Word length effect in early reading and in developmental dyslexia

Vocal reaction times were measured in Italian dyslexics and in proficient readers while they read single words. Three groups of control participants (for a total of 79) were tested. All were in the first, second or third grade of elementary school. Nine third graders with a low level of reading ability when assessed by standard reading procedures were also tested. Results indicated that vocal RTs of control participants were faster and less sensitive to word length as a function of age; also, there was a particularly marked change between first and second graders. Dyslexics' vocal RTs and errors were much worse than those of peer control participants and resembled those of first grade controls. It is suggested that normal readers in an orthographically transparent language (Italian) adopt a lexical strategy quite early in their learning. On the contrary, dyslexics seem unable to learn this mode of processing and continue to use a sub-lexical reading procedure.     

High cost helping scenario: The role of empathy,prosocial reasoning and moral disengagement on helping behavior

This study aimed to investigate the process that leads people to offer or omit help in response to an explicit request for assistance, taking into account both emotional and cognitive factors. Specifically, a hypothetical scenario methodology was used in a sample of 174 Italian youths (50% males) to examine whether and how factors such as empathy, prosocial moral reasoning and moral disengagement influence the propensity to help when providing assistance is not in the individual’s personal interest. While a few previous studies have included moral disengagement as an antecedent of prosocial decision making, we highlight the significance of this factor in the avoidance of moral responsibility towards others in need. The results highlight two ways in which differences in emotional tendencies and moral-cognitive processes may operate in prosocial decision making in high personal cost situations. First, high empathy levels could promote an altruistic response which in turn fosters mature prosocial moral reasoning. Second, personal distress may enhance moral disengagement mechanisms that may facilitate self-centred behaviors.     

Time perspective as a predictor of problematic Internet use: A study of Facebook users

Time perspective (TP) has been related to different problematic human behaviors. The work presented in this paper assesses the role of time perspective in predicting problematic Internet use (PIU) by studying a sample (n = 149) of Facebook users. Participants (79 male, 70 female, mean age = 32.40, SD = 11.80) completed electronic versions of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) to assess their TP, and the Generalized Problematic Internet Use Scale 2 (GPIUS2) to assess their PIU. Results show that Past Negative and Present Fatalistic temporal frames are predictors of problematic Internet use, suggesting that time perspective is an individual difference construct that should be taken into consideration in the context of PIU.     

The Correlation Between Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation: The Moderating Effects of Political and Religious Identity

In a secondary analysis performed on a representative sample of the Italian population (N = 887), we examined the correlation between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), analyzing the moderating effect exerted on such correlation by political interest and religion importance. RWA and SDO showed a positive, significant correlation (r = .38), moderated by political interest (which heightened it) and religion importance (which lowered it). Limits, implications, and possible developments of the research are discussed.     

Not Only Whites: Racial Priming Effect for Black Faces in Black People

Black people are widely negatively stereotyped. The presence of unconscious stereotypes can be effectively assessed with the administration of “racial priming tasks.” An ethnically diverse group was subjected to a priming paradigm to test whether racial cues could bias the identification of target objects. Participants were asked to categorize objects (either as dangerous or nondangerous) after the presentation of Black/White faces as primes. Results show that both Black and White participants were faster in categorizing dangerous objects when primed with Black faces compared to the control condition (i.e., scrambled faces). One possible explanation for this effect is that Black faces are generally associated with a feeling of danger, which ultimately leads to faster responses.     

Neurophysiological bases underlying the organization of intentional actions and the understanding of others’ intention

Philosophical and neuroscientific investigation on intentional actions focused on several different aspects, making difficult to define what should be meant with the concept of intention. Most of our everyday actions are constituted by complex and finely organized motor sequences, planned and executed in order to attain a desired final goal. In this paper, we will identify the final goal of the action as the motor intention of the acting individual. First, we will review the relative contribution of the vast neuroscientific literature on the role of different cortical areas in the organization of goal-directed movement. In particular, we will describe recent data on the cortical organization of natural action sequences, showing that this organization could be at the basis not only of our capacity of acting intentionally, but also of our ability to understand the motor intentions underlying others’ behaviour which is crucial during social interactions.     

When warrant transmits and when it doesn’t: towards a general framework

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright’s analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright’s analysis to make it immune to the counterexample.     

Words and possible words in early language acquisition

In order to acquire language, infants must extract its building blocks—words—and master the rules governing their legal combinations from speech. These two problems are not independent, however: words also have internal structure. Thus, infants must extract two kinds of information from the same speech input. They must find the actual words of their language. Furthermore, they must identify its possible words, that is, the sequences of sounds that, being morphologically well formed, could be words. Here, we show that infants’ sensitivity to possible words appears to be more primitive and fundamental than their ability to find actual words. We expose 12- and 18-month-old infants to an artificial language containing a conflict between statistically coherent and structurally coherent items. We show that 18-month-olds can extract possible words when the familiarization stream contains marks of segmentation, but cannot do so when the stream is continuous. Yet, they can find actual words from a continuous stream by computing statistical relationships among syllables. By contrast, 12-month-olds can find possible words when familiarized with a segmented stream, but seem unable to extract statistically coherent items from a continuous stream that contains minimal conflicts between statistical and structural information. These results suggest that sensitivity to word structure is in place earlier than the ability to analyze distributional information. The ability to compute nontrivial statistical relationships becomes fully effective relatively late in development, when infants have already acquired a considerable amount of linguistic knowledge. Thus, mechanisms for structure extraction that do not rely on extensive sampling of the input are likely to have a much larger role in language acquisition than general-purpose statistical abilities.