In the ongoing debate in the area of critical leadership studies, the nature of leader–follower relationships is a thorny issue. The nature of followership has been questioned, especially whether followers can display resistance behaviours while maintaining their follower position. Addressing this issue requires a dialectical approach in which followers and leaders alike are primary elements in leadership co-production. Followers who face destructive leaders are of special interest when leadership is studied as a co-creational process. This context favours the emergence of a full range of behavioural profiles in which passives and colluders will illustrate the destructive leadership co-production process, and those who resist demonstrate that followers may not follow the leader and still keep a followership purpose. A two-step data analysis procedure was conducted based on the behaviour descriptions of 123 followers having a destructive leader. A qualitative analysis (i.e. content analysis) showed a set of behaviours and their antecedents that suggest three main groups of followers: resisters, obedient and mixed behaviour. Treating these data quantitatively (i.e. latent class analysis), six followers’ profiles emerged: active resistance, passive resistance, passive obedience, conflict avoidance, support and mixed. Our findings provide evidence that followers who resist may do it for the sake of the organisation. We discuss our findings in light of followership theory, whereby joining role-based and constructionist approaches allows us to argue that followers may still be followers even when they do not invariably follow their leader.
Purpose: Follower's individual differences have been receiving increased attention in studying destructive leadership because followers may enable or disable it. One of these yet under-researched features is the role of followers' leadership coproduction beliefs (a role construal) in explaining their resistance to destructive leaders. Departing from the proactive motivation theory, this paper explores the robustness of coproduction beliefs by testing its ability to predict followers' resistance to destructive leaders across four situations – abusive supervision, exploitative leadership, organization directed behaviors and laissez-faire. Design/methodology/approach: With a sample of 359 participants that answered a scenario-based survey, the present study tests the relationship between coproduction beliefs and resistance behaviors in the four mentioned groups, while controlling for alternative explanations. A multigroup analysis was conducted with PLS-SEM. Findings: Constructive resistance is always favored by coproduction beliefs independently of the leader's type of destructive behavior. Dysfunctional resistance, however, is sensitive to the leader's type of destructive behavior. Originality/value: This paper extends knowledge on the role of coproduction beliefs as an individual-based resource against destructive leaders.
Of the many of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products, electronic games are considered as having great potential for improving health and social outcomes. This chapter considers the factors that may be involved in facilitating health and social outcomes and also those factors that might be considered risk factors by reviewing studies that have shown both positive and detrimental effects on people's physical and mental health. The authors also debate some research questions that remain unanswered and suggest guidelines for practitioners, researchers, and game designers.
Objective: The present experiment analyzed the effects of playing a violent video game on player’s sensitivity to victimized people by measuring the involuntary pupil dilation responses (PDRs) during a passive picture viewing paradigm and examining the mediating role of PDR on aggression. Method: Participants (N = 135) were randomly assigned to play a violent video game or a nonviolent video game. The participants’ PDRs were then recorded while they were exposed to pictures of alleged victims of violence displayed in negative, neutral, and positive contexts. A competitive reaction time task was also used to measure aggression. Results: Participants in the violent game condition demonstrated both a lower PDR to the victims of violence in a negative circumstances and greater aggression than participants in the nonviolent game condition. Lower PDR to victims displayed in negative context mediated the relationship between violent game play and aggression. Conclusion: The negative effects of playing violent games are a societal concern. Our results indicate that a single violent gaming session can reduce the player’s involuntary PDRs to pictures of victimized people in negative context and increase participant aggression, a new relevant finding that should encourage further research in this area.
This study was conducted to analyze the short‐term effects of violent electronic games, played with or without a virtual reality (VR) device, on the instigation of aggressive behavior. Physiological arousal (heart rate (HR)), priming of aggressive thoughts, and state hostility were also measured to test their possible mediation on the relationship between playing the violent game (VG) and aggression. The participants—148 undergraduate students—were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: two groups played a violent computer game (Unreal Tournament), and the other two a non‐violent game (Motocross Madness), half with a VR device and the remaining participants on the computer screen. In order to assess the game effects the following instruments were used: a BIOPAC System MP100 to measure HR, an Emotional Stroop task to analyze the priming of aggressive and fear thoughts, a self‐report State Hostility Scale to measure hostility, and a competitive reaction‐time task to assess aggressive behavior. The main results indicated that the violent computer game had effects on state hostility and aggression. Although no significant mediation effect could be detected, regression analyses showed an indirect effect of state hostility between playing a VG and aggression.
