The investigation of quantity implicatures during typical development: a systematic review

The present work is a systematic review on the acquisition of quantity implicatures in typically developing children. The references were selected through the PRISMA method. The criteria for eligibility were that the articles should be peer-reviewed, published articles written in English, containing empirical data on the comprehension of quantity implicatures in first language acquisition during typical development. The aim of this review is three-fold. First, to provide a picture of what empirical data tells us about the acquisition of quantity implicatures, based on both lexical and ad-hoc scales, potentially contributing to theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. Second, to analyze the methodologies that have been used to test children and their adequacy. And lastly to evaluate whether or not systematic review is an accurate analysis method for this type of varied and often complicated data. The results suggest that children improve in implicature derivation with age, especially with lexical scales, and that action-based tasks not based on meta-linguistic evaluations might be better suited to test these inferences, especially as opposed to Truth Value Judgment tasks. The fact that the systematic analysis confirms previously individuated trends in the acquisition of implicatures confirms that this is in fact a useful methodology to analyze the data, even with its limitations

Assessment of geomorphic effectiveness of controlled floods in a braided river using a reduced-complexity numerical model

Most Alpine rivers have undergone strong alteration of flow and sediment regimes. These alterations have notable effects on river morphology and ecology. One option to mitigate such effects is the flow regime management, specifically by the re-introduction of channel-forming discharges. The aim of this work is to assess the morphological changes induced in the Piave River (Italy) due to two different controlled flood strategies, the first characterized by a single artificial flood per year and the second by higher magnitude, but less frequent, floods. The work was carried out applying a 2D reduced-complexity morphodynamic model (CAESAR-LISFLOOD) to a 7 km-long reach, characterized by a braided pattern and highly regulated discharges. The numerical modelling allowed the assessment of morphological changes for four long-term scenarios (2009–2034). The scenarios were defined taking into account the current flow regime and the natural regime, which was estimated by a stochastic physically-based hydrologic model. Changes in channel morphology were assessed by measuring active channel width and braiding intensity. Comparing controlled flood scenarios to a baseline scenario (i.e., no controlled floods) it turned out that artificial floods had small effects on channel morphology. The highest channel widening (13.5 %) was produced by the release strategy with higher magnitude floods, while the other strategies produced lower widening (8.6 %). Negligible change was observed in terms of braiding intensity. Results pointed out that controlled floods may not represent an effective solution for morphological recovery in braided rivers strongly impacted in their flow and sediment regimes

Uncovering the Social Deficits in the Autistic Brain. A Source-Based Morphometric Study

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that mainly affects social interaction and communication. Evidence from behavioral and functional MRI studies supports the hypothesis that dysfunctional mechanisms involving social brain structures play a major role in autistic symptomatology. However, the investigation of anatomical abnormalities in the brain of people with autism has led to inconsistent results. We investigated whether specific brain regions, known to display functional abnormalities in autism, may exhibit mutual and peculiar patterns of covariance in their gray-matter concentrations. We analyzed structural MRI images of 32 young men affected by autistic disorder (AD) and 50 healthy controls. Controls were matched for sex, age, handedness. IQ scores were also monitored to avoid confounding. A multivariate Source-Based Morphometry (SBM) was applied for the first time on AD and controls to detect maximally independent networks of gray matter. Group comparison revealed a gray-matter source that showed differences in AD compared to controls. This network includes broad temporal regions involved in social cognition and high-level visual processing, but also motor and executive areas of the frontal lobe. Notably, we found that gray matter differences, as reflected by SBM, significantly correlated with social and behavioral deficits displayed by AD individuals and encoded via the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule scores. These findings provide support for current hypotheses about the neural basis of atypical social and mental states information processing in autism

Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to investigate whether bilingualism confers an advantage on children’s conversational understanding. A total of 163 children aged 3 to 6 years were given a Conversational Violations Test to determine their ability to identify responses to questions as violations of Gricean maxims of conversation (to be informative and avoid redundancy, speak the truth, and be relevant and polite). Though comparatively delayed in their L2 vocabulary, children who were bilingual in Italian and Slovenian (with Slovenian as the dominant language) generally outperformed those who were either monolingual in Italian or Slovenian. We suggest that bilingualism can be accompanied by an enhanced ability to appreciate effective communicative responses

