Lateralized reading in the healthy brain: A behavioral and computational study on the nature of the visual field effect.

Despite its widespread use to measure functional lateralization of language in healthy subjects, the neurocognitive bases of the visual field effect in lateralized reading are still debated. Crucially, the lack of knowledge on the nature of the visual field effect is accompanied by a lack of knowledge on the relative impact of psycholinguistic factors on its measurement, thus potentially casting doubts on its validity as a functional laterality measure. In this study, an eye-tracking-controlled tachistoscopic lateralized lexical decision task (Experiment 1) was administered to 60 right-handed and 60 left-handed volunteers and word length, orthographic neighborhood, word frequency, and imageability were manipulated. The magnitude of visual field effect was bigger in right-handed than in left-handed participants. Across the whole sample, a visual field-by-frequency interaction was observed, whereby a comparatively smaller effect of word frequency was detected in the left visual field/right hemisphere (LVF/RH) than in the right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH). In a subsequent computational study (Experiment 2), efficient (LH) and inefficient (RH) activation of lexical orthographic nodes was modelled by means of the Naïve Discriminative Learning approach. Computational data simulated the effect of visual field and its interaction with frequency observed in the Experiment 1. Data suggest that the visual field effect can be biased by word frequency. Less distinctive connections between orthographic cues and lexical/semantic output units in the RH than in the LH can account for the emergence of the visual field effect and its interaction with word frequency.

Attachment networks in young adults.

Introduction: This study investigated attachment networks in a sample of Italian young adults. Attachment networks were defined in terms of attachment functions, attachment strength, the presence of a primary figure, and full-blown attachments. Method: Participants were 405 young adults, and we studied the effects of the demographic variables of gender, romantic status (whether single, involved in a romantic relationship for less or more than 24 months) and employment (whether university students or workers) on the structure of attachment networks. Participants were asked to answer the WHO-TO questionnaire, and derived indexes were analyzed using mixed ANOVAs, linear and logistic regression techniques. Results: Results indicated that while friends still had great importance in the network, partners were acquiring increasing relevance; at the same time, parents, and particularly mothers, remained central figures, particularly for the secure base function. Regarding the demographic variables, we observed that women reported stronger bonds with their mothers than men did, while the importance of friends was higher for men than for women. Additionally, our study supports previous findings underlining the importance of romantic partners in this phase of life, with participants involved in romantic relationships for longer than 24 months showing a fully developed attachment bond with their partners. Finally, for workers, the transfer of functions from the family-of-origin to external figures seemed to be fostered. Discussion: In conclusion, young Italian young adults go through a phase of intensive restructuring of attachment bond networks, particularly in relation to the consolidation of romantic relationships and work commitments.

Technology in Rehabilitative Interventions for Children: Challenges and Opportunities.

Technology innovation has been leading to the development of an increasing number of applications that aim to support the rehabilitation of cognitive functions [...].

The facial emotion recognition deficit in Parkinson's disease: Implications of a visual scanning strategy.

OBJECTIVE: We explored the relationship between a visual scanning strategy and a facial emotion recognition deficit in Parkinson's disease (PD). METHOD: Thirty nondemented PD patients (balanced for symptom side at onset) and 20 age, education and gender-matched healthy controls (HC) were enrolled. The PD group underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological battery also exploring the executive functions. In both groups, eye movements were recorded while subjects categorized facial emotion from Ekman's 60-faces test. We were particularly interested in the location of fixations on facial pictures (top vs. bottom) and in emotional valence (positive vs. negative). We also compared performance of the two groups on a verbal emotion attribution task. RESULTS: Compared to HC, PD patients performed worse on visual recognition of negative emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness (where the upper part of the face is more informative than the lower part); the two groups did not differ on the verbal emotion attribution task. HC modified their visual scanning strategy (both number and overall time duration of fixations) according to the valence of the emotion; by contrast, PD showed the same pattern regardless of the valence. In the PD group, accuracy in the visual recognition of negative emotions and fixation pattern correlated with performance on tasks exploring executive functions; however, no associations were observed with severity of motor state. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that visual scanning strategy contributes significantly to the facial emotion recognition deficit of PD patients, especially at a "high level" related to cognitive control of eye movements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Telerehabilitation and Wellbeing Experience in Children with Special Needs during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic represented a golden opportunity to implement telerehabilitation for clinical groups of children. The present study aims to show the impact that telerehabilitation had on the experience of well-being of children with special needs being treated at the Foundation IRCCS Neurological Institute 'C. Besta' in Milan (Specific Learning Disorders and Cerebral Palsy diagnosis); it aims to do so by comparing it with experiences of those who did not undertake telerehabilitation despite the diagnosis during the pandemic, and with typically developing children. Results show that the three groups differed in the Support, Respect and Learning dimensions of well-being experience. Post hoc comparisons revealed that children with Specific Learning Disorders and Cerebral Palsy scored higher than normotypical children in Support and in Respect scales. Furthermore, children who experienced telerehabilitation showed the highest scores on the Learning scale in comparison with the other two groups. These results support the importance of reorganizing care and assistance by integrating telemedicine, which seems to have fostered a positive experience of well-being in people with special needs, particularly in the perception of a supportive environment that respects psychological needs.