An experimental study was conducted to investigate the impact of violent computer games on state hostility, state anxiety and arousal. Participants were undergraduate students, aged from 18 to 25 years. Before the experimental sessions, participants filled in self-report measures concerning their video game habits and were also pre-tested for aggressiveness and trait anxiety. Physiological responses (heart rate and skin conductance) were measured during the experiment. After playing, information about state hostility and state anxiety was collected. The results showed that participants who played the violent game reported significantly higher state hostility, and support the assumption that an aggressive personality moderates the effect of playing a violent game on state hostility.
The present study examined whether eye movements when regarding pictures of other people in fortunate (positive) and unfortunate (negative) circumstances are influenced by background music. Sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to three background music conditions (happy music, sad music, or no music) where pairs of negative-positive pictures were shown. Participants' eye movements were recorded throughout the experiment to assess distinct phases of attentional processes, i.e., initial orienting to, and subsequent engagement with, visual scenes. We found that these attentional processes were not uniformly influenced by the music. The type of background music had no effect on initial visual attention but played a relevant role in guiding subsequent gaze behaviour by maintaining attention in a mood-congruent fashion: sad music enhanced attentional bias to visual images of others in unfortunate circumstances, whereas happy music contributed to longer gazes at images of others in fortunate circumstances. These results support the notion that attention is affected by background music and reflected by gaze behaviour.
This study analyzed the effects of playing a violent computer game on emotional desensitization and aggressive behavior. College students (N = 58) were randomly assigned to play a violent game (VG) or a nonviolent game (NVG), and then were exposed to a set of emotional pictures. Participants' physiological responses were recorded, and the Self‐Assessment Manikin scale was used to assess affective valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Participants were then asked to replay the game, after which aggressive behavior was measured. Participants' violent game habits (VGH) were also measured. We found that VG playing interacted with participants' VGH to influence aggression, and that self‐reported valence mediated this effect by lowering the feelings of pleasure and displeasure toward emotional stimuli.
This chapter gives a comprehensive state-of-the-art review on the effects that exposure to or enactment of violence in mainstream media has on aggressive behavior, emotions, and empathy. In line with contemporary technological developments, the authors also cover the more and more widespread consumption of violent video games, which put the player in a more active role than traditional media (such as television) put their viewers. As the field is extremely controversial, the authors are careful in their analysis of the actually existing evidence as well as in their conclusions and recommendations for future research. Despite all controversy, and after reviewing existing literature, as well as a large number of own empirical work, the authors come to the conclusion that there is evidence for increased aggressive motivation and impulsivity as a result of exposure to media violence, but that it is not clear yet how much it affects people’s real-life behavior. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is no evidence for cathartic effects, a conclusion that is similar in research on the effects of filmed violence, and an idea that had been present in the controversy for decades but can now be abandoned.
In two experiments, prime face stimuli with an emotional or a neutral expression were presented individually for 25 to 125 ms, either in foveal or parafoveal vision; following a mask, a probe face or a word label appeared for recognition. Accurate detection and sensitivity (A') were higher for angry, happy, and sad faces than for nonemotional (neutral) or novel (scheming) faces at short exposure times (25-75 ms), in both the foveal and the parafoveal field, and with both the probe face and the probe word. These results indicate that there is a low perceptual threshold for unambiguous emotional faces, which are especially likely to be detected both within and outside the focus of attention; and that this facilitated detection involves processing of the affective meaning of faces, not only discrimination of formal visual features.
Neste estudo são apresentadas as normas de associação livre de 16 palavras portuguesas para 3 faixas etárias de crianças – 3/4 anos, 7/8 anos e 11/12 anos – e adultos. As comparações efectuadas entre as faixas etárias revelaram uma diferença significativa entre os 3/4 anos e os 7/8 anos ao nível do número de associados obtidos, provavelmente atribuída a um aumento considerável do vocabulário nesta fase do desenvolvimento. Mudanças conceptuais na organização do conhecimento foram também analisadas, verificando-se nos pré-escolares associações que revelam relações funcionais e um predomínio de relações taxonómicas a partir dos 7/8 anos.
