Vivendo em família ou em instituição: a experiência ótima, metas e desafios na vida de adolescentes

The influence of family relationships on adolescents' behavior and development has been widely investigated. This study examines the relationship between family structure and a) adolescents' quality of experience in daily activities and social contexts b) adolescents' perceived life influences, challenges and goals. To achieve this aim, Flow Questionnaire and Life Theme Questionnaire were administered to 50 Italian girls (15-21 years of age), 25 living in two-parent families, 25 entrusted to Institutions for Custody of Minors. The findings suggest tha adolescents' perception of a positive and supportive family enviroment fosters the active search for challenges and enjoyment in daily activities, and the involvement in productive and social contexts. On the contrary , negative family perception is related to lack of engagement and motivation, and to the prevalence of low-challenge activities as sources of enjoyment and satisfaction. Although the sample size does not allow us to draw conclusions about causality, the results confirm the crucial role of family in influencing adolescents' psychological and behavioral development.A influência das relações familiares no comportamento e desenvolvimento de adolescentes tem sido amplamente investigada. Este estudo examina a relação entre a estrutura familiar e a qualidade das experiências de adolescentes nas atividades diárias e contextos sociais, e a percepção que eles têm das influências em suas vidas, de seus desafios e metas. Para atingir estes objetivos, Flow Questionnaire e o Life Theme Questionnaire foram aplicados a 50 adolescentes italianas (15-21 anos), 25 vivendo em famílias com ambos os pais, 25 em Instituições Abrigo. Os dados sugerem que a percepção dos adolescentes de um ambiente familiar positivo e acolhedor incentiva a busca por atividades diárias desafiadoras e agradáveis e o envolvimento em contextos sociais produtivos. Ao contrário, uma percepção negativa da família está relacionada com falta de engajamento e motivação e a prevalência de atividades com baixo índice de desafio como fonte de divertimento e satisfação. Os resultados, apesar de se ter uma amostra pequena que não permite generalizações, confirmam o papel crucial da família no influenciar o desenvolvimento psicológico e comportamental dos adolescentes

Vivendo em família ou em instituição: a experiência ótima, metas e desafios na vida de adolescentes

The influence of family relationships on adolescents' behavior and development has been widely investigated. This study examines the relationship between family structure and a) adolescents' quality of experience in daily activities and social contexts b) adolescents' perceived life influences, challenges and goals. To achieve this aim, Flow Questionnaire and Life Theme Questionnaire were administered to 50 Italian girls (15-21 years of age), 25 living in two-parent families, 25 entrusted to Institutions for Custody of Minors. The findings suggest tha adolescents' perception of a positive and supportive family enviroment fosters the active search for challenges and enjoyment in daily activities, and the involvement in productive and social contexts. On the contrary , negative family perception is related to lack of engagement and motivation, and to the prevalence of low-challenge activities as sources of enjoyment and satisfaction. Although the sample size does not allow us to draw conclusions about causality, the results confirm the crucial role of family in influencing adolescents' psychological and behavioral development.A influência das relações familiares no comportamento e desenvolvimento de adolescentes tem sido amplamente investigada. Este estudo examina a relação entre a estrutura familiar e a qualidade das experiências de adolescentes nas atividades diárias e contextos sociais, e a percepção que eles têm das influências em suas vidas, de seus desafios e metas. Para atingir estes objetivos, Flow Questionnaire e o Life Theme Questionnaire foram aplicados a 50 adolescentes italianas (15-21 anos), 25 vivendo em famílias com ambos os pais, 25 em Instituições Abrigo. Os dados sugerem que a percepção dos adolescentes de um ambiente familiar positivo e acolhedor incentiva a busca por atividades diárias desafiadoras e agradáveis e o envolvimento em contextos sociais produtivos. Ao contrário, uma percepção negativa da família está relacionada com falta de engajamento e motivação e a prevalência de atividades com baixo índice de desafio como fonte de divertimento e satisfação. Os resultados, apesar de se ter uma amostra pequena que não permite generalizações, confirmam o papel crucial da família no influenciar o desenvolvimento psicológico e comportamental dos adolescentes

Affect Recognition using Psychophysiological Correlates in High Intensity VR Exergaming

User experience estimation of VR exergame players by recognising their affective state could enable us to personalise and optimise their experience. Affect recognition based on psychophysiological measurements has been successful for moderate intensity activities. High intensity VR exergames pose challenges as the effects of exercise and VR headsets interfere with those measurements. We present two experiments that investigate the use of different sensors for affect recognition in a VR exergame. The first experiment compares the impact of physical exertion and gamification on psychophysiological measurements during rest, conventional exercise, VR exergaming, and sedentary VR gaming. The second experiment compares underwhelming, overwhelming and optimal VR exergaming scenarios. We identify gaze fixations, eye blinks, pupil diameter and skin conductivity as psychophysiological measures suitable for affect recognition in VR exergaming and analyse their utility in determining affective valence and arousal. Our findings provide guidelines for researchers of affective VR exergames.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665992 </p

Statistical Coding and Decoding of Heartbeat Intervals

The heart integrates neuroregulatory messages into specific bands of frequency, such that the overall amplitude spectrum of the cardiac output reflects the variations of the autonomic nervous system. This modulatory mechanism seems to be well adjusted to the unpredictability of the cardiac demand, maintaining a proper cardiac regulation. A longstanding theory holds that biological organisms facing an ever-changing environment are likely to evolve adaptive mechanisms to extract essential features in order to adjust their behavior. The key question, however, has been to understand how the neural circuitry self-organizes these feature detectors to select behaviorally relevant information. Previous studies in computational perception suggest that a neural population enhances information that is important for survival by minimizing the statistical redundancy of the stimuli. Herein we investigate whether the cardiac system makes use of a redundancy reduction strategy to regulate the cardiac rhythm. Based on a network of neural filters optimized to code heartbeat intervals, we learn a population code that maximizes the information across the neural ensemble. The emerging population code displays filter tuning proprieties whose characteristics explain diverse aspects of the autonomic cardiac regulation, such as the compromise between fast and slow cardiac responses. We show that the filters yield responses that are quantitatively similar to observed heart rate responses during direct sympathetic or parasympathetic nerve stimulation. Our findings suggest that the heart decodes autonomic stimuli according to information theory principles analogous to how perceptual cues are encoded by sensory systems

Living at home or in institution: adolescents' optimal experience and life theme building

The influence of family relationships on adolescents' behavior and development has been widely investigated. This study examines the relationship between family structure and a) adolescents' quality of experience in daily activities and social contexts b) adolescents' perceived life influences, challenges and goals. To achieve this aim, Flow Questionnaire and Life Theme Questionnaire were administered to 50 Italian girls (15-21 years of age), 25 living in two-parent families, 25 entrusted to Institutions for Custody of Minors. The findings suggest tha adolescents' perception of a positive and supportive family enviroment fosters the active search for challenges and enjoyment in daily activities, and the involvement in productive and social contexts. On the contrary , negative family perception is related to lack of engagement and motivation, and to the prevalence of low-challenge activities as sources of enjoyment and satisfaction. Although the sample size does not allow us to draw conclusions about causality, the results confirm the crucial role of family in influencing adolescents' psychological and behavioral development

Psychological selection and optimal experience across cultures : social empowerment through personal growth/ Fave

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