The Me and Us of Emotions: Program for promoting socio-emotional skills in children in the school context

This project aims to develop an intervention program for emotional literacy and regulation for children in the 3rd and 4th grades. The objectives are: to promote the ability to identify and express one's own and others' emotions; to teach emotional self-regulation strategies focused on calming and compassion; to encourage behaviors of awareness, social cohesion, and cooperation; to develop games and digital content to create an appealing environment and interactive learning.

Reading performance after confinement

Mindfulness to students success (M2S): Relating executive functions and writing through a mindfulness app to promote childrens cognitive, social, and health-related outcomes

The EU High-Level Expert Group on Literacy's report concluded that literacy is a crucial life skill that empowers citizens to develop the capacities for reflection, oral expression, critical thinking, and empathy, promoting personal development, self-confidence, sense of identity, and participation in a digital and knowledge-based economy and society. Despite the undeniable value of reading and writing in contemporary societies, many children fail to master these skills, hindering employment access and increasing the risk of poverty and social exclusion. Research is a catalyst for promoting literacy skills, but the body of empirically validated knowledge and practices is still sparse and fails to reach schools. Moreover, few efforts have been made to relate writing to other relevant skills for academic success, such as executive functions (EF). Over four studies, the M2S Project aims to examine the role of EF in writing and related skills and to develop empirically validated practices to promote not only EF and writing but also academic performance, social skills, and health indicators. Study 1 will examine the longitudinal relationships between EF and writing over two overlapping cohorts (1st-3rd and 3rd-5th years, N = 400). With a randomized experimental design, Study 2 will test the effects of an EF intervention on measures of EF, writing, academic performance, social skills, and health in the 2nd grade. This intervention will provide specific training in Integrative Mind-Body Training (IMBT), which research has shown to be effective in promoting EF through its impact on the autonomic nervous system. This intervention will be transformed into a mobile app linked to wristbands to collect psychophysiological and behavioral data, to be tested in Study 3. This will have a single-subject experimental design, with three types of 2nd-grade students: typical development, writing difficulties, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (N = 9). Effects will be analyzed on Study 2 measures and on psychophysiological and behavioral data collected. Study 4 will test the incremental value of combining IBMT with a writing intervention in the 2nd grade, including teacher support feedback software, also being developed. The effects will be analyzed on the same measures as Study 3. Given the scientific relevance and originality of the expected results, the applied orientation including the development of empirically validated materials and technological tools (application and software), and the involvement of stakeholders at different stages, this project can play an instrumental role in promoting the development of EF and writing from an early age, with substantial implications for the success and well-being of students throughout life.

Research internship

Research internship under the supervision of Jon Lasser (Others) at Texas State University

The state of the art of an art without state: Contribution to the study of school psychology in Portugal

Transatlantic Cooperation Project - Graduate Concentration in Global Education and Developmental Studies (GEDS)

Bolsa de formação no estrangeiro, no âmbito do programa GEDS - Global Education and Development Studies, sob supervisão de Rune J. Simeonsson.