Prior studies suggest a multifaceted relationship between creativity and psychopathology, indicating that mild psychopathology might enhance creative behavior. Moreover, similar brain regions may be implicated in both creativity and psychosis. Although aberrant salience (AS) is often associated with psychotic disorders, it could also enhance…

The extent to which Theory of Mind (ToM) performance is influenced by cultural and gender differences remains a subject of debate. A sample of 324 Dutch and 511 Italian children (52% boys; 2.8-11.7 years; 50% boys; 2.6-10.3 years; respectively) was administered the ToM Storybooks. Analysis focused on indicators of nonlinearity: moving standard…

The current study seeks to shed light on social-cognitive resources that mitigate master students' experience of dysfunctional career-related worry before graduation. Based on the career self-management model (CSM; Lent & Brown, 2013), we investigate concurrent and time-lagged direct and mediated relationships between career planning,…

Introduction: Recent evidence demonstrates an association between social media addiction (SMA) and aggressive behaviors; however, the longitudinal relationship between these two variables remains not fully understood. The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between SMA and aggressive behaviors (overt and relational…

Decisions to invest in human capital depend on people's time preferences. We show that differences in patience are closely related to substantial subnational differences in educational achievement, leading to new perspectives on longstanding within-country disparities. We use social-media data -- Facebook interests -- to construct novel regional…

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,…

The relationships between visuo-spatial abilities and geometry performances in school-aged children were examined. A battery of tests assessing non-verbal reasoning, visuo-spatial mental imagery, and academic achievement in geometry (i.e., geometric knowledge and geometric problem-solving competencies) was presented to 162 8-9.5-year-old pupils…

This study examines how family functioning, the parent-child relationship and personal factors are related to happiness in 1549 children aged 7 to 14 years old (53% females) in Italy. Children and pre-adolescents completed a set of questionnaires on self-rated happiness, self-concept and loneliness. At least one of their parents filled in…

The main aim of this study was to investigate a conceptual model linking subtypes of social withdrawal, social/asocial dissatisfaction, and internalizing problems in late childhood and early adolescence. Participants were N = 459 students (n = 247 girls) aged 8-14 years (M = 11.24, SD = 1.66), who completed self-reports assessments of social…

This paper argues that the consideration of educational disadvantage should go beyond the micro-scale contextual level of individual students, and explore eventual connections with hybrid forms of disadvantage in the social field. The paper draws on the capability approach and the concept of dwelling to introduce dwelling in time as functioning.…

I explored the effect of socio-economic status (SES) on mathematics achievement by gender at grades 5 in 2012 and 10 in 2017. Secondary Italian data (30,868 pupils in primary and 38,091 in secondary school) were analysed via the Rasch model to estimate students' ability in mathematics and then via a three-level regression (students nested into…

Whether intellectually gifted children have a greater emotional response when tested is still unclear. This may be due to the marked heterogeneity of this particular population, and the fact that most studies lack the power to reduce the noise associated with this heterogeneity. The present study examined the relationship between performance and…

National assessments of mathematics are often used as an objective measurement of students' knowledge. However, various factors are believed to influence students' achievements on the national assessments, among which students' invested effort. Moreover, students' effort may vary between genders and might be influenced by the presence of external…

The Cognitive Style Indicator (CoSI) includes 3 cognitive dimensions: creating (flexible, open-ended and inventive), knowing (emphasizing facts, details, objectivity, and rationality), and planning (guided by preferences for certainty and well-structured information). The first aim of this research was to validate the 3-factor structure of the…

In this study, we investigated how empirical indicators of test-taking engagement can be defined, empirically validated, and used to describe group differences in the context of the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC). The approach was to distinguish between disengaged and engaged response behavior by means of…