Emotional abilities in preadolescents and adolescents with long-term cochlear implant use.

OBJECTIVES: Emotional abilities (EAs) are particularly important during preadolescence/adolescence, two challenging periods characterized by significant biological, physical, and cognitive changes. The present study attempted to a holistic EA approach in preadolescents/adolescents with cochlear implants (CI) and typical hearing (TH), considering various aspects such as perception, cognitive facilitation, comprehension, and management of emotions. A secondary aim was to identify significant demographic and audiological factors of EA development. METHODS: CI/TH groups were matched for chronological age, nonverbal IQ, gender, economic income, and maternal level of education. Each group consisted of 43 participants (age range 10-18 years). EAs were evaluated by using the multi-trait/method IE-ACCME test. Auditory-linguistic assessments included participants' lexical skills and Matrix performance as well. RESULTS: EA performance for perception and cognitive facilitation did not show any statistically significant CI/TH group differences (p > 0.05). Significant CI/TH differences emerged for emotion comprehension and management: CI group performed significantly worse in understanding emotional blends (t = 2.56, p = 0.014) but better in personal emotion management (t = -2.01, p = 0.048). For the CI group, gender showed statistically significant effects on cognitive facilitation in sensations, with males performing better than females (U = 129, p = 0.018). TH preadolescents showed significantly lower scores in understanding emotional changes in comparison to TH adolescents (U = 125.5, p = 0.01). Emotional blends understanding showed a weak negative correlation with Matrix performance (r = - 0.38, p = 0.013) and a moderate positive correlation with lexical skills (r = 0.40, p = 0.008). Relationships management showed various significant correlations: weak negative correlations with age at CI (r = - 0.38, p = 0.011) and Matrix performance (r = - 0.36, p = 0.016) as well as weak positive correlations with nonverbal-IQ (r = 0.38, p = 0.013) and positive moderate correlations with lexical skills (r = 0.49, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Cochlear implantation seems to show significant positive effects on emotional development in children, allowing them to achieve age appropriate EAs as they grow up and become preadolescents/adolescents. EA assessment in CI users may not only support monitorization of EA trajectory, but also early identification of any EA disorders, so that subjects with low EA profiles could be timely and properly intervened.

Robot's Inner Speech Effects on Human Trust and Anthropomorphism.

Inner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process that refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argued that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system that simulates human inner speech could enhance both human trust and users' perception of robot's anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, intelligence and safety. For this reason, we planned a pre-test/post-test control group design. Participants were divided in two different groups, one experimental group and one control group. Participants in the experimental group interacted with the robot Pepper equipped with an over inner speech system whereas participants in the control group interacted with the robot that produces only outer speech. Before and after the interaction, both groups of participants were requested to complete some questionnaires about inner speech and trust. Results showed differences between participants' pretest and post-test assessment responses, suggesting that the robot's inner speech influences in participants of experimental group the perceptions of animacy and intelligence in robot. Implications for these results are discussed.

Beyond emotional intelligence: The new construct of meta-emotional intelligence.

Meta-emotional intelligence is a recently developed multidimensional construct that, starting from the original ability model of emotional intelligence, focuses on the cognitive aspects of emotional abilities and on the metacognitive and meta-emotional processes that influence our emotional life. Thus, meta-emotional intelligence is the combination of emotional abilities and meta-emotional dimensions, such as the beliefs about emotions, the self-concept about one's emotional abilities, and the self-evaluation of performance. This article aims to illustrate the theoretical and methodological background of this construct and to describe the IE-ACCME test, an original multi-method tool that has been developed to measure the different variables that compose meta-emotional intelligence. Applications of this construct will be discussed, as well as future directions.

Teachers' Emotional Intelligence, Burnout, Work Engagement, and Self-Efficacy during COVID-19 Lockdown.

Teachers' psychological well-being is a crucial aspect that influences learning in a classroom climate. The aim of the study was to investigate teachers' emotional intelligence, burnout, work engagement, and self-efficacy in times of remote teaching during COVID-19 lockdown. A sample of 65 teachers (Mage = 50.49), from early childhood through lower secondary education, were recruited during a period of school closure to answer self-report questionnaires and other measures assessing study variables. Results showed that during the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers reported higher levels of burnout and lower levels of self-esteem due to multiple challenges related to remote teaching and the growing sense of insecurity regarding health safety in the school environment. However, the negative effects of COVID-19 on teachers' self-efficacy, work engagement, and burnout varied according to their own levels of emotional intelligence. These results demonstrate that emotional intelligence may support teachers in facing these challenges.

Sex differences in emotional and meta-emotional intelligence in pre-adolescents and adolescents.