Comparison on Well-Being, Engagement and Perceived School Climate in Secondary School Students with Learning Difficulties and Specific Learning Disorders: An Exploratory Study.

Reading and writing skills influence the social status of students, exerting effects not only on learning, but also on wellbeing. This study aimed to assess the impact of diagnosis of specific learning disorder on well-being in secondary-school students, comparing students with a diagnosis of specific learning disorder (SLD-group), students showing learning difficulties without diagnosis (LD-group) and students without learning difficulties (control-group). Students were tested with neuropsychological screening tests in order to identify learning difficulties and were further assessed by means of psychological and school well-being questionnaires. The results show that LD group perceive themselves as having a low sense of mastery and autonomy, less interest and engagement in daily activities and low peer social support than their schoolmates. This result highlights, for the LD group, a low well-being experience, which is not observed in the SLD and control groups. On the contrary, SLD group students do not differ from control group students in any dimensions except for the perceived parents' support and involvement in school life, in which the SLD group show the highest scores. This work underlines the importance of having a diagnosis as it seems to work as a protective factor for both the psychological and school well-being of the student.

Uncinate fasciculus and word selection processing in Parkinson's disease.

We explored with Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) technique whether the ability to select words among competitive alternatives during word production is related to the integrity of the left uncinate fasciculus (UF) in Parkinson's disease (PD). Nineteen PD patients (10 right-sided and 9 left-sided) and 17 matched healthy controls (HC) took part in the study. Participants were asked to derive nouns from verbs (reading from to read) or to generate verbs from nouns (to build from building). Noun and verb production, in this task, differ in the number of lexical entries among which the response is selected, as the noun must be selected from a larger number of alternatives compared to the verb, and thus is more demanding of processing resources. DTI evaluation was obtained for each subject. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) maps were derived from DTI and median FA and MD values were computed within the left and right UF. Then, FA and MD of the left and right UF were correlated with noun and verb production. Both the left and right UF-FA correlated with the global (noun + verb) production and noun production in the whole PD group. In right-sided PD, correlations were found with the contralateral UF-FA; in left-sided PD the correlations emerged with both the left and right UF-FA. The most difficult task, noun production, significantly correlated with the right UF-FA in left-sided PD. The left UF is involved in word selection processes, and the right UF intervenes when the selection is particularly demanding of attentional resources.

Tell Me a Story: Socio-Emotional Functioning, Well-Being and Problematic Smartphone Use in Adolescents With Specific Learning Disabilities.

Although Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) are described as specific difficulties in one or more academic areas, often socio-emotional problems are also reported to be related to well-being and school engagement. Moreover, recent evidence shows that emotional problems and reduced social support predict problematic use of new technologies, such as a smartphone, that can, in turn, increase these problems. In this study, we aimed to investigate socio-emotional functioning and its relation to well-being, school engagement, and problematic smartphone use. Social and emotional skills of 19 adolescents with a diagnosis of SLD and 19 control adolescents were assessed through a narrative test; adolescents were requested to narrate complete stories elicited by pictures representing social situations. Information on well-being and problematic smartphone use were collected through questionnaires. The comparison between groups showed differences in cognitive-social skills, although no significant differences in emotional functioning were found. Additionally, the perception of the social environment as supportive and trustworthy was related to general well-being for both groups, whereas the perception of limits and rules set by the adult world appeared to be related to a decreased investment in learning processes only for the SLD students. Finally, correlation analysis showed that smartphone use was associated with reduced perception of social support and to a decreased ability to understand and solve social situations. These results assert the critical role played by social information processing and social support in terms of well-being in adolescence, and contribute to enhancing knowledge of the mechanisms underlying problematic smartphone use in a clinical sample.

