The Italian Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI-I).

The importance of social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills is recognized worldwide, but their measurement has always been a challenge. The BESSI measures 32 SEB skills, divided into five domains (social engagement, cooperation, self-management, emotional resilience, and innovation), but its validity must be expanded to new languages and contexts. Across two studies (N1 = 990, N2= 824) we developed the Italian version of the BESSI, provided further support for its convergent and discriminant validity with the Big Five, and expanded its nomological network to procrastination, self-efficacy, and emotion regulation. The BESSI-I showed excellent internal reliability and satisfactory fit indices at the facet, domain, and overarching framework level. We also confirmed the correlations between the SEB skills and the Big Five personality traits and found meaningful correlations with the selected external outcomes. Overall, we confirm that the BESSI-I is a valid and useful instrument to assess SEB skills for research and clinical purposes.

Keep going, keep growing: A longitudinal analysis of grit, posttraumatic growth, and life satisfaction in school students under COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted students' daily life, but grit could have sustained students' wellbeing by helping them work hard and stay goal-oriented over time despite adversity. Gritty students may also have interpreted COVID-19-related adversity as an opportunity to grow, thus displaying higher levels of post-traumatic growth. In this study, 445 students in grades 6-12 (160 males, Mage = 14.25, SDage = 2.11) completed measures of grit and life satisfaction at the beginning (Time 1) and at the end (Time 2) of the school year, together with a measure of posttraumatic growth. A longitudinal SEM model shows that perseverance positively relates to posttraumatic growth, indirectly favoring life satisfaction at Time 2. In conclusion, perseverance, rather than consistency, appeared to have sustained students' positive adjustment to the COVID-19 pandemic. Teaching students how to nurture this quality can have important beneficial effects for their wellbeing under adverse conditions.

Do Strengths Converge into Virtues? An Item-, Virtue-, and Scale-Level Analysis of the Italian Values in Action Inventory of Strengths-120.

The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) is a widely-used measure for character. Its factorial structure is still debated, however, and previous validation studies usually failed to examine the unidimensionality of the single character strengths. In addition, no studies to date have examined its Italian version. We validated the structure of the Italian short form of the VIA-IS in a sample of 16722 participants. Using confirmatory factor analysis and treating items as ordinal variables, we followed three simple, but too often neglected, steps: we studied the unidimensionality of the single strengths first, then their convergence into second-order virtues, and then fitted a hierarchical model that includes items, strengths and virtues, as originally proposed by Peterson and Seligman. All strengths except "love of learning" were unidimensional, and both the virtues and the final hierarchical models showed acceptable fit indices, unlike three models derived from an exploratory factor analysis. The same findings emerged for a smaller sample of 1035 participants. Finally, both character strengths and virtues showed positive relations with general mental health and negative relations with psychological distress. These results are discussed considering previous studies on the factorial structure of the VIA-IS.

The practice of speleology: What is its relationship with spatial abilities?

Given the evidence of motor and exploring activities being related to spatial abilities on different scales, the present study considers the case of speleology, a peculiar underground exploratory activity. The relation of this practice with spatial abilities was examined. The study compares a group of expert speleologists (18), a group with a reduced amount of experience in speleology (19 novice speleologists), and a group with a similar amount of practice but in the outdoors (19 experts mountaineers). Group differences will be investigated in terms of (i) small-scale spatial task performance (rotation-based and spatial working memory); (ii) large-scale environment learning (reproduced using verbal descriptions) asking participants to learn a path through a cave or up a mountain (in a counterbalanced order) and then to test their recall with true/false spatial questions and graphical representation tasks; and (iii) self-reports of wayfinding attitudes. The results of linear models showed that, after controlling for age, gender, years of education, and vocabulary scores, expert speleologists had greater mental rotation and perspective-taking abilities and less spatial anxiety than expert mountaineers, and the former performed the true/false questions better than the latter. It should be noted that participants who reported having guiding/path-finding experiences had greater accuracy in graphical representation performance and higher scores in attitude towards orientation. Overall, expertise in speleology is related to spatial abilities on different scales and might have a distinctive role in comparison with other motor practices, pointing to the potential value of examining speleology in the spatial cognition framework.

Successful navigation: the influence of task goals and working memory.

