... le principali caratteristiche della MLVS, ritenuta, per l'appunto, responsabile della capacità della nostra mente di generare e manipolare spontaneamente immagini, siano ... delle immagini mentali richiede... more
... le principali caratteristiche della MLVS, ritenuta, per l'appunto, responsabile della capacità della nostra mente di generare e manipolare spontaneamente immagini, siano ... delle immagini mentali richiede l'intervento di diverse componenti del sistema di memoria di lavoro ...
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Cognitive psychology offers an important contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying intelligence. In this paper, we synthesize the research showing that, among the different cognitive mechanisms associated with... more
Cognitive psychology offers an important contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying intelligence. In this paper, we synthesize the research showing that, among the different cognitive mechanisms associated with intelligence, working memory has a particularly high explanatory power, especially when considered in its active component involving not only the maintenance (as in short-term memory) but also the manipulation of information. The paper considers two main implications of this finding for the applied and clinical fields. For a start, we examine how intelligence tests take into consideration working memory. Secondly, we consider the highly debated literature on the effects of working memory training on intellectual performance. Theoretical and applied implications for the relationship between working memory and intelligence are discussed.
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The distinction between passive and active visuo-spatial memory has been useful to interpret various pattern of deficits reported in individual differences studies. However, this interpretation raises the issue of task difficulty, since... more
The distinction between passive and active visuo-spatial memory has been useful to interpret various pattern of deficits reported in individual differences studies. However, this interpretation raises the issue of task difficulty, since active tasks could be failed simply because more complex and the corresponding deficit could reflect a reduced capacity of the system. We describe two children with Nonverbal Learning Disability whose performance provides evidence of a dissociation between passive and active memory processes. One of the children showed a selective impairment in passive tasks and performed flawlessly in active tasks, whereas the second child displayed the opposite pattern. These data suggest that a qualitative difference between passive and active processes does exist and that differences in performance do not reflect a lower/higher level of task difficulty. Further, these data underlie the importance of formulating theoretical models of visuo-spatial memory including...
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Test psicologico. Scheda descrittiva creata all'interno del progetto Bibliomedi
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This study investigated whether the lack of visual experience affects the ability to create spatial inferential representations of the survey type. We compared the performance of persons with congenital blindness and that of blindfolded... more
This study investigated whether the lack of visual experience affects the ability to create spatial inferential representations of the survey type. We compared the performance of persons with congenital blindness and that of blindfolded sighted persons on four survey representation-based tasks (Experiment 1). Results showed that persons with blindness performed better than blindfolded sighted controls. We repeated the same tests introducing a third group of persons with late blindness (Experiment 2). This last group performed better than blindfolded sighted participants, whereas differences between participants with late and congenital blindness were nonsignificant. The present findings are compatible with results of other studies, which found that when visual perception is lacking, skill in gathering environmental spatial information provided by nonvisual modalities may contribute to a proper spatial encoding. It is concluded that, although it cannot be asserted that total lack of ...
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Experimental Psychology, Perception, and 15 moreSpatial cognition, Cognition, Blindness, Medicine, Space perception, Modalities, Humans, Female, Male, Reaction Time, Spatial Information, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Aged, Middle Aged, and Adult
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This study reports the observations gathered from 11 children referred to consulting services because of learning difficulties at school and diagnosed with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD). These children had an average verbal IQ,... more
This study reports the observations gathered from 11 children referred to consulting services because of learning difficulties at school and diagnosed with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD). These children had an average verbal IQ, but a WISC-R performance IQ lower than the verbal IQ by at least 15 points and experienced difficulties especially in mathematics and drawing. The children completed a battery of four tasks requiring visuospatial working memory and visual imagery: a memory task composed of pictures and their positions (Pictures task), a task that required them to memorize the positions filled in a matrix (Passive Matrix task), a task that required them to imagine a pathway along a matrix (Active Matrix task) and a task that required them to learn groups made up of three words, using a visual interactive imagery strategy (TV task). In comparison to a control group of 49 children, children with NVLD scored lower in all the tasks, showing deficits in the use of visuospa...