The Impact of School Climate on Well-Being Experience and School Engagement: A Study With High-School Students.

The aim of this work is to investigate the factors promoting students' engagement at school and supporting their well-being experience. According to the Positive Education there is a strong relationship between school environment and student's well-being. Moreover, the quality of the school climate perceived by the students was found to influence engagement in school activities, as well. In this study, 153 students (M = 67) attending 10th grade were presented with tests and questionnaires to assess individual assets (personality traits, literacy skills), emerging appraisals (school-climate, well-being experience) and emerging actions (school engagement), according to the Student Well-Being Model. Path analysis showed that the best model does include neither individual assets nor direct effect of school climate on engagement, as the effect of school climate on engagement is mediated by well-being experience. The main result is that school climate has been confirmed as an important factor to be considered to improve engagement in school activities, but it is effective only when its influence can modify the well-being experience of the students. Moreover, the lack of significant effects of individual assets in the model suggests that improving school climate means to support well-being experience and, indirectly school engagement, irrespective to learning abilities and personality traits. This work encourages working in/with schools to implement positive education programs that support and sustain a positive school climate and culture for school-community wellbeing.

Effects of Reading Proficiency and of Base and Whole-Word Frequency on Reading Noun- and Verb-Derived Words: An Eye-Tracking Study in Italian Primary School Children.

The aim of this study is to assess the role of readers' proficiency and of the base-word distributional properties on eye-movement behavior. Sixty-two typically developing children, attending 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, were asked to read derived words in a sentence context. Target words were nouns derived from noun bases (e.g., umorista, 'humorist'), which in Italian are shared by few derived words, and nouns derived from verb bases (e.g., punizione, 'punishment'), which are shared by about 50 different inflected forms and several derived words. Data shows that base and word frequency affected first-fixation duration for nouns derived from noun bases, but in an opposite way: base frequency had a facilitative effect on first fixation, whereas word frequency exerted an inhibitory effect. These results were interpreted as a competition between early accessed base words (e.g., camino, chimney) and target words (e.g., caminetto, fireplace). For nouns derived from verb bases, an inhibitory base frequency effect but no word frequency effect was observed. These results suggest that syntactic context, calling for a noun in the target position, lead to an inhibitory effect when a verb base was detected, and made it difficult for readers to access the corresponding base+suffix combination (whole word) in the very early processing phases. Gaze duration was mainly affected by word frequency and length: for nouns derived from noun bases, this interaction was modulated by proficiency, as length effect was stronger for less proficient readers, while they were processing low-frequency words. For nouns derived from verb bases, though, all children, irrespective of their reading ability, showed sensitivity to the interaction within frequency of base+suffix combination (word frequency) and target length. Results of this study are consistent with those of other Italian studies that contrasted noun and verb processing, and confirm that distributional properties of morphemic constituents have a significant impact on the strategies used for processing morphologically complex words.

Selection Processing in Noun and Verb Production in Left- and Right-Sided Parkinson's Disease Patients.

Verbs are more difficult to produce than nouns. Thus, if executive resources are reduced as in Parkinson's disease (PD), verbs are penalized compared to nouns. However, in an experimental condition in which it is the noun that must be selected from a larger number of alternatives compared to the verb, it is the noun production that becomes slower and more prone to errors. Indeed, patients are slower and less accurate than normal subjects when required to produce nouns from verbs (VN) in a morphology derivation tasks (e.g., "osservazione" from "osservare") ["observation" from "observe"] than verbs from nouns in a morphology generation task, in which only a verb can be generated from the noun (NV) (e.g., "fallire" from "fallimento") ["to fail" from "failure"]. In the Italian language morphology, in fact, generation and derivation tasks differ in the number of lexical entries among which the response must be selected. The left Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) has been demonstrated to be involved in selection processes. In the present study, we explored if the ability to select words is related to the cortical thickness of the left IFG. Twelve right-sided PD with nigrostriatal hypofunctionality in the left hemisphere (RPD-LH), 9 left-sided PD with nigrostriatal hypofunctionality in the right hemisphere (LPD-RH) and 19 healthy controls (HC) took part in the study. NV and VN production tasks were administered; accuracy and reaction times (RTs) were collected. All 40 subjects received a structural MRI examination. Cortical thickness of the IFG and volumetric measurements for subcortical regions, thought to support selection processes, were computed using FreeSurfer. In VN derivation tasks RPD-LH patients were less accurate than LPD-RH patients (accuracy: 66% vs. 77%). No difference emerged among the three groups in RTs. Task accuracy/RTs and IFG thickness showed a significant correlation only in RPD-LH. Not only nouns (as expected) but also verbs were correlated with cortical thickness. This suggests that the linguistic nature of the stimuli along with executive resources are both relevant during word selection processes. Our data confirm that executive resources and language interact in the left IFG in word production tasks.

