O projeto LessSugar4Kids tem como objetivo abordar o problema do consumo excessivo de açúcar nas crianças portuguesas, examinando os determinantes individuais (por exemplo, as preferências e percepções alimentares das crianças) e contextuais (por exemplo, as atitudes dos pais/professores em relação ao consumo de açúcar) subjacentes. Para atingir este objetivo, é fundamental combinar as perspectivas dos pais, dos professores e das crianças.

Every day a vast amount of misinformation and Fake News are repeated and infinitely shared, reaching millions of people in a short time. The large-scale dissemination of misinformation is one of the major challenges that current societies face, with long-lasting costs to individuals and governments. European Commission’s recent efforts in seeking advice from experts regarding measures to counteract disinformation attest to the urgency of addressing this issue. The fact that people tend to believe in information they repeatedly encounter and to reject claims that contradict what they heard before makes misinformation-correction very difficult. Since most correction strategies entail both a repetition of the false claims and their contradiction, they ironically end up strengthening the validity of the misinformation they attempt to correct. It is thus of the utmost importance to examine the mechanisms that may contribute to the development of effective misinformation-correction actions.

The proposed research program is designed to investigate the embodied mechanisms that ground cognition, in first (L1) and second (L2) language. We suggest that different languages shape our thinking, perceiving and feeling of the world. More importantly, they are grounded differently. We argue that whereas L1 is embodied, this is not the case for L2, or at least not to the same degree. The proposed experiments are designed to systematically compare L1/L2 related differences in performance as well as psychophysiological indicators in a number of paradigms presented to early (EB) and late (LB) bilinguals. To our knowledge these are among the first studies on embodiment with bilingual samples. The suggestion that L1 and L2 are unlikely to be equally embodied will be investigated in a study designed to furnish a direct examination of how L1 and L2 are somatically grounded (a neglected feature of both the embodied literature as well as bilingualism research). Studies 2 to 4 investigate how embodied simulation may drive specific phenomena such language congruence effects, modality switching costs and false memories in L1 and L2. Studies 5 & 6 will provide a more ecologically valid indication of how affective and interpersonal states are manifested in spontaneous linguistic representations when using L1 and L2. Our findings are likely to advance our understanding of a number of central issues pertinent to the emerging field of embodiment and may lend additional support to the assumptions that cognition and language are grounded on bodily states. Second, this research will identify the constraints of such assumptions in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural world where the daily use of a second language for professional, recreational and interpersonal purposes is often required. This is likely to inform research and policies designed to address the current challenges posed by participating in two or more linguistic communities.

Sinopse: Este livro procura colmatar uma importante lacuna na divulgação de trabalhos de investigação na área da protecção de crianças e jovens em diversos sectores de intervenção social em Portugal. Neste sentido, os textos apresentados pretendem identificar e problematizar tanto o estado da arte como apresentar soluções técnicas nos planos legal, familiar e institucional, dando-se ainda destaque ao desenho de programas de intervenção. No seu conjunto, os textos incluídos neste livro podem interessar a estudantes de Licenciatura e de Pós-graduação, a profissionais investidos num percurso de aprendizagem ao longo da vida, bem como a todos aqueles que procuram conhecer abordagens novas na área da avaliação e intervenção no domínio da protecção de crianças e jovens em risco, e respectivos contextos de desenvolvimento (família, instituições e comunidade). Com esta obra pretende-se, assim, promover padrões de qualidade e valores de boas práticas de intervenção institucio¬nal e comunitária na área de populações em risco, e propor¬cionar um contributo válido com aplicação em termos das políticas e práticas no âmbito dos serviços sociais em geral, e do sistema de protecção de crianças e jovens em particular.