Dear readers,

We are pleased to present the second volume of 2024 (volume 26.2) of the journal Psychology: Theory and Practice. This volume features 12 original research articles that explore a diverse range of topics in psychology and related areas and provide valuable insights for researchers and practitioners alike. These articles are published on our website, free of charge, in a continuous flow format.

This volume features two important quantitative studies in the field of child and adolescent mental health, both with large samples and using standardized instruments. Recognizing the high prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems among school-age school-aged children and adolescents, one article, based on a sample of 6-12 year old children/adolescent from the city of São Paulo, presents findings on the ability of the CBCL/6-18 to discriminate between those who received mental health care from those who did not. The study found that those who scored highly in critical items of the CBCL were more likely to have used mental health services. Despite the high frequency of emotional and behavioral problems, the use of mental health services was less than 1% in the studied population. The second article identified protective factors (resilience and life satisfaction) in relation to depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic, in this case with a sample of adolescents aged 14 to 17. The only statistically significant factor was optimism, while the following factors showed a tendency towards significance: family, self, compared self and self-efficacy, confidence, sensitivity, and impairment.

In 2015, Brazil experienced an epidemic of Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome, which continues to impact our population. One of the articles in this volume examined the reliability of using the Bayley III Scales (degree of agreement between pairs of observers) to assess the development of children with the Zika Virus. The results indicate that the use of the Bayley III Scales, with adaptations to evaluate this specific population, have excellent reliability indicators, provided that the training and supervision of the team ensures standardization in the evaluation processes.

This volume also contains two articles on children, young people and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The first study compares the adaptive behavior of groups of children/young people with ASD with comorbidities, with ASD without comorbidities, and with a non-clinical group (N=309). The study reveals differences between participants with ASD compared to the non-clinical group in the three domains of the Diagnosis Adaptive Behavior Scale (DABS): conceptual, social and practical skills. More details about the differences and similarities between the subgroups considering the sociodemographic profile of the participants can be found in the full article. The second article analyzes the effect of different delay times in conditional, identity and arbitrary discrimination tasks in a sample of four participants with ASD (from 6 to 11 years old) and two young adults (18 and 25 years old) with intellectual disability. The results showed a decrease in performance as the delay increased, especially for the participants with intellectual disabilities, as well as the importance of recurrent behaviors in relation to remembering the behavior required in the experimental tasks.

Two of the 12 articles in this volume analyzed criteria from different assessment instruments, resulting in: (1) the establishment of adequate parameters (good discrimination, breadth of information and a good variation in response thresholds) of the items of the Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies (VAST) via Item Response Theory, based on a sample of 396 adults of both sexes; and (2) the identification of four factors (explaining 49% of the data variance) of the internal structure of the Brazilian Attachment Scale-Adult 34 (EBRAPEG-A 34) according to Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses with a sample of 808 adults.

This volume contains two review articles that deal with gender and stigma issues: A scoping review that reveals a growing interest in the topic of sexism in the workplace, demonstrating its manifestation in the institutional context with women as victims of this phenomenon. The review identified 129 articles from the SciELO, PePSIC, LILACS, Index Psi, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, and Web of Science databases; The second article combines a narrative review with a thematic analysis based on interviews with managers and experts in the health field. The literature findings indicate a widespread dissemination of stigma related to obesity in different contexts, with the media playing a prominent role. In contrast, managers and health professionals demonstrate an interest in proposed interventions to minimize this type of stigma, recognizing the important demand in the area. The authors conclude with a logical model of change for interventions aimed at reducing obesity stigma, which is well worth consulting.

This volume also includes three empirical articles, one qualitative and two quantitative, on current issues of great importance. The first surveys problem-solving strategies and the characteristics of 10 people with chronic pain, based on individual semi-structured on-line interviews. Although, as expected, the complaints focused on physical limitations and daily activities, it is interesting to note that problem solving occurred through socio-emotional aspects mainly derived from the comfort and support arising from significant affective relationships. The second article evaluates the influence of personality traits from the well-established Big Five model on intertemporal decision making, taking into account sociodemographic covariates and psychopathological symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress in a large sample of 520 adults. The third article is based on the question: “Are there differences in the self-efficacy of volleyball players in relation to the position they play?” The authors examine how different positions on the court influence the self-efficacy of 300 high-performance volleyball athletes, revealing that defensive and offensive positions require different types of confidence and skills.

Finally, this volume presents an Invited Commentary which discusses the importance of executive functions in child development and the role of play in improving them. It compares the benefits of free play and guided play, concluding that guided play offers more opportunities for the development of these functions, especially for children from disadvantaged communities. This work is the result of collaboration between researchers from the United Kingdom, Argentina and Brazil with the title “The Importance of Guided Play in Classrooms to Promote Children’s Executive Functions” .

To conclude this editorial, I would like to highlight that, in line with our aim of expanding the diversity of theoretical approaches in the field of Psychology, our journal has been quantitatively and qualitatively expanding its editorial board, now reaching a total of 19 section editors covering all of the Brazilian regions. In addition, internal adjustments have been taking place regularly to better accommodate the expertise of each section editor and to handle the fluctuating volume of submissions in each section. Therefore, our authors and readers may notice a change of editors according to the section of activity. Currently, the editors are distributed as follows across the five sections of PTP Magazine:

- Psychological Assessment Section: Prof. Dr. Alexandre Luiz de Oliveira Serpa; Prof. Dr. André Luiz de Carvalho Braule Pinto; Prof. Dr. Juliana Burges Sbicigo ; Prof. Dr. Lisandra Borges Vieira Lima and Prof. Dr. Natalia Becker.

- Human Development Section: Prof. Dr. João Rodrigo Maciel Portes; Prof. Dr. Maria Cristina Triguero Veloz Teixeira and Prof. Dr. Rosane Lowenthal .

- Clinical Psychology Section: Prof. Dr. Ana Alexandra Caldas Osório; Prof. Dr. Candida Helena Lopes Alves; Prof. Dr. Carolina Ziebold and Prof. Dr. Julia Garcia Durand.

- Psychology and Education Section: Prof. Dr. Alessandra Gotuzo Seabra, Prof. Dr. Carlo Schmidt and Prof. Dr. Regina Basso Zanon.

- Social Psychology and Population Health Section: Prof. Dr. Daniel Kveller ; Prof. Dr. Enzo Banti Bissoli; Prof. Dr. Marina Xavier Carpena.

Furthermore, Prof. Dr. Jessica Mayumi Maruyama works on processing Review Articles, regardless of the manuscript submission section.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain to our Instagram followers that, due to a change in the journal’s interns, our Instagram page (@revistapsico), which had been very active, was suspended for a few months. We understand the importance of maintaining this communication channel with authors, readers, professionals and students in the field of Psychology and related areas and are thus restructuring to enable us to resume posting with full force in 2024. We thank you for your understanding.

I would like to finish by wishing everyone good reading, and, as always, thank our editorial and administrative teams, as well as our readers and the authors who choose to share their scientific production with us.

Yours sincerely

Prof. Dr. Cristiane Silvestre de Paula

Editor-in-Chief

Psychology: Theory and Practice