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 s…
Emotional and meta-emotional intelligence as predictors of adjustment problems in students with Specific Learning Disorders
The purpose of this study was to analyse adjustment problems in a group of adolescents with a Specific Learning Disorder (SLD), examining to what extent they depend on the severity level of the learning disorder and/or on the individual‟s level of emotional intelligence. Adjustment problems,, perceived severity levels of SLD, and emotional and meta-emotional intelligence were examined in 34 adolescents with SLD. Results demonstrated that emotional beliefs, emotional self-concept and emotional intelligence are very important factors in the psychological adjustment of adolescents with SLD. These results provide evidence for the importance of considering meta-emotional intelligence in both dia…
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 c…
The Robotic Construction Kit as a Tool for Cognitive Stimulation in Children and Adolescents: The RE4BES Protocol
Through numerous experiences, the robotics has been demonstrated to have good potential in the field of strengthening social skills in children with Special Educational Needs and in particular with autism spectrum disorder. There are still not many experimental studies on the cognitive enhancement and social skills of children with special needs conducted with robotics construction kits that, requiring both the construction of the robot body and the programming of its “mind“, bring into play a multiplicity of cognitive and social skills. For the aforementioned reasons our team from the University of Palermo and from the Center MetaIntelligenze ONLUS developed the treatment protocol RE4BES, …
Differences in achievement not in intelligence in the north and south of Italy: Comments on
Abstract Lynn (2010a, 2010b) argued that individuals from south Italy have a lower IQ than individuals from north Italy, and that these differences in IQ are at the basis of north–south gap in income, education, infant mortality, stature, and literacy. In the present paper, we discuss several theoretical and methodological aspects which we regard as flaws of Lynn's studies. Moreover, we report scores of southern Italian children on Raven's Progressive Matrices and a north–south comparison for the PASS theory of intelligence as measured by the Cognitive Assessment System (Taddei & Naglieri, 2006). Both results reveal similar levels of performance of northern and southern Italian children in …
MetaEmotions at School: A Program for Promoting Emotional and MetaEmotional Intelligence at School; a Research-Intervention Study
MetaEmotions at Schools is a SEL program that aims at promoting the culture of emotional and metaemotional intelligence in schools, and at improving emotional awareness both among teachers and students. It is a train-the-trainers program that unfolds in five steps, respectively, aimed at stimulating teachers and students to: (1) develop emotional literacy; (2) create emotionally inclusive environments; (3) build tools, materials and methods for emotionally inclusive classes; (4) develop didactic method mediated by emotions; (5) become ambassadors of the metaemotional intelligence at school and beyond. In this study, we report some results of the first application of the training program, fo…
Robotics Construction Kits: From “Objects to Think with” to “Objects to Think and to Emote with”
This paper discusses new ideas about the use of educational robotics in social-emotional learning. In particular, educational robotics could be a tool intended to allow children to acquire some of the basic aspects of human emotions and emotional functioning, and to understand how these relate to the mind and body. More specifically, by using robots such as the LEGO Mindstorm construction kits—which allow users to both construct the body of the robot and to provide it with a behavioural repertory—children have the opportunity to visualize (and manipulate) the relationship between the robot’s body and mind. This allows them to simulate “embodied emotional minds” and to reflect on new neurosc…
Robot’s Inner Speech Effects on Human Trust and Anthropomorphism
AbstractInner 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 …
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 …
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.
The Relationship between Perceived Emotional Intelligence, Work Engagement, Job Satisfaction, and Burnout in Italian School Teachers: An Exploratory Study
The study investigates the relationship between perceived emotional intelligence, burnout, work engagement, and job satisfaction in 238 Italian school teachers. The mean age was 50 years, ranged from 26 to 66 (SD = 9.16). The research protocol included a demographics data sheet, the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS; Wong & Law, 2002), the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI; Kristensen, Borritz, Villadsen, & Christensen, 2005), the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES; Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006), and the Organizational Satisfaction Scale (QSO; Cortese, 2001). Several international studies already demonstrated an association among these variable…