Reading Derived Words by Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia: The Effect of Root Length.

Children with dyslexia are extremely slow at reading long words but they are faster with stimuli composed of roots and derivational suffixes (e.g., CASSIERE, 'cashier') than stimuli not decomposable in morphemes (e.g., CAMMELLO, 'camel'). The present study assessed whether root length modulates children's morphological processing. For typically developing readers, root activation was expected to be higher for longer than shorter roots because longer roots are more informative access units than shorter ones. By contrast, readers with dyslexia were not expected to be facilitated by longer roots because these roots might exceed dyslexics' processing capacities. Two groups of Italian 6th graders, with and without dyslexia, read aloud low-frequency derived words, with familiar roots and suffixes. Word reaction times (RTs) and mispronunciations were recorded. Linear mixed-effects regression analyses on RTs showed the inhibitory effect of word length and the facilitating effect of root frequency for both children with and without dyslexia. Root length predicted RTs of typically developing readers only, with faster RTs for longer roots, over and above the inhibitory effect of word length. Furthermore, typically developing children had faster RTs on words with more frequent suffixes while children with dyslexia were faster when roots had a small family size. Generalized linear regression analyses on accuracy showed facilitating effects of word frequency and suffix frequency, for both groups. The large word length effect on latencies confirmed laborious whole-word processing in children when reading low-frequency derived words. The absence of a word frequency effect along with the facilitating effect of root frequency indicated morphemic processing in all readers. The reversed root length effect in typically developing readers pointed to a stronger activation for longer roots in keeping with the idea that these represent particularly informative units for word decoding. For readers with dyslexia the facilitating effect of root frequency (not modulated by root length) confirmed a pervasive benefit of root activation while the lack of root length modulation indicated that the longest roots were for them too large units to be processed within a single fixation.

Word and pseudoword superiority effects: Evidence from a shallow orthography language.

The word superiority effect (WSE) denotes better recognition of a letter embedded in a word rather than in a pseudoword. Along with WSE, also a pseudoword superiority effect (PSE) has been described: It is easier to recognise a letter in a legal pseudoword than in an unpronounceable nonword. At the current state of the art, both WSE and PSE have been mainly tested with English speakers. This study uses the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm with native speakers of Italian (a shallow orthography language). Different from English and French, we found WSE for reaction times (RTs) only, whereas PSE was significant for both accuracy and RTs. This finding indicates that in the Reicher-Wheeler task, readers of a shallow orthography language can effectively rely on both the lexical and the sublexical routes. As to the effect of letter position, a clear advantage for the first-letter position emerged, a finding suggesting a fine-grained processing of the letter strings with coding of letter position and indicating the role of visual acuity and crowding factors.

Word selection processing in Parkinson's disease: When nouns are more difficult than verbs.

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are impaired in verb production. Interpretations range from grammatical deficits to semantic-conceptual decay of action representation. The verb production deficit in PD can also be considered a dysexecutive disorder, specifically, a deficit of selection processing during word production, due to corticostriatal damage. Producing verbs is "more difficult" than producing nouns, because verb-forms must be selected from a large set of word-forms which share the verb-root, and the set of possible verb-forms is larger than the set of possible noun-forms when a noun has to be produced. However, if we devise a condition in which a noun must be selected from a set of alternatives larger than the set of alternative forms from which a verb must be selected, we expect an opposite pattern, with nouns becoming more difficult than verbs. We used morphological tasks varying in the number of alternative responses during word production. Fourteen PD patients and 14 healthy Controls participated in the study. Participants performed a noun-from-verb ('observation' from 'to observe') and a noun-from adjective derivation task ('kindness' from 'kind'), and a verb-from-noun ('to observe' from 'observation') and an adjective-from-noun generation task ('kind' from 'kindness'). Input-stimuli were presented singularly on a screen and participants produced the response as fast as possible. Response latencies were longer in derivation tasks (several alternative responses) than in generation tasks (one possible response), irrespective of the grammatical class of the target word, with no difference between groups. PD patients were significantly less accurate than Controls only in the noun-from-verb derivation task, that is, in the task with the highest number of alternative responses (PD: 60%; Controls: 81%). Results suggest that the verb production disorder in PD patients may reflect disturbed selection processes among competitors: the higher the number of alternative responses the more severe the impairment.