There is still a need to analyze the factors that enhance navigation accuracy. This study aims to examine how success in environment learning relates to task goals and WM. A total of 90 undergraduates (46 females) learned a route from a virtual navigation experience after being given a goal that involved tracing the route (a route-based goal) or finding a shortcut (a survey-based goal). The two groups thus formed were each divided into three subgroups according to the dual-task paradigm: one only navigated (control condition); the other two did so while simultaneously performing a visuo-spatial or verbal secondary task. Afterwards, participants traced the previously seen route and found a shortcut. Several visuo-spatial and verbal WM tasks were also administered. The results showed that participants given a route-based goal performed better in the route-tracing task; and those given a survey-based goal were better at finding shortcuts. An influence of WM was also shown: higher WM (visuo-spatial and verbal) ability significantly reduced the number of route-tracing errors made while performing a secondary visuo-spatial task, regardless of the goal, whereas no such effects emerged for shortcut finding. These results offer new insight on how task goals and WM support successful navigation.

Spatial text processing: are estimates of time and distance influenced by the age of characters and readers?

It is widely accepted that, while hearing or reading a story, people continuously form and update mental representations of the characters, places and events being described, based on plausible spatial, temporal or intentional details. According to the embodied cognition approach, the mental representations that accompany text reading are grounded in each reader's own sensorimotor experiences. Two experiments were conducted to examine whether readers' estimates of time and distance are influenced by age, their own and that of the character being described. In Experiment 1, 182 young adults read the description of a route in a town being covered by a young or an elderly character. In Experiment 2, the same descriptions as in Experiment 1 were read by 121 young adults and 53 older people. To avoid a possible confound, a follow-up to Experiment 1 (Experiment 1a) repeated the study by removing from texts the adverbs describing the walking speed of characters. In all experiments, participants were asked to estimate: (a) the time the characters took to reach their destinations (time estimation task); and (b) the distance they covered (distance estimation task). The results showed that both characters' and readers' ages influenced the time estimated, whereas no effects were found on estimates of distance: the elderly character was estimated to take longer than the young character (Experiments 1, 1a and 2), and older readers estimated longer times than younger readers (Experiment 2). This prompts the conclusion that personal features of both the readers and the characters they read about were used to infer the temporal dimension of situations described in the narratives. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.

Supporting route learning in older adults: the role of imagery strategy.

OBJECTIVES: Route learning is an everyday spatial ability important to individuals' independent living, and is known to decline with age. This study aimed to investigate the benefit of using an imagery strategy to support route learning in young and older adults. METHODS: Forty young adults and 40 older adults learned a path from a video. Twenty of each age group were taught to use an imagery strategy (strategy groups [SGs]), while the others received no specific instructions (control groups [CGs]). Then participants were asked to recall the order and location of landmarks they had seen along the path (landmark ordering and locating tasks). RESULTS: Young adults recalled the order and location of landmarks better than older adults, and the SGs outperformed the CGs regardless of age. The Age group x Learning group interaction was only significant for the landmark locating task, with the young CG performing better than the older CG, while the older SG proved as good at recalling landmark locations as the young SG. Further, it was only among the older adults that the SG outperformed the CG. CONCLUSION: These findings newly suggest that using imagery helps to sustain older adults' route learning ability, especially in spatial recall tasks demanding the active manipulation of spatial information learnt, such as locating landmarks previously encountered while navigating a path. These results are discussed within the aging and spatial cognition frameworks.

Using the Walking Corsi test to explain age-related differences between young and older adults' rotation performance.

This study newly assessed visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) in young and older adults with an extended version of the backward Corsi Blocks Task (CBT): the backward Walking Corsi Test (WalCT). It involves recalling sequences of spatial locations while moving in an indoor space (2.5 × 3m) in which the CBT layout is recreated on the floor. The specific contribution of the backward WalCT (beyond that of the backward CBT) to explaining age-related effects on spatial rotation abilities was explored. Seventy young adults and 56 older adults performed the backward WalCT, classic VSWM tasks, self-assessments on pleasure in exploring and spatial anxiety, and mental rotation and perspective-taking tasks. Mediation models for the mental rotation and perspective-taking measures showed a direct age-related effect on both the backward WalCT and backward CBT, and an indirect one on the two spatial rotation abilities, mediated by the backward WalCT and - partly - the backward CBT. In particular, age-related effects on mental rotation were explained by the backward WalCT, while those on perspective-taking were explained by both the backward WalCT and backward CBT. The backward WalCT can be considered a measure suitable for assessing VSWM in older adults, which also explains age-related effects on mental rotation and perspective-taking performance.

"Andrà tutto bene": Associations Between Character Strengths, Psychological Distress and Self-efficacy During Covid-19 Lockdown.

