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Two cross-modal priming experiments tested whether lexical access is constrained by syllabic structure in Italian. Results extend the available Italian data on the processing of stressed syllables showing that syllabic information restricts the set of candidates to those structurally consistent with the intended word (Experiment 1). Lexical access, however, takes place as soon as possible and it is not delayed till the incoming input corresponds to the first syllable of the word. And, the initial activated set includes candidates whose syllabic structure does not match the intended word (Experiment 2). The present data challenge the early hypothesis that in Romance languages syllables are the units for lexical access during spoken word recognition. The implications of the results for our understanding of the role of syllabic information in language processing are discussed.

In this longitudinal study we analyse the early phases of reading development in Italian and explore the transition from phonological to lexical reading. A group of 28 Italian children was tested in four phases. Language and cognitive skills were first assessed in the preschool. Reading performance was then tested in three different sessions, in grade 1 and 2, using off-line naming tasks. To identify lexical reading we included in our test Italian words that have atypical stress assignment and can be pronounced with fluent prosody only by using lexical look up. Our findings show that phonological reading develops from aloud conversion of small orthographic units (e.g., single graphemes) to aloud conversion of whole strings. Such development underlies a systematic expansion of lexical reading. Children who deployed lexical reading for a low percentage of words at the end of grade 2 were likely to rely on grapheme by grapheme conversion still at the end of grade 1. Phonological, lexical, visual attention, and orthographic memory skills contribute to the systematic development of lexical reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, habits related to smoking have been changing. An increasing portion of light/occasional smokers tend to define themselves as non-smokers, leading to an incorrect perception of the risks that smoking even a few cigarettes can entail. In this study, we investigated the nicotine-induced cognitive distortion in young, higher-education students with low/moderate dependence (as indexed by the Fagerstrom questionnaire). The study involved 111 participants (62 female; mean age 24.43 ± 3.77) divided into smokers and non-smokers, who responded to specific questionnaires to evaluate their attachment style, emotion dysregulation, and state anxiety. Their response to smoking-related cues following emotional stimulation was experimentally evaluated, with participants being made to choose between care- or smoking-related images, following the presentation of threatening or neutral stimuli. The results show a cognitive bias in smokers, with participants choosing smoking-related stimuli significantly more often than non-smokers, with a slower reaction time, regardless of emotional cues. Emotion dysregulation and attachment style were also significantly correlated with response choice but not with response latency. Overall, our data indicate that there is no such thing as light use of nicotine and that smoking, even if not continuous, determines cognitive biases that lead to a vision of the environment as a function of substance seeking.

Understanding sarcasm is a complex ability, which includes several processes. Previous studies demonstrated the possible roles of linguistic and meta-representative factors in understanding sarcasm in school children, while the influence of specific contextual variables still needs to be investigated. Here, we present two studies investigating the possible role of contextual, linguistics, and meta-representative factors in understanding sarcasm in school children. In Study 1, we investigated sarcasm comprehension in 8-9-year-old school children in three different contexts, in which both familiarity and authority were manipulated. We found that understanding sarcasm was facilitated when the conversational partner was characterized by a high level of authority and familiarity (the mother) rather than when the conversational partner was an adult with a lower level of both authority and familiarity (the cashier of a food store). In Study 2, we replicated and extended Study 1 by investigating the possible influence of the same contextual factors but in a more sizeable sample and at different ages: first, third, and fifth grades of primary school. We found that understanding sarcasm improved significantly with age. The results of both studies indicated that understanding sarcasm is influenced by contextual factors. Children at any age better understood sarcasm produced by a speaker with a high level of both familiarity and authority. This ability improved with age. These results expand our understanding of how children infer a speaker's intentions in sarcasm. This might be particularly of interest to develop possible interventions for children on the Autism Spectrum, who are known to misunderstand sarcasm at different levels of complexity.