Two experiments attempted to resolve previous contradictory findings concerning developmental trends in false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm by using an improved methodology--constructing age-appropriate associative lists. The research also extended the DRM paradigm to preschoolers. Experiment 1 (N=320) included children in three age groups (preschoolers of 3-4 years, second-graders of 7-8 years, and preadolescents of 11-12 years) and adults, and Experiment 2 (N=64) examined preschoolers and preadolescents. Age-appropriate lists increased false recall. Although preschoolers had fewer false memories than the other age groups, they showed considerable levels of false recall when tested with age-appropriate materials. Results were discussed in terms of fuzzy-trace, source-monitoring, and activation frameworks.
Recently, a relationship between bilingualism and enhanced social flexibility has been suggested. However, research on the subject is scarce and what little exists is limited by several conceptual and methodological concerns. In the current study, we attempted to (a) replicate the findings from a study by Ikizer and Ramírez-Esparza (Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21:957–969, 2018) by using the scales that the authors developed, and (b) test the concept of social flexibility experimentally with a switch-task using socially relevant stimuli. In the first part, participants (n = 194) filled out the scales developed by Ikizer and Ramírez-Esparza. We could not find that bilingualism leads to enhanced social flexibility. We did, however, find that higher level of education led to higher scores on the social flexibility scale. In the second part, a subsample (n = 74) from Part 1 completed a task where they were asked to identify the congruency between a face and a voice based on either gender or emotion, and to switch between these two tasks. The experimental task did not show an advantage for the bilingual participants. On the contrary, higher proficiency in a second language led to lower accuracy in the congruent emotion condition, while level of education led to higher accuracy in that same condition. We suggest that factors other than bilingualism, such as level of education and biculturalism, most likely drove the effect found both in the current study and originally by Ikizer and Ramírez-Esparza.
We investigated the emotional development of bilingual children by measuring balanced and unbalanced 4-year-old bilinguals’ performance on an identification of emotional facial expressions task. A total of 84 children were divided into three groups: balanced bilinguals, unbalanced bilinguals, and monolinguals. Participants completed a computerized task where photographs of faces displaying anger, happiness, sadness, and fear were presented. The groups generally performed in line with previous research, but slightly differently from each other. For all three groups, the results showed that anger and happiness were more accurately identified, while sadness and fear were still difficult to identify for children at this age. However, there were interesting trends suggesting that balanced bilinguals made more refined judgments than the two other groups. Overall, this study supports the idea that the development of bilingual children is similar to their monolingual peers when it comes to learning to identify facial expressions of emotions, but that proportion of exposure to the bilingual child’s languages may lead to slightly different developmental courses.
The current study investigated the identification of facial expressions of emotion, a socio-emotional task that has not previously been examined in children from different linguistic environments. Eighty-four 4-year-olds growing up in one of three linguistic environments (monolingual, dominant bilingual, balanced bilingual) performed a task where they identified facial expressions (happiness, anger, sadness, fear). Accuracy was analysed with a mixed-design analysis of variance using group (monolinguals, dominant bilinguals and balanced bilinguals) and emotion (happy, angry, sad and scared) as between- and within-group variables, respectively. Our results showed a main effect of emotion, but there was no main effect of group. This suggests that 4-year-olds’ linguistic environment does not affect performance on an identification of facial expressions task. This study was the first to investigate the identification of facial expressions of emotion in children coming from different linguistic environments. As the socio-emotional development of bilinguals is not yet well understood, especially regarding the visual perception of emotions, this study is amongst the first to contribute to this area of research. Our results are therefore of significance as a building block for additional studies that should explore the visual perception of emotions in other types of tasks and populations.
Virtual Reality in Exposure Therapy allows exposing patients to simulations of feared situations, even in cases where actual exposure is not possible or difficult. We have created a Web application that helps therapists performing this type of therapy when dealing with patients that suffer from anxiety of crossing road tunnels. The application contains a set of animations of virtual scenarios recreating a car journey across a tunnel visualized from the point of view of the traveler sitting beside the driver and exhibiting a set of potential anxiety inductors. In this paper we describe the application and report a user study to assess the adequacy of our application as a VRET tool and also to compare the impact of visualizing the animations resorting to two distinct low cost apparatus: a versatile immersive equipment and a big projection.
