Lexical and Pragmatic Development of Italian Children During the Second Year of Life: a Longitudinal Study

A longitudinal study on the lexical and pragmatic development of 24 Italian children during the second year of life is presented. Parents filled in the PVB inventory and were interviewed using PICA parental interview at 14, 18 and 24 months of age of their children. Results are consistent with previous findings that underlined the individual stability of language acquisition and show the positive correlations between lexical and communicative acts increments. Those findings point out the possibility of a very early intervention if there is a late language emergence

Autonomous Physical Exploration Influences Spatial Representation: Evidence From Blind and Sighted.

Evidences demonstrated that verbal information allows to construct a mental representation of space, even for persons who have no previous experience of sight. However, the construction of a mental model from verbal description is not presentation-free, as the verbal description anchors participants to a single perspective. The aim of our study is to test the perspective of spatial representation after the physical exploration of space, in order to avoid the influence of format presentation. We asked visual impaired and sighted participants to explore autonomously a room and then to perform a Sentence Verification Task, with sentences presented in an egocentric and in an allocentric version. We measured both response time and accuracy. Data demonstrated a better performance with allocentric perspective, even if the response time suggests that participants are more confident with the egocentric perspective. In conclusion, we suggest that the physical exploration of space leads to the development of an allocentric representation

Automatic Dehumanization Across Menstrual Cycle

In the current study we address the role of hormonal fluctuations across menstrual cycle in female dehumanization of women and men. Using a sequential priming procedure in a lexical decision task, we test whether increased levels of conception risk lead to dehumanization of other women and men on both animal and human dimensions. Results showed that for word woman as the prime, animal words were more accessible in the high than in the low conception risk of the menstrual cycle; whereas human words were more inhibited in the high compared to the low conception risk. As for word man prime, no difference in terms of accessibility was found between the high and the low conception risk on both animaland human-words. This study demonstrates that dehumanization of women is automatically elicited by menstrual cycle–related processes and associated with women’s mate-attraction goals

Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development (BSITD-III). Chronological Or Corrected Age: Which Is More Appropriate to Assess Preterm Infants’ Cognitive, Linguistic, and Motor Performances?

The use of chronological or/and corrected age administering BSITD-III in preterm children was investigated in a sample of preterm infants and full-term infants. BSITD-III was administered at 12 months corrected age. The performance scores for the three BSITD-III subscales were calculated according to the child’ chronological age and considering the BSITD-III request for correction referring to the 40th week or the 37th week of gestation. Results indicate that corrected age should be used with the cognitive subscale only, not with the Motor nor with the Language ones

Adolescents' Appraisal of Homophobic Epithets: The Role of Individual and Situational Factors

Homophobic epithets have become commonly-used insults among adolescents. However, evidence suggests that there are differences in how these homophobic epithets are evaluated based on beliefs held by the observer, and by the context in which they are used. In order to examine this, Italian high school students were asked to rate the offensiveness of homophic epithets, as well as to consider how they or others would react to homophobic epithets across various situations. Homophobic beliefs and beliefs about the social acceptability of homophobic epithets were also examined. It was found that greater perceived social acceptability of homophobic epithets was related to dismissive reactions to their use, whereas homophobic beliefs were predictive of negative emotional reactions, but in varying ways depending on the specific context. The results indicate that homophobic epithets may not always be perceived as homophobic by adolescents, and that attempts to alter the social acceptability of these insults may be an effective manner of reducing their use