The number line estimation task (NLE) is often used as a predictor for broader measures of mathematical achievement. In spite of its popularity, it is still not clear whether the task is based on symbolic or non-symbolic numerical competence. In particular, there is only a very limited amount of studies investigating the relationship between NLE performance and symbolic vs. non-symbolic math skills in children who have not yet begun formal schooling. This study investigates the strength of the association between NLE performance and symbolic and non-symbolic tasks in young kindergarteners. Ninety two 5-year-old children completed the NLE task (range 0-100) and a battery of early numerical competence tests including symbolic-lexical tasks, symbolic semantic tasks, and non-symbolic semantic tasks. The relationship between symbolic and non-symbolic early numerical competence and NLE performance was analyzed using a regression model based on the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Results show that only symbolic semantic tasks are significant predictors of NLE performance. These results suggest that symbolic numerical knowledge is involved in number line processing among young children, whilst non-symbolic knowledge is not. This finding brings new data to the debate on the relationship between non-symbolic numeral knowledge and symbolic number processing and supports the evidence of a primary role of symbolic number processing already in young kindergarteners., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Meloni, Delogu and Fanari.)

Introduction: The paper investigates the impact of the use of metaphors in reasoning tasks concerning vaccination, especially for defeasible reasoning cases. We assumed that both metaphor and defeasible reasoning can be relevant to let people understand vaccination as an important collective health phenomenon, by anticipating possible defeating conditions., Methods: We hypothesized that extended metaphor could improve both the argumentative and the communicative effects of the message. We designed an empirical study to test our main hypotheses: participants ( N = 196, 78% females; Meanage = 27.97 years, SDage = 10.40) were presented with a text about vaccination, described in either literal or metaphorical terms, based on uncertain vs. safe reasoning scenarios., Results: The results of the study confirmed that defeasible reasoning is relevant for the communicative impact of a text and that an extended metaphor enhances the overall communicative effects of the message, in terms of understandability, persuasion, perceived safety, and feeling of control over the health situation, collective trust in expertise and uptake of experts' advice. However, the results show that this effect is significantly nuanced by the type of defeasible reasoning, especially in the case of participants' trust in expertise and commitment to experts' advice., Conclusion: Both communicative and defeasible reasoning competences are needed to enhance trust in immunization, with possible different outcomes at an individual and collective level., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Ervas, Salis, Sechi and Fanari.)

Previous research has documented that type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is associated with cognitive impairment. Psychological variables were repeatedly investigated to understand why T2DM patients are poorly active, despite standards of medical care recommends performing aerobic and resistance exercise regularly and reducing the amount of time spent sitting. This exploratory study aims to investigate how affective variables as thoughts, feelings, and individuals' stage of exercise adoption can modulate low cognitive performances during an experimental procedure based on exercise. The Exercise Thoughts Questionnaire (ETQ), Exercise-Induced Feeling Scale (EFI), and Physical Activity Stage of Change were administered to a sample of 12 T2DM patients. The Bivalent Shape Task (BST) alone (BST), BST with exercise [control exercise recovery (CER) + BST], and BST with metaboreflex [post-exercise muscle ischemia (PEMI) + BST] were used as mental task, and response time to congruent, incongruent, and neutral stimuli was recorded. Concomitant cerebral oxygenation (COX) was evaluated by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). As expected, T2DM patients performed significantly better when the stimulus was presented in congruent trials (followed by neutral and incongruent). In the CER + BST session, T2DM patients showed longer reaction time to incongruent trials than in the PEMI + BST and BST alone sessions. Positive feelings toward exercise seem to modulate cognitive performances in high challenging task only if T2DM patients were conscious to play exercise. These results could provide some insights for health intervention targeting exercise for patients with T2DM in order to enhance cognitive performances., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2020 Guicciardi, Fadda, Fanari, Doneddu and Crisafulli.)