Research Interests: Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Intelligence, Adolescent, Medicine, and 15 moreLearning Disabilities, Elementary Education, Learning, Memory, Humans, Child, Mental Imagery, Female, Male, Learning Disability, Developmental disabilities, Etiology, Learning Disorders, Memorization, and Learning Disabled
Verbal and nonverbal forms of developmental learning disabilities have been reported. Whereas there are several instruments for evaluating children for the presence of verbal learning disabilities at school, no screening tool is available... more
Verbal and nonverbal forms of developmental learning disabilities have been reported. Whereas there are several instruments for evaluating children for the presence of verbal learning disabilities at school, no screening tool is available to identify children who have nonverbal learning disabilities. This study aimed at devising and validating a short screening questionnaire that can be used by teachers in primary schools to identify those children who need to be referred for clinical services because they have a visuospatial learning disability (VSLD). An 18-item Shortened Visuospatial Questionnaire (SVS) was derived from an earlier, longer version. Its validation procedure was twofold and was achieved by (a) verifying that children who had been identified with the SVS questionnaire as having a VSLD actually showed visuospatial deficits on psychometric evaluation and by (b) rating with the SVS a clinically identified population of children with VSLD. The results of the validation p...
Research Interests: Psychology, Psychometrics, Child Development, Nonverbal Communication, Adolescent, and 15 moreComparative Study, Medicine, Learning Disabilities, Elementary Education, Humans, Child, Primary School, Female, Male, Learning Disability, Learning Disorders, Learning Disabled, Nino, mass Screening, and preadolescent
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ABSTRACT The effects of warning on false recognition and associated subjective experience of false recollection and familiarity were investigated in 7- to 13-year-old children and young adults (N=259) using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott... more
ABSTRACT The effects of warning on false recognition and associated subjective experience of false recollection and familiarity were investigated in 7- to 13-year-old children and young adults (N=259) using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Two warning conditions (warning with an example of a critical lure and warning without an example of a critical lure) were compared to a control condition, in which no warning was received. We found that 7- to 8-year-olds exhibited higher false recognition in the warning-with-example condition compared with the control condition; in contrast, 12- to 13-year-olds and young adults exhibited reduced false recognition in the warning-with-example condition. No effect of warning was observed in 10- to 11-year-olds. The subjective experience associated with false memories was similar across ages. In contrast, age-related increases in subjective recollection were found for true memories. The processes that enhance or suppress false memories during development are discussed.
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Objective: Two new rating scales are presented for the assessment of ADHD symptoms in Italian preschool children, and the agreement between parents and teachers on the presence of an ADHD profile is examined. Method: The scales were... more
Objective: Two new rating scales are presented for the assessment of ADHD symptoms in Italian preschool children, and the agreement between parents and teachers on the presence of an ADHD profile is examined. Method: The scales were administered to parents and teachers of 180 children with a mean age of 5 years and 9 months, attending final year of the Italian preschool system (kindergarten). Results: Despite the good psychometric properties of the scales, parent and teacher agreement was poor and parents endorsed more symptomatic behaviors in their children than the teachers, especially for the hyperactive dimension, although they did not necessarily associate these with the presence of a potential problem. Conclusions: The low correspondence between teachers and parents shows that ADHD rating scales, although useful screening instruments, are not sufficient for diagnosis and must be combined with other tools. ( J. of Att. Dis. 2009; 12(6) 532-539)
Research Interests: Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Psychometrics, Medicine, and 15 moreItaly, Humans, Female, Male, Risk factors, Rating Scale, Parents, Questionnaires, Age Factors, Risk Factors, Attention Disorders, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Child preschool, Attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, and mass Screening
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Research Interests: Psychology and Humanities
The literature reports mixed results on the imagery abilities of the blind, at times showing a difference between sighted and blind individuals and at other times similarities. However, the possibility that the results are due to... more
The literature reports mixed results on the imagery abilities of the blind, at times showing a difference between sighted and blind individuals and at other times similarities. However, the possibility that the results are due to different strategies spontaneously used in performing the imagery tasks has never been systematically studied. A large group of 30 totally congenitally blind (TCB) individuals and a group of 30 sighted individuals matched for gender age and schooling were presented with a mental pathway task on a complex two-dimensional (5 x 5) matrix. After administering the task, participants were interviewed in order to establish the strategy they used. Results showed that both sighted and TCB may use a spatial mental imagery, a verbal or a mixed strategy in carrying out the task. Differences between the groups emerged only when last location and then entire pathway had to be remembered rather than just the last position, and were clearly affected by the type of strategy. Specifically, TCB performed more poorly than the sighted individuals when they used a spatial mental imagery strategy, whereas the two groups had a similar performance with a verbal strategy.
