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Cognitive reserve (CR) represents the adaptive response of the cognitive system responsible for preserving normal functioning in the face of brain damage. Experiential factors such as education, occupation, and leisure activities influence the development of CR. Theoretically, such factors build up from childhood and across adulthood. Thus, appropriate tools to define and measure CR as early as adolescence are essential to understand its developmental processes. To this aim, we introduce the construct of "Cognitive Reserve Potential" (CRP) and its corresponding index of experiential factors tailored to youth. We investigated prototypical youth exposures potentially associated with the lifelong development of CR (e.g., sport practice, musical experiences, cultural activities, relationships with peers and family). Principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis identified and replicated the CRP factor structure on two independent samples of Italian students: N=585 (295 F) and N=351 (201 F), ages 11-20. CRP was associated mainly with family socio-cultural status (i.e., SES, Home Possessions and Books at Home). Results confirmed the strength of the factorial model and warranted the proposal of the CRP-questionnaire as an innovative tool for understanding CR evolutionary dynamics.

Whether mathematics is a gendered domain or not is a long-lasting issue bringing along major social and educational implications. The females' underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been considered one of the key signs of the math gender gap, although the current view largely attributes the origin of this phenomenon to sociocultural factors. Indeed, recent approaches to math gender differences reached the universal conclusion that nature and nurture exert reciprocal effects on each other, establishing the need for approaching the study of the math gender issue only once its intrinsic complexity has been accepted. Building upon a flourishing literature, this review provides an updated synthesis of the evidence for math gender equality at the start, and for math gender inequality on the go, challenging the role of biological factors. In particular, by combining recent findings from different research areas, the paper discusses the persistence of the “math male myth” and the associated “female are not good at math myth,” drawing attention to the complex interplay of social and cultural forces that support such stereotypes. The suggestion is made that longevity of these myths results from the additive effects of two independent cognitive biases associated with gender stereotypes and with math stereotypes, respectively. Scholars' responsibility in amplifying these myths by pursuing some catching lines of research is also discussed.

Despite increasing attention towards Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), as reflected by the publication of the International Clinical Practice Recommendations (Blank et al., 2012; 2019), the absence of prevalence data in the Italian population well attests the extent to which this clinical condition is overlooked and misrecognised in our country. Aim of this discussion is to call for a concerted effort in understanding the reasons for which DCD is still unfamiliar to most of the clinicians facing with the assessment and the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders. By defining DCD and Developmental dyspraxia respectively, as well as by promoting general awareness on the psychosocial consequences of DCD, the hope is to extend to the Italian community recognition, early identification, and targeted support to individuals with developmental coordination disorders.