The aim of our work is to propose a Virtual Reality solution to treat social anxiety, applying cognitive-behavioral therapies, that preserves the sense of immersion without requiring the use of expensive special purpose hardware. We have developed an application, called Virtual Spectators, that creates a simulation taking place in a virtual scenario inhabited by animated virtual humans whose behaviors are dynamically controlled by the therapist. To evaluate the effective usefulness of the tool from the point of view of the therapist, we performed an evaluation of the application with a set of these professionals familiarized with the use of exposure therapy. Their feedback was positive and they were enthusiastic about the possibility of using such a tool to support a session of exposure therapy. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Previous research showed that the asymmetrical direction of bilateral skin conductance responses (SCRs) remains constant regardless of task (with larger left SCRs in men and larger right SCRs in women). However, SCRs are controlled ipsilaterally by structures also associated with sexual arousal, hence it could be expected that larger right SCRs are specifically elicited by sexual stimuli. In order to test the two competing hypotheses, left and right SCR magnitude to three stimulus categories (sexually explicit, sexually non-explicit and neutral) were compared in 54 subjects (27 females). The direction of the asymmetry remained constant across stimulus types, however, unexpected sex differences occurred, as males had larger right SCRs and there was no lateralization in females. Interestingly, this interaction disappeared after controlling for indicators of subjective sexual arousal, suggesting that a specific (not previously hypothesized) processing of sexual information could take place.
Studies have traditionally shown that there are differences between the number of words that men and women produce, where females generally produce more words than males. The same has been found for emotional words. However, it is unclear when during development, and why those differences arise. In order to understand this issue better, we replicated a study by Neshat Doost et al. (1999) on a Swedish population. Not only did we study emotional word generation in children (n = 127, age range 8-10 years) as in the original study by Neshat Doost et al. (1999), but we also tested an adult population (n = 183, mean age = 27.7 years) in order to compare different stages in life. Participants generated words based on ten categories, two of which were neutral, and eight of which were emotional categories, covering various aspects of happiness, sadness, and fear. Our results show similar gender differences in the targeted age groups. For the younger population, females produced more words than males in all emotional categories, but there was no difference in the neutral category. Similarly, in the adult population, women generated more words than men in most emotional categories, but no differences were found in the neutral categories. Overall, our results show no gender differences in word generation of neutral words for both the younger and the adult participants, but when it comes to the emotional categories, the female participants generated significantly more words than their male peers. This trend is observable even in children as young as 8-10 years, and persists into adulthood. Our results suggest that gender differences in amount of words generated is specific to, or at least more prominent for emotional words.
Within Psychology, there has been a growing interest in the study of human animal interactions. However, studies addressing human empathy towards non-human animals are still scarce, as are the instruments to measure it, and as of now there was none available for the Portuguese population. We chose the Animal Empathy Scale (AES), for being the most frequently used tool to measure empathy towards non-human animals. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis revealed a twocomponent structure, and the two new subscales were named Emotional Detachment and Animal Empathic Concern. Both the final scale and subscales structures showed a well-adjusted model with good levels of internal consistency. A significant correlation was found with a measure of empathy towards humans (Interpersonal Reactivity Index - IRI), strengthening the validity of this instrument as a useful tool to assess empathy toward animals in the Portuguese population. © 2016, Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada. All rights reserved.
While the relation between human directed empathy (HDE) and animal directed empathy (ADE) has been reported as relatively weak, very little is known on factors underpinning the development of the later. We explored predictive models of HDE and ADE regressing them on gender, religion, diet, having pets and belonging to NGO charities, and we also compared portuguese with english speaking people as a proxy of culturally distinct populations. An online survey was conducted and included portuguese and english versions of measures of HDE and ADE, as well as questions targeted at the predictive variables. Results indicated gender as the single predictor of human directed empathy in the "Portuguese" group whereas both gender and having pets predicted empathy towards animals in both groups. NGO affiliation is a predictor of empathy towards animals in the portuguese but not in the english group, where a vegetarian/vegan diet is the strongest predictor.
Emotional processing of food-related pictures was studied in four experiments, comparing participants who revealed unhealthy attitudes toward food, dieting and body shape with control groups. All subjects were female and responses to pictures of low and of high calorie foods were compared to responses to other emotional stimuli. The first three experiments measured verbal and autonomic responses and Experiment 4 was a classical conditioning study. In Experiments 2-4, pictures were presented backward masked in order to observe automatic, non-conscious responses. The results showed that, in general, food pictures were processed in the same way as other emotional material, both verbally and psychophysiologically. Although there were some results indicating a difference between groups, the general pattern was that participants selected for being more worried about food and dieting did not show higher reactivity to food cues.
