Although psychosocial interventions are receiving increased validation, actions to translate evid... more Although psychosocial interventions are receiving increased validation, actions to translate evidence into practice are inconsistent. This study is one pillar of the Erasmus+ project entitled \u201cSkills in DEmentia Care - Building psychosocial knowledge and best practice in dementia care\u201d (SiDECar). In light of the importance of policies in establishing what is needed to meet dementia challenges, the aim of this study was to analyze European national strategies/plans to check whether they include references or full sections devoted to psychosocial care. The amount and content of the information along with its coherence with scientific evidence were investigated. European strategies/plans were searched on the \u201cAlzheimer Europe\u201d and the \u201cAlzheimer Disease International\u201d websites and, if not available, Google and Google Scholar were used. Keywords were: \u201cpsychosocial care\u201d, \u201cpsychosocial interventions\u201d, \u201cnon-pharmacological care\u201d...
OBJECTIVES The COVID-19 pandemic and public health measures caused serious consequences for sever... more OBJECTIVES The COVID-19 pandemic and public health measures caused serious consequences for several population cohorts, including people with dementia in care homes and their families. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of COVID-19 on care home residents with dementia as experienced by family carers in Italy. Specifically, strategies implemented to overcome the pandemic's constraints, their influence upon care, and consequences for everyday life of residents with dementia and carers were investigated. METHODS Semi-structured interviews explored participants' experiences of the pandemic, its restrictions and the services' status during lockdown. Transcripts were analysed via thematic analysis. RESULTS 26 family carers were interviewed. Three themes emerged: (1) COVID-19 restrictions negatively affected both residents with dementia and family carers, (2) Changing policies in care homes during COVID-19, and (3) Technology use in care homes during COVID-19. COVID-19 restrictions severely affected care home residents with dementia, disrupted their daily living, and accelerated their cognitive decline. Consequently carers' emotional burdens increased. Care home response strategies (safe visiting and digital solutions) were critical, though they were not enough to compensate for the lack of close in-person contacts. CONCLUSIONS Mixed evidence emerged about the feasibility of care home strategies and their associated benefits. To meet arising needs and possible future pandemic waves, there is a need for updated health strategies. These should prioritise a continuity of therapeutic activities and minimize negative effects on residents' quality of life, whilst incorporating feasible and accessible digital solutions to provide remote communication and psychological support for family carers.
Objectives: Technology can assist and support both people with dementia (PWD) and caregivers. Rec... more Objectives: Technology can assist and support both people with dementia (PWD) and caregivers. Recently, technology has begun to embed remote components. Timely with respect to the pandemic, the present work reviews the most recent literature on technology in dementia contexts together with the newest studies about technological support published until October 2020. The final aim is to provide a synthesis of the timeliest evidence upon which clinical and non-clinical decision-makers can rely to make choices about technology in the case of further pandemic waves.Methods: A review of reviews was performed alongside a review of the studies run during the first pandemic wave. PsycInfo, CINAHL, and PubMed-online were the databases inspected for relevant papers published from January 2010.Results: The search identified 420 articles, 30 of which were reviews and nine of which were new studies meeting the inclusion criteria. Studies were first sorted according to the target population, then ...
The way human bodies are represented is central in everyday activities. The cognitive system must... more The way human bodies are represented is central in everyday activities. The cognitive system must combine internal, visceral, and somatosensory, signals to external, visually driven information generated from the spatial placement of others' bodies and the own body in the space. However, how different body representations covertly interact among them when observing human body parts is still unclear. Therefore, we investigated the implicit processing of body parts by manipulating either the body part stimuli' posture (conditions a and b) or the participants' response body posture (conditions c, d, and e) in healthy participants (N = 70) using a spatial compatibility task called Sidedness task. The task requires participants to judge the colour of a circle superimposed on a task-irrelevant body part picture. Responses are facilitated when the spatial side of the responding hand corresponds to the spatial code generated by the hand stimulus's position with respect to a body of reference. Results showed that the observation of the task-irrelevant body parts oriented participants' attention and facilitated responses that were spatial compatible with the spatial position such body parts have within a configural representation of the body structure (i.e., Body Structural Representation) in all the five experimental conditions. Notably, the body part stimuli were mentally attached to the body according to the most comfortable and less awkward postures, following the anatomo-physiological constraints. Moreover, the pattern of the results was not influenced by manipulating the participants' response postures, suggesting that the automatic and implicit coding of the body part stimuli does not rely on proprioceptive information about one's body (i.e., Body Schema). We propose that the human body's morphometry knowledge is enriched by biomechanical and anatomo-physiological information about the real body movement possibilities. Moreover, we discuss the importance of the automatic orienting of attention based on the sidedness within the context of imitational learning.