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Previous studies investigated different kinds of mental images with reference to vividness, generation, maintenance times and recall. The present study focuses on the distinction between general and specific mental images and examines the... more
Previous studies investigated different kinds of mental images with reference to vividness, generation, maintenance times and recall. The present study focuses on the distinction between general and specific mental images and examines the time required for generating the images of concrete nouns as well as their recall under different task conditions. Results show that the generation time of general images are shorter than that of specific ones. Processes underlying the generation of general images appear different from the processes involved either in the retrieval of the concepts associated with the nouns or in the generation of more specific images.
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Research Interests: Psychology, Cognition, Reading, Linguistics, Adolescent, and 11 moreMedicine, Learning, Memory, Humans, Child, Hearing disorders, Female, Male, Deafness, Clinical Sciences, and Adult
Research Interests: Psychology, Computer Science, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Imagination, Medicine, and 15 moreEpisodic Memory, Memory, Humans, Female, Neuroimage, Male, Cognitive Process, Middle Aged, Adult, Parahippocampal Gyrus, Episodic, Life Span, Image Generation, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, and Medical and Health Sciences
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Imagery and the brain symmetries and asymmetries between imagery and perception visual-spatial short-term memory visual working memory or visual buffer? imagery and thinking imagery and verbal memory memory of action events some... more
Imagery and the brain symmetries and asymmetries between imagery and perception visual-spatial short-term memory visual working memory or visual buffer? imagery and thinking imagery and verbal memory memory of action events some implications for memory theory and for imagery static versus dynamic imagery a developmental approach to mental imagery.
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Recent theoretical accounts of working memory proposed a distinction between passive storage and active processing of visuo-spatial information. These hypotheses are based on empirical evidence showing that individual differences in... more
Recent theoretical accounts of working memory proposed a distinction between passive storage and active processing of visuo-spatial information. These hypotheses are based on empirical evidence showing that individual differences in visuo-spatial abilities are frequently modulated by this variable. However, results from age differences studies are not clear, and this research was designed to specifically investigate the level of competence of elderly people in tasks measuring visuo-spatial working memory and, in particular, passive and active components of the system. Three groups of participants (mean ages were approximately 22, 66, and 76) were tested in eight cognitive tasks tapping passive storage and active manipulation in various aspects of visuo-spatial and verbal processing. Results showed that elderly people are selectively impaired in active tasks, and these tasks were also more sensitive in detecting differences within the older group. These data highlight the need for theoretical models of wor...
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Mental image generation is a complex process mediated by dynamically interrelated components, e.g. image generation and image enrichment of details. This study investigated the cognitive and neural correlates of sequential image... more
Mental image generation is a complex process mediated by dynamically interrelated components, e.g. image generation and image enrichment of details. This study investigated the cognitive and neural correlates of sequential image generation. An event-related fMRI experiment was carried out in which general and specific images had to be generated sequentially in two different positions. Participants had to generate either a general image first and then a specific one or a specific image first and then a general one, in response to the same word-stimulus. Generation times showed that specific images took shorter to be produced if they had been preceded by the generation of a general image. The fMRI results showed that position of generation and type of image was associated with different patterns of neurofunctional change. When an image was generated as first, areas of activation were found in the parahippocampal, fusiform and occipital regions. These are areas associated with memory retrieval and visual processing. When an image was generated as second, significant activations were found in superior temporal and precuneus areas, brain structures that are involved in the storage of visual memory for object shapes and imagery, respectively. The generation of a general image was supported by frontal areas and by the precuneus. The generation of a specific image involved frontal and thalamic areas (structures associated with visual processing of details) and the posterior cingulate cortex. When shifting from a specific image to a general one, a higher level of activity was found in the middle frontal gyrus involved in global visuo-spatial processing, suggesting that the generation of specific images required the retrieval of an object's global shape. Altogether, these data suggest that the sequential generation of different types of image is associated with discrete processes but also shares common cognitive and neural components.
