How HEXACO personality traits are involved in school performance of middle school adolescents (10-14 years).

This paper aimed at investigating the relationship between HEXACO personality traits and academic performance in two samples of Italian 10-14 years old middle-school adolescents (N = 714 and N = 1093) using Multilevel Mixed Models. The main results show that: 1) Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience were the most important predictors of school performance, followed by Honesty-Humility; 2) a modest effect was present also for eXtraversion and Emotionality; 3) these influences occurred net of the influence of gender and class and could be generalized to male and female adolescents across 6th, 7th and 8th grade; 5) Perfectionism, Diligence and Prudence within Conscientiousness, Inquisitiveness within Openness, and Sincerity within Honesty-Humility were the facets more correlated with school performance; 6) results were replicated in two studies. Results are discussed and conclusions are drawn.

Parental stress and support perception in southern Italy's households with intellectual disabilities and/or autistic spectrum disorder before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The stress experienced by parents of persons with Intellectual Disability (ID) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is higher than that of parents of neurotypical children (TD). An important protective factor is the perception of the support received within the family and the social network. The emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the health of people with ASD/ID and their families. The aim of the study was to describe the levels of parental stress and anxiety before and during the lockdown in southern Italy's families with ASD/ID persons and analyze how the levels of support perceived by these families. 106 parents, the ages of 23 and 74 years (M = 45; SD = 9), from southern Italy responded to an online battery of questionnaires measuring parental stress, anxiety, perception of support and attendance at school activities and rehabilitation centers, before and during lockdown. In addition, descriptive, Chi-Square, MANOVA, ANOVAs, and correlational analyses were conducted. The results showed that during the lockdown, attendance at therapies and extra-moenia activities and participation in school activities drastically dropped. During lockdown, parents felt inadequate. The parental stress and anxiety were moderate, but the perception of support dropped significantly.

A Preliminary Longitudinal Study on Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) Components in the First Year of Life.

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is an essential factor of mother-infant interaction and facilitates early language processing and word learning during dyadic interactions. This study aimed to longitudinally investigate emotional and prosodic components of IDS in the first year of life by analyzing children's responses to the different prosodic trends that mothers use during the observation of mother-child interactions. Seventeen mothers and infants were recruited for this study during their first hospitalization. The study involved observing communication changes in face-to-face interactions between the mother and child at three, six, and nine months after the child's birth. We analyzed the relationship between gaze direction, smiling, speech speed, and clarity. The results showed that the IDS differs in production when compared to the age of the child; at only nine months, there is high intensity. The same is evident from the results related to the elocution velocity. The verbal sensitivity of the mother and the ability to tune in to the affective states of the child, especially at nine months, can predict the child's understanding of future language.

Construct and criterion validity of the HEXACO Medium School Inventory Extended (MSI-E).

In this cross-sectional study we aimed at: 1) validating the observer (Obs) version of HEXACO Medium School Inventory Extended (MSI-E); 2) establishing convergent and divergent construct validity of the HEXACO-MSI-E; 3) establishing criterion validity of HEXACO-MSI-E. We administered the HEXACO-MSI-E, the Big Five Questionnaire-Children (BFQ-C), the Internalizing and Externalizing scales of Youth Self Report (YSR), some items of the 2019 Middle School Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRB) and some items about adolescents' values, beliefs, behaviors, and desired features of a possible future job to 1175 adolescents (Mage = 12.03, SD = 0.89) and the observer version of these measures (except for BFQ-C) to 854 parents or legal guardians. The factorial structure and the reliability of the Observer Report of HEXACO-MSI-E were confirmed. Convergent and divergent validity were successfully established with a version of the inventory filled out by parents. Convergent and divergent validity were also established with BFQ-C notwithstanding some only apparent anomalies. Criterion validity was established with respect to four specific groups of criteria collected in both self-report and observer form. HEXACO-MSI-E traits were more predictive with respect to self-report than to observer criteria and the majority were common. Together with the positive results of this study, implications and issues for future studies are discussed.

Relationships between Dream and Previous Wake Emotions Assessed through the Italian Modified Differential Emotions Scale.

Despite the increasing interest in sleep and dream-related processes of emotion regulation, their reflection into wake and dream emotional experience remains unclear. Here, we aimed to assess dream emotions and their relationships with wake emotions through the modified Differential Emotions Scale (Fredrickson, 2003), which includes a broad array of both positive and negative emotions. The scale has been first validated on 212 healthy Italian participants, in two versions: a WAKE-2wks form, assessing the frequency of 22 emotions over the past 2 weeks, and a WAKE-24hr form, assessing their intensity over the past 24 h. Fifty volunteers from the wider sample completed the WAKE-24hr mDES for several days until a dream was recalled, and dream emotions were self-reported using the same scale. A bifactorial structure was confirmed for both mDES forms, which also showed good validity and reliability. Though Positive and Negative Affect (average intensity of positive and negative items, PA, and NA, respectively) were balanced in dreams, specific negative emotions prevailed; rmANOVA showed a different pattern (prevalence of PA and positive emotions) in wake (both WAKE-2wks and WAKE-24hr), with a decrease of PA and an increase of NA in the dream compared to previous wake. No significant regression model emerged between waking and dream affect, and exploratory analyses revealed a stable proportion of PA and NA (with prevailing PA) over the 3 days preceding the dream. Our findings highlight a discontinuity between wake and dream affect and suggest that positive and negative emotions experienced during wake may undertake distinct sleep-related regulation pathways.