The Covid-19 pandemic obliged people around the world to stay home and self-isolate, with a number of negative psychological consequences. This study focuses on the protective role of character strengths in sustaining mental health and self-efficacy during lockdown. Data were collected from 944 Italian respondents (mean age = 37.24 years, SD = 14.50) by means of an online survey investigating character strengths, psychological distress and Covid-19-related self-efficacy one month after lockdown began. Using principal component analysis, four strengths factors were extracted, namely transcendence, interpersonal, openness and restraint. Regression models with second-order factors showed that transcendence strengths had a strong inverse association with psychological distress, and a positive association with self-efficacy. Regression models with single strengths identified hope, zest, prudence, love and forgiveness as the strengths most associated with distress, love and zest as the most related to self-efficacy and zest to general mental health. Openness factor and appreciation of beauty showed an unexpected direct relation with psychological distress. These results provide original evidence of the association of character strengths, and transcendence strengths in particular, with mental health and self-efficacy in a pandemic and are discussed within the field of positive psychology.

Evidence for age-related deficits in object-location binding during place recognition.

Deciding whether a place is the same or different than places encountered previously is a common task in daily navigation which requires to develop knowledge about the locations of objects (object-location binding) and to recognize places from different perspectives. These abilities rely on hippocampal functioning which is susceptible to increasing age. Thus, the question of the present study is how they both together impact on place recognition in aging. Forty people aged 20-29, 44 aged 60-69, and 32 aged 70-79 were presented with places consisting of four different objects during the encoding phase. In the test phase, they were then presented with a second place and had to decide whether it was the same or different. Test places were presented from different perspectives (0°, 30°, 60°) and with different object conditions (same, a swap of two objects, a substitution with a novel object). The sensitivity for detecting changes (d') decreased from 20-29 to 60-69 and to 70-79 years old, and with increasing perspective shifts. Importantly, older adults were less sensitive to object swapping than to object substitution, while young participants did not show any difference. Overall, these results suggest specific age-related difficulties in object-location binding in the context of place recognition.

Spatial mental representations: the influence of age on route learning from maps and navigation.

Experiencing an environment by navigating in it or reading a map (route and survey views, respectively) is a typical activity of everyday life. Previous research has demonstrated that aging coincides with a decline in spatial learning, but it is unclear whether this depends to some degree on how the learning conditions relate to the method used to assess the recall. The present study aims to shed light on this issue. Forty-six young, 43 young-old and 38 old-old adults learned outdoor environments from a map and a video, then performed sketch map and route repetition tasks. Participants were assessed on their visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM), and reported their self-assessed visuo-spatial inclinations. The results showed that young adults completed the sketch maps more accurately after learning from a map rather than a video. The same was true of the young-old participants (but not of the old-old), though their performance was not as good as the younger group's. The learning condition had no effect on the route repetition task, however, and only age-related differences emerged, with both older groups performing less well than the young adults. After controlling for learning condition and age group, VSWM and participants' reported propensity to explore places predicted their accuracy in both types of spatial task. The overall results, discussed in the light of spatial cognitive and aging models, show that learning condition (combined with recall tasks) and visuo-spatial factors influence spatial representations, even in aging.

Is working memory training in older adults sensitive to music?

Evidence in the literature suggests that listening to music can improve cognitive performance. The aim of the present study was to examine whether the short- and long-term gains of a working memory (WM) training in older adults could be enhanced by music listening-the Mozart's Sonata K448 and the Albinoni's Adagio in G minor-which differ in tempo and mode. Seventy-two healthy older adults (age range: 65-75 years) participated in the study. They were divided into four groups. At each training session, before starting the WM training activities, one group listened to Mozart (Mozart group, N = 19), one to Albinoni (Albinoni group, N = 19), one to white noise (White noise group, N = 16), while one served as an active control group involved in other activities and was not exposed to any music (active control group, N = 18). Specific training gains on a task like the one used in the training, and transfer effects on visuo-spatial abilities, executive function and reasoning measures were assessed. Irrespective of listening condition (Mozart, Albinoni, White noise), trained groups generally outperformed the control group. The White noise group never differed from the two music groups. However, the Albinoni group showed larger specific training gains in the criterion task at short-term and transfer effects in the reasoning task at both short-and long term compared to the Mozart group. Overall the present findings suggest caution when interpreting the effects of music before a WM training, and are discussed according to aging and music effect literature.

The role of practice and strategy in mental rotation training: transfer and maintenance effects.

