ABSTRACT
Humans drive in a holistic fashion which entails, in particular, understanding dynamic road events and their evolution. Injecting these capabilities in autonomous vehicles can thus take situational awareness and decision making closer to human-level performance. To this purpose, we introduce the ROad event Awareness Dataset (ROAD) for Autonomous Driving, to our knowledge the first of its kind. ROAD is designed to test an autonomous vehicle's ability to detect road events, defined as triplets composed by an active agent, the action(s) it performs and the corresponding scene locations. ROAD comprises videos originally from the Oxford RobotCar Dataset, annotated with bounding boxes showing the location in the image plane of each road event. We benchmark various detection tasks, proposing as a baseline a new incremental algorithm for online road event awareness termed 3D-RetinaNet. We also report the performance on the ROAD tasks of Slowfast and YOLOv5 detectors, as well as that of the winners of the ICCV2021 ROAD challenge, which highlight the challenges faced by situation awareness in autonomous driving. ROAD is designed to allow scholars to investigate exciting tasks such as complex (road) activity detection, future event anticipation and continual learning. The dataset is available at https://github.com/gurkirt/road-dataset; the baseline can be found at https://github.com/gurkirt/3D-RetinaNet.
ABSTRACT
The present study focuses on the relation between coping strategies of children with leukemia during treatment and locus of control of their mothers. In particular, the study aims to determine whether maternal locus of control can influence sick children's coping styles, and if this relation can be used to predict maladjustments. The study analyzed a cohort of 60 pediatric leukemia patients undergoing treatment and a group formed by their mothers. The participants were recruited from two Pediatric Onco- Hematology Units in Italy. The Child Behavioral Style Scale (CBSS) was used to assess children's coping strategies, whereas the Parental Health Locus of Control Scale (PHLCS) was employed to analyze maternal locus of control. A linear regression model was applied to verify a possible interdependent relationship between children's coping styles and maternal locus of control. The differences in mean CBSS scores were analyzed by K-S test. Multivariate analysis of variance was performed to assess any potential effect of child's gender, hospital context and maternal socio-cultural status on children's coping strategies. Our results show a significant relationship between children's coping strategies and maternal locus of control. In particular, the scales mass media, fate and healthcare professionals display a predictive effect on children's monitoring coping style, given the positive correlation observed (F=3.28, P=0.008). In contrast, the same scales negatively correlate with blunting coping style (F=3.5, P=0.005). Our results reveal several interesting resources having a profound impact on the psychological functioning of children with leukemia undergoing treatment as well as their mothers. Furthermore, with regard to the central hypothesis of the study, our findings show both positive and negative correlations between specific scales of maternal locus of control and children's coping style, which could be used to predict children at risk of emotional maladjustment.
ABSTRACT
This study has explored the valence of sibship that may empower the self-esteem of children with asthma at the interpersonal, environmental control competence, emotionality management, and body-image levels. It has been assumed that the relationship between siblings may have a moderating effect on the negative impact that asthma has on child's development. Seventy children suffering from chronic asthma have been involved: 40 children with siblings (experimental group) and 30 sibling-free children (control group). The children with asthma have exhibited higher levels of self-esteem in comparison with the sibling-free children. The results of the study, at the clinical significance level, highlight how meaningful could be the involvement of healthy siblings to support the development, and to ease the compliance of children suffering from asthma. The outcomes have confirmed the supportive valence of sibship for the self-esteem of the children with asthma.
ABSTRACT
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a very distressing experience for children and requires a special effort of adjustment. Therefore, it seems to be crucial to explore coping resources for the experienced risk condition. In this sense, the study focuses on coping strategies and locus of control in children with ALL during the treatment phase, and on their possible relation. The correlation between children and maternal coping strategies is also investigated. The participants involved were an experimental group of 40 children with ALL and their mothers, and 30 healthy children as the control group. The tools used were: the Child Behavioral Style Scale and the Monitor-Blunter Style Scale to assess the coping strategies of children and mothers; the locus of Control Scale for Children to analyze the children's perception of controlling the events. Both children with ALL and their mothers resorted to monitoring coping strategies with a statistically significant rate of occurrence (children: M=17.8, SD=3.8; mothers: M=10.48, SD=3.4). The data concerning the locus of control show this tendency towards internal causes (M=53.1, SD=4.7). There were statistically significant correlations between monitoring coping strategies and external locus of control (r=0.400, P<0.05). The results gained from the control group are almost equivalent. The outcomes show several interesting resources of the psychological functioning of children as well as of their mothers.
