RJAP

Abstract: Virtual reality scenarios have been developed in order to assess cognitive functioning such as: memory, attention and executive function. Most scenarios replicate everyday situations like shopping activities, navigation through a park or a street, learning objects in an apartment or virtual office, or sitting and solving tasks in a classroom or apartment. Results of these studies support the use of virtual reality scenarios in neurocognitive assessment. Virtual scenarios that are used in cognitive training include a wide range of contexts from everyday life such as: a store, a kitchen, a city, as well as exercises like touching a ball on a screen for movement coordination, collecting a coconut and positioning it in a basket. Overall, virtual reality-based assessment or rehabilitation tools seem to be valid, reliable and efficient with an increased level of ecological validity.

Keywords: virtual reality, cognitive assessment, cognitive rehabilitation, memory, executive function.

Address of correspondence: alexandra_negut@yahoo.com

Abstract: The current research aimed to explore Romanian parents’ social representations of vaccination in children and to identify how they fluctuate across gender and degree of reliance on information regarding this practice learned from media and, respectively, medical experts. The first study was conducted on a sample of 80 mothers and fathers of children who were supposed to receive the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) later that year. The analysis of the data gathered upon the completion of the Associative Network Task (de Rosa, 2002) revealed that the nucleus of the social representation of vaccination comprised the evocations health, conspiracy and immunization, revealing a positive valence of this representation. The second study was conducted on another sample of 80 parents with the same characteristics as the previous sample and revealed that fathers had significantly more positive social representations of vaccination as compared to mothers, and that participants who relied more on doctors as a source of information on vaccination were significantly more likely to have more positive representations as compared to those who did not. In addition to this, parents who relied more on media sources had more negative representations of vaccination. Results are discussed in the light of their contribution to the social representations theory and of their implications for comprehending Romanians’ motivations for adopting or rejecting this practice.

Keywords: social representation, vaccination, media, children, parents

Address of correspondence: laura.arhiri@yahoo.com

Abstract: This research investigated the psychometric properties and the factorial invariance across genders of the Propensity for Angry Driving Scale (PADS), using data from a Romanian college sample (n = 227). Exploratory factor analysis supported the unidimensionality of the scale, while confirmatory factor analysis revealed a good fit for the initial 19 items version, as well as for two shortened versions of 13 and 8 items, respectively. All three forms of the scale showed optimal reliability. The metric invariance across genders was achieved for the 8 items version of the scale. Also, men reported higher levels of aggressive driving than women (medium effect size). Overall, the present results suggest that the Romanian version of the PADS is a reliable tool for assessing aggressive driving.

Keywords: aggressive driving, Propensity for Angry Driving Scale, reliability, factorial invariance

Address of correspondence: paul.sarbescu@gmail.com

Abstract: The present paper presents the psychometric properties of the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) in a sample of 543 Romanian undergraduate students. The TSI is a self-report questionnaire developed for the assessment of 13 types of preferences for problem solving (or thinking styles). The internal reliability analyses indicated that TSI scales have poor reliability (Cronbach's alphas between .26 and .72, with a median value of .62), and these values were slightly improved after we removed of 10 items from the original questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analyses failed to identify an appropriate solution for describing the relationships between the TSI items, indicating poor structural validity of the questionnaire. Further analyses indicated that the sex of the respondent has small effects on TSI scales. Also, results indicated that TSI scales can be used effectively to predict the academic specialization of the respondent.

Keywords: thinking styles; mental self-government theory; questionnaire adaptation

Address of correspondence: lmaricutoiu@socio.uvt.ro

Abstract: The present study explored the psychometric properties, validity and factorial structure of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) in healthy and chronically ill Romanian adolescents. The sample consisted of 500 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years (M = 14.2; SD = 1.39) recruited from schools and medical settings. Two additional screening tools were used to test the validity of the measured construct. Results indicated that the structure of HADS is represented in both healthy and chronically ill Romanian adolescents by a similar two-factor structure corresponding to anxiety and depression symptoms. With some exceptions, all items loaded on their original scale. Both HADS-Anxiety and HADS-Depression subscales showed good stability over one week and adequate positive correlations with scores on similar screening tools. Still, reliability problems of HADS-Depression scale were identified in healthy adolescents. The findings provide preliminary evidence of the adequacy of using HADS in chronically ill adolescents. The problems connected with the use of HADS-Depression scale in healthy adolescents are discussed.