Childhood overweight and obesity in both girls and boys is reaching epidemic proportions over the world, Italy included. Childhood obesity has been linked to deleterious health consequences. There is a need to develop theory based and cost-effective interventions to promote healthy eating and physical activity with the aim to reduce obesity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a long-term theory-based intervention to promote healthy lifestyles in underserved school-aged children. A quasi experimental design was adopted, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention, considering information from their parents. Parents were asked to rate their children attitude, motivation and behavior regarding two energy balance-related behaviors. Results indicate that pupils involved in the intervention were more likely to do physical activity in leisure time and have more positive attitudes toward exercise compared to the control group. About eating habits, children involved in the intervention were more likely to choose healthy foods and less likely to choose fat foods compare to the control group. Changes in attitude and motivation between the baseline and the follow up and the two groups are also shown, even if not significant. Despite several limitations in the design, this study provided further support to the argument that Self-determination theory-based interventions could result in meaningful health-behavior changes. Niñez sobrepeso y obesidad en niños y niñas está alcanzando proporciones epidémicas en el mundo entero, Italia incluida. La obesidad infantil se ha relacionado con consecuencias perjudiciales para la salud. Hay una necesidad de desarrollar intervenciones teoría basada y rentables para promover la alimentación saludable y la actividad física con el objetivo de reducir la obesidad. El propósito de este estudio fue evaluar una intervención basada en la teoría de largo plazo para promover estilos de vida saludables en niños en edad escolar de escasos recursos. Se adoptó un diseño cuasi experimental, con el fin de evaluar la eficacia de la intervención, teniendo en cuenta la información de sus padres. Se pide a los padres para evaluar a sus hijos la actitud, la motivación y el comportamiento con respecto a los comportamientos relacionados con saldo de dos energías. Los resultados indican que los alumnos que participan en la intervención tenían más probabilidades de hacer actividad física en el tiempo libre y tienen actitudes más positivas hacia el ejercicio en comparación con el grupo control. Acerca de los hábitos alimenticios, los niños que participaron en la intervención eran más propensos a elegir alimentos saludables y menos propensos a elegir alimentos ricos en grasas en comparación con el grupo control. Los cambios en la actitud y la motivación entre el inicio y el seguimiento y los dos grupos se muestran también, aunque no significativamente. A pesar de varias limitaciones en el diseño, este estudio proporcionan más apoyo al argumento de que las intervenciones basadas en teoría de la autodeterminación podrían resultar en cambios significativos que afectan a su salud significativamente. Infância sobrepeso e obesidade em meninas e meninos Ambas está atingindo proporções epidêmicas no mundo inteiro, Itália incluído. Infância a obesidade tem-se ligado a consequências para a saúde deletérios. ere a necessidade de desenvolver a teoria com base e de custo-e intervenções ective para promover saudável comer e atividade física Com o objetivo de reduzir a obesidade. e efeitos de estudo ESTA foi avaliar uma intervenção baseada na teoria de longo prazo para promover estilos de vida saudáveis em crianças em idade escolar carentes. Um projeto quase-experimental foi adotado, a fim de avaliar o ectiveness da intervenção, considerando as informações de seus pais. Os pais foram convidados a avaliar sua atitude infantil, motivação e comportamento em relação dois comportamentos relacionados com o balanço de dois energia. Os resultados indicam que alunos envolvidos na intervenção eram mais propensos a fazer atividade física no tempo livre e têm atitudes mais positivas em relação ao exercício comparado ao grupo controle. Sobre os hábitos alimentares, as crianças na intervenção envolvidos eram mais propensos a escolher alimentos saudáveis e menos propensos a escolher alimentos ricos em gordura comparar com o grupo de controle. Mudanças de atitude e motivação Entre a linha de base e o acompanhamento e os dois grupos são mostrados Além disso, mesmo que não seja significante. Apesar das limitações na concepção Vários, Este estudo forneceu ainda apoio ao argumento de que intervenções baseadas em teoria da autodeterminação poderia resultar em mudanças de comportamento de saúde significativos.