Does pronounceability modulate the letter string deficit of children with dyslexia? A study with the rate and amount model.

The locus of the deficit of children with dyslexia in dealing with strings of letters may be a deficit at a pre-lexical graphemic level or an inability to bind orthographic and phonological information. We evaluate these alternative hypotheses in two experiments by examining the role of stimulus pronounceability in a lexical decision task (LDT) and in a forced-choice letter discrimination task (Reicher-Wheeler paradigm). Seventeen fourth grade children with dyslexia and 24 peer control readers participated to two experiments. In the LDT children were presented with high-, low-frequency words, pronounceable pseudowords (such as DASU) and unpronounceable non-words (such as RNGM) of 4-, 5-, or 6- letters. No sign of group by pronounceability interaction was found when over-additivity was taken into account. Children with dyslexia were impaired when they had to process strings, not only of pronounceable stimuli but also of unpronounceable stimuli, a deficit well accounted for by a single global factor. Complementary results were obtained with the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm: both groups of children gained in accuracy in letter discrimination in the context of pronounceable primes (words and pseudowords) compared to unpronounceable primes (non-words). No global factor was detected in this task which requires the discrimination between a target letter and a competitor but does not involve simultaneous letter string processing. Overall, children with dyslexia show a selective difficulty in simultaneously processing a letter string as a whole, independent of its pronounceability; however, when the task involves isolated letter processing, also these children can make use of the ortho-phono-tactic information derived from a previously seen letter string. This pattern of findings is in keeping with the idea that an impairment in pre-lexical graphemic analysis may be a core deficit in developmental dyslexia.

List context effects in languages with opaque and transparent orthographies: a challenge for models of reading.

This paper offers a review of data which show that reading is a flexible and dynamic process and that readers can exert strategic control over it. Two main hypotheses on the control of reading processes have been suggested: the route de-emphasis hypothesis and the time-criterion hypothesis. According to the former, the presence of irregular words in the list might lead to an attenuation of the non-lexical process, while the presence of non-words could trigger a de-emphasis of the lexical route. An alternative account is proposed by the time-criterion hypothesis whereby the reader sets a flexible deadline to initiate the response. According to the latter view, it is the average pronunciation difficulty of the items in the block that modulates the time-criterion for response. However, it is worth noting that the list composition has been shown to exert different effects in transparent compared to opaque orthographies, as the consistency of spelling-sound correspondences can influence the processing costs of the non-lexical pathway. In transparent orthographies, the non-lexical route is not resource demanding and can successfully contribute to the pronunciation of regular words, thus its de-emphasis could not be as useful/necessary as in opaque orthographies. The complex patterns of results from the literature on list context effects are a challenge for computational models of reading which face the problem of simulating strategic control over reading processes. Different proposals suggest a modification of parameter setting in the non-lexical route or the implementation of a new module aimed at focusing attention on the output of the more convenient pathway. Simulation data and an assessment of the models' fit to the behavioral results are presented and discussed to shed light on the role of the cognitive system when reading aloud.

Word and pseudoword superiority effects in a shallow orthography language: the role of hemispheric lateralization.

The word superiority effect (WSE) has made it possible to demonstrate the automatic activation of lexical-orthographic entries in reading. The observation of this effect is important since it led to experimental support of the main cognitive reading models. These models were mostly developed on English data, hence the verification in different orthography systems is relevant. The present study tested WSE in Italian, a language in which this effect was predicted to be less constant given the highly consistent correspondence between orthography and phonology. Moreover, the presentation of the items in a lateralized visual field condition allowed testing of assumptions about the roles of the right and left hemispheres in written word recognition and, in particular, on the hemispheric lateralization of lexical processing. Two experiments were conducted with undergraduate students who had to recognize a target letter within a word, pseudoword, or nonword. In Experiment 1, prime and probe letters were in the same letter case, while in Experiment 2 they were in different letter cases. Error rates and reaction times were analyzed with mixed models. The results showed a superiority of pseudowords (pseudoword superiority effect; PSE) over illegal strings with no evidence of a clear superiority of words over pseudowords for both left and right visual field presentations. This suggests that in Italian, the sub-lexical route could play a major role in reading and that this route relies on a visual-perceptual orthographic coding concerning familiarity of letter combinations, which is also available to the right hemisphere.