Deeper attentional masking by lateral objects in children with autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often associated with a detail-oriented perception and overselective attention in visual tasks, such as visual search and crowding. These results were obtained manipulating exclusively the spatial properties of the stimuli: few is known about the spatio-temporal dynamics of visual processing in ASD. In this study we employed an attentional masking (AM) paradigm comparing children with ASD and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) controls. The AM effect refers to an impaired identification of a target followed by a competitive masking object at different proximities in space and time. We found that ASD and TD groups did not differ in the AM effect provoked by the competitive object displayed in the same position of the target. In contrast, children with ASD showed a deeper and prolonged interference than the TD group when the masking object was displayed in the lateral position. These psychophysical results suggest that the inefficient attentional selection in ASD depends on the spatio-temporal interaction between competitive visual objects. These evidence are discussed in the light of the ASD altered neural connectivity hypothesis and the reentrant theory of perception.     

Multiple stimulus presentation yields larger deficits in children with developmental dyslexia: A study with reading and RAN-type tasks

In this study, we examined the effect of multiple versus single stimulus presentation in typically developing readers and children with developmental dyslexia. The tasks involved either reading single words or arrays of words or naming single or multiple colors and digits (rapid automatized naming or RAN). To be able to compare these sets of conditions, we recorded total response times (i.e., the time between stimulus onset and the end of the participant’s vocal response) in all cases. The study included 43 typically developing readers and 25 children with dyslexia.

Results indicate that typically developing readers have a clear advantage with multiple over single items on both RAN and reading tasks. The children with dyslexia showed a moderate advantage for multiple stimuli in naming colors and digits but presented the opposite pattern in reading.

With regard to reading, the disproportionate impairment of the children with dyslexia in dealing with multiple arrays suggests difficulty in integrating the multiple subcomponents of the reading task over and above the basic nuclear deficit in decoding words. Regarding the RAN tasks, results confirm that the requirement of integrating multiple subcomponents may be critical in mediating the predictive value of these measures on reading.     

Predictors of reading fluency in Italian orthography: Evidence from a cross-sectional study of primary school students

This study investigates the role of linguistic and visuospatial attentional processes in predicting reading fluency in typical Italian readers attending primary school. Tasks were administered to 651 children with reading fluency z scores > ?1.5 standard deviation to evaluate their phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal short-term memory, vocabulary, visual search skills, verbal-visual recall, and visual-spatial attention. Hybrid models combining confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis were used to evaluate the data obtained from younger (first and second grade) and older (third–fifth grade) children, respectively. The results showed that phonological awareness and RAN played a significant role among younger children, while also vocabulary, verbal short-term memory, and visuospatial attention were significant factors among older children.     

Tarski On Logical Notions

We try to explain Tarski's conception of logical notions, as it emerges from alecture of his, delivered in 1966 and published posthumously in 1986 (Historyand Philosophy of Logic 7, 143–154), a conception based on the idea ofinvariance. The evaluation of Tarski's proposal leads us to consider an interesting(and neglected) reply to Skolem in which Tarski hints at his own point of view onthe foundations of set theory. Then, comparing the lecture of 1966 with Tarski'slast work and with an earlier paper written with Lindenbaum, it is shown thatTarski's conception of logical notions, with its essentially type-theoretic character,did not undergo any significant modifications throughout his life. A remark onTarski's prudential attitude on the topic in the famous paper on the concept oflogical consequence (and elsewhere) concludes our paper.     

On the empirical indistinguishability of knowledge structures

In recent years a number of articles have focused on the identifiability of the basic local independence model. The identifiability issue usually concerns two model parameter sets predicting an identical probability distribution on the response patterns. Both parameter sets are applied to the same knowledge structure. However, nothing is known about cases where different knowledge structures predict the same probability distribution. This situation is referred to as ʻempirical indistinguishabilityʼ between two structures and is the main subject of the present paper. Empirical indistinguishability is a stronger form of unidentifiability, which involves not only the parameters, but also the structural and combinatorial properties of the model. In particular, as far as knowledge structures are concerned, a consequence of empirical indistinguishability is that the existence of certain knowledge states cannot be empirically established. Most importantly, it is shown that model identifiability cannot guarantee that a certain knowledge structure is empirically distinguishable from others. The theoretical findings are exemplified in a number of different empirical scenarios.