Research in the domain of spatial abilities is now focusing on whether spatial abilities can be trained, and whether this can produce gains and maintenance effects in other, untrained skills. The aim of the present study was to assess the benefit and maintenance effects of two types of mental rotation training, one based on mental rotation practice alone, the other combining mental rotation practice with the use of a spatial (rotation) strategy. Seventy-two females took part in the study: 24 practiced with a rotation task that involved comparing pairs of 3D objects [the mental rotation (MR) group], 24 were taught to use the rotation strategy while practicing with the rotation task [the strategy + mental rotation (S + MR) group], and 24 were involved in parallel non-spatial activities (the active control group). Transfer effects were sought on both untrained spatial tasks (testing object rotation and perspective taking) and fluid ability tasks; self-reported strategy use was also examined. Our results showed short-term benefits and maintenance effects in the MR and the S + MR groups in terms of their accuracy in both the MR tasks considered (a 3D same/different task, and the Mental Rotations Test). The S + MR group was more accurate at follow-up than at post-test in both MR tasks, and reported using the rotation strategy in association with the tasks; this group was also more accurate at follow-up than at pre-test in the perspective-taking and fluid intelligence tasks. These findings are discussed from the spatial cognition standpoint and with reference to the (rotation) training literature.

How directions of route descriptions influence orientation specificity: the contribution of spatial abilities.

Previous studies found mental representations of route descriptions north-up oriented when egocentric experience (given by the protagonist's initial view) was congruent with the global reference system. This study examines: (a) the development and maintenance of representations derived from descriptions when the egocentric and global reference systems are congruent or incongruent; and (b) how spatial abilities modulate these representations. Sixty participants (in two groups of 30) heard route descriptions of a protagonist's moves starting from the bottom of a layout and headed mainly northwards (SN description) in one group, and headed south from the top (NS description, the egocentric view facing in the opposite direction to the canonical north) in the other. Description recall was tested with map drawing (after hearing the description a first and second time; i.e. Time 1 and 2) and South-North (SN) or North-South (NS) pointing tasks; and spatial objective tasks were administered. The results showed that: (a) the drawings were more rotated in NS than in SN descriptions, and performed better at Time 2 than at Time 1 for both types of description; SN pointing was more accurate than NS pointing for the SN description, while SN and NS pointing accuracy did not differ for the NS description; (b) spatial (rotation) abilities were related to recall accuracy for both types of description, but were more so for the NS ones. Overall, our results showed that the way in which spatial information is conveyed (with/without congruence between the egocentric and global reference systems) and spatial abilities influence the development and maintenance of mental representations.

How to enhance route learning and visuo-spatial working memory in aging: a training for residential care home residents.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to assess the efficacy of a route-learning training in a group of older adults living in a residential care home. We verified the presence of training-specific effects in tasks similar to those trained - route-learning tasks - as well as transfer effects on related cognitive processes - visuo-spatial short-term memory (VSSTM; Corsi Blocks Test (CBT), forward version), visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM; CBT, backward version; Pathway Span Tasks; Jigsaw Puzzle Test) - and in self-report measures. The maintenance of training benefits was examined after 3 months. METHOD: Thirty 70-90-year-old residential care home residents were randomly assigned to the route-learning training group or to an active control group (involved in non-visuo-spatial activities). RESULTS: The trained group performed better than the control group in the route-learning tasks, retaining this benefit 3 months later. Immediate transfer effects were also seen in visuo-spatial span tasks (i.e., CBT forward and backward version and Pathway Span Task); these benefits had been substantially maintained at the 3-month follow-up. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that a training on route learning is a promising approach to sustain older adults' environmental learning and some related abilities (e.g., VSSTM and VSWM), even in residential care home residents.

Mental rotation training: transfer and maintenance effects on spatial abilities.

One of the aims of research in spatial cognition is to examine whether spatial skills can be enhanced. The goal of the present study was thus to assess the benefit and maintenance effects of mental rotation training in young adults. Forty-eight females took part in the study: 16 were randomly assigned to receive the mental rotation training (based on comparing pairs of 2D or 3D objects and rotation games), 16 served as active controls (performing parallel non-spatial activities), and 16 as passive controls. Transfer effects to both untrained spatial tasks (testing both object rotation and perspective taking) and visual and verbal tasks were examined. Across the training sessions, the group given mental rotation training revealed benefits in the time it took to make judgments when comparing 3D and 2D objects, but their mental rotation speed did not improve. When compared with the other groups, the mental rotation training group did show transfer effects, however, in tasks other than those practiced (i.e., in object rotation and perspective-taking tasks), and these benefits persisted after 1 month. The training had no effect on visual or verbal tasks. These findings are discussed from the spatial cognition standpoint and with reference to the (rotation) training literature.

Mental representations derived from spatial descriptions: the influence of orientation specificity and visuospatial abilities.

