 and 2017 about online materials of some Italian associations that are positioned as 'GI opponents'. The content analysis underlines the use of a violent communication style that aims to create alarm and panic regarding presumed 'gender drifts' within social and educational contexts. This operation reveals the attempt to reaffirm an anthropological vision of sexuality based on the hierarchical--complementary relationship between male and female. The analysis highlights the risk of a sort of 'Silence Spiral', where -- in the face of a noisy and violent minority -- numerous and various voices disappear. These voices differentiate and invoke the urgency of a deeper debate about the concept of gender and its implications within educational, social and ecclesiastical contexts.

The research on families of the gifted is extremely limited. In the past, families of the gifted have been studied mainly for two reasons: to discover how family life creates or supports giftedness or eminence, or to understand how one gifted child affects siblings. Few studies, however, have examined the impact of gifted children on the lives of parents. Most studies highlight that many gifted have unique needs and vulnerabilities. Although there is limited empirical research on the experience of parenting a gifted child, there is clinical and anecdotal evidence that the role presents unique parenting challenges. This article presents preliminary research data on the experiences of parenting a gifted child within the family. The authors embrace a risk and resilience model, supported by clinical data obtained from families with a gifted child seen at a leading center for gifted children in Milan.

This article explores how new public management policy ideas and technologies circulating in the globalised education space have been re-contextualised in the re-design of the Italian Higher Education System. In doing so, it uses the governmentality studies as a sensitising framework to problematise what we term here as the "calculative and instrumental turn" in the evaluation of Higher Education. The work reflects on the complex assemblage of forms of knowledge, technical means and collective and individual subjects through which the evaluation of the Italian universities unfolds in its current form. The attempt is to highlight the changes produced in how Higher Education and its ethical subjects are thought and their qualities are conceived and appraised. The article presents some conclusive remarks on some of the paradoxical risks of the Evaluation turn, namely contractualisation, depoliticisation and fabrication, but also insists on its reflexivity potential, interpreting the current developments as a missed opportunity.

This paper examines individual and institutional characteristics which may influence the outcomes of university students' careers. Withdrawals, course changes, delays and graduations of students enrolled in first-cycle degree courses in a large public university in Italy are examined. Individual longitudinal data from administrative archives were used, taking into account both the temporal dimension and the organisational and structural characteristics of the degree courses. Results indicate that the profile of a successful student is defined by both socio-demographic factors and pre-university educational experience. At course level, restricted access to courses, study fields and course size were important for students' university careers.

In the present analysis, we test the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking in a cross-national sample of over 5,200 individuals aged 10 through 30 (M = 17.05 years, SD = 5.91) from 11 countries. We examine whether reward seeking and self-regulation make independent, additive, or interactive contributions to risk taking, and ask whether these relations differ as a function of age and culture. To compare across cultures, we conduct 2 sets of analyses: 1 comparing individuals from Asian and Western countries, and 1 comparing individuals from low- and high-GDP countries. Results indicate that reward seeking and self-regulation have largely independent associations with risk taking and that the influences of each variable on risk taking are not unique to adolescence, but that their link to risk taking varies across cultures.

The aim of this study was to investigate factors mediating the effects of Luoghi di Prevenzione (LdP) smoking prevention intervention based on social competence and social influence approaches, and characterized by peer-led school-based interventions, out-of-school workshops, school lessons, and by enforcing the school anti-smoking policy. Students aged 14-15 years in 13 secondary schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy (989 students) were randomly assigned to the LdP intervention or a control condition. The baseline and follow-up surveys were carried out before and 18 months after the intervention, respectively. The outcomes were cigarette daily and frequent smoking and smoking at school. Multilevel multiple mediation analyses were carried out in order to study effect mediation. The mediators were normative perception, positive and negative beliefs, refusal skills for smoking, social acceptability perception, risk perception, smoking knowledge and awareness about dangers of second-hand smoking. The intervention effects were explained by the social influence component through the mediator refusal skills for smoking. The programme also showed to significantly increase risk perception and smoking knowledge, even though these mediators had no effect on smoking. Moreover, LdP intervention directly reduced smoking in school areas. Future interventions should maintain and strengthen the LdP social influence component and the part regarding the school anti-smoking policy.

Educational agencies are going through a difficult transition, with important consequences in terms of de-legitimacy of the social mandate historically assigned to the school. The reason for this widespread unease can be traced to the fact that today we live in a complex system. This paper arises within this problematic framework with the intent to outline the most important lines of change affecting education agencies during the last fifteen years, paying particular attention to the new institutional and normative framework that redefined the whole educational structure in Italy. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the development of a new vision of the education system, more in line with the challenges posed by the global and complex society that emphasizes both the importance of evaluation of education agencies, on the basis of Quality Assurance more attentive to results, and the community's responsibility to education.