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pmj-10.1177_02692163211048340 for An online international compar... more Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pmj-10.1177_02692163211048340 for An online international comparison of palliative care identification in primary care using the Surprise Question by Nicola White, Linda JM Oostendorp, Victoria Vickerstaff, Christina Gerlach, Yvonne Engels, Maud Maessen, Christopher Tomlinson, Johan Wens, Bert Leysen, Guido Biasco, Sofia Zambrano, Steffen Eychmüller, Christina Avgerinou, Rabih Chattat, Giovanni Ottoboni, Carel Veldhoven and Patrick Stone in Palliative Medicine
Background:The number of research projects into residential aged care (RAC) during the COVID-19 p... more Background:The number of research projects into residential aged care (RAC) during the COVID-19 pandemic is increasing, however there are limited data on the cross-country comparison of experiences residents living with dementia and their families. Our study aimed to 1) give an overview of the RAC restrictions and changes (visiting policy, governmental & health authorities’ advice, service delivery) implemented during the pandemic in Australia, Italy and the UK and 2) and their impact on people with dementia in RAC facilities and their families.Methods:A total of 56 informal family carers of people with dementia residing in RAC took part in semi- structured interviews over the telephone or via Skype in Australia (n=6), Italy (n=25) and the UK (n=26) between July 2020 and March 2021. The interviews were recorded and translated verbatim. Transcripts were analysed by researchers in each country using thematic analysis, then combined across sites.Results:Inductive thematic analysis iden...
Nel presente studio sono stati testati tre diversi gruppi di atleti (Pallavolisti di Serie A1, pa... more Nel presente studio sono stati testati tre diversi gruppi di atleti (Pallavolisti di Serie A1, pallavolisti under 16, calciatori under 16) al fine di indagare le loro capacita' di predire il risultato di un'azione di palleggio. Le azioni di palleggio sono state videoriprese durante partite reali di pallavolo di Serie A e somministrate a computer attraverso la tecnica di occlusione temporale. La capacita' predittiva e' risultata essere in funzione dello sport praticato, con migliori risultati da parte degli atleti piu' evoluti. Contrariamente a quanto atteso, non e', pero', emerso un vantaggio per gli atleti che erano usi compiere le stesse azioni mostrate in video (i.e., i palleggiatori). I risultati sono stati discussi alla luce delle informazioni motorie condivise tra chi osserva e chi compie l'azione. English abstract Title: The sport action prediction emerges in function of sport expertise: a pilot study with volleyball players and footballers. In...
Imitare i gesti altrui è un lavoro complesso, organizzato in subunità e governato da specifici me... more Imitare i gesti altrui è un lavoro complesso, organizzato in subunità e governato da specifici meccanismi cognitivi. La presente rassegna vuole presentare i modelli che nel corso degli anni hanno ottenuto i risultati più apprezzabili nello spiegare i processi sottostanti all'imitazione. Alcuni dei modelli descritti prendono le mosse da evidenze provenienti dall'osservazione del comportamento di persone afflitte da problematiche cerebrali, altri da evidenze raccolte attraverso esperimenti con persone sane, altre- la maggior parte- da evidenze raccolte con individui in età evolutiva. Proprio in considerazione alle evidenze evolutive, la rassegna si chiuderà evidenziando la necessità di investigare ulteriormente il confronto tra le dimensioni corporee dei soggetti interessati al momento imitativo. Pochissimi studi sono stati condotti, ma ciò che emerge è che il confronto tra schemi corporei può mettere ulteriore ordine all'interno del piano lungo il quale le teorie imitativ...
