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Social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic represented a golden opportunity to implement telerehabilitation for clinical groups of children. The present study aims to show the impact that telerehabilitation had on the experience of well-being of children with special needs being treated at the Foundation IRCCS Neurological Institute ‘C. Besta’ in Milan (Specific Learning Disorders and Cerebral Palsy diagnosis), it aims to do so by comparing it with experiences of those who did not undertake telerehabilitation despite the diagnosis during the pandemic, and with typically developing children. Results show that the three groups differed in the Support, Respect and Learning dimensions of well-being experience. Post hoc comparisons revealed that children with Specific Learning Disorders and Cerebral Palsy scored higher than normotypical children in Support and in Respect scales. Furthermore, children who experienced telerehabilitation showed the highest scores on the Learning scale in comparison with the other two groups. These results support the importance of reorganizing care and assistance by integrating telemedicine, which seems to have fostered a positive experience of well-being in people with special needs, particularly in the perception of a supportive environment that respects psychological needs.

We explored with Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) technique whether the ability to select words among competitive alternatives during word production is related to the integrity of the left uncinate fasciculus (UF) in Parkinson's disease (PD). Nineteen PD patients (10 right-sided and 9 left-sided) and 17 matched healthy controls (HC) took part in the study. Participants were asked to derive nouns from verbs (reading from to read) or to generate verbs from nouns (to build from building). Noun and verb production, in this task, differ in the number of lexical entries among which the response is selected, as the noun must be selected from a larger number of alternatives compared to the verb, and thus is more demanding of processing resources. DTI evaluation was obtained for each subject. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) maps were derived from DTI and median FA and MD values were computed within the left and right UF. Then, FA and MD of the left and right UF were correlated with noun and verb production. Both the left and right UF-FA correlated with the global (noun + verb) production and noun production in the whole PD group. In right-sided PD, correlations were found with the contralateral UF-FA; in left-sided PD the correlations emerged with both the left and right UF-FA. The most difficult task, noun production, significantly correlated with the right UF-FA in left-sided PD. The left UF is involved in word selection processes, and the right UF intervenes when the selection is particularly demanding of attentional resources.

The word superiority effect (WSE) denotes better recognition of a letter embedded in a word rather than in a pseudoword. Along with WSE, also a pseudoword superiority effect (PSE) has been described: It is easier to recognise a letter in a legal pseudoword than in an unpronounceable nonword. At the current state of the art, both WSE and PSE have been mainly tested with English speakers. This study uses the Reicher–Wheeler paradigm with native speakers of Italian (a shallow orthography language). Different from English and French, we found WSE for reaction times (RTs) only, whereas PSE was significant for both accuracy and RTs. This finding indicates that in the Reicher–Wheeler task, readers of a shallow orthography language can effectively rely on both the lexical and the sublexical routes. As to the effect of letter position, a clear advantage for the first-letter position emerged, a finding suggesting a fine-grained processing of the letter strings with coding of letter position and indicating the role of visual acuity and crowding factors.

The aim of this work is to contribute to the identification of the factors which can promote students’ engagement at school and support flourishing in young people. According to the Positive Education (Seligman, 2011), there is a strong relationship between school environment and student’s well-being. Fatou and Kubiszewski (2018) found that the quality of the school climate perceived by the students influences engagement in school activities. In this study, 153 students (M = 67) attending 10th grade were presented with tests and questionnaires to assess individual assets (personality traits, literacy skills), emerging appraisals (school-climate, well-being experience) and emerging actions (school engagement), according to the Student Well-Being Model proposed by Soutter et al., (2014). Path analysis showed that the best model includes neither individual assets nor direct effect of school climate on engagement, as the effect of school climate on engagement is mediated by well-being experience. In other words, school climate has been confirmed as an important factor to be considered to improve engagement in school activities, but it is effective only when its influence can modify the well-being experience of the students. These results support the perspective of Positive Education, as intervention on school environment is expected to exert positive effects not only on students’ well-being, but also on their engagement in school activities and learning, irrespective to students’ assets. Therefore, improving school climate means to support well-being experience and to reduce dropout risk also in students with learning difficulties and with personality traits, which might lead to dysfunctional behaviors. This work encourages working in/with schools to implement positive education programs that support and sustain a positive school climate and culture for school-community well-being.

