@article{ref1,
title="Meta-representational skills in bullying roles: the influence of definitional competence and empathy",
journal="Frontiers in psychology",
year="2020",
author="Belacchi, Carmen and Benelli, Beatrice",
volume="11",
number="",
pages="e592959-e592959",
abstract="This study investigated the influence of meta-representational aspects on bullying. Meta-representation was operationalized in terms of the metalinguistic skill to produce conventional definitions, reflecting culturally shared representations and of the meta-level capacity to represent others' mental states underlying empathic disposition. One hundred and seventeen children, aged between 8;5 and 10;11 years, completed a definitional task and self-report questionnaires on bullying roles and empathic disposition. Descriptive, correlational, and regression analyses were performed. <br><br>RESULTS confirmed that hostile roles are negatively related to definitional competence and to empathic disposition. Lack of definitional competence was the main predictor (accounting for about 16% of variance), followed by empathy (explaining a further 6% of variance) of Primary School children's disposition to assume aggressive behaviors. These findings suggest that a lack of general meta-representational abilities may hinder the development of abstract and other-centered perspective taking, and compromise (compromising) social adjustment. This implies the need to work, particularly in school, on enhancing meta-representational and metalinguistic skills, such as the ability to recognize mental states and verbally make explicit cultural-semantic word meaning representations.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1664-1078",
doi="10.3389/fpsyg.2020.592959",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.592959"
}