I benefici che l'attività motoria opera sia nell'età adulta che durante l'infanzia so... more I benefici che l'attività motoria opera sia nell'età adulta che durante l'infanzia sono molteplici. Tra questi, si annoverano i miglioramenti delle abilità percettive, attentive e mnestiche. Lo scopo del presente lavoro è verificare se le capacità mnestiche ed attentive possano essere incrementate dalla messa in opera di un'offerta formativa specifica. Due gruppi di bambini, di età compresa tra i sei e i dieci anni sono stati avviati al gioco della pallavolo. Un gruppo è stato allenato con un metodo che carica di significati i movimenti corporei dell'allenatore e dei compagni al fine di associare tali movimenti allo svolgimento di future indicazioni da eseguire (Pittera, Pedata e Ligas, 2008). L'altro gruppo ha svolto esercizi propedeutici alla pallavolo attraverso la focalizzazione sull'apprendimento dei gesti tecnici. La differenza tra i dati raccolti all'inizio e alla fine del periodo di allenamento preso in esame evidenziarono un miglioramento del...
According to the embodied perspective, cognitive processes are entwined with sensory-motor proces... more According to the embodied perspective, cognitive processes are entwined with sensory-motor processes (Shapiro, 2011). The present study investigates the implications of such a perspective in the sport domain. We provided a group of athletes with sessions of embodied relaxation exercises designed to increase their body awareness, in addition to standard Taekwondo training while a control group of athletes received an extra period of standard training. Sport performance was assessed for the two groups by means of Taekwondo exams. Athletes performed better on the Taekwondo exam with the addition of embodied relaxation training and this effect was influenced by the number of sessions each athlete attended. The positive effect of embodied relaxation training on taekwondo performance suggests that embodied cognition may have an applied influence in the domain of sports.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
To program proper reactions, athletes must anticipate opponents’ actions on the basis of previous... more To program proper reactions, athletes must anticipate opponents’ actions on the basis of previous visuomotor experience. In particular, such abilities seem to rely on processing others’ intentions to act. We adopted a new approach based on an attentional spatial compatibility paradigm to investigate how elite volleyball players elaborate both spatial and motor information at upper-limb posture presentation. Forty-two participants (18 volleyball players and 17 nonathlete controls assigned to Experiments 1 a and b, and eight basketball players assigned to Experiment 2) were tested to study their ability to process the intentions to act conveyed by hands and extract motor primitives (i.e., significant components of body movements). Analysis looked for a spatial compatibility effect between direction of the spike action (correspondence factor) and response side for both palm and back of the hand (view factor). We demonstrated that volleyball players encoded spatial sport-related indices...
A set of unusual objects, a structurally modified version of typical objects, was used to clarify... more A set of unusual objects, a structurally modified version of typical objects, was used to clarify how information coded by the ventro-dorsal stream, processing stable object features (linked to function and experience-related), is integrated with information coded by the dorso-dorsal stream, devoted to grasping and action control, based on object structural properties. We presented both the typical and unusual object versions to 28 participants, between 21 and 27 years-old (19 females) asking them to categorize objects'use-related function. Results showed an increased salience of the functional part of both the kind of objects due, to the task demand and based on activation of ventro-dorsal object functional analysis, while the dorso-dorsal processing about how to grasp the object, leading to the so-called affordance effect, was reduced
Some studies on Social Cognition demonstrated that high level cognitive processes, such as empath... more Some studies on Social Cognition demonstrated that high level cognitive processes, such as empathy for pain, are influenced by racial bias. In this study we investigated whether this bias modulates the (lower) mechanism of attribution of intention too. We used a Simon-like paradigm, consisting of judging the colour of a circle at the centre of photographs of Caucasian and Black hands, from palm or back view, slightly rotated along their axes, implying a motor attitude/movement. Results were compatible with the hypothesis that palm views are interpreted as threatening by the observer. Moreover, women and men showed different reactions to black palm views (threatening stimuli): while the former showed a speeding up of reaction times, witnessing a defensive inherent response, men showed a slowing down of reaction times, suggesting a deeper analysis of stimuli (counterattack response)