Childhood overweight and obesity in both girls and boys is reaching epidemic proportions over the world, Italy included. Childhood obesity has been linked to deleterious health consequences. There is a need to develop theory based and cost-effective interventions to promote healthy eating and physical activity with the aim to reduce obesity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a long-term theory-based intervention to promote healthy lifestyles in underserved school-aged children. A quasi experimental design was adopted, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention, considering information from their parents. Parents were asked to rate their children attitude, motivation and behavior regarding two energy balance-related behaviors. Results indicate that pupils involved in the intervention were more likely to do physical activity in leisure time and have more positive attitudes toward exercise compared to the control group. About eating habits, children involved in the intervention were more likely to choose healthy foods and less likely to choose fat foods compare to the control group. Changes in attitude and motivation between the baseline and the follow up and the two groups are also shown, even if not significant. Despite several limitations in the design, this study provided further support to the argument that Self-determination theory-based interventions could result in meaningful health-behavior changes. RESUMEN: Niñez sobrepeso y obesidad en niños y niñas está alcanzando proporciones epidémicas en el mundo entero, Italia incluida. La obesidad infantil se ha relacionado con consecuencias perjudiciales para la salud. Hay una necesidad de desarrollar intervenciones teoría basada y rentables para promover la alimentación saludable y la actividad física con el obje- tivo de reducir la obesidad. El propósito de este estudio fue evaluar una intervención basada en la teoría de largo plazo para promover estilos de vida saludables en niños en edad escolar de escasos recursos. Se adoptó un diseño cuasi experimental, con el fin de evaluar la eficacia de la intervención, teniendo en cuenta la información de sus padres. Se pide a los padres para evaluar a sus hijos la actitud, la motivación y el comportamiento con respec- to a los comportamientos relacionados con saldo de dos energías. Los resul- tados indican que los alumnos que participan en la intervención tenían más probabilidades de hacer actividad física en el tiempo libre y tienen actitudes más positivas hacia el ejercicio en comparación con el grupo control. Acerca de los hábitos alimenticios, los niños que participaron en la intervención eran más propensos a elegir alimentos saludables y menos propensos a elegir alimentos ricos en grasas en comparación con el grupo control. Los cambios en la actitud y la motivación entre el inicio y el seguimiento y los dos grupos se muestran también, aunque no significativamente. A pesar de varias limi- taciones en el diseño, este estudio proporcionan más apoyo al argumento de que las intervenciones basadas en teoría de la autodeterminación podrían resultar en cambios significativos que afectan a su salud significativamente. RESUMO: Infância sobrepeso e obesidade em meninas e meninos Ambas está atingindo proporções epidêmicas no mundo inteiro, Itália incluído. Infância a obesidade tem-se ligado a consequências para a saúde deletérios. ere a necessidade de desenvolver a teoria com base e de custo-e intervenções ective para promover saudável comer e atividade física Com o objetivo de reduzir a obesidade. e efeitos de estudo ESTA foi avaliar uma intervenção baseada na teoria de longo prazo para promover estilos de vida saudáveis em crianças em idade escolar carentes. Um projeto quase-experimental foi adotado, a fim de avaliar o ectiveness da intervenção, considerando as infor- mações de seus pais. Os pais foram convidados a avaliar sua atitude infantil, motivação e comportamento em relação dois comportamentos relacionados com o balanço de dois energia. Os resultados indicam que alunos envolvi- dos na intervenção eram mais propensos a fazer atividade física no tempo livre e têm atitudes mais positivas em relação ao exercício comparado ao grupo controle. Sobre os hábitos alimentares, as crianças na intervenção envolvidos eram mais propensos a escolher alimentos saudáveis e menos propensos a escolher alimentos ricos em gordura comparar com o grupo de controle. Mudanças de atitude e motivação Entre a linha de base e o acom- panhamento e os dois grupos são mostrados Além disso, mesmo que não seja significante. Apesar das limitações na concepção Vários, Este estudo forneceu ainda apoio ao argumento de que intervenções baseadas em teoria da autodeterminação poderia resultar em mudanças de comportamento de saúde significativos.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of the treatment for language and calculation disorders and for speech apraxia in vascular subjects. Only therapeutic methods that could be qualified as neuropsychological were taken into account. For language disorders, we searched the pertinent literature published from 1950 to August 31, 2007 by means of electronic data banks and we took into consideration the Cochrane review, and papers in Cicerone et al. and Cappa et al. systematic reviews. For acalculia we examined the literature from 1980 by carrying out research on electronic data banks; for speech apraxia, studies emerged from a search of PUBMED. Aphasia therapy has been clearly demonstrated efficacious in groups of subjects if sufficiently prolonged/intensive. Treatment for specific disorders (words and sentences processing, reading, writing) studied in series of single patients, though always efficacious, reaches a lower level of recommendation due to the lack of RCT. Only a few studies tackled the problem of efficacy in case of speech apraxia and calculation disorders. Results are positive but data are scanty. Efficacy of aphasia therapy seems well established in group of subjects and well-promising for speech apraxia and calculation disorders. It is suggested, however, that the term "aphasia" covers widely different impairments and that RCT are not the best instrument to evaluate efficacy; the importance of chronicity is underlined.