Variability in human olfactory sensitivity has been attributed to individual-level factors such as genetics, age, sex, medical history of infections and trauma, neurogenerative diseases, and emotional disorders. Scarce evidence exists on the cross-cultural variation in olfactory sensitivity. Hence, we performed 2 studies to estimate the variability in olfactory threshold as a function of location and environment. Study 1 involved 11 laboratories from 4 continents (N = 802). In each location, in a designated laboratory, approximately 80 subjects underwent olfactory sensitivity testing with custom-made tests with eucalyptol and phenylethanol (PEA) odors. Tests were based on the Threshold subtest of the Sniffin' Sticks battery. In Study 2, we compared olfactory sensitivity and suprathreshold perception of PEA and eucalyptol in 2 Chinese (N = 160) and 2 Indian (N = 92) populations-one based in their native country and the other in Germany. Both studies present large-scale evidence that olfactory sensitivity varies as a function of geographical location and suggest that environmental factors play an important role in shaping olfactory sensitivity and suprathreshold olfactory perception. We delineate further steps necessary to identify specific factors underlying uncovered variability and the relationship between olfactory sensitivity and suprathreshold odor perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Morra is a 3,000-years-old hand game of prediction and numbers. The two players reveal their hand simultaneously, presenting a number of fingers between 1 and 5, while calling out a number between 2 and 10. Any player who successfully guesses the summation of fingers revealed by both players scores a point. While the game is extremely fast-paced, making it very difficult for players to achieve a conscious control of their game strategies, expert players regularly outperform non-experts, possibly with strategies residing out of conscious control. In this study, we used Morra as a naturalistic setting to investigate the necessity of attentive control in generation of sequence of items and the ability to proceduralize random number generation, which are both a crucial defensive strategy in Morra and a well-known empirical procedure to test the central executive capacity within the working memory model. We recorded the sequence of numbers generated by expert players in a Morra tournament in Sardinia (Italy) and by undergraduate students enrolled in a course-based research experience (CRE) course at Lawrence Technological University in the United States. Number sequences generated by non-expert and expert players both while playing Morra and in a random number generation task (RNGT) were compared in terms of randomness scores. Results indicate that expert players of Morra largely outperformed non-experts in the randomness scores only within Morra games, whereas in RNGT the two groups were very similar. Importantly, survey data acquired after the games indicate that expert players have very poor conscious recall of their number generation strategies used during the Morra game. Our results indicate that the ability of generating random sequences can be proceduralized and do not necessarily require attentive control. Results are discussed in the framework of the dual processing theory and its automatic-parallel-fast vs. controlled-sequential-slow polarities., (Copyright © 2020 Delogu, Barnewold, Meloni, Toffalini, Zizi and Fanari.)

This study aimed to explore the influence of the visuospatial active working memory subcomponents on early math skills in young children, followed longitudinally along the first 2 years of primary school. We administered tests investigating visual active working memory (jigsaw puzzle), spatial active working memory (backward Corsi), and math tasks to 43 children at the beginning of first grade (T1), at the end of first grade (T2), and at the end of second grade (T3). Math tasks were selected according to the children's age and their levels of formal education: the "Battery for the evaluation of numerical intelligence from 4 to 6 years of age" (BIN 4-6) at T1 to test early numerical competence and the "Test for the evaluation of calculating and problem-solving abilities" (AC-MT 6-11) to test math skills at T2 and T3. Three regression models, in which the predictors were identified through a backward selection based on the use of the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) index, were performed to study the relationship between visual and spatial working memory and math ability at the three points in time. The results show that spatial working memory influences early numerical performance at T1, while early numerical performance is the unique predictor of math performance at T2. At the end of the second grade, the regression model reveals a relationship between math performance and both visual and spatial working memory and the attenuation of the importance of domain-specific predictors. The study depicts the different implications of visual and spatial working memory predictors over the children's development periods and brings additional evidence to the debate on the relationship between visuospatial working memory and math ability in young children., (Copyright © 2019 Fanari, Meloni and Massidda.)