The study focuses on sex differences in emotional and meta-emotional intelligence in a sample of 355 pre-adolescents and 164 adolescents. Emotional and meta-emotional intelligence were measured using the multi-trait multi-method IE-ACCME test, allowing to define individuals' profiles of ability EI, emotional self-concept, meta-emotional knowledge, meta-emotional ability in self-evaluation and meta-emotional beliefs. Meta-emotional dimensions refer to the awareness of individuals about their emotional abilities and to their beliefs about the functioning of emotions in everyday life. Results demonstrated that girls scored better than boys in ability-EI, in particular in adolescents' group, whereas boys reported higher score than girls in emotional self-concept in both groups of age. Result about meta-emotional knowledge and meta-emotional ability in self-evaluation revealed that boys systematically overestimate their emotional abilities whereas girls, particularly in the adolescent group, tend to underestimate them. Finally, in both age groups, girls scored higher than males in metaemotional beliefs. The adoption of the meta-emotional intelligence framework may help to explain the discordances about sex differences found in previous studies using self-report vs. performance measures of EI. Moreover, it may contribute to shed light on the nature-nurture debate and on the role of meta-emotional variables for explaining sex differences in EI.

The Role of Emotional and Meta-Emotional Intelligence in Pre-adolescents' Well-Being and Sociometric Status.

The study examined the relationships among emotional and meta-emotional intelligence, well-being, and sociometric status in 105 pre-adolescents. Emotional and meta-emotional intelligence were measured using the Intelligenza Emotiva: Abilità, Credenze e Concetto di Sé Meta-Emotivo (IE-ACCME) test (D'Amico, 2013), allowing to measure ability emotional intelligence (EI), emotional self-concept, meta-emotional knowledge, meta-emotional ability in self-evaluation, and meta-emotional beliefs. Meta-emotional dimensions refer to the awareness of individuals about their emotional abilities and to their beliefs about the functioning of emotions in everyday life. Eudemonic well-being and sociometric status were, respectively, measured using the well-known Psychological Well-Being (PWB) scale by Ryff's (1989) and registering the levels of acceptance/rejection from peers (Moreno, 1960). Results demonstrated that: pre-adolescents' meta-emotional beliefs are positively associated to eudemonic well-being: pre-adolescents with higher levels of ability EI, meta-emotional knowledge and meta-emotional self-evaluation are more accepted by others while those that overestimate their emotional abilities are more refused by peers. These results evidence that meta-emotional variables may play a crucial role in well-being and sociometric status, encouraging future studies on this issue.

Automation Inner Speech as an Anthropomorphic Feature Affecting Human Trust: Current Issues and Future Directions.

This paper aims to discuss the possible role of inner speech in influencing trust in human-automation interaction. Inner speech is an everyday covert inner monolog or dialog with oneself, which is essential for human psychological life and functioning as it is linked to self-regulation and self-awareness. Recently, in the field of machine consciousness, computational models using different forms of robot speech have been developed that make it possible to implement inner speech in robots. As is discussed, robot inner speech could be a new feature affecting human trust by increasing robot transparency and anthropomorphism.

A Playful Experiential Learning System With Educational Robotics.

This article reports on two studies that aimed to evaluate the effective impact of educational robotics in learning concepts related to Physics and Geography. The reported studies involved two courses from an upper secondary school and two courses from a lower secondary school. Upper secondary school classes studied topics of motion physics, and lower secondary school classes explored issues related to geography. In each grade, there was an "experimental group" that carried out their study using robotics and cooperative learning and a "control group" that studied the same concepts without robots. Students in both classes were subjected to tests before and after the robotics laboratory, to check their knowledge in the topics covered. Our initial hypothesis was that classes involving educational robotics and cooperative learning are more effective in improving learning and stimulating the interest and motivation of students. As expected, the results showed that students in the experimental groups had a far better understanding of concepts and higher participation to the activities than students in the control groups.

Internet addiction disorder: an Italian study.

The Italian version of the Young's Internet Addiction Test (IAT) was administered online to a sample of Italian chatters (n = 236) who were different in terms of gender, age, and occupation. Results revealed that young users are more at-risk subjects for Internet addiction than adults, perceiving a compromised social and individual quality of their life that led them to make a compensatory usage of the Internet. Similarly, employed users perceive their social and individual quality of life as more compromised by the Internet than students. Moreover, subjects who declared spending much time online obtained IAT scores higher than others in all the IAT subscales. Finally, nightly users are more at-risk subjects for developing an Internet addiction disorder, diminishing their individual quality of life and disabling their time control.

New frontiers for psychology and education: robotics.

The paper reviews the first attempts to study the educational and psychological usefulness of robotics: (1) the social and cooperative dimensions involved in the robot-building activities; (2) the reasoning strategies implied in building and programming robots; (3) the influences of robotics on mathematical and scientific achievement; (4) the use of robotics in modification of social skills of autistic children.

Relations among perceived self-efficacy, self-esteem, and school achievement.

The present research explored empirically the factorial dimensions of self-efficacy and self-esteem and associations among self-esteem, self-efficacy, and scholastic achievement as measured in 151 subjects (M age = 13.4 yr.). Five factors emerged from factorial analysis: two factors reflected the self-esteem feelings (and were, respectively, named as self-referential self-esteem and comparative self-esteem). The remaining three factors reflected the self-efficacy beliefs in the three different scholastic domains considered, linguistic-literary, logical-mathematical, and technical-practical. All self-efficacy scores were significantly correlated with scholastic achievement while no associations between self-esteem scores and scholastic performance were found. Nevertheless, self-efficacy and self-esteem dimensions shared some common aspects. In particular, each different self-esteem factor showed different magnitudes of association with domain-specific self-efficacy beliefs.