Objective: To evaluate the family history of epilepsy in first degree relatives of probands with epilepsy. Methods: A sample of 10787 patients with epilepsy with complete information about first degree relatives (parents, siblings and offspring) was selected from the database of the Episcreen Project, the largest Italian observational study on epilepsy. Family history was assessed by: (1) prevalence estimates of epilepsy among proband's relatives, (2) modified cumulative risks (MCR), adjusted using proband's age as censoring time in life tables, (3) standardised morbidity ratios (SMR), using a sub-group of symptomatic epilepsies as control group. Results: Patients (9.1%) had a family history of epilepsy. The overall prevalence of epilepsy among first degree relatives was 2.6%. Idiopathic generalised epilepsies had the highest prevalence (5.3%). Cryptogenetic epilepsies had a lower prevalence (2.1%) than idiopathic epilepsies, but higher then symptomatic epilepsies (1.5%), both in generalised and focal forms (3.8% vs. 2.0% and 1.8% vs. 1.3%). A similar tendency was detected using MCR and SMR, with the higher values of risks/ratios for idiopathic and generalised epilepsies. Probands with idiopathic generalised epilepsies were highly concordant with respect to their relatives' type of epilepsy. Considering other strata factors, risks were higher in proband's epilepsies with an onset less then 14 years of age, while sex played no definite role in differentiating the family history. Conclusions: The Episcreen model permits a variety of stratification factors to measure family risk, including age at onset, epilepsy localisation and aetiology with a large sample of more than 10000 probands and 1065/40544 relatives affected and classified.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T11:12:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_4040_Luciana Silvestre Girelli.pdf: 430898 bytes, checksum: 1d7342a526a1c1897c9c7656cb28425b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-06-30 Aborda o papel da cultura na reprodução do sistema capitalista a partir da obra de Fredric Jameson, que afirma ser o pós-modernismo a lógica cultural da atual fase do capitalismo. Além de contextualizar a emergência histórica do pós-modernismo a partir das mudanças no âmbito econômico e político na segunda metade do século XX, com destaque para a reestruturação produtiva e a implantação do neoliberalismo, caracteriza a cultura como elemento constitutivo do modo de vida contemporâneo, marcado pelo individualismo e pelo consumismo. Apresenta a mercantilização cultural como marca principal da cultura na fase de financeirização da economia e relaciona a hegemonia dessa lógica cultural à dificuldade de organização da classe trabalhadora na atualidade.

English and German readers have been shown to mark a position to the left of the true centre as the subjective midpoint in word bisection. This effect resembles a well-known phenomenon observed with the bisection of solid lines (pseudoneglect), although this behavioural similarity does not imply a common origin. The purpose of the present study was twofold: on the one hand, to investigate the perceptual and lexical features that influence the bisection of Italian orthographic strings and, on the other hand, to investigate whether identical or partially independent processing mediate bisection of line and orthographic stimuli. Five experiments were carried out to explore to what extent stimulus type (lines, words, pseudowords, consonant strings, symbols), stimulus length (from 3 to 13 characters), list context (pure and mixed), and written word frequency (high and low) affected the bisection performance. The results showed that list context modulated the processing similarities across different materials and that word frequency failed to influence the magnitude of the bisection bias. More critically, across all five experiments, the results showed different effects for solid lines versus orthographic material. Lines were always bisected to the left, independent of length and list context. By contrast, a crossover effect emerged with orthographic material; for long stimuli (above five letters) the bias was consistently to the left, while short stimuli showed a consistent rightward bias. The results indicate that manual bisection involved partly different cognitive mechanisms during word and line perception and that this may depend on the characteristics of the stimuli (words/discrete vs. lines/continuous).

The visual mechanisms underlying approximate numerical representation are still intensely debated because numerosity information is often confounded with continuous sensory cues (e.g., texture density, area, convex hull). However, numerosity is underestimated when a few items are connected by illusory contours (ICs) lines without changing other physical cues, suggesting in turn that numerosity processing may rely on discrete visual input. Yet, in these previous works, ICs were generated by black-on-gray inducers producing an illusory brightness enhancement, which could represent a further continuous sensory confound. To rule out this possibility, we tested participants in a numerical discrimination task in which we manipulated the alignment of 0, 2, or 4 pairs of open/closed inducers and their contrast polarity. In Experiment 1, aligned open inducers had only one polarity (all black or all white) generating ICs lines brighter or darker than the gray background. In Experiment 2, open inducers had always opposite contrast polarity (one black and one white inducer) generating ICs without strong brightness enhancement. In Experiment 3, reverse-contrast inducers were aligned but closed with a line preventing ICs completion. Results showed that underestimation triggered by ICs lines was independent of inducer contrast polarity in both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, whereas no underestimation was found in Experiment 3. Taken together, these results suggest that mere brightness enhancement is not the primary cause of the numerosity underestimation induced by ICs lines. Rather, a boundary formation mechanism insensitive to contrast polarity may drive the effect, providing further support to the idea that numerosity processing exploits discrete inputs. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13414-021-02378-y.

The exact visual mechanisms underpinning the approximate number system are still debated. Recent evidence suggests that numerosity is extracted on segmented visual objects, at least for a moderate numerical range (e.g.

