St Mary’s Lecturer Presents at European Psychology Conference

Dr Caroline Sciplino, Lecturer in Psychology at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, recently presented a poster at the 16^th European Conference on Developmental Psychology in Lausanne, Switzerland. On Wednesday 4^th September Dr Sciplino, along with fellow researcher Prof Peter Smith (Goldsmith, University of London) delivered a poster presentation entitled: Three generational perceptions of grandparents’ representations in the United Kingdom, Italy and Greece. The poster presentation examined the view that Grandparents play an important part in the in the lives of their grandchildren, along with the role children’s books had in generating childhood perceptions of grandparents. A total of 180 participants, 20 children, parents, and grandparents in each country (UK, Italy and Greece) were interviewed while being shown a selection of illustrations of grandparents from children’s books. The results indicated that those who were grandparents considered the picture of younger grandparents as the best representations, whereas the children more frequently chose the picture of middle aged and older grandparents. By contrast these pictures were viewed by parents and grandparents as stereotyped and not reflecting the beliefs about grandparenthood today. The implications of national differences in the UK, Italy and Greece were also discussed. The presentation furthered Dr Sciplino’s research contribution to representations of grandparents in different media, intergenerational relationships within the family context, in particular the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren, the effects of television and other media on children’s cognitive and social development. To find out more information about studying psychology at St Mary’s visit the website.