Il questionario SF-12 permette di descrivere la salute di un gruppo di persone attraverso due ind... more Il questionario SF-12 permette di descrivere la salute di un gruppo di persone attraverso due indici sintetici calcolati su 12 domande. L’indice denominato Physical Component Summary (PCS), riguarda lo stato fisico, mentre l’indice Mental Component Summary (MCS) misura lo stato mentale. I punti di maggior forza del questionario riguardano la brevita e la facilita di somministrazione. Attualmente e disponibile un manuale, guida all’utilizzo, nelle cui ultime pagine e offerto un algoritmo di calcolo per ottenere gli indici per persona. L’algoritmo e scritto pero in modo che possa essere utilizzato solo all’interno del pacchetto statistico SAS (Littell, Milliken, Stroup, & Wolfinger, 1996). Non tutti coloro che sono interessati al calcolo degli indici hanno domestichezza con questo pacchetto statistico, ragion per cui, il presente lavoro si propone di offrire due algoritmi alternativi e sviluppati per i pacchetti statistici SPSS (IBM, 2011) e R (RStudio Team, 2015), oltre alla possibil...
Background Emerging evidence shows an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living with demen... more Background Emerging evidence shows an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living with dementia and informal carers, without any evidence-based global comparison to date. The aim of this international study was to explore and compare the perceived impact of COVID-19 and associated public health restrictions on the lives of people living with dementia and informal carers and access to dementia care across five countries. Methods Informal carers and people living with dementia who were residing in the community in the UK, Australia, Italy, India, and Poland were interviewed remotely between April and December 2020. Participants were asked about their experiences of the pandemic and how restrictions have impacted on their lives and care. Transcripts were analysed by researchers in each country using inductive thematic analysis. Results Fifteen people living with dementia and 111 informal carers participated across the five countries. Four themes emerged: (1) Limited access and sup...
Although psychosocial interventions are receiving increased validation, actions to translate evid... more Although psychosocial interventions are receiving increased validation, actions to translate evidence into practice are inconsistent. This study is one pillar of the Erasmus+ project entitled \u201cSkills in DEmentia Care - Building psychosocial knowledge and best practice in dementia care\u201d (SiDECar). In light of the importance of policies in establishing what is needed to meet dementia challenges, the aim of this study was to analyze European national strategies/plans to check whether they include references or full sections devoted to psychosocial care. The amount and content of the information along with its coherence with scientific evidence were investigated. European strategies/plans were searched on the \u201cAlzheimer Europe\u201d and the \u201cAlzheimer Disease International\u201d websites and, if not available, Google and Google Scholar were used. Keywords were: \u201cpsychosocial care\u201d, \u201cpsychosocial interventions\u201d, \u201cnon-pharmacological care\u201d...
OBJECTIVES The COVID-19 pandemic and public health measures caused serious consequences for sever... more OBJECTIVES The COVID-19 pandemic and public health measures caused serious consequences for several population cohorts, including people with dementia in care homes and their families. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of COVID-19 on care home residents with dementia as experienced by family carers in Italy. Specifically, strategies implemented to overcome the pandemic's constraints, their influence upon care, and consequences for everyday life of residents with dementia and carers were investigated. METHODS Semi-structured interviews explored participants' experiences of the pandemic, its restrictions and the services' status during lockdown. Transcripts were analysed via thematic analysis. RESULTS 26 family carers were interviewed. Three themes emerged: (1) COVID-19 restrictions negatively affected both residents with dementia and family carers, (2) Changing policies in care homes during COVID-19, and (3) Technology use in care homes during COVID-19. COVID-19 restrictions severely affected care home residents with dementia, disrupted their daily living, and accelerated their cognitive decline. Consequently carers' emotional burdens increased. Care home response strategies (safe visiting and digital solutions) were critical, though they were not enough to compensate for the lack of close in-person contacts. CONCLUSIONS Mixed evidence emerged about the feasibility of care home strategies and their associated benefits. To meet arising needs and possible future pandemic waves, there is a need for updated health strategies. These should prioritise a continuity of therapeutic activities and minimize negative effects on residents' quality of life, whilst incorporating feasible and accessible digital solutions to provide remote communication and psychological support for family carers.
