Lev Vygotskij, figura e opera da (ri)scoprire. Un contributo alle teorie dell’educazione

Dopo un’introduzione alla figura e al pensiero di Lev Vygotskij, se ne esaminano gli aspetti relativi alle influenze storico-culturali sulle modalità di funzionamento cognitivo umano, con attinenza alla psicologia dello sviluppo e dell’educazione, nonché alla didattica. Mentre, infatti, alcune delle sue osservazioni sono state inglobate all’interno di moderne teorie dell’apprendimento, nelle discipline più diverse, dall’insegnamento della lettura e della scrittura a quello della matematica, altre sono state utilizzate solo in modo parziale o inconsapevole; altre ancora restano da analizzare e mettere a frutto. Il contributo si pone l’obiettivo di delineare tali aspetti, e quindi di (ri)scoprire l’opera di Vygotskij, sempre attuale per quanto riguarda sia la comprensione delle dinamiche implicate nei processi di apprendimento sia lo sviluppo delle abilità cognitive umane, in un clima di cooperazione docente-discente, dove il ruolo del primo è fondamentale al fine della riuscita, nel compito, del secondo.After an introduction to the figure and thought of Lev Vygotskij, some features concerning historical and cultural influences on human cognitive functioning will be analysed, especially in relation to developmental and educational psychology and teaching. Among Vygotskij’s ideas, some have been incorporated into modern theories of learning in various disciplines, ranging from teaching reading and writing skills to mathematics; others have been only partially or casually employed; others still remain to be analysed and used. This contribution aims to outline these issues in order to (re)discover Vygotskij’s work. In fact, his thought remains central to both the understanding of the dynamics of the learning process and to the development of human cognitive abilities, especially in relation to teacher-learner cooperation. In fact, teachers have a fundamental role in order to make their students’activities successful

Overt Subject Distribution in early Italian Children

The distribution of the subjects in early Italian productions is used to retrieve information about the grammatical knowledge of children. We performed a cross-sectional study of 59 children’s productions (age 22/35 months) and a longitudinal study of 4 children’s utterances (age 18/39 months). The subject use is analysed in * copula versus lexical verbs. * unaccusative versus unergative/transitive. The overt subjects were analized for: * the nominal/pronominal status. * the pre/ post verbal position. We found that the subject use is greater with copula than main verbs and with unaccusative than unergative verbs and that SV order is preferred with “to be”, “transitive” and “unergative” verbs, while VS order with “unaccusative” verbs. These findings suggest that children distinguish between copula and lexical verbs and between “unergative” and “unaccusative” verbs, showing that the subject of the unaccusative verbs is generated in internal argument positio

Article Omission: across Child Languages and across Special Registers

"In this paper, we look at two new languages, Catalan and Dutch, beside Italian, and try to establish which factors influence children’s omission of articles. The paper starts with a description of the system of articles and of the syntax/semantics of nouns in the three languages. Then, it presents the investigation of the speech of 9 children (3 for each language). It ends with a discussion of the results

The Relation Between Emotion Understanding and Theory of Mind in Children Aged 3 to 8: The Key Role of Language

Although a significant body of research has investigated the relationships among children’s emotion understanding (EU), theory of mind (ToM), and language abilities. As far as we know, no study to date has been conducted with a sizeable sample of both preschool and school-age children exploring the direct effect of EU on ToM when the role of language was evaluated as a potential exogenous factor in a single comprehensive model. Participants in the current study were 389 children (age range: 37–97 months, M = 60.79 months; SD = 12.66), to whom a False-Belief understanding battery, the Test of Emotion Comprehension, and the Peabody Test were administered. Children’s EU, ToM, and language ability (receptive vocabulary) were positively correlated. Furthermore, EU scores explained variability in ToM scores independently of participants’ age and gender. Finally, language was found to play a crucial role in both explaining variance in ToM scores and in mediating the relationship between EU and ToM. We discuss the theoretical and educational implications of these outcomes, particularly in relation to offering social and emotional learning programs through schools