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Communication can be defined as the understanding and exchanging of meaningful messages. The role of communication is central to the lives of human beings as, everyday, we use language to interact with the world around us. Linguistic skills play a fundamental role in this scenario and Language Disorders (LD) are impairments that limit the processing of linguistic information. Early and accurate identification of LD is thus essential to promote lifelong learning and well-being. From an evolutionary perspective, some human language constructs evolved from an ancestral motor system and share the same neural pathways in the Broca's area of the brain. This suggests a correlation between action and language. If such a relationship is well established and reliable, it would be possible to use the former as a marker of the latter. The hypothesis of our work, in a nutshell, is that movement can be a predictor of language. To study this correlation, we developed C(H)o(L)ordination, a Mixed Reality (MR) application for HoloLens 2. The application offers several activities based on visual stimuli involving motor movements, which tap on the same skills needed to perform some language tasks. We performed an exploratory study with N=22 users to test the application usability and user experience. The results suggest that C(H)o(L)ordination is a usable and powerful tool to gather insights on the ongoing debate about language evolution and language disorders.

Cognitive impairment is a condition that results in a person's inability to remember, learn, concentrate or make decisions that affect his/her everyday life. The assessment of these deficits is usually performed using standardized paper and pencil or computerized tests within a controlled clinical setting. Many traditionally designed tools show only low to moderate levels of ecological validity, limiting the reliability of the collected measures. The proposed system adapts existing screening tests within an immersive virtual reality environment with 360° video, recreating a familiar setting for the patient. This faithful reproduction of everyday environments and situations can enhance the ecological validity of the assessment procedure while maintaining a standardized stimuli delivery, all in a controlled and safe setting. As a computerized system, virtual reality technology allows an error-free computation of the test scores, here collected by means of accuracy for each task. The system involves many technologies aimed at capturing any kind of user input provided by the patient. Additionally, using a visor with integrated eye-tracker sensor, the system can register the visual exploration pattern adopted by the patient during the task execution, providing information concerning the attentional and visuo-spatial functioning which are not obtainable using traditional assessment procedures. Finally, the results of an exploratory study that was conducted with 11 users on the reliability and usability of the system are presented.

Ideally, language and reading skills in bilingual children are assessed in both languages spoken in order to avoid misdiagnoses of communication or learning disorders. Due to limited capacity of clinical and educational staff, computerized screenings that allow for automatic evaluation of the children’s performance on reading tasks (accuracy and speed) might pose a useful alternative in clinical and school settings. In this study, a novel web-based screening platform for language and reading assessment is presented. This tool has been preliminarily validated with monolingual Italian, Mandarin–Italian and English–Italian speaking primary school children living and schooled in Italy. Their performances in the screening tasks in Italian and—if bilingual—in their native language were compared to the results of standardized/conventional reading assessment tests as well as parental and teacher questionnaires. Correlations revealed the tasks that best contributed to the identification of risk for the presence of reading disorders and showed the general feasibility and usefulness of the computerized screening. In a further step, both screening administrators (Examiners) and child participants (Examinees) were invited to participate in usability studies, which revealed general satisfaction and provided suggestions for further improvement of the screening platform. Based on these findings, the potential of the novel web-based screening platform is discussed.

Mixed Reality (MR) has been receiving increasing interest in the rehabilitation of people with Cognitive Disabilities. The power of MR in the context of therapies is the possibility to maintain a physical and psychological relationship with the surrounding environment while experiencing customized multimedia content and tasks that are appropriate for the needs of these users. The purpose of this work is to explore the potential of MR applications integrated with interactive speech-based Virtual Assistants. We present HoloLearn, an application for Microsoft HoloLens, which aims to help people with Cognitive Disabilities to improve their autonomy and learn simple activities of their everyday life (e.g., setting the table). The paper discusses the design features of the Virtual Assistant created and the results of a controlled study. The participants involved were 15 subjects with Cognitive Disabilities who used HoloLearn in two experimental conditions - with and without a Virtual Assistant. The results, although preliminary, indicate that enriching a MR experience with the presence of a speech-based Virtual Assistant would improve the user performance in the execution of the MR activities.

Our research explores game play in Wearable Collaborative Virtual Environments (WCVEs) to provide new forms of treatment for persons with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) that complement traditional methods of intervention. We investigate this issue using the Social MatchUP (SMUP) application as a case study. SMUP provides a set of games in WCVEs that have been co-designed with NDD experts and aim at improving communication skills. In SMUP, multiple users wearing a Virtual Reality visor play together to accomplish collaborative tasks that take place in shared virtual environments and require talking to each other to be completed. The paper presents an exploratory empirical study devoted to evaluate the potential of SMUP games for persons with NDD to improve their speech-based conversational capability. We organized participants (24 persons with NDD) in 2 groups, one playing a game in SMUP and one playing a similar game in the real world, and assessed likability, usability, and a number of conversational performance metrics. Our results indicate that the game experience in SMUP was usable and enjoyable, and boosted higher conversational skills with respect to its counterpart in the physical setting.

This paper elaborates an empirical analysis of labour force characteristics that emerge as a response to the growing importance of environmental sustainability. Using data on the United States we compare green and non-green occupations to detect differences in terms of skill content and of human capital. Our empirical profiling reveals that green jobs use more intensively high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills compared to non-green jobs. Green occupations also exhibit higher levels of standard dimensions of human capital such as formal education, work experience and on-the-job training. While preliminary, our exploratory exercise seeks to call attention to an underdeveloped theme, namely the labour market implications associated with the transition towards green growth.