L’APP Mind Inclusion: la tecnologia assistiva per promuovere l’inclusione sociale delle persone con disabilità intelletive nella loro comunità

Information and Communication Technologies have been widely used to enhance evidencebased interventions in the education and training of individuals with intellectual disabilities. The use of Information and Communication Technologies for these purposes is called Assistive Technology. Assistive technology is able to support persons with intellectual disabilities to live fuller and richer lives in their communities, supporting more successful functioning across multiple domains: independent living and inclusion in community.This study has the aim to present and explain the development of an assistive technology tool for persons with intellectual disabilities, the Mind Inclusion APP which can allow persons with intellectual disabilities to search and reach for a location or an activity in their community. The APP was co-created through the support of a participatory design and a person centred approach.A sample of 48 people, including persons with disabilities, caregivers, educators and business owners, was involved at all stages of the project. This study has shown that persons with disabilities can interact better, be part of their society more easily, and learn new skills reducing the impact of disability on daily functioning by using the Mind Inclusion APP

Agenzia Territoriale: un servizio di innovazione sociale per occupazione e disabilità

Il presente contributo documenta gli esiti di Agenzia Territoriale, un servizio di inclusione lavorativa e occupazionale realizzato da Margherita Società Cooperativa Sociale Onlus, in provincia di Vicenza. Il framework teorico di riferimento combina la prospettiva bio-psico-sociale sulla disabilità e l’approccio delle capability, con particolare attenzione alle dimensioni della partecipazione sociale, dell’autodeterminazione, e del benessere fisico e mentale

Working memory and emotional interpretation bias in a sample of Syrian refugee adolescents

The number of adolescent refugees around the world has been continuously increasing over the past few years trying to escape war and terror, among other things. Such experience not only increases the risk for mental health problems including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but also may have implications for socio-cognitive development. This study tested cognitive-affective processing in refugee adolescents who had escaped armed conflict in Syria and now resided in Istanbul, Turkey. Adolescents were split into a high trauma (n = 31, 12 girls, mean age = 11.70 years, SD = 1.15 years) and low trauma (n = 27, 14 girls, mean age = 11.07 years, SD = 1.39 years) symptom group using median split, and performed a working memory task with emotional distraction to assess cognitive control and a surprise faces task to assess emotional interpretation bias. The results indicated that high (vs. low) trauma symptom youth were similar to 20% worse correctly remembering the spatial location of a cue, although both groups performed at very low levels. However, this finding was not modulated by emotion. In addition, although all youths also had a similar to 20% bias toward interpreting ambiguous (surprise) faces as more negative, the high (vs. low) symptom youth were faster when allocating such a face to the positive (vs. negative) emotion category. The findings suggest the impact of war-related trauma on cognitive-affective processes essential to healthy development