The literature has suggested that students' progress at university is influenced by their personal characteristics; this article examines whether these factors act differently according to the study fields of degree courses in which students are enrolled. In particular, the factors influencing the various outcomes of the university programme (withdrawals, course changes, delays, completion of degrees) in three-year degree courses in a large Italian university are analysed from the perspective of study fields. The authors examined the records of over 32,000 students enrolling from academic years 2002/3 to 2005/6 in 84 first-cycle degree courses, grouped in four different fields of study. Analyses were conducted by considering the time dimension within the methodological approach of survival analysis, by means of individual longitudinal data from university administrative archives. A discrete-time method for competing risks event history analysis was applied to study the determinants of university outcomes in the various fields of study.

Although dyslexia runs in families, several putative risk factors that cannot be immediately identified as genetic predict reading disability. Published studies analyzed one or a few risk factors at a time, with relatively inconsistent results. To assess the contribution of several putative risk factors to the development of dyslexia, we conducted a case-control study of 403 Italian children, 155 with dyslexia, by implementing a stepwise logistic regression applied to the entire sample, and then to boys and girls separately. Younger parental age at child's birth, lower parental education, and risk of miscarriage significantly increased the odds of belonging to the dyslexia group (19.5% of the variation). These associations were confirmed in the analyses conducted separately by sex, except for parental education, which significantly affected only males. These findings support reading disabilities as a multifactorial disorder and may bear some importance for the prevention and/or early detection of children at heightened risk for dyslexia.

In a national sample of the Italian population, surveyed four times between October 2002 and January 2007 (N = 2,008), we performed a multilevel longitudinal study aimed at predicting the increase in crime risk perception as a function of three families of independent variables, respectively lying at the within individual level (direct victimization and indirect victimization), at the between-individuals level (being a woman, being an older person, being a poorly educated person and size of area of residence) and at the ecological level (county's crime rate, unemployment rate and immigration rate). Direct and indirect victimization, being a woman, being an older person, living in a large town and in a context characterized by high crime and unemployment rates positively influenced the change in crime risk perception, while the other individual and ecological predictors we used in our predictive model did not. Strengths, limitations, implications and future developments of this research are discussed.

Background: In spite of the proven effectiveness of parenting based programs to prevent adolescent risk behaviors, such programs are rarely implemented in Mediterranean countries. Objective: This pilot study was aimed at assessing the feasibility and the effects of a parenting based universal prevention program (Connect) in Italy. Methods: Our sample comprised 147 mothers and 147 youths, aged 11-14 (M = 12.46, SD = 0.72). We adopted a quasi-experimental design. Forty percent of the parents in the sample were in the intervention condition (receiving 10 one hour lessons a week). ANCOVAs and Cohen's d coefficients were used to compute intervention effects. Results: The results showed that, despite difficulty in recruiting parents, the program held promising effects regarding the prevention of alcohol use at a universal level (Cohen's d = 0.55); the intervention also marginally decreased the level of non-empathic answers from parents, at least in the short term (Cohen's d = 0.32). Conclusions: This study highlighted the importance of focusing on families to prevent problem behaviors in adolescence. It also points to the need for new strategies to engage parents in universal prevention.

As adolescents' alcohol abuse is more widespread almost everywhere, the aim of this study was to better understand the influence of both alcohol expectancies and parenting styles on this risky behaviour in order to allow the development of future prevention programmes, by evaluating the correlation between these variables. A total of 1500 subjects participated in this study: 500 high school students were asked to complete different questionnaires concerning their consumption attitude, and their beliefs on alcohol, whereas their parents (N = 1000) were asked to evaluate parenting styles. According to previous studies, the sample was classified into non-drinkers, social, binge and heavy drinkers. Consistent with the hypothesis, statistical analysis showed that both alcohol expectancies and parenting style significantly differ within these groups, thus being powerful predictors of high-risk drinking patterns. (Contains 1 table.)

Evidence of an association between binge eating and binge drinking and of related health consequences have stimulated investigators to examine and explore risk and protective factors plus the reasons why individuals engage in these risky behaviours (Benjamin & Wulfert, 2003; Ferriter & Ray, 2011). This study examined the relationship between binge drinking and eating, time perspective and psychological functioning. A cross-sectional survey of 1350 17-19 year-old adolescents was conducted. Findings suggested that adolescents engaged in both binge eating and binge drinking behaviours reported negative experiences in the past, and they showed a lower future orientation and a greater inclination to fatalism than did the other students. Additionally, they were more likely to report lower feelings of satisfaction with life and self-esteem than the others. The pattern of results allows to conclude that time perspective may be a salient dimension when exploring the psychosocial correlates of binge behaviours, particularly within adolescents. (Contains 2 tables.)