Objectives: Technology can assist and support both people with dementia (PWD) and caregivers. Rec... more Objectives: Technology can assist and support both people with dementia (PWD) and caregivers. Recently, technology has begun to embed remote components. Timely with respect to the pandemic, the present work reviews the most recent literature on technology in dementia contexts together with the newest studies about technological support published until October 2020. The final aim is to provide a synthesis of the timeliest evidence upon which clinical and non-clinical decision-makers can rely to make choices about technology in the case of further pandemic waves.Methods: A review of reviews was performed alongside a review of the studies run during the first pandemic wave. PsycInfo, CINAHL, and PubMed-online were the databases inspected for relevant papers published from January 2010.Results: The search identified 420 articles, 30 of which were reviews and nine of which were new studies meeting the inclusion criteria. Studies were first sorted according to the target population, then ...
The way human bodies are represented is central in everyday activities. The cognitive system must... more The way human bodies are represented is central in everyday activities. The cognitive system must combine internal, visceral, and somatosensory, signals to external, visually driven information generated from the spatial placement of others' bodies and the own body in the space. However, how different body representations covertly interact among them when observing human body parts is still unclear. Therefore, we investigated the implicit processing of body parts by manipulating either the body part stimuli' posture (conditions a and b) or the participants' response body posture (conditions c, d, and e) in healthy participants (N = 70) using a spatial compatibility task called Sidedness task. The task requires participants to judge the colour of a circle superimposed on a task-irrelevant body part picture. Responses are facilitated when the spatial side of the responding hand corresponds to the spatial code generated by the hand stimulus's position with respect to a body of reference. Results showed that the observation of the task-irrelevant body parts oriented participants' attention and facilitated responses that were spatial compatible with the spatial position such body parts have within a configural representation of the body structure (i.e., Body Structural Representation) in all the five experimental conditions. Notably, the body part stimuli were mentally attached to the body according to the most comfortable and less awkward postures, following the anatomo-physiological constraints. Moreover, the pattern of the results was not influenced by manipulating the participants' response postures, suggesting that the automatic and implicit coding of the body part stimuli does not rely on proprioceptive information about one's body (i.e., Body Schema). We propose that the human body's morphometry knowledge is enriched by biomechanical and anatomo-physiological information about the real body movement possibilities. Moreover, we discuss the importance of the automatic orienting of attention based on the sidedness within the context of imitational learning.
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pmj-10.1177_02692163211048340 for An online international compar... more Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pmj-10.1177_02692163211048340 for An online international comparison of palliative care identification in primary care using the Surprise Question by Nicola White, Linda JM Oostendorp, Victoria Vickerstaff, Christina Gerlach, Yvonne Engels, Maud Maessen, Christopher Tomlinson, Johan Wens, Bert Leysen, Guido Biasco, Sofia Zambrano, Steffen Eychmüller, Christina Avgerinou, Rabih Chattat, Giovanni Ottoboni, Carel Veldhoven and Patrick Stone in Palliative Medicine
Background:The number of research projects into residential aged care (RAC) during the COVID-19 p... more Background:The number of research projects into residential aged care (RAC) during the COVID-19 pandemic is increasing, however there are limited data on the cross-country comparison of experiences residents living with dementia and their families. Our study aimed to 1) give an overview of the RAC restrictions and changes (visiting policy, governmental & health authorities’ advice, service delivery) implemented during the pandemic in Australia, Italy and the UK and 2) and their impact on people with dementia in RAC facilities and their families.Methods:A total of 56 informal family carers of people with dementia residing in RAC took part in semi- structured interviews over the telephone or via Skype in Australia (n=6), Italy (n=25) and the UK (n=26) between July 2020 and March 2021. The interviews were recorded and translated verbatim. Transcripts were analysed by researchers in each country using thematic analysis, then combined across sites.Results:Inductive thematic analysis iden...