CPS (Child Protection Services) workers are required to assess the level of safety of referred minors and to identify the best intervention to protect them. CPS workers’ decision making, in particular the child removal decision, has been the focus of a growing number of studies in order to identify which factors influence workers’ evaluation. The present study aimed to investigate both familial and mother/father-related risk and protective factors that influenced CPS workers’ decision about the child placement through the “judgment analysis” approach. We analyzed 340 social records of families referred to CPS due to child maltreatment were retrospectively analyzed on the basis of the Protocol of risk and Protective factors ( Di Blasio, 2005 ). The mean age of the mothers was 36.85 (SD = 7.61; range = 17–58), while the mean age of the fathers was 41.86 (SD = 8.85; range = 21–72). The mean age of the children was 8.37 (SD = 4.87; range = 0–17), the 48.8% of them were males. To identify the most relevant factors for the discrimination of high- and low-risk cases (operationalized as child out-of-home placement vs monitoring and parental abilities support), 3 decision tree analyses (C&RT) models were tested. Results of our research seem to indicate that workers attribute great importance to autonomy and independence of parents: when this factor is absent, the likelihood of child removal from the family is higher. Results also indicate that workers attribute different weight to specific information cues, when they characterize either the maternal or the paternal role. We speculate that in the future, decision tree models can help CPS professionals in processing the information collected during psycho-social investigations of at-risk families.

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are impaired in verb production. Interpretations range from grammatical deficits to semantic-conceptual decay of action representation. The verb production deficit in PD can also be considered a dysexecutive disorder, specifically, a deficit of selection processing during word production, due to corticostriatal damage. Producing verbs is "more difficult" than producing nouns, because verb-forms must be selected from a large set of word-forms which share the verb-root, and the set of possible verb-forms is larger than the set of possible noun-forms when a noun has to be produced. However, if we devise a condition in which a noun must be selected from a set of alternatives larger than the set of alternative forms from which a verb must be selected, we expect an opposite pattern, with nouns becoming more difficult than verbs. We used morphological tasks varying in the number of alternative responses during word production. Fourteen PD patients and 14 healthy Controls participated in the study. Participants performed a noun-from-verb ('observation' from 'to observe') and a noun-from adjective derivation task ('kindness' from 'kind'), and a verb-from-noun ('to observe' from 'observation') and an adjective-from-noun generation task ('kind' from 'kindness'). Input-stimuli were presented singularly on a screen and participants produced the response as fast as possible. Response latencies were longer in derivation tasks (several alternative responses) than in generation tasks (one possible response), irrespective of the grammatical class of the target word, with no difference between groups. PD patients were significantly less accurate than Controls only in the noun-from-verb derivation task, that is, in the task with the highest number of alternative responses (PD: 60%; Controls: 81%). Results suggest that the verb production disorder in PD patients may reflect disturbed selection processes among competitors: the higher the number of alternative responses the more severe the impairment.

A Raglio1, D Traficante2, O Oasi31Sospiro Foundation, Cremona, Italy; 2Education Technologies Research Center (CRTI), 3Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, ItalyAbstract: This study presents a tool (Music Therapy Rating Scale [MTRS]) to evaluate the progression of the relationship between the patient and the therapist during music therapy sessions. The rating scale was developed from an intersubjective framework and from an improvisational music therapy technique. It mainly consists of two behavioral classes: non-verbal communication (NVC) and sonorous-musical communication (SMC). Five levels for each class are given (from 0 to 4). Every 15 seconds, two sets of two music therapists coded the behaviors in seven sessions with different patients. The patients were seven children (four males; three females) aged 3–10 years (mean age = 6.28), diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder. The reliability indices were computed and there was a substantial agreement in the assessments of the video raters (non-verbal relationship: ρ = 0.70; sonorous-musical relationship:ρ = 0.77). A digital output of the program to use the MTRS is presented and clinical implications are discussed.Keywords: music therapy, intersubjective approach, affect attunement, process assessment

The study explored the different influences of roots and suffixes in reading aloud morphemic pseudowords (e.g., vetr-ezza, “glass-ness”). Previous work on adults showed a facilitating effect of both roots and suffixes on naming times. In the present study, pseudoword stimuli including roots and suffixes in different combinations were administered to sixth-grade children with dyslexia (N=22) and skilled readers (N=44), matched for chronological age. Indeed, the sequential reading strategy of less proficient readers (particularly for pseudowords) should favour the emergence of differences between left and right constituents (root and suffix, respectively) in reading performance. Results showed that for both children with dyslexia and skilled young readers the onset of pronunciation depended exclusively on roots, while there was no significant effect of suffixes. However, both roots and suffixes led to higher levels of accuracy than matched orthographic strings of letters. Posthoc regression analyses confirm...