This study examined automatic elicitation of conditioned skin conductance responses (SCRs), when a backward masking procedure prevented the subject's conscious awareness of the conditioned stimuli (CSs). The CSs were pictures of emotional facial expressions. A differential conditioning procedure was used. One facial expression (e.g. an angry face) was aversively conditioned by a shock unconditioned stimulus, whereas another facial expression (e.g. a happy face) was never presented with the shock. After conditioning, the CSs were presented backwardly masked by a neutral face. This procedure prevented conscious perception of the CS. Nevertheless, reliable differential SCRs were obtained when the CS had been an angry face. This effect, however, was dependent on the subject's direction of attention. When attention was focused on the mask, no differential responding was observed. Thus it was concluded that, when fear-relevant stimuli (angry faces) served as the CS, elicitation of SCRs was automatic in the sense that it was possible even when the subjects were not aware of the stimuli presented. However, it was only partially automatic because the effect was modified by attention.
Virtual Reality systems have been proved to be a valuable tool in the exposure treatment of different anxiety disorders. Virtual Spectators is an application created to be used by therapists in the treatment of social anxiety. The application allows the therapist to manipulate the difficulty of the task during the therapy session. The aim of the present study was to test the emotional impact of the application in non-clinical participants with different levels of social anxiety, by measuring Heart-Rate, Skin Conductance Responses and the Startle Reflex. Participants had to read two different texts (one easier and another more difficult) in front of a panel with three animated virtual judges, while their physiological responses were monitored continuously. From an initial pool of 95 participants, 32 (10 males) were selected to participate in the experiment according to their anxiety level (high or low). The results showed a general increase in heart-rate and skin conductance levels while they were reading the first text. A general differentiation between the groups was also observed in the heart-rate data, with participants in the high-anxiety group showing higher rates than in low-anxiety participants. Interestingly, the participants rated the exposure situation as more realistic while they were reading the more difficult text. In general, it can be concluded that the application Virtual Spectators seems to be a useful instrument to induce anxiety responses in exposure situations in the treatment of social anxiety.
Body dissatisfaction is an important factor in the development and maintenance ofeating disorders. The comparison with the thin ideal prevalent in different mediachannels, can be one of the factors that contribute to widespread of dissatisfaction withthe own body. Thus, even people not meeting the criteria for eating disorders, mightshow a very problematic way to cope with their body and food intake. The present studyaimed to investigate the attentional pattern evoked when young women were exposed topictures of female bodies varying in their body shape.Eighty-one women, aged 18 to 37 years, viewed a series of pictures, each onecontaining four photos of women. The photos were generated and manipulated digitallyin order to get different body shapes, ranging from a slim to a heavy body shape. Thephotos were exposed in a 2x2 array during 4 seconds. Body Shape Questionnaire wasused to divide participants into two groups; high and low body dissatisfaction. Thedirection and fixation of the gaze were recorded continuously by means of an eyetracker.In general, an attentional bias in the body dissatisfaction group was observed, i.e.,women looked longer to the slimmest picture in the array. Women in the control group(low body dissatisfaction) showed distributed attention to the four body shapes.These results suggest promising possibilities of using ocular tracking tests in the earlydetection of symptoms associated with eating disorders, and perhaps possibilities ofimproving clinical and preventive interventions.
We examined the possibility of nonconscious associative learning in a context of skin conductance conditioning, using emotional facial expressions as stimuli. In the first experiment, subjects were conditioned to a backwardly masked angry face that was followed by electric shock, with a masked happy face as the nonreinforced stimulus. In spite of the effectively masked conditioned stimuli, differential conditioned skin conductance responses were observed in a subsequent nonmasked extinction phase. This effect could not be attributed to differential sensitization or pseudo‐conditioning. In the second experiment, the differential responding during extinction was replicated with angry but not with happy faces as conditioned stimuli. It was concluded that with fear‐relevant facialexpressions as the conditioned stimulus, associative learning was possible even in conditions where the subjects remained unaware of the conditioned stimulus, associative learning was possible even in conditions where the subjects remained unaware of the conditioned stimulus and its relationship to the unconditioned stimulus.
The aim of the study was to test if there was a bias for a better detection of caloric food stimuli when compared to healthy food. Using a visual search paradigm, it was showed that caloric stimuli (both pictures and words) were faster detected among healthy food stimuli than the other way around.
Four experiments are reported investigating recognition of emotional expressions in very briefly presented facial stimulus. The faces were backwardly masked by neutral facial displays and recognition of facial expressions was analyzed as a function of the manipulation of different parameters in the masking procedure. The main conclusion was that stimulus onset asynchrony between target and mask proved to be the principal factor influencing recognition of the masked expressions. In general, confident recognitions of facial expressions required about 100–150 msec, with shorter time for happy than for angry expressions. The manipulation of the duration of both the target and the mask, by itself, had only minimal effects.
