The contribution of verbal working memory to deaf children's oral and written production

open3noopenArfé, Barbara; Rossi, Cristina; Sicoli, SilviaArfe', Barbara; Rossi, Cristina; Sicoli, Silvi

Temporal and causal reasoning in deaf and hearing novice readers

Temporal and causal information in text are crucial in helping the reader form a coherent representation of a narrative. Deaf novice readers are generally poor at processing linguistic markers of causal/temporal information (i.e., connectives), but what is unclear is whether this is indicative of a more general deficit in reasoning about temporal/causal information. In Study 1, 10 deaf and 63 hearing children, matched for comprehension ability and age, were compared on a range of tasks tapping temporal/causal reasoning skills. In Study 2, 20 deaf and 32 hearing children, matched for age but not reading comprehension ability, were compared on revised versions of the tasks. The pattern of performance of the deaf was different from that of the hearing; they had difficulties when temporal and causal reasoning was text-based, but not when it was nonverbal, indicating that their global temporal/causal reasoning skills are comparable with those of their hearing counterparts

Addressing individual differences between readers in text simplification

Barbara Arfé, profesora de la Universidad de Padua (Italia), presenta los resultados de su investigación sobre las diferencias entre los lectores en la simplificación de textos en las Jornades Lectura Fàcil de la Generalitat Valenciana organizadas por la ERI-Lectura de la Universitat de València el 18-19 mayo de 2018. http://ir.uv.es/4zhj7I

Timed written picture naming in 14 European languages

We describe the Multilanguage Written Picture Naming Dataset. This gives trial-level data and time and agreement norms for written naming of the 260 pictures of everyday objects that compose the colorized Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set (Rossion & Pourtois in Perception, 33, 217–236, 2004). Adult participants gave keyboarded responses in their first language under controlled experimental conditions (N = 1,274, with subsamples responding in Bulgarian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish). We measured the time to initiate a response (RT) and interkeypress intervals, and calculated measures of name and spelling agreement. There was a tendency across all languages for quicker RTs to pictures with higher familiarity, image agreement, and name frequency, and with higher name agreement. Effects of spelling agreement and effects on output rates after writing onset were present in some, but not all, languages. Written naming therefore shows name retrieval effects that are similar to those found in speech, but our findings suggest the need for cross-language comparisons as we seek to understand the orthographic retrieval and/or assembly processes that are specific to written output

READ-COGvid: A Database From Reading and Media Habits During COVID-19 Confinement in Spain and Italy

In the present paper, we present the READ-COGvid database, composed of responses of 4,800 individuals from Spain and Italy. While we focus on leisure and reading habits at different moments (before the confinement, shortly after confinement, and after 1 month confined), we also collected many other indices (socio-demographic, psychological, and reading-related) that may be of interest to researchers interested in adults' reading and related areas (e.g., communication research, cognitive sciences, social studies, health sciences, cross-cultural studies).Psicologí

How noise affect cognitive performances of children with additional learning needs: a preliminary study

The goal of the study is to investigate how background noise can affect children’s cognitive performance, and whether it affects in similar way the cognitive performance of children without and with additional learning need, like a learning disability (LD) or an attentional deficit disorder (ADHD). Two visual attentional tasks, an inhibition task and a verbal WM task have been administered by a serious game App (“Cognitive Effort in Noise” – CoEN) to 62 typically developing children and to 17 children with a diagnosis of LD or ADHD, between 7 and 12 years of age. All tasks have been performed in both quiet and noise (multitalker babble at 60dB through headphones). The data analysis revealed a detrimental effect of noise on children’s WM performance in both groups. However, noise had also a positive influence on the attentional performance of children with additional needs

CoEN (Cognitive Effort in Noise) App: a serious game application for the assessment of children’s ability to focus in noisy environments

Children spend most of their time in schools. Unfortunately, classrooms do not always provide an optimal acoustic environment for learning, due to the presence of noise (whether external or internal) and reverberation. It has been widely demonstrated that noise has negative consequences on children’s learning (on reading and math) and cognition (on attention and working memory). CoEN (Cognitive Effort in Noise) is an App developed to easily assess children’s executive functions when exposed to noisy environments. The App, available for tablets, contains six standardized neuropsychological tests adapted in the form of engaging games. Verbal working memory, visual attention and non-verbal inhibition skills are assessed in quiet and noise. In this contribution, we will present the design and evaluation of the app. The tests performed in the evaluation phase involved 233 primary school children, with and without learning disabilities or sensory impairments. Preliminary results showed that CoEN was easy to use, engaging and enjoyable for the children. It also captured individual differences in children’s response to noise. Overall, the app provides a promising tool for children, as well as for teachers, parents or professionals, who wish to evaluate their cognitive abilities to cope with noise in an easy and engaging way

Exploring Gender Differences in Coding at the Beginning of Primary School

The gender gap in Computer Science (CS) is widely documented worldwide. Only a few studies, however, have investigated whether and how gender differences manifest early in the learning of computing, at the beginning of primary school. Coding, seen as an element of Computational Thinking, has entered the curriculum of primary school education in several countries. As the early years of primary education happen before gender stereotypes in CS are expected to be fully endorsed, the opportunity to learn coding for boys and girls at that age might in principle help reduce the gender gap later observed in CS education. Prior research findings however suggest that an advantage for boys in coding tasks may begin to emerge already since preschool or the early grades of primary education. In the present study we explored whether the coding abilities of 1st graders, at their first experience with coding, are affected by gender differences, and whether their presence associates with gender differences in executive functions (EF), i.e., response inhibition and planning skills. Earlier research has shown strong association between children’s coding abilities and their EF, as well as the existence of gender differences in the maturation of response inhibition and planning skills, but with an advantage for girls. In this work we assessed the coding skills and response inhibition and planning skills of 109 Italian first graders, 45 girls and 64 boys, before an introductory coding course (pretest), when the children had no prior experience of coding. We then repeated the assessment after the introductory coding course (posttest). No statistically significant difference between girls and boys emerged at the pretest, whereas an advantage in coding appeared for boys at the posttest. Mediation analyses carried out to test the hypothesis of a mediation role of EF on gender differences in coding show that the gender differences in coding were not mediated by the children’s EF (response inhibition or planning). These results suggest that other factors must be accounted for to explain this phenomenon. The different engagement of boys and girls in the coding activities, and/or other motivational and sociocognitive variables, should be explored in future studies