The validity of the Italian version of the 28-items Resilience Scale for Adolescents (READ) was examined. A sample of 472 senior high school students between 18 and 20 years of age were used for this purpose. Reliability and validity were investigated by means of Cronbach's alpha, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. The results supported the construct validity of the five factors of the scale, which yielded acceptable psychometric properties. The findings conclude that the READ is a valid measure assessing relevant resilience factors, thereby serving as a valuable tool in resilience and risk-factor research in adolescence. (Contains 3 tables.)

Background: The family context has proven to be a useful target in which to apply prevention efforts aimed at child and adolescent health risk behaviors. There are currently a variety of cultural adaptation models that serve to guide the international adaptation of intervention programs. Objective: The cultural adaptation process and program reception of the Strengthening Families Program 10-14 (SFP 10-14) was described in this article. The implementation context is one in which strong family bonds and high family communication are the norm. Methods: We described our cultural adaptation process comparing our efforts to the recommended stages of the main current cultural adaptation models. We pilot tested and implemented the adapted version of our program with a total of 35 families in the city of Turin Italy. Results: This study showed that the SFP 10-14 may indeed be quite suitable for Italian families given the particularities of Italian society regarding strong family bonds and extended social networks. We described the language translation, cultural adaptation process for program materials, staff training, onsite supervision, and the process evaluation feedback that were undertaken as part of the adaptation efforts. Conclusions: The field of prevention could greatly benefit from the identification of tools and techniques that are applicable to populations with diverse social and cultural backgrounds. The family is extremely important for Italians and represents a rich context in which prevention efforts could be addressed.

The epidemiology of anxiety traits was examined in a large sample of Italian preadolescent children, and 3,479 Italian nine-year-old subjects were enrolled. Anxious traits were observed in 10.5% of children. No significant gender differences were found, but children of separated couples presented a relative risk for anxious traits that was 50% higher, than children of cohabiting or married parents. Moreover, large families (more than 4 members) with a stay-at-home mother were also associated with anxiety in the offspring. Currently, this is the first study carried out in a large sample of preadolescent children, all of the same age.

In the present psychology-informed literature review we address some aspects of the nature of creativity from cognitive and confluence perspectives. The authors begin by discussing models of creativity offered by cognitive and confluence approaches, focusing on the transition from univariate to multivariate models. The article explores what these literatures suggest about factors that can influence creativity, including cognitive conative and environmental ones. The article goes on to present the overlaps and distinctiveness between creativity and innovation and the vexed question of the evaluation of creativity exploring two contrasting stances of psychometric and componential approaches. The review concludes by acknowledging the complexity of the phenomenon of creativity explored here mainly through cognitive and confluence lenses touching on psychometric and social-personality approaches, and recognizes the potential of other lenses in psychology such as psychodynamic, humanistic and evolutionary, for understanding creativity. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

The present study involved a systematic longitudinal analysis, with three points of assessment in the second year of life, of gestures/actions, word comprehension, and word production in a sample of very preterm infants compared to a sample of full-term infants. The relationships among these competencies as well as their predictive value on language development at 24 months and the contribution of biological, medical and social risk factors on language delay at 24 months were also analysed. One hundred and four monolingual Italian very preterms (mean gestational age 29.5 weeks) without major cerebral damages, and a comparison group of 20 monolingual healthy Italian full-terms were followed at 12, 18 and 24 months by administering to their parents the Italian short forms of the MacArthur-Bates CDI. Preterms showed a slower acquisition in gesture/action production, word comprehension, and word production with an increasing divergence with respect to full-terms from 12 to 24 months, when 20% of preterms were delayed in word production (less than 10th percentile) and 14% did not combine words yet. Lexical competencies at 12 months and together with gestures/actions at 18 months were predictive of word production at 24 months, with a stronger contribution of word comprehension at 12 months and of word production at 18 months. Male gender, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and low maternal educational level increased the risk of language delay at 24 months. Our findings suggest there to be a slower rate of communicative-linguistic development in very preterms with an increasing difference in their gestural and lexical competencies in the second year of life with respect to full-terms. The interplay of the above competencies and biological, medical and social risk factors increase the risk of language delay at 24 months in very preterm infants. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.)