ABSTRACT
The study investigated the correlation between the perception of sibling relationship to cope an adverse occurrence - the partial collapse of a primary school - and the indicators related to the traumatic impact set off by the event, by soliciting the child's reminiscence of the catastrophic experience. One hundred trauma-exposed children were recruited from a Sicilian primary school and were administered the following research instruments: the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC-A), to investigate the traumatized response that can be triggered in the children involved; the Brother as a Resource Questionnaire (BRQ), to delve into the perception of sibling relationship as a resource. The outcomes showed statistically significant negative correlations between the Anxiety scale of the TSCC-A and the Scaffolding factors (r = -.260, p < .05) and Decision making process (r = -.315, p < 05) of the BRQ; between the Depression scale and the Scaffolding factors (r = -.147, p < .05), Emotional sharing (r = -.168, p < .05) and Decision making process (r = -.281, p < .05). The Anger scale correlated negatively with the Emotional sharing (r = -187, p < .05), the Decision making process (r = -.182, p < .05) and the Scaffolding factors (r = -.279, p < .05); the Post-traumatic Stress correlated negatively with the Scaffolding factors (r = -.203, p < .05) and the Decision making process (r = -.238, p < .05). Lastly, the Dissociation correlated negatively with the Decision making process (r = -.270, p < .05).
ABSTRACT
A child's oncological or chronic disease is a stressful situation for parents. This stress may make it difficult for appropriate management strategies aimed at promoting the child's wellbeing and helping him or her cope with a disease to be adopted. In particular, this study focuses on the possible connections between the variable national cultural influences and the parental strategies used to cope with a child's severe disease by comparing the experiences of Italian and Portuguese mothers. The study investigates differences and cross-cultural elements among the coping strategies used by Italian and Portuguese mothers of children with oncological or chronic disease. Two groups of mothers took part: 59 Italian mothers (average age 37.7 years; SD=4.5) and 36 Portuguese mothers (average age 39.3 years; SD=4.6). The tool used was the Italian and the Portuguese versions of the COPE inventory that measures five coping strategies: Social Support, Avoidance Coping, Positive Aptitude, Religious Faith and Humor, Active Coping. There were statistically significant differences between Portuguese and Italian mothers regarding Social Support (F(3, 94)=6.32, P=0.014, ɳ(2)=0.065), Religious Faith and Humor (F(3, 94)=20.06, P=0.001, ɳ(2)=0.18, higher values for Portuguese mothers) and Avoidance Coping (F(3, 94)=3.30, P=0.06, ɳ(2)=0.035, higher values for Italian mothers). Regarding child's disease, the only statistically significant difference was in Religious Faith and Humor (F(3, 94)=7.49, P=0.007, ɳ(2)=0.076, higher values for mothers of children with chronic disease). The findings of specific cultural transversalities provide the basis for reflection on important factors emerging on the relationship between physicians and parents. In fact, mothers' coping abilities may allow health workers involved in a child's care not only to understand how parents face a distressful event, but also to provide them with professional support.
ABSTRACT
The exact role of the enzyme glycogen synthase kinase 3beta (GSK-3beta) in mood disorders is still unknown. GSK-3beta has been mapped to chromosome 3q13.3, a potential susceptibility locus for bipolar disorder. The -50T/C polymorphism, falling within the promoter region of the gene coding for GSK-3beta, was previously reported to be associated with age at onset, therapeutic response to lithium salts and total sleep deprivation in bipolar patients. In the present study we investigated the association between the -50T/C polymorphism and both symptomatic and personality features in mood disorders. The sample comprised 365 inpatients affected by major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder, genotyped for the GSK-3beta-50 polymorphism and assessed with the Operational Criteria Checklist for Psychotic Illness (OPCRIT). Ninety-five subjects were also evaluated with the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). The GSK-3beta-50 polymorphism showed a positive association with delusional symptomatology and with the personality features linked to Self-Transcendence. Finally, GSK-3beta-50 and personality showed an interactive effect on delusional scores. In conclusion, our findings support the role of GSK-3beta-50 in both normal and psychopathological aspects of human cognition and further suggest a possible interaction between genes and personality in the liability to psychotic disorders.