Nel presente studio sono stati testati tre diversi gruppi di atleti (Pallavolisti di Serie A1, pa... more Nel presente studio sono stati testati tre diversi gruppi di atleti (Pallavolisti di Serie A1, pallavolisti under 16, calciatori under 16) al fine di indagare le loro capacita' di predire il risultato di un'azione di palleggio. Le azioni di palleggio sono state videoriprese durante partite reali di pallavolo di Serie A e somministrate a computer attraverso la tecnica di occlusione temporale. La capacita' predittiva e' risultata essere in funzione dello sport praticato, con migliori risultati da parte degli atleti piu' evoluti. Contrariamente a quanto atteso, non e', pero', emerso un vantaggio per gli atleti che erano usi compiere le stesse azioni mostrate in video (i.e., i palleggiatori). I risultati sono stati discussi alla luce delle informazioni motorie condivise tra chi osserva e chi compie l'azione. English abstract Title: The sport action prediction emerges in function of sport expertise: a pilot study with volleyball players and footballers. In...
Imitare i gesti altrui è un lavoro complesso, organizzato in subunità e governato da specifici me... more Imitare i gesti altrui è un lavoro complesso, organizzato in subunità e governato da specifici meccanismi cognitivi. La presente rassegna vuole presentare i modelli che nel corso degli anni hanno ottenuto i risultati più apprezzabili nello spiegare i processi sottostanti all'imitazione. Alcuni dei modelli descritti prendono le mosse da evidenze provenienti dall'osservazione del comportamento di persone afflitte da problematiche cerebrali, altri da evidenze raccolte attraverso esperimenti con persone sane, altre- la maggior parte- da evidenze raccolte con individui in età evolutiva. Proprio in considerazione alle evidenze evolutive, la rassegna si chiuderà evidenziando la necessità di investigare ulteriormente il confronto tra le dimensioni corporee dei soggetti interessati al momento imitativo. Pochissimi studi sono stati condotti, ma ciò che emerge è che il confronto tra schemi corporei può mettere ulteriore ordine all'interno del piano lungo il quale le teorie imitativ...
I benefici che l'attività motoria opera sia nell'età adulta che durante l'infanzia so... more I benefici che l'attività motoria opera sia nell'età adulta che durante l'infanzia sono molteplici. Tra questi, si annoverano i miglioramenti delle abilità percettive, attentive e mnestiche. Lo scopo del presente lavoro è verificare se le capacità mnestiche ed attentive possano essere incrementate dalla messa in opera di un'offerta formativa specifica. Due gruppi di bambini, di età compresa tra i sei e i dieci anni sono stati avviati al gioco della pallavolo. Un gruppo è stato allenato con un metodo che carica di significati i movimenti corporei dell'allenatore e dei compagni al fine di associare tali movimenti allo svolgimento di future indicazioni da eseguire (Pittera, Pedata e Ligas, 2008). L'altro gruppo ha svolto esercizi propedeutici alla pallavolo attraverso la focalizzazione sull'apprendimento dei gesti tecnici. La differenza tra i dati raccolti all'inizio e alla fine del periodo di allenamento preso in esame evidenziarono un miglioramento del...
According to the embodied perspective, cognitive processes are entwined with sensory-motor proces... more According to the embodied perspective, cognitive processes are entwined with sensory-motor processes (Shapiro, 2011). The present study investigates the implications of such a perspective in the sport domain. We provided a group of athletes with sessions of embodied relaxation exercises designed to increase their body awareness, in addition to standard Taekwondo training while a control group of athletes received an extra period of standard training. Sport performance was assessed for the two groups by means of Taekwondo exams. Athletes performed better on the Taekwondo exam with the addition of embodied relaxation training and this effect was influenced by the number of sessions each athlete attended. The positive effect of embodied relaxation training on taekwondo performance suggests that embodied cognition may have an applied influence in the domain of sports.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
To program proper reactions, athletes must anticipate opponents’ actions on the basis of previous... more To program proper reactions, athletes must anticipate opponents’ actions on the basis of previous visuomotor experience. In particular, such abilities seem to rely on processing others’ intentions to act. We adopted a new approach based on an attentional spatial compatibility paradigm to investigate how elite volleyball players elaborate both spatial and motor information at upper-limb posture presentation. Forty-two participants (18 volleyball players and 17 nonathlete controls assigned to Experiments 1 a and b, and eight basketball players assigned to Experiment 2) were tested to study their ability to process the intentions to act conveyed by hands and extract motor primitives (i.e., significant components of body movements). Analysis looked for a spatial compatibility effect between direction of the spike action (correspondence factor) and response side for both palm and back of the hand (view factor). We demonstrated that volleyball players encoded spatial sport-related indices...