We investigated the beneficial effects of drinking supplementary water during the school day on the cognitive performance and transitory subjective states, such as fatigue or vigor, in 168 children aged between 9 and 11years who were living in a hot climate (South Italy, Sardinia). The classes were randomly divided into an intervention group, which received water supplementation, and a control group. Dehydration was determined by urine sampling and was defined as urine osmolality greater than 800mOsm/kg H(2)O (Katz, Massry, Agomn, & Toor, 1965). The change in the scores from the morning to the afternoon of hydration levels, cognitive performance and transitory subjective states were correlated. In line with a previous observational study that evaluated the hydration status of school children living in a country with a hot climate (Bar-David, Urkin, & Kozminsky, 2005), our results showed that a remarkable proportion of children were in a state of mild, voluntary dehydration at the beginning of the school day (84%). We found a significant negative correlation between dehydration and the auditory number span, which indicates a beneficial effect of drinking supplementary water at school on short-term memory. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between dehydration and performance in the verbal analogy task. The results are discussed in the light of the complexity of the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the relationship between hydration status and cognition., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The present study reports descriptive normative measures for 245 Italian verbal idiomatic expressions. For each of the idiomatic expressions the following variables are reported: Length, Knowledge, Familiarity, Age of Acquisition, Predictability, Syntactic flexibility, Literality and Compositionality. Syntactic flexibility was assessed using five syntactic operations: adverb insertion, adjective insertion, left dislocation, passive and movement. The psycholinguistic relevance of each dimension, their measures and the correlations among them are provided and discussed. The databases are freely available for down-loading from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.

In this study we used a semantic battery assessing the conceptual, lexical, and metacognitive level in semantic relationships to predict expressive lexicon in preschool children with typical and atypical language development. Our regression analyses showed that the tests of our semantic battery altogether accounted for 24% of variance in expressive lexicon after controlling for age and phonological short-term memory. The ability to memorize picture-cue/word pairs that were linked by taxonomic relations made a unique contribution to the expressive lexicon, and was a reliable marker of delayed expressive vocabulary in a group of children with specific language impairment.

Five word-spotting experiments explored the role of consonantal and vocalic phonotactic cues in the segmentation of spoken Italian. The first set of experiments tested listeners' sensitivity to phonotactic constraints cueing syllable boundaries. Participants were slower in spotting words in nonsense strings when target onsets were misaligned (e.g., lago in ri.blago) than when they were aligned (e.g., lago in rin.lago) with phonotactically determined syllabic boundaries. This effect held also for sequences that occur only word-medially (e.g., /tl/ in ri.tlago), and competition effects could not account for the disadvantage in the misaligned condition. Similarly, target detections were slower when their offsets were misaligned (e.g., cittá in cittáu.ba) than when they were aligned (e.g., cittá in cittá.oba) with a phonotactic syllabic boundary. The second set of experiments tested listeners' sensitivity to phonotactic cues, which specifically signal lexical (and not just syllable) boundaries. Results corroborate the role of syllabic information in speech segmentation and suggest that Italian listeners make little use of additional phonotactic information that specifically cues word boundaries.

Three experiments tested the main claims of the idiom decomposition hypothesis: People have clear intuitions on the semantic compositionality of idiomatic expressions, which determines the syntactic behavior of these expressions and how they are recognized. Experiment 1 showed that intuitions are clear only for a very restricted number of expressions, but for the majority of idioms, they are not consistent across speakers. Experiment 2 failed to support the claim that semantic compositionality influences the syntactic flexibility of idioms. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that idioms are more quickly recognized than their literal counterparts, regardless of compositionality and syntactic flexibility. All of the findings were at odds with the tenets of the idiom decomposition hypothesis. The theoretical implications of the results with respect to idiom processing and the notion of compositionality are discussed.

This study investigates recognition of spoken idioms occurring in neutral contexts. Experiment 1 showed that both predictable and non-predictable idiom meanings are available at string offset. Yet, only predictable idiom meanings are active halfway through a string and remain active after the string's literal conclusion. Experiment 2 showed that the initial fragment of a predictable idiom inhibits recognition of a word providing a congruous, but literal, conclusion to the expression. No comparable effects were obtained with non-predictable idioms. These findings are consistent with the view that spoken idiom identification differs from word recognition and occurs word-by-word, just as with other familiar, multi-lexical phrases.