Ricerc@Sapienza

Attention is essential to development and is important for executive functioning. Unfortunately, a growing number of school children suffer of chronic attention deficit such as the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It is important to consider that many of these very young patients are pharmacologically treated and need to deal with side effects that may occur.

Videogaming is an increasingly prevalent activity among adolescents worldwide. The present study aimed at adapting the Gaming Motivation Scale (GAMS) to the Italian context, assessing its psychometric properties and verifying its sensitivity to predict depression and anxiety levels. From a sample of 1899 participants, a group of 388 adolescents who participated in the survey was divided into two subgroups of Heavy (HG, N = 188) and Light Gamers (LG, N = 200). A sub-sample of N = 172 adolescents also filled-in CESD and STAI to assess, respectively, depression and trait anxiety.

Literature suggests that several demographic variables are linked with religiosity in adolescence, such as gender, age and parental religiosity. The sample consisted of 910 young people (53% female) between 14 and 19 years of age, attending secular secondary schools in Rome, Italy. They self-identified as heterosexual adolescents (91.6%), and lesbian/gay (LG) adolescents (8.4%).

Despite the multidimensional/ecological integrative perspective that suggests that the risk for problem gambling
in adolescents can be determined by an interactive effect of different risk factors, few studies have investigated
how different individual factors may affect the risk for problem gambling in a multiplicative way. This study
aimed at exploring the interaction between immigrant status (IS) and sensation seeking (SS) on adolescent
problem-gambling severity. The study involved 994 Italian adolescents (64% boys, Mage = 16.57, SD = 1.62).

Attention is essential to development and healthy life. Unfortunately, a growing number of school children suffer of chronic attention deficit such as the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Most literature is focused on the role that social environment plays in child development whereas scarce attention is paid on the physical environment, both built and natural.
METHOD

The external environment has traditionally been considered as the primary driver of animal life history (LH). Recent research suggests that animals' internal state is also involved, especially in forming LH behavioural phenotypes. The present study investigated how these two factors interact in formulating LH in humans.

Objective: Core alexithymic features, such as the difficulty in identifying and describing feelings, are associated with poor attachment styles and emotional trauma, which influence the capacity to regulate affect. Additionally, emotional regulation has been found to be the most commonly identified function associated with non-suicidal self-injury behavior (NSSI) in adolescents as they attempt to modulate strong emotions.

Multidimensional Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale for Children has been developed as an important tool to measure Self-Efficacy in school contexts. The present study assesses the measurement invariance of the MSPSE across two samples of Italian and Colombian adolescents using Multi-sample Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Participants were Italian (N = 564) and Colombian (N = 645) students attending the 7th grade (age 12–13) drawn from a residential community near Rome and three Colombian cities: Medellin, Manizales and Santa Marta.

Sexting has been commonly defined as the sharing of sexually suggestive content via new technologies. The relationship between sexting motivations and both online and offline aggressive behaviors (i.e., sexual harassment, dating violence, and bullying) is still understudied. This study aimed to investigate the association between three sexting motivations—sexual purposes, instrumental/aggravated reasons, and body image reinforcement—and teen dating violence.

Epidemiological data indicate that risk behaviors are among the leading causes of adolescent morbidity and mortality worldwide. Consistent with this, laboratory-based studies of age differences in risk behavior allude to a peak in adolescence, suggesting that adolescents demonstrate a heightened propensity, or inherent inclination, to take risks. Unlike epidemiological reports, studies of risk taking propensity have been limited to Western samples, leaving questions about the extent to which heightened risk taking propensity is an inherent or culturally constructed aspect of adolescence.