While seminal theories suggest that nonsymbolic visual numerosity is mainly extracted from segmented items, more recent views advocate that numerosity cannot be processed independently of nonnumeric continuous features confounded with the numerical set (i.e., such as the density, the convex hull, etc.). To disentangle these accounts, here we employed two different visual illusions presented in isolation or in a merged condition (e.g., combining the effects of the two illusions). In particular, in a number comparison task, we concurrently manipulated both the perceived object segmentation by connecting items with Kanizsa-like illusory lines, and the perceived convex-hull/density of the set by embedding the stimuli in a Ponzo illusion context, keeping constant other low-level features. In Experiment 1, the two illusions were manipulated in a compatible direction (i.e., both triggering numerical underestimation), whereas in Experiment 2 they were manipulated in an incompatible direction (i.e., with the Ponzo illusion triggering numerical overestimation and the Kanizsa illusion numerical underestimation). Results from psychometric functions showed that, in the merged condition, the biases of each illusion summated (i.e., largest underestimation as compared with the conditions in which illusions were presented in isolation) in Experiment 1, while they averaged and competed against each other in Experiment 2. These findings suggest that discrete nonsymbolic numerosity can be extracted independently from continuous magnitudes. They also point to the need of more comprehensive theoretical views accounting for the operations by which both discrete elements and continuous variables are computed and integrated by the visual system. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-021-01979-w.

How non-symbolic numerosity is visually extracted remains a matter of intense debate. Most evidence suggests that numerosity is directly extracted on individual objects following Weber’s law, at least for a moderate numerical range. Alternative accounts propose that, whatever the range, numerosity is indirectly derived from summary texture-statistics of the raw image such as spatial frequency (SF). Here, to disentangle these accounts, we tested whether the well-known behavioural signature of numerosity encoding (ratio effect) is preserved despite the equalisation of the SF content. In Experiment 1, participants had to select the numerically larger of two briefly presented moderate-range numerical sets (i.e., 8–18 dots) carefully matched for SF; the ratio between numerosities was manipulated by levels of increasing difficulty (e.g., 0.66, 0.75, 0.8). In Experiment 2, participants performed the same task, but they were presented with both the original and SF equalised stimuli. In both experiments, the results clearly showed a ratio-dependence of the performance: numerosity discrimination became harder and slower as the ratio between numerosities increased. Moreover, this effect was found to be independent of the stimulus type, although the overall performance was better with the original rather than the SF equalised stimuli (Experiment 2). Taken together, these findings indicate that the power spectrum per se cannot explain the main behavioural signature of Weber-like encoding of numerosities (the ratio effect), at least over the tested numerical range, partially challenging alternative indirect accounts of numerosity processing.

Despite a large body of evidence suggests positive effects of playing action video games and practising sports on various visual attentional skills, the impact of these activities on the ability to maintain attention over prolonged periods of time (i.e., sustained attention) has been largely neglected. Here, we first explored free-time habits on a group of 310 adolescents by means of a self-reported questionnaire. We found an inverse relationship between the time spent with sports and video games, but not with other extra-scholastic activities: the time spent practising sports and playing video games clearly competed with each other, with the more-intensive-sport practitioners being less involved in video game play. Next, we directly measured sustained attention and other attentional skills in a subgroup of 76 participants, divided as a function of their time spent in sports and action video games. In particular, sustained attention was assessed by means of two tasks: a classic exogenous task, requiring participants to attend to a flashing visual stimulus; and an internal (endogenous) sustained attention task, requiring participants to synchronise their manual responses to the rhythm of auditory pulses presented in an earlier phase. As previously documented, we found that action video game players displayed worse ability to maintain attention over time, as compared with non-action players. In striking contrast, intensive sports practice was associated with an increased ability to maintain attention over time. Overall, these findings unveil distinct cascading effects on sustained attention induced by doing sport and playing action video games.

