Cross-cultural perspectives on childhood social skills development; our visiting PhD is now a Doctor!

On March 23rd, 2026, Dr. Ingrid Zugey Galán Vera successfully defended her doctoral thesis, Individual and Contextual Factors Influencing Social Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. During her PhD, Ingrid visited the Focus on Emotion Lab. Congratulations to Dr. Ingrid on completing her PhD!

Curious about Ingrid’s PhD?

Ingrid’s doctoral work (full dissertation available here) was supervised by Professors Irene C. Mammarella and Uguetta Moscardino at the University of Padova and was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship.

This work explored the development of social skills from a cross-cultural perspective (data collected from Italy and Mexico), with a particular focus on social challenges associated with autistic-like traits in youth in a community population. Ingrid examined how individual differences, such as social anxiety and emotional intelligence, interact with contextual factors, including family cultural values.

A key contribution of this research is its focus on social challenges that areassociated with autistic-like traits beyond clinical populations. By adopting a dimensional approach, the dissertation highlights that social challenges can also be present in youth who do not meet diagnostic criteria, yet who may remain largely overlooked in research and clinical practice. Moreover, including different cultures, this work contributes to a more inclusive and culturally sensitive understanding of child and adolescent development.