This study sought to contribute to a better understanding of children's attitudes and opinions regarding health care, mainly in terms of medical procedures, institutions and the efficacy of health professionals. The sample included 381 children, recruited from different schools in Lisbon. The more negative attitudes were attributed to institutions, while positive attitudes were related to the efficacy of health professionals. Medical procedures were considered less painful compared to potential day-to-day accidents. Higher levels of pain were reported by children of the female sex and by children during the primary education phase. Medical fears mediated the relationship between the perception of pain and children's attitudes with respect to health care. Higher levels of pain perception were seen to be related to more negative attitudes regarding health care. However, this relationship was diminished when children's fears about medical issues were contemplated. In conclusion, a translated instrument to assess children's attitudes regarding health care is needed, as it may even contribute to the development of intervention programs within the scope of the promotion of attitudes towards health care.
This study developed three types of educational preoperative materials and examined their efficacy in preparing children for surgery by analysing children’s preoperative worries and parental anxiety. The sample was recruited from three hospitals in Lisbon and consisted of 125 children, aged 8–12 years, scheduled to undergo outpatient surgery. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the seven independent conditions that were combined into the following three main groups: an experimental group, which received educational materials with information about surgery and hospitalization (a board game, a video or a booklet); a comparison group, which received entertaining material with the same format type; and a control group, which did not receive any material. Children’s preoperative worries and parental anxiety were evaluated after the experimental manipulation. Children who received educational materials were significantly less worried about surgery and hospital procedures than children in the comparison and the control groups, although no statistically differences were found between the type of materials within the experimental group, and no significant effect occurred on parental state anxiety. These results do however support the hypothesis that providing preoperative materials with educational information reduce children’s preoperative worries.
Surgery is a highly stressful event for children and caregivers. Extensive effort has been made to improve preoperative care in order to alleviate worry about the surgical procedure itself. This study tested the impact of an educational multimedia intervention on the cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses of children undergoing surgery, as well as on parental state anxiety. Children (n = 90) were assigned to three different groups: an educational multimedia intervention (experimental group), an entertainment video game intervention (comparison group), and a control group (no intervention). Children who received the educational multimedia intervention reported lower level of worries about hospitalization, medical procedures, illness, and negative consequences than those in the control and in the comparison groups. Parental state anxiety was also lower in the both the educational and the entertainment video game interventions compared to the control group. These findings suggest that providing information to children regarding medical procedures and hospital rules and routines is important to reduce their preoperative worries, and also relevant for parental anxiety.
Worries are common in surgical patients, especially in children. The present study analyzed the factor structure and the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of the Child Surgery Worries Questionnaire (CSWQ-P) in a Portuguese sample of 490 children. Exploratory factor analysis, conducted via principal axis factoring with oblimin rotation, provided evidence for a four-factor structure of the 21 item questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis was also conducted, showing the good fit of this solution. The CSWQ-P proved to have one more subscale than the original Spanish version CSWQ. Correlations with the children’s trait anxiety provided evidence of convergent validity for the CSWQ-P. Females also scored higher on worries than males on all subscales. Psychometric properties of this revised version of the CSWQ provided support for use with young children, and indicate the CSWQ-P has value for use in healthcare practice and in clinical research.
The present study sought to contribute to a better understanding of children’s attitudes and behaviors regarding oral health and dental practices. The sample was composed of 101 children (8–10 years), collected from several schools in the Lisbon metropolitan area. Our main goals were to collect a survey of information about the beliefs, attitudes, habits and knowledge of children about oral and dental issues in order to not only have an overview of them but also to serve as a basis and a starting point for the development of intervention programs to increase positive attitudes and behaviors related to oral health and promote greater knowledge about these subjects. In general, children reported positive behaviors regarding dental habits and oral hygiene practices. Children’s opinions and beliefs about dentists were also globally positive; however, the results suggested that younger children reported more positive attitudes, emotions and previous experiences. Regarding children’s knowledge about these dental issues, the results were quite negative and worrying, ruled by ignorance and incorrect beliefs and behaviors. In sum, all the results and conclusions of this study may contribute to the development of educational programs within the scope of the promotion of oral health and hygiene practices—“An Adventure about Oral Health.”