Current theories of intelligence maintain that intellectual development is the expression of a strict interplay among different cognitive abilities and the environment. Yet, the environment in which the individual develops has often been reduced to a single measure in empirical research, which thus loses sight of its inherent multifaceted structure. This work stems from the need to grasp such multifaceted complexity, by differentiating the associations of cultural and socioeconomic factors with crystallized and fluid intelligence in adolescence. An updated and digitalized version of the Verbal task from the Primary Mental Abilities battery (PMA Verbal) was administered to a large group of Italian adolescents as a measure of crystallized intelligence. Item Response Theory confirmed the good psychometric properties of the test. The relationship among cognitive abilities and the environment was explored through a Network Analysis on measures of crystallized intelligence (PMA Verbal), fluid intelligence (Raven SPM) and various environmental dimensions (socioeconomic status, home possessions, books at home, reading habits). Network Analysis is particularly suited for highlighting the individual role of each variable within such a complex system. Our results illustrated a key role of books at home, which was positively connected to verbal abilities on the one hand and to reading habits on the other, whereas no relationship to fluid intelligence was found. Crucially, these findings were independent of socioeconomic status. This study indicates that a more detailed conceptualization of the environment provides a better understanding of how cognitive abilities develop.

The prompt recognition of pleasant and unpleasant odors is a crucial regulatory and adaptive need of humans. Reactive answers to unpleasant odors ensure survival in many threatening situations. Notably, although humans typically react to certain odors by modulating their distance from the olfactory source, the effect of odor pleasantness over the orienting of visuospatial attention is still unknown. To address this issue, we first trained participants to associate visual shapes with pleasant and unpleasant odors, and then we assessed the impact of this association on a visuospatial task. Results showed that the use of trained shapes as flankers modulates performance in a line bisection task. Specifically, it was found that the estimated midpoint was shifted away from the visual shape associated with the unpleasant odor, whereas it was moved toward the shape associated with the pleasant odor. This finding demonstrates that odor pleasantness selectively shifts human attention in the surrounding space. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

// Federica Galli 1 , Andrea Chirico 1, 5 , Luca Mallia 2 , Laura Girelli 3 , Michelino De Laurentiis 4 , Fabio Lucidi 1 , Antonio Giordano 5, 6 and Gerardo Botti 7 1 Department of Psychology of Development and Socialization Processes, Sapienza, University of Rome, Rome, Italy 2 Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome, “Foro Italico”, Rome, Italy 3 Department of Human, Philosophical, Educational Sciences, University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy 4 Breast Department, National Cancer Institute of Naples IRCCS “G. Pascale”, Naples, Italy 5 Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, Center for Biotechnology College of Science and Technology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A 6 Department of Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience, University of Siena, Siena, Italy 7 Division of Pathology, Department of Experimental Oncology, G. Pascale Foundation, National Cancer Institute, IRCCS, Naples, Italy Correspondence to: Antonio Giordano, email: president@shro.org Keywords: older adults; physical activity; exercise; well-being; health; Gerotarget Received: February 16, 2018 Accepted: April 25, 2018 Published: May 22, 2018 ABSTRACT Physical activity and exercise have been identified as behaviors to preserve physical and mental health in older adults. The aim of the present study was to test the Integrated Behavior Change model in exercise and physical activity behaviors. The study evaluated two different samples of older adults: the first engaged in exercise class, the second doing spontaneous physical activity. The key analyses relied on Variance-Based Structural Modeling, which were performed by means of WARP PLS 6.0 statistical software. The analyses estimated the Integrated Behavior Change model in predicting exercise and physical activity, in a longitudinal design across two months of assessment. The tested models exhibited a good fit with the observed data derived from the model focusing on exercise, as well as with those derived from the model focusing on physical activity. Results showed, also, some effects and relations specific to each behavioral context. Results may form a starting point for future experimental and intervention research.

Introduction During adolescence, experiencing positive emotions at school is important for motivation as well as for academic success and psychological well-being. In the present study, on the basis of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), we investigated the relationships between sociocultural factors (gender, immigrant and socioeconomic background), peer relatedness (acceptance and friendship) and positive affect at school. Methods Data was based on a random sample of 36,712 tenth grade Italian adolescents. Their average age was 15.6 years (SD = 0.77), 50.6% were males, while 6.1% were first-generation immigrants and 3.8% were second-generation immigrants. Firstly, comparing latent means, we established peer relatedness and positive affect profiles of adolescents with different sociocultural backgrounds. Subsequently, we tested a structural equation model, based on SDT, according to which the effects of sociocultural factors on experiencing positive affect at school are mediated by peer relatedness dimensions. Results Latent mean comparisons showed that immigrant adolescents, students with a lower-SES and girls had fewer friendships with their classmates, lower levels of positive affect at school and were less accepted by their peers. A well-fitting structural equation model corroborated the mediating role of acceptance and friendship, which accounted for 16% of variance in positive affect. Conclusions Due to sociocultural factors, some groups of adolescents proved to be more at risk of being socially excluded and of experiencing less positive affect at school. Moreover, our findings support the claim of SDT that the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, such as relatedness, is more important than sociocultural factors in determining adolescents’ psychological well-being.