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Cognition, Imagination, Brain, and 15 moreEvoked Potentials, Humans, Mental Imagery, Hemodynamics, Psychological, Concept Formation, Female, Functional Imaging, Male, Memory Retrieval, Middle Aged, Adult, Brain Structure, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and Image Generation
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TITOLO: Il ruolo dell’interferenza proattiva nel test di corsi ABSTRACT BREVE: La presente ricerca si propone di indagare il ruolo dell’interferenza proattiva in un test di memoria di lavoro visuo-spaziale: il Test di Corsi. A tale scopo, metà dei soggetti eseguivano il compito con una procedura ...more
Five experiments were conducted to explore the effect of task constraints on memorability ratings and on study time allocation strategies and to examine the conditions under which an item labor-in-vain effect is found (i.e., items studied... more
Five experiments were conducted to explore the effect of task constraints on memorability ratings and on study time allocation strategies and to examine the conditions under which an item labor-in-vain effect is found (i.e., items studied for a long time are not recalled equally or better than items studied for a short time). Results show that the strategy of time allocation was influenced by the outcome of a previous memory test (Experiment 1), by the final memory test (Experiment 4), and by the total available time (Experiment 5). None of these manipulations eliminated the labor-in-vain effect, which is not due to the subjects' inability to manage the study time (Experiment 3) and which disappeared only when the time was experimenter paced (Experiment 2). Results are discussed in terms of a cost–benefit strategy.
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This study aimed to ascertain a) whether morning reports of dream experience more frequently reproduce bizarre contents of night reports than nonbizarre ones and b) whether this effect depends on the rarity of bizarre contents in the... more
This study aimed to ascertain a) whether morning reports of dream experience more frequently reproduce bizarre contents of night reports than nonbizarre ones and b) whether this effect depends on the rarity of bizarre contents in the dream or on their richer encoding in memory. Ten subjects were awakened in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep three times per night for 4 nonconsecutive nights and asked to report their previous dream experiences. In the morning they were asked to re-report those dreams. Two separate pairs of judges scored the reports: the former identified the parts in each report with bizarre events, characters or feelings and the latter parsed each report into content units using transformational grammar criteria. By combining the data of the two analyses, content units were classified as bizarre or nonbizarre and, according to whether present in both the night and corresponding morning reports, as semantically equivalent or nonequivalent. The proportion of bizarre conte...
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ABSTRACT This study was designed to identify individual differences predicting competence in solving written subtractions with borrowing in second-grade schoolchildren. To examine the role of domain-general and domain-specific precursors,... more
ABSTRACT This study was designed to identify individual differences predicting competence in solving written subtractions with borrowing in second-grade schoolchildren. To examine the role of domain-general and domain-specific precursors, a group of 68 second-graders was tested at three different sessions. Domain-general precursors were analyzed during the first session, including four working memory (WM) tasks, distinguishing between simple-storage and complex-span WM tasks. The domain-specific mathematical abilities tested were knowledge of symbols, arithmetical fact retrieval, understanding of the positional value of digits, and alignment skills. During the second and third sessions, children were taught written subtraction algorithms, first without and then with borrowing procedures, and were then immediately assessed on their acquired competences. Path analysis models were run and the final model showed that performance in written subtractions with borrowing was predicted by both visuospatial WM and specific mathematical skills. The results are discussed for their theoretical and educational implications.
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Imagery ratings, incidental free recall, and intentional free recall of a group of young congenitally blind adults living in an institute for the blind and of control group were compared. Words to be rated and recalled belonged to three... more
Imagery ratings, incidental free recall, and intentional free recall of a group of young congenitally blind adults living in an institute for the blind and of control group were compared. Words to be rated and recalled belonged to three categories: (a) high-imagery words whose referents can be sensorially experienced also by the blind; (b) high-imagery words whose referents cannot be experienced; and (c) low-imagery words. In the control group, both ratings of imagery and recall were affected by the category to which the word belonged. For the blind group the category of the word affected only the ratings of imagery which still assumed a peculiar form since words in category b received extremely low ratings. It is concluded that the blind can evaluate the imagery value of a word, but that their recall is not affected by the level of its imagery value. Therefore, the imagery value really seems to describe, as Paivio asserts, the susceptibility of an item to being coded in a specific ...
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... early estimates of GS's nonverbal IQ and the fact that MM is a native bilingual in signed ... demands will result in no improvement in complex working memory or in speech-reading expertise ... Recent data from sign... more
... early estimates of GS's nonverbal IQ and the fact that MM is a native bilingual in signed ... demands will result in no improvement in complex working memory or in speech-reading expertise ... Recent data from sign language research also suggest that native sign lan-guage users in ...