Keywords: HADS; psychometrics; validity; adolescents.

Address of correspondence: andreea.mihalca@uj.edu.pl

Abstract: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is one of the most widely utilised measures of behavioural and emotional difficulties among children and young people. Previous research has raised concerns about the psychometric properties of the measure, particularly the internal consistency of the CP and PP subscales. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has generally supported a five-factor solution that is consistent with Goodman’s (1997) original conceptualisation of the SDQ, but alternative factor structures have been validated including models with internalising and externalising factors, and a total difficulties factor. This was the first study to examine the dimensionality, construct validity and internal consistency of the Romanian self-report version of the SDQ. Based on data collected from 1,086 school children aged 9-17 years old, six alternative factor models were specified and tested using conventional CFA techniques and a confirmatory bifactor modelling approach. The five-factor model provided a better fit for the data than alternative factor structures, but was still unacceptable according to a range of overall model fit indices and individual item loadings. Model fit statistics for the five-factor solution were also notably poorer among boys than girls. Internal consistency was low for the CP, H and PP subscales among the total sample and girls only; and for the EP, CP, H and PP subscales among boys only. Results are discussed in terms of the appropriate interpretation of the Romanian SDQ.

Keywords: Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ); children; confirmatory factor analysis; bifactor modelling; internal consistency

Address of correspondence: k.sharratt@hud.ac.uk

Abstract: Integrating a dehumanization perspective with the literature on stereotyping of obesity, this paper investigated whether obese people are implicitly categorized as animals rather than humans. Sixty participants were asked to complete an Implicit Association Test in which they had to associate images of thin and obese faces with animal or human characteristics. As predicted, people were more likely to categorize images of obese faces as animal-like and this tendency was more acute amongst thinner participants. Implications of our results for future on research on dehumanization and negative stereotyping of obesity are discussed.

Keywords: obesity, animalization, dehumanization, obesity stereotyping, implicit association test

Address of correspondence: pbernard@ulb.ac.be

Abstract: The aim of this research was to investigate Romanians’ social representations of ageing and positive ageing, as well as the variations of these social representations according to the age and gender of the participants in what regards the centrality of the components and basic cognitive scheme activations. Study 1 was conducted on 80 participants who filled in two associative map tasks (Dafinoiu & Crumpei, 2013) that had as inductors “ageing” and, respectively, “positive ageing”. Results have shown a notable variation between the two social representations, in the sense that the latter was entirely made up of positive associations, whereas the former comprised both positive and negative associations. The second study was conducted on another sample of 80 participants (20 young adult men and 20 young adult women and, respectively, 20 mature adult men and 20 mature adult women) and it found by employing the questioning principle (“mise-en-cause”, Moliner, 1994) that two core elements of the social representation of ageing vary in centrality according to the age of the participants. Moreover, variations across age were also encountered in the overall activation of basic cognitive schemes as well as in the activation of the three dimensions: Description, Praxis and Attribution / Evaluation (Rateau, 1995). Results are discussed in the light of their contribution to the social representations theory.

Keywords: social representations, ageing, positive ageing, basic cognitive schemes, mise-en-cause

Address of correspondence: mihaela.a.gherman@gmail.com

Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine the moderation role of cognitive reappraisal, as an emotion regulation strategy, in the relationship between job resources and well-being (work engagement and affective commitment). Data was collected from 64 employees (53% women), which work in a multinational company. The instruments were administrated on-line. The results show that social support positively relates with affective commitment, and cognitive reappraisal moderates this relation. Work engagement is positively associated with social support and cognitive reappraisal, but the latter has no moderating influence on the relation between work engagement and social support. This study has major practical implications for organizations and emphasizes the importance of studying emotions in association with work related aspects.

Keywords: cognitive reappraisal, social support, affective commitment, work engagement

Address of correspondence: delia.virga@e-uvt.ro