Fly in color. A chromatic “model” for the cabin of a commercial aircraft

The European research CASTLE (Cabin System Design Towards Passenger Wellbeing) puts the passenger's perception of well-being at the center of a prototype commercial aeronautics project. From this point of view, the evaluation of ergonomics and the travel experience become the objectives of an analysis of the space/context in which color, integrated with the functional components, of the shape and materials, becomes a tool for the concept design of the cabin space. The methodological approach developed therefore entrusts color to a primary role in defining the state of well-being and identity of the cabin space, through a "color model" that can be scaled in relation to the colors that each company will choose for its own color image

Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment: The Importance Of Close Observation Of The Adaptation Process

Muthu, Nambi, Krishnan, & Vijayaraghavan (2023a) wrote an interesting paper discussing the effectiveness of a training that showed to determine improvement in Theory of Mind and Quality of Life in people with schizophrenia. As the authors of this commentary are the first and last authors of the paper presenting the Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment (Gabbatore et al., 2015), from which the authors state their treatment was adapted, we would like to highlight the potential of such results, but also provide some clarifications on the data presented

Communicative-Pragmatic Treatment in schizophrenia: A pilot study

This paper aims to verify the efficacy of Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment (CPT), a new remediation training for the improvement of the communicative-pragmatic abilities, in patients with schizophrenia. The CPT program is made up of 20 group sessions, focused on a number of communication modalities, i.e., linguistic, extralinguistic and paralinguistic, theory of mind (ToM) and other cognitive functions able to play a role on the communicative performance, such as awareness and planning. A group of 17 patients with schizophrenia took part in the training program. They were evaluated before and after training, through the equivalent forms of the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo), a tool for testing, both in comprehension and in production, a wide range of pragmatic phenomena such as direct and indirect speech acts, irony and deceit, and a series of neuropsychological and ToM tests. The results showed a significant improvement in patients’ performance on both production and comprehension tasks following the program, and in all the communication modalities evaluated through the ABaCo, i.e., linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic, and social appropriateness. This improvement persisted after 3 months from the end of the training program, as shown by the follow-up tests. These preliminary findings provide evidence of the efficacy of the CPT program in improving communicative-pragmatic abilities in schizophrenic individuals

A cross-sectional study to assess pragmatic strengths and weaknesses in healthy ageing

BACKGROUND: Ageing refers to the natural and physiological changes that individuals experience over the years. This process also involves modifications in terms of communicative-pragmatics, namely the ability to convey meanings in social contexts and to interact with other people using various expressive means, such as linguistic, extralinguistic and paralinguistic aspects of communication. Very few studies have provided a complete assessment of communicative-pragmatic performance in healthy ageing. METHODS: The aim of this study was to comprehensively assess communicative-pragmatic ability in three samples of 20 (N = 60) healthy adults, each belonging to a different age range (20–40, 65–75, 76–86 years old) and to compare their performance in order to observe any potential changes in their ability to communicate. We also explored the potential role of education and sex on the communicative-pragmatic abilities observed. The three age groups were evaluated with a between-study design by means of the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo), a validated assessment tool characterised by five scales: linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic, contextual and conversational. RESULTS: The results indicated that the pragmatic ability assessed by the ABaCo is poorer in older participants when compared to the younger ones (main effect of age group: F(2,56) = 9.097; p < .001). Specifically, significant differences were detected in tasks on the extralinguistic, paralinguistic and contextual scales. Whereas the data highlighted a significant role of education (F(1,56) = 4.713; p = .034), no sex-related differences were detected. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the ageing process may also affect communicative-pragmatic ability and a comprehensive assessment of the components of such ability may help to better identify difficulties often experienced by older individuals in their daily life activities. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12877-022-03304-z