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IX CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL y XIV 
NACIONAL de PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA

PALACIO DE LA MAGDALENA
SANTANDER (ESPAÑA), 17-20 de NOVIEMBRE, 2016
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 		Maria Sinatra
Full professor Department of Educational Sciences, Psychology and Communication,
University of Bari
BARI, ITALIA
1 English
Maria Sinatra is full professor of General Psychology at the Department of Educational Sciences, Psychology, Communication, University of Bari (Italy). After studying and working at the Goethe University in Frankfurt/M. (Germany), she turned her attention to the epistemological aspects of psychology, as well as to mass media communication. However, her main interests are in the areas of identity construction and health psychology with particular emphasis on behavioural addictions. On these subjects she has published more than 150 national and international publications. In addition to her teaching and research, Professor Sinatra has held various administrative roles since joining the University, including degree director, Rector’s delegate for Counselling, Psychology Research Co-ordinator, etc. She lectured in a variety of countries and addressed numerous conferences.

INVITED SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACT
Personality and cyber-addictions
Cyber-addictions have become a topic of great concern in clinical psychological research in the last few years. In fact, the prevalence of people affected by a pathological behaviour linked with the use of the Internet is highly growing especially among adolescents and young adults. Findings show that cyber-addictions may be linked with specific personality and psychopathology traits. Nevertheless the complex relationship between personality, psychopathology and Internet addiction needs to be explored further. Firstly, It is particularly important to investigate more deeply the traits that may be viewed as predictive and protective factors of cyber-addictions. Secondly, it is necessary to explore the possibility to perform a differential diagnosis linking different personality aspects and different forms of Internet addiction (gaming, online gambling, social networking, cybersex). This symposium will address these topics by presenting new important research studies carried out in this field.