We undertook a randomised controlled trial to assess whether a music therapy (MT) scheme of administration, including three working cycles of one month spaced out by one month of no treatment, is effective to reduce behavioural disturbances in severely demented patients. Sixty persons with severe dementia (30 in the experimental and 30 in the control group) were enrolled. Baseline multidimensional assessment included demographics, Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Barthel Index and Neuropsychiatry Inventory (NPI) for all patients. All the patients of the experimental and control groups received standard care (educational and entertainment activities). In addition, the experimental group received three cycles of 12 active MT sessions each, three times a week. Each 30-min session included a group of three patients. Every cycle of treatment was followed by one month of wash-out. At the end of this study, MT treatment resulted to be more effective than standard care to reduce behavioural disorders. We observed a significant reduction over time in the NPI global scores in both groups (F(7,357) = 9.06, p < 0.001) and a significant difference between groups (F(1,51) = 4.84, p < 0.05) due to a higher reduction of behavioural disturbances in the experimental group at the end of the treatment (Cohen's d = 0.63). The analysis of single NPI items shows that delusions, agitation and apathy significantly improved in the experimental, but not in the control group. This study suggests the effectiveness of MT approach with working cycles in reducing behavioural disorders of severely demented patients.

The styles of attachment in two groups of adolescents with different characteristics and life experiences are examined. Participants were 81 adolescents residing inside residential treatment centers ( M age = 15.5 yr., SD = 1.1; 48% boys, 52% girls) and 81 adolescents living with their own families ( M age = 15.6 yr., SD = 1.3; 49% boys, 51% girls). The Italian adaptation of the Separation Anxiety Test was used to measure attachment style. Only the data obtained from the “Self” perspective indicated a significant difference between the two groups, showing higher percentages of Secure attachment among adolescents living with their families. When replies were referred to the “Self,” the risk of assessing Insecure attachment in the Residential group was about 2 times higher than in the Family group ( OR = 2.28).

Several studies on children and adults with and without linguistic impairment have reported differences between verb and noun processing. The present study assessed whether noun and verb bases affect differently children’s reading of derived words. Thirty-six Italian good readers and 18 poor readers, all 4th or 5th graders, were asked to read aloud nouns derived from either a noun base (e.g., artista, artist) or a verb base (e.g., punizione, punishment). Word and base frequency affected latencies only for deverbal nouns, while an effect of word length emerged for denominal nouns and an inhibitory effect of suffix length was found for both types of stimuli. A high base frequency and a high whole-word frequency both led to higher levels of accuracy. Verb bases led to higher error rates than noun bases. Poor readers, although slower and less accurate than good readers, showed a pattern of results similar to that of typically developing readers. Data confirm that in 4th and 5th graders morphological decomposition may affect reading aloud of long complex words, and that the grammatical class of the base can modulate this effect.

The word superiority effect (WSE) has made it possible to demonstrate the automatic activation of lexical-orthographic entries in reading. The observation of this effect is important since it led to experimental support of the main cognitive reading models. These models were mostly developed on English data, hence the verification in different orthography systems is relevant. The present study tested WSE in Italian, a language in which this effect was predicted to be less constant given the highly consistent correspondence between orthography and phonology. Moreover, the presentation of the items in a lateralized visual field condition allowed testing of assumptions about the roles of the right and left hemispheres in written word recognition and, in particular, on the hemispheric lateralization of lexical processing. Two experiments were conducted with undergraduate students who had to recognize a target letter within a word, pseudoword, or nonword. In Experiment 1, prime and probe letters were in the same letter case, while in Experiment 2 they were in different letter cases. Error rates and reaction times were analyzed with mixed models. The results showed a superiority of pseudowords (pseudoword superiority effect; PSE) over illegal strings with no evidence of a clear superiority of words over pseudowords for both left and right visual field presentations. This suggests that in Italian, the sub-lexical route could play a major role in reading and that this route relies on a visual-perceptual orthographic coding concerning familiarity of letter combinations, which is also available to the right hemisphere.

Puberty is a very important process for adolescents. Physiological changes and body modifications lead to great vulnerability. This vulnerability is connected to the adolescent’s perceptions of the uncertainty of outcomes due to the transformation of their infant body into an adult one. This cross-sectional study aims to better understand whether body image perception and satisfaction influence self-esteem in a sample of Italian male and female adolescents. A total of 242 adolescents (120 male and 122 female individuals) aged 11 to 17 years (M= 13.33;SD= 1.7) completed the study measures. Quantitative and qualitative instruments were used. In particular, adolescents completed self-report questionnaires to assess their pubertal status (Pubertal Developmental Scale, Peterson, Crockett, Richards, & Boxer, 1988), their body esteem (Body Esteem Scale, Mendelson, Mendelson, & White, 2001), their body image (Body Image Satisfaction Questionnaire, Rauste-von Wright, 1989), and their self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Rosenberg,1965). Adolescent were also invited to depict themselves to assess their body representations by completing the Drawing Me test (Confalonieri, 2011). Results from MANOVAs confirm that gender and age are two factors that influence body image perception and satisfaction. SEM analyses show that good self-esteem is reached through good body satisfaction following different trajectories in male and female individuals. Data from adolescents’ body representations obtained via drawings confirm that females are more concerned about their body changes and about the appearance of secondary sexual features than males. This research, stressing the influence of various individual factors and highlighting the psychological distress and dissatisfaction of adolescents, especially females, confirms the importance of studying this topic in order to generate preventive measures to help adolescents through this developmental task.

