LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course is aimed at providing students with knowledge and assessment materials about the psychological development of individual differences, with particular reference to the construct of self-regulation, understood as the set of control processes aimed at the regulation of behavior, whose development results from the increased ability to control of impulses, attention, and emotions. 

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course allows:

• acquiring adequate knowledge and an effective ability to understand the self-regulatory processes;
• applying the acquired knowledge and to understand the developmental trajectories in the typical and atypical development;
• knowing how to use autonomously the knowledge acquired in the various application contexts on a conceptual and operational level;
• acquiring the typical technical language of the discipline to communicate clearly and unambiguously with specialists and non-specialist;
• acquiring adequate learning skills that allow continuing to deepen independently the main issues of the discipline.

TEACHING METHODS

The course will take place through lectures and opportunities for discussion, supplemented by an individual exercise as follows: administration of questionnaire, analysis and summary of the responses (scoring),  brief discussion about results. The results about the different individual profiles will be also discussed in class. During the course, several case discussions in a small group will also be proposed. These activities aim to promote the understanding of the typical and atypical development trajectories and to facilitate the transfer of acquired knowledge to application contexts.
At the end of the course, there is an additional written exercise modulated on the basis of the exam questions assigned in the state certification exam for Psychologists. The exercise will focus on the topics presented in the course, but the students should also integrate these with the knowledge previously achieved.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Different theoretical approaches that explain temperament and self-regulation will be introduced. A selection of contributions aimed at illustrating specific aspects related to the emotional and social development will be presented. During the course will be presented some questionnaires for the assessment of temperament. Students have to complete an exercise that will lead to discuss different temperamental profiles .

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

• R.F. Baumeister, K.D. Vohs, Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications (Paperback), Guilford Publications, 2007 (capp. 14, 15 e 16).
• J. Kagan, The temperamental thread: How genes, culture, time, and luck make us who we are. Dana Press, 2010.
• M.K. Rothbart, Becoming who we are: Temperament and personality in development. Guilford Press, 2011.
• F. Pons & P.L. Harris, Longitudinal change and longitudinal stability of individual differences in children's emotion understanding. Cognition and Emotion, 19(8), 1158–1174, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930500282108
• Nigg J. T. (2017). Annual Research Review: On the relations among self-regulation, self-control, executive functioning, effortful control, cognitive control, impulsivity, risk-taking, and inhibition for developmental psychopathology. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 58(4), 361–383. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12675
• Shiner, R. L. (2015). The development of temperament and personality traits in childhood and adolescence. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver, M. L. Cooper, & R. J. Larsen (Eds.), APA handbooks in psychology®. APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Vol. 4. Personality processes and individual differences (p. 85–105). American Psychological Association.

A book among the following:

• J. Bowlby, The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds, Routledge Classics 2012.
• M. Tomasello, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny. Harvard University Press, 2021.
• R. Plomin, Blueprint. How DNA makes us who we are, Allen Lane, 2018.
• V. Reddy, How Infants Know Minds. Harvard University Press, 2010.