Repositório do ISPA
Repositório Institucional do Ispa-Instituto Universitário
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Intersections among attachment, empathy and emotion regulation in middle childhood
Publication . Pires, Eva; Fernandes, Marilia; Fernandes, Carla; Santos, António J.; Vaughn, Brian E.; Veríssimo, Manuela; Pires, Eva
Within secure attachment relationships, caregivers function as primary sources of self‐regulation and foster empathy. Affective empathy refers to the direct sharing of others' emotional states, whereas cognitive empathy involves understanding the meaning of others' affective displays. Although robust evidence links secure attachment to empathy, research examining the mediating role of emotion regulation (ER) during middle childhood remains limited. Participants were 214 children (108 girls) aged 8–12 years (M = 9.28 ± 1.09) and their parents (86.3% mothers). Children completed the Security Scale (SS), assessing Safe Haven (SH) and Secure Base (SB), as well the Questionnaire to Assess Affective and Cognitive Empathy in Children (QACE). Primary caregivers completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist assessing children's ER and lability/negativity. Results indicated that global ER was positively associated with cognitive but not affective empathy. Mediation analyses revealed that attachment was significantly associated with children's empathy (
however, ER did not mediate this association. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that maternal SH and paternal SB were strongly associated with cognitive and global empathy, whereas only maternal SH was strongly associated with affective empathy. These results underscore the robustness of attachment theory as an organising framework for socioemotional development regarding the processes during middle childhood.
Health risk behaviors among university students: A latent class cnalysis and its association with mental health
Publication . Pais Brandão, Tânia Raquel; Gouveia, Maria Joao; Dias Neto, David Manuel; Queirós, Francisco; Loureiro, Filipe; Rocha, Teresa Almeida; Almeida Rocha, Teresa; Martins, Ana Cristina; Belo, Sara; Rodrigues, Soraia; Vargas-Moniz, Maria
Health behaviors (HB) are critical for university students, as they are closely associated with academic and overall well-being. This cross-sectional study aimed to explore health behaviors in a sample of university students, identify patterns of HB, and examine the association between these patterns and mental health outcomes. The sample consisted of 1085 university students enrolled at a private higher-education institution. Participants were predominantly female (83.4%), with a mean age of 22.74 years (= 7.03). Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was employed to identify distinct classes of HB. Three classes were identified: Class 1, labelled as the Unhealthy habits - high-stress profile (15.7%); Class 2, labelled as the Healthy/Low-risk group (68%); and Class 3, labelled as the Unhealthy habits - substance-use profile (16.3%). Significant differences in mental health outcomes were observed, with the Unhealthy habits - high stress profile displaying significantly worse mental health compared to the Healthy/Unhealthy habits - substance use profile. These findings reinforce the idea that HB do not operate in isolation but are interdependent components of a broader lifestyle pattern. The findings may inform the development of targeted interventions to promote healthier lifestyle patterns and support mental health among university students, particularly for the Unhealthy habits - high stress profile in the student population.
Ecological context modulates the visual detection advantage for snakes
Publication . Biondi, Luiz; Gomes, Nuno; Maior, Rafael S.; Silva, Fábio; Silva, Samuel; Soares, Sandra
Research indicates that the human visual system is highly efficient at detecting snakes, yet less is known about how ecological visual contexts modulate this advantage. We conducted two experiments with university students (N = 58 each) to test whether background complexity influences snake-detection efficiency using a dual-task paradigm. In Experiment 1, stimuli were presented on a uniform grey
background. Here, snakes were detected and visually fixated significantly faster than non-snake control animals, consistent with previous findings. Crucially, this advantage was not influenced by participants’ self-reported fear of snakes or anxiety levels. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli were embedded in a complex
leaf-litter background. Under these conditions, non-snake stimuli were detected earlier than snakes, and overall accuracy declined. This indicates that the snake detection advantage is sensitive to changes in perceptual and contextual conditions, which may attenuate or reverse the pattern observed under simplified settings. Subjective fear scores again showed no moderating effect. Overall, these
findings are consistent with an evolved sensitivity to snake-related visual features, but show that this advantage is context-dependent and can be attenuated or even reversed under ecologically complex visual conditions, independently of selfreported fear. They underscore the necessity of incorporating ecological variables into threat-detection research.
Emotion regulation, fear of hypoglycemia, and diabetes distress in parents of children with type 1 diabetes
Publication . Vieira, Anabela; Costa, Vasco; Pais Brandão, Tânia Raquel
Parents of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are responsible for intensive daily disease management and often experience high levels of emotional distress. This study examined whether fear of hypoglycemia mediates the association between parents’ emotion regulation strategies and diabetes-related distress. Participants were recruited through Facebook and WhatsApp groups for parents of children and adolescents with T1D, and data was collected via self-report online questionnaires. A total of 102 parents, 92.2% mothers (aged 32–58 years) of children with T1D aged 8–17 years, completed measures of fear of hypoglycemia (Hypoglycemia Fear Survey—Parent Version), diabetes distress (Problem Areas in Diabetes-Parent Revised) and emotion regulation strategies (Emotion Regulation Questionnaire), along with a sociodemographic questionnaire. Four mediation models were tested using PROCESS, including cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression as predictors and the worry and behavior subscales of fear of hypoglycemia as mediators. Results revealed a significant indirect effect of worry on the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and diabetes distress (indirect effect = −0.15, 95% CI [−0.35, −0.02]), highlighting worry as a potential mediator between these variables, while the direct effect was negative but non-significant. No significant indirect effects were found for expressive suppression on the behavior subscale (indirect effect = 0.12; 95% IC [−0.07; 0.36]) or on the worry subscale (indirect effect = 0.07; 95% IC [−0.08; 0.24]). These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal may be associated with lower diabetes-related distress through lower levels of excessive worry about hypoglycemia. Clinically, the results highlight fear-related cognition can be a relevant intervention target, alongside emotion regulation skills, in psychosocial support programs for parents of youth with T1D.
Solution-phase ITC validation of literature-reported Glyphosate DNA Aptamers: Affinity ranking and an operational selectivity boundary
Publication . Sun, Jingchun; Zhang, Linbing; Goncalves, David; Kuang, Shaoping; Yang, Hongsheng
Glyphosate is a highly polar herbicide, the reliable molecular recognition of which is complicated by co-occurring structural analogues, metabolites, and derivatives in real-world samples. Rather than reporting new aptamer discovery, this study establishes a standardized, solution-phase isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) workflow to thermodynamically reassess two literature-reported glyphosate DNA aptamers, Seq03 and Seq05, under matched buffer composition and instrument settings. After verification of baseline stability and evaluation of heat-of-dilution contributions, ligand-to-aptamer titrations yielded apparent dissociation constants of approximately 8.14 μM for Seq03 and 40.2 μM for Seq05, enabling affinity-based prioritization of these reported candidates within the tested concentration window. To define an application-relevant selectivity boundary, we further constructed a counter-screen panel restricted to glyphosate-related chemicals, including structural analogues, metabolites, and derivatives, and evaluated all candidates using an identical ITC protocol with explicit background handling. None of the counter-screen compounds produced binding-consistent, saturable isotherms after integration and control-based interpretation; instead, their responses remained close to background heat and were therefore operationally classified as having no detectable binding under the tested conditions, including a reverse-titration format check with Glufosinate-N-acetyl. Collectively, these results position ITC as a label-free, platform-independent validation step for small-molecule aptamer benchmarking prior to analytical translation, while also highlighting that the present conclusions are bounded by the tested PBS-based conditions and the sensitivity window of the current ITC configuration.