This study aimed to investigate the orientation dependence effect and the role of visuospatial abilities in mental representations derived from spatial descriptions. The analysis focused on how the orientation effect and the involvement of visuospatial abilities change when survey and route descriptions are used, and the initial and main orientation of an imaginary tour. In Experiment 1, 48 participants listened to survey or route descriptions in which information was mainly north-oriented (matching the initial heading and main direction of travel expressed in the description). In Experiment 2, 40 participants listened to route descriptions in which the initial orientation (north-oriented) was mismatched with the main direction of travel (east-oriented). Participants performed pointing task while facing north vs south (Exp. 1 and 2), and while facing east vs west (Exp. 2), as well as a map drawing task and several visuospatial measures. In both experiments, the results showed that pointing was easier while facing north than while facing south, and map drawings were arranged with a north-up orientation (with no difference between survey and route descriptions). In Experiment 2, pointing while facing east was easier than in the other pointing conditions. The results obtained with the visuospatial tasks showed that perspective-taking (PT) skill was the main predictor of the ability to imagine positions misaligned with the direction expressed in the descriptions (i.e., pointing while facing south in Experiment 1; pointing while facing north, south or west in Experiment 2). Overall, these findings indicate that mental representations derived from spatial descriptions are specifically oriented and their orientation is influenced by the main direction of travel and by the initial orientation. These mental representations, and the adoption of counter-aligned imaginary orientations, demand visuospatial skills and PT ability in particular.

Map learning and the alignment effect in young and older adults: how do they gain from having a map available while performing pointing tasks?

Two studies were conducted to investigate age-related differences between young and older adults in the impact of a map being available or not while performing aligned and counter-aligned pointing tasks. In the first study, 19 young adults (aged 20-30) and 19 young-old adults (aged 65-74) studied a map and performed a pointing task. In the second, three groups of adults, 19 of them young (aged 20-30), 19 young-old (aged 65-74), and 19 old-old (aged 75-84), studied a map and performed a pointing task, first with the map available, and then without it. The results of both studies showed that young and older adults' performance was similar in aligned pointing, while the young performed better than the older adults in counter-aligned pointing. Analyzing the types of error, results showed that older adults made more counter-aligned pointing errors than young adults, both with and without the map. Having the map available improved all participants' performance, however. Finally, visuo-spatial working memory was found to sustain pointing performance in all age groups and map conditions. Overall, these findings suggest that older adults are specifically susceptible to the alignment effect-making more counter-aligned errors-regardless of whether or not they have a map available while performing pointing tasks.

Age-related differences in pointing accuracy in familiar and unfamiliar environments.

This study aimed to investigate age-related differences in spatial mental representations of familiar and unfamiliar places. Nineteen young adults (aged 18-23) and 19 older adults (aged 60-74), all living in the same Italian town, completed a set of visuospatial measures and then pointed in the direction of familiar landmarks in their town and in the direction of landmarks in an unknown environment studied on a map. Results showed that older adults were less accurate in the visuospatial tasks and in pointing at landmarks in an unfamiliar environment, but performed as well as the young adults when pointing to familiar places. Pointing performance correlated with visuospatial tests accuracy in both familiar and unfamiliar environments, while only pointing in an unknown environment correlated with visuospatial working memory (VSWM). The spatial representation of well-known places seems to be well preserved in older adults (just as well as in young adults), while it declines for unfamiliar environments. Spatial abilities sustain the mental representations of both familiar and unfamiliar environments, while the support of VSWM resources is only needed for the latter.

Academic Achievement and Satisfaction Among University Students With Specific Learning Disabilities: The Roles of Soft Skills and Study-Related Factors.

Understanding the individual qualities sustaining students with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) is key to supporting their academic achievement and well-being. In this study, we investigated the differences between students with and without SLDs in terms of intraindividual factors (soft skills and study-related factors), academic and nonacademic outcomes (achievement, academic and life satisfaction), and the relationships between such intraindividual factors and the three outcomes. A total of 318 students (79 males; Mage = 22.7; SD = 3.56; age range = 19-45 years; 147 with SLDs) completed self-reported questionnaires and a measure of fluid intelligence. The results showed that students with SLDs reported higher creativity but lower academic self-efficacy, study resilience, and academic achievement, with small-to-medium effect sizes. In both groups, achievement significantly positively related to academic self-efficacy and negatively to creativity. Life satisfaction was positively related to study resilience; and academic satisfaction was related to critical thinking, curiosity, and academic self-efficacy. Nurturing such intraindividual factors can benefit students with and without SLDs.