This study examines the effects of orthographic neighborhood size (N-size) in relationship with word frequency on the reading aloud of children with and without dyslexia whose language has a consistent orthography. Participants included 22 Italian fourth-grade children with dyslexia and 44 age-matched typically developing readers. Children with dyslexia read low-frequency words with high N-size faster than words that had no neighbors; by contrast, typically developing readers showed no N-size effects, irrespective of word frequency. The facilitating effect of N-size on low-frequency word reading in children with dyslexia indicates that they benefit from lexical activation spreading from dense neighborhoods.

The aim of this paper is to provide further detail about the results of a randomised controlled study published in this journal (Raglio et al., 2010, 14, 900-904), in which we assessed the efficacy of music therapy (MT) on the behavioural disturbances in people with moderate-severe dementia.Sixty patients were randomly assigned to the experimental (MT and standard care) and control group (standard care only). The experimental group received three cycles of 12 MT sessions each, three times a week. Each cycle of treatment was followed by one month of washout period, while the standard care activities continued over time.The impact of the treatment (12 MT sessions) was reliable on NPI global scores, as the interaction Time by Group was significant (F(1,49) = 4.09, p = 0.049). After the end of the treatment the NPI global scores of the experimental and control groups tended to become similar, as both groups worsened (Time effect: F(1,48) = 4.67, p = 0.014) and the difference between them disappeared (F 1). Interaction Time by Group was not significant.The study confirms that active MT determines a positive response and can amplify and strengthen the efficacy of therapeutic interventions towards people with dementia.

Autism is a pathology in which the communicative and relational deficit is quite clear. After giving an up-to-date general view to the nosographic aspects and to the interpretative models of the Autistic Disorder, the authors focus on an improvisational music therapy approach in an intersubjective theoretical perspective. Coherently, with the theoretical frame and the clinical evidence, important process indicators were extrapolated into the analysed session. By using an appropriate coding scheme made to evaluate the music therapeutic process, the authors present an example analysis about the coding of some music therapy's sessions of a clinical case of infantile autism. Such analysis highlighted the occurred changes within the sessions and it can be considered a useful tool for a longitudinal evaluation of the music therapeutic treatments.

The Music Therapy Checklist is useful for music therapists to monitor and evaluate the music therapeutic process. A list of different types of behaviors were selected based on results derived from applying the Music Therapy Coding Scheme. The use of a checklist to code the events with a recording method based on 1-min. intervals allows observation without data-processing systems and drastically reduces coding time. At the same time, the checklist tags the main factors in musical interaction.

Background: Music therapy (MT) has been proposed as valid approach for behavioral and psychologic symptoms (BPSD) of dementia. However, studies demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach are lacking. Objective: To assess NIT effectiveness in reducing BPSD in subjects with dementia. Method: Fifty-nine persons with dementia were enrolled in this study. All of them underwent a multidimensional assessment including Mini Mental State Examination, Barthel Index and Neuropsychiatry Inventory at enrolment and after 8, 16, and 20 weeks. Subjects were randomly assigned to experimental (n = 30) or control (n = 29) group. The NIT sessions were evaluated with standardized criteria. The experimental group received 30 MT sessions (16 wk of treatment), whereas the control group received educational support or entertainment activities. Results: NPI total score significantly decreased in the experimental group at 8th, 16th, and 20th weeks (interaction time x group: F-3,F- 165 = 5.06, P = 0.002). Specific BPSD (ie, delusions, agitation, anxiety, apathy, irritability, aberrant motor activity, and night-time disturbances) significantly improved. The empathetic relationship and the patients' active participation in the NIT approach, also improved in the experimental group. Conclusions: The study shows that NIT is effective to reduce BPSD in patients with moderate-severe dementia.

This study presents a coding system for observation and monitoring of changes in the interactive behaviour between patient and therapist during music therapy sessions. The coding scheme was developed from a psychodynamic framework and mainly consists of four behavioural classes: Verbal Communication, Nonverbal Communication, Countenance, and Sonorous Musical Communication. The 15 minutes in the middle of each videotape concerning the first active music therapy session—based on the sonorous musical improvisation—were coded. Subjects were children (4 boys; 3 girls) ages 3 to 10 years ( M age = 6.3), diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, and seven therapists. The method for data collection was continuous recording, applied through The Observer Video-Pro 5.0. For the reliability indexes there was a substantial agreement between assessments by video raters.