A set of unusual objects, a structurally modified version of typical objects, was used to clarify... more A set of unusual objects, a structurally modified version of typical objects, was used to clarify how information coded by the ventro-dorsal stream, processing stable object features (linked to function and experience-related), is integrated with information coded by the dorso-dorsal stream, devoted to grasping and action control, based on object structural properties. We presented both the typical and unusual object versions to 28 participants, between 21 and 27 years-old (19 females) asking them to categorize objects'use-related function. Results showed an increased salience of the functional part of both the kind of objects due, to the task demand and based on activation of ventro-dorsal object functional analysis, while the dorso-dorsal processing about how to grasp the object, leading to the so-called affordance effect, was reduced
Some studies on Social Cognition demonstrated that high level cognitive processes, such as empath... more Some studies on Social Cognition demonstrated that high level cognitive processes, such as empathy for pain, are influenced by racial bias. In this study we investigated whether this bias modulates the (lower) mechanism of attribution of intention too. We used a Simon-like paradigm, consisting of judging the colour of a circle at the centre of photographs of Caucasian and Black hands, from palm or back view, slightly rotated along their axes, implying a motor attitude/movement. Results were compatible with the hypothesis that palm views are interpreted as threatening by the observer. Moreover, women and men showed different reactions to black palm views (threatening stimuli): while the former showed a speeding up of reaction times, witnessing a defensive inherent response, men showed a slowing down of reaction times, suggesting a deeper analysis of stimuli (counterattack response)
Il questionario SF-12 permette di descrivere la salute di un gruppo di persone attraverso due ind... more Il questionario SF-12 permette di descrivere la salute di un gruppo di persone attraverso due indici sintetici calcolati su 12 domande. L’indice denominato Physical Component Summary (PCS), riguarda lo stato fisico, mentre l’indice Mental Component Summary (MCS) misura lo stato mentale. I punti di maggior forza del questionario riguardano la brevita e la facilita di somministrazione. Attualmente e disponibile un manuale, guida all’utilizzo, nelle cui ultime pagine e offerto un algoritmo di calcolo per ottenere gli indici per persona. L’algoritmo e scritto pero in modo che possa essere utilizzato solo all’interno del pacchetto statistico SAS (Littell, Milliken, Stroup, & Wolfinger, 1996). Non tutti coloro che sono interessati al calcolo degli indici hanno domestichezza con questo pacchetto statistico, ragion per cui, il presente lavoro si propone di offrire due algoritmi alternativi e sviluppati per i pacchetti statistici SPSS (IBM, 2011) e R (RStudio Team, 2015), oltre alla possibil...
Background Emerging evidence shows an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living with demen... more Background Emerging evidence shows an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living with dementia and informal carers, without any evidence-based global comparison to date. The aim of this international study was to explore and compare the perceived impact of COVID-19 and associated public health restrictions on the lives of people living with dementia and informal carers and access to dementia care across five countries. Methods Informal carers and people living with dementia who were residing in the community in the UK, Australia, Italy, India, and Poland were interviewed remotely between April and December 2020. Participants were asked about their experiences of the pandemic and how restrictions have impacted on their lives and care. Transcripts were analysed by researchers in each country using inductive thematic analysis. Results Fifteen people living with dementia and 111 informal carers participated across the five countries. Four themes emerged: (1) Limited access and sup...
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