This study investigates the bi-directionality of synaestesic experience by means of a flanked bisection paradigm in TT, a number-colour synaesthete. Previous studies have shown that bisection is shifted towards the larger digit flanker (e.g., Ranzini & Girelli, 2012). TT and controls performed line bisections with lines flanked by black digits (experiment 1), by TT’s photism colours (experiment 2), and by congruently (experiment 3), or incongruently coloured digits (experiment 4). While the results of the control group mainly replicated previous findings, only the colour-digit congruence elicited in TT the larger-digit bias. TT’s absence of effects in the other conditions was not due to reduced sensitivity to luminance effects (experiment 5), or to mathematical expertise (experiment 6). We suggest that grapheme-colour synaesthesia might be characterised by a rigid access to semantic representation when the inducer is task-irrelevant.

Objectives: This research aims to investigate the relationship between coming out to family and coming out in sports for lesbian and gay athletes and to examine the internalization of sexual prejudice as a potential mediator of this relationship. Methods: For this purpose, disclosure of sexual orientation to family, coming out in sports and internalized sexual prejudice in sports-related contexts, age, gender, socioeconomic status, education level, political orientation, type of sport (individual vs. team sport), years of sports participation were assessed on an Italian sample of 113 lesbian athletes and 63 gay athletes between 18 and 35 years of age. Results: Findings indicated that coming out to family was significantly associated with coming out in sports. In addition, the internalization of negative attitudes toward the visibility of lesbian and gay athletes in sport settings partially mediated the relationship between coming out to family and coming out in sports. Conclusions: These findings suggest that prior experiences of coming out in family contexts may provide additional resources to prevent the internalization of sexual prejudice, and this may promote the coming out in other life contexts. Moreover, we recommend that more efforts should be made to support sexual minority athletes who are not able to disclose their identity in sports environments. Research implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Time is often conceptualized in terms of space (mental time line; MTL). A prevalent representation of temporal concepts, indeed, construes the past and the future as respectively behind and in front of the ego. Insofar, however, a major omission of this line of research is that manual responses were restricted to the frontal space. This work provides the first striking demonstration that temporal processing affects the motor programming of active whole-body movements. Participants initiated steps backward much faster in response to past-than to future-related words, whereas they were faster to step forward in response to future-than past-related words. Furthermore, since the reported compatibility effect was limited to movement initiation time, it is likely that the processing of temporal information acted on the early stages of response selection (see Ulrich et al., 2012). Beyond substantiating the longstanding hypothesis that humans spatialize time on an egocentric spatial frame of reference, our findings demonstrate that the intangible domain of time extends to the more concrete domain of space through our body's action in the physical world.

Expert readers have been repeatedly reported to misperceive the centre of visual stimuli, shifting systematically to the left the bisection of any lines (pseudoneglect) while showing a cross-over effect while bisecting different types of orthographic strings (Arduino etal., 2010, Neuropsychologia, 48, 2140). This difference has been attributed to asymmetrical allocation of attention that visuo-verbal material receives when lexical access occurs (e.g., Fischer, 2004, Cognitive Brain Research, 4, 163). The aim of this study was to further examine which visual features guide recognition of potentially orthographic materials. To disentangle the role of orthography, heterogeneity, and visuo-perceptual discreteness, we presented Italian unimpaired adults with four experiments exploiting the bisection paradigm. The results showed that a cross-over effect emerges in most discrete strings, especially when their internal structure, that is being composed of heterogeneous elements, is suggestive of orthographically relevant material. Interestingly, the cross-over effect systematically characterized the processing of letter strings (Experiment 2) and words (Experiments 3 and 4), whether visually discrete or not. Overall, this pattern of results suggests that neither discreteness nor heterogeneity per se are responsible for activating visual scanning mechanisms implied in text exploration, although both contribute to increasing the chance of a visual stimulus undergoing a perceptual analysis dedicated to pre-lexical processing