Supplementary Material - "Assessment of geomorphic effectiveness of controlled floods in a braided river using a reduced-complexity numerical model"

This Supplementary Material provides supplementary text concerning the CAESAR-LISFLOOD model (hereafter C-L) detailing several issues about the hydrodynamic and sediment transport numerical scheme, the lateral erosion and the vegetation component modules (Text S1). It also includes details concerning the C-L model calibration to the Piave River case study (Text S2) in addition to a specific focus on the sediment budget estimation carried out to enforce the calibration achievements (Text S3)

False belief understanding in deaf children: what are the difficulties?

Children with cochlear implants (CIs) demonstrate proficiency in verbal-story elicited-response (VS-ER) false-belief tasks, such as the Sally & Ann task, at a similar age as typically developing hearing children. However, they face challenges in non-verbal spontaneous-response (NV-SR) false-belief tasks, measured via looking times, which hearing infants typically pass by around 2 years of age, or earlier. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether these difficulties remain in a non-verbal-story elicited-response (NVS-ER) false-belief task, in which children are offered the opportunity to provide an elicited response to a non-verbal-story task. A total of thirty 4- to 8-year-old children with CI-s and hearing children completed three different kinds of false-belief tasks. The results showed that children with CI-s performed above chance level on the verbal task (i.e., VS-ER task), but not on the two non-verbal tasks, (i.e., NVS-ER and NV-SR tasks). The control group of typically developing hearing children performed above chance on all three kinds of tasks (one-tailed significance level). Our findings highlight the importance of external narrative support for children with CIs in tasks that involve mental perspective-taking, and specifically predicting actions based on false beliefs

Virtual Velocity Approach for Estimating Bed Material Transport in Gravel-Bed Rivers: Key Factors and Significance

In large gravel-bed rivers bed material transport estimation is challenging since theoretically-based formulas often fail to accurately predict sediment fluxes, and it is difficult to carry out field measurements. A viable alternative to direct measurement is provided by the virtual velocity approach representing a hybrid solution to calculate the bed material transport based on a theoretical framework and use of tracers. This work aims to improve the methodology and to assess the role of input factors through a case-study application carried out in the Parma River (Italy). Two tracer types and scour chains were deployed at four sections. Data on water level, transport processes, particle travel distances and active layers were collected over 17 months and 6 events. The transport that occurred during two events was calculated applying different configurations taking in account for several input factors (i.e. grain size, water stage, topography). Applying simple or more complex configurations led to significant differences in transport estimates: in relation to channel morphodynamics, different factors (e.g. variability of water level within the cross-section in multi-thread channels) play a key-role on transport processes. Results indicate that it is crucial to collect and process field data developing reach-specific transport rating-curves and to combine different type of tracers for monitoring the clast displacement lengths. Based on the methodological improvements and sensitivity analysis addressed in this study, we developed a decision tree in order to design future applications of the virtual velocity approach for estimating the bed material load in different gravel-bed river contexts

What Teachers Tell Us About the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Public Education in Italy

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) state of emergency has brought about a radical change in the way of teaching. In a questionnaire, we asked 120 teachers from Italian Primary, Middle and High Schools about the advantages and disadvantages of online teaching, the students’ conduct during lessons and the methodologies applied to students with special educational needs. Primary School teachers most strongly reported an increase in boredom and distraction, and disagreed that online teaching helps students’ learning and that it makes them more active. The main advantage of online teaching was the technical and methodological innovations, while the main disadvantage was the lack of relationship with students. In the case of students with special educational needs, many teachers reported that they used simplified procedures and personalized meetings. Overall, teachers appear to think that online teaching has many drawbacks, though it also has some positive aspects that need to be appreciated and exploited

Bilingualism Accentuates Children's Conversational Understanding

BACKGROUND: Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1) significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1) significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses