Explore the vast range of titles available.

The citation order was mistaken in the production process and three references needed to be added to the References section; thus, the reference list needs to be updated. [...]in Section 2.3.3. of the main text, the correct reference for the AC-MT battery is [73]; in the discussion, the correct reference for Beebe and Gonzal is [94]; and in the final paragraph, “Furthermore, it is important to remember that medical and/or behavioural treatment on sleep disorders (that are related to sleepiness) and, in particular, on sleep habits and hygiene may be in some cases effective and recommended in order to reduce the cognitive difficulties due to sleepiness”, the correct references are [5,123–125]. Carskadon, M.A.; Wolfson, A.R.; Acebo, C.; Tzischinsky, O.; Seifer, R. Adolescent sleep patterns, circadian timing, and sleepiness at a transition to early school days. Liu, J.; Liu, X.; Ji, X.; Wang, Y.; Zhou, G.; Chen, X. Sleep disordered breathing symptoms and daytime sleepiness are associated with emotional problems and poor school performance in children. Hunter, S.J.; Gozal, D.; Smith, D.L.; Philby, M.F.; Kaylegian, J.; Kheirandish-Gozal, L. Effect of Sleep-disordered Breathing Severity on Cognitive Performance Measures in a Large Community Cohort of Young School-aged Children.

We compared reading words and pseudo-words presented in single displays (as typical of psycholinguistic research) with stimuli presented in multiple displays (as typical of real-life conditions and clinical testing) under controlled conditions. Italian sixth-grade children with and without a reading deficit showed an advantage in reading times for multiple over single displays. This finding was partly ascribed to the capacity to overlap the non-decisional component of the response, an effect present in control readers as well as children with dyslexia. Furthermore, there were several indications in the data that the requirement to read sequentially taxes performance by augmenting the relative impact of the experimental manipulations used. This effect was present in both groups of children, but proportionally stronger in children with dyslexia. The study contributes to filling the gap between single and multiple displays, a condition more like real-life situations.

It is well known that a difficulty in forming lexical representations is a strong predictor of reading and spelling difficulties even after controlling for the effects of other cognitive skills. Our study had two main interrelated aims. First, we wanted to examine whether the ability to learn new written words (lexical learning) varies as a function of the orthographic consistency of the language of the learner. Second, we wanted to evaluate the cognitive abilities involved in orthographic lexical learning and whether they differed as a function of language consistency. 163 Italian children and 128 English children performed a lexical learning task as well as tasks assessing several cognitive skills potentially related to the ability to establish orthographic representations. We found that children learning an orthographic inconsistent orthography (English) were better able to learn novel written words presented in association with pictures than children learning a consistent orthography (Italian). This was true for both younger and older primary school children and also when children were matched for school grade. Lexical learning may be better in English children because the many irregularities of this language promote storing in memory whole-word representations and processing larger orthographic units. In Italian, instead, reading can be accomplished successfully on the basis of grapheme-phoneme conversion rules and on processing smaller orthographic units. This interpretation was supported by the pattern of cognitive skills associated with lexical learning skills in the two languages. Variations in lexical learning were explained by spatial visual memory and phonological awareness tasks in both languages, but phonological STM explained further variance in Italian, while a task tapping visuo-attentional capacity explained further variance in English. Learning a language with inconsistent orthography is associated with better lexical learning skills in children at different stages of primary school; the pattern of cognitive skills associated with lexical learning skills is also partially modulated by orthographic consistency.

We examined reading, spelling, and mathematical skills in an unselected group of 129 Italian fifth graders by testing various cognitive predictors for each behaviour. As dependent variables, we measured performance in behaviours with a clear functional value in everyday life, such as reading a text, spelling under dictation and doing mental and written computations. As predictors, we selected cognitive dimensions having an explicit relation with the target behaviour (called proximal predictors), and prepared various tests in order to select which task had the best predictive power on each behaviour. The aim was to develop a model of proximal predictors of reading (speed and accuracy), spelling (accuracy) and maths (speed and accuracy) characterized by efficacy also in comparison to the prediction based on general cognitive factors (i.e., short-term memory, phonemic verbal fluency, visual perceptual speed, and non-verbal intelligence) and parsimony, pinpointing the role of both common and unique predictors as envisaged in the general perspective of co-morbidity. With one exception (reading accuracy), the proximal predictors models (based on communality analyses) explained a sizeable amount of variance, ranging from 27.5% in the case of calculation (accuracy) to 48.7% of reading (fluency). Models based on general cognitive factors also accounted for some variance (ranging from 6.5% in the case of spelling to 19.5% in the case of reading fluency) but this was appreciably less than that explained by models based on the hypothesized proximal predictors. In general, results confirmed the efficacy of proximal models in predicting reading, spelling and maths although they offered only limited support for common predictors across different learning skills; namely, performance in the Orthographic Decision test entered as a predictor of both reading and spelling indicating that a single orthographic lexicon may account for performance in reading and spelling. Possible lines of research to expand on this approach are illustrated.

In a previous study ( Zoccolotti et al., 2020 ) we examined reading, spelling, and maths skills in an unselected group of 129 Italian children attending fifth grade by testing various cognitive predictors; results showed a high degree of predictors’ selectivity for each of these three behaviors. In the present study, we focused on the specificity of the predictors by performing cross-analyses on the same dataset; i.e., we predicted spelling and maths skills based on reading predictors, reading based on maths predictors and so on. Results indicated that some predictors, such as the Orthographic Decision and the Arithmetic Facts tests, predicted reading, spelling and maths skills in similar ways, while others predicted different behaviors but only for a specific parameter, such as fluency but not accuracy (as in the case of RAN), and still others were specific for a single behavior (e.g., Visual-auditory Pseudo-word Matching test predicted only spelling skills). To interpret these results, we propose a novel model of learning skills separately considering factors in terms of competence, performance and acquisition (automatization). Reading, spelling and calculation skills would depend on the development of discrete and different abstract competences (accounting for the partial dissociations among learning disorders reported in the literature). By contrast, overlap among behaviors would be accounted for by defective acquisition in automatized responses to individual “instances”; this latter skill is item specific but domain independent. Finally, performance factors implied in task’s characteristics (such as time pressure) may contribute to the partial association among learning skills. It is proposed that this new model may provide a useful base for interpreting the diffuse presence of comorbidities among learning disorders.

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected many areas and contexts of today’s society, including school and family. Several studies focused on the worldwide effects of school closures on students’ learning outcomes, context, and well-being. However, the data emerging from these studies are often inconsistent and fragmentary, highlighting the need of a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. This need is especially urgent for the countries with the most severe school closure, like Italy. This systematic review aims to collect the opinions of parents, teachers, and students on: other dimensions of Italian primary school students affected by school closures, beyond academic performance; hypothetical agreement between the opinions of parents, teachers, and students regarding the different effects of school closures on Italian primary school students; possible differences between the effects of school closures on Italian primary school students and the students in other countries. Our search was conducted using PRISMA 2020 guidelines on Web of Science, Pubmed, Scopus, and EBSCOHost. The results obtained from 34 articles revealed a strong concern on the part of all stakeholders involved in learning during the pandemic, with evident negative effects for Italian school students. The constraint on distance learning led to a drastic change in everyone’s routine, and a negative emotional change on the part of young students. Parents and teachers generally considered distance learning to be ineffective for the education of their children and students; they encountered technical-practical difficulties in the use of electronic devices for participation in school activities; overall learning deficits on the part of students, especially in mathematics, as confirmed by INVALSI results were also found. The investigation reveals a condition of shared emotional and academic performance difficulty, and a further challenging circumstance for students previously at risk of marginalization. Further research in this field is paramount to identify new and adequate recovery strategies.

Background/Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate letter processing in children with dyslexia and typically developing readers as a function of the type of orthographic context. Methods and Results: In Experiment 1A, children performed a two-alternative forced choice task (Reicher–Wheeler paradigm) using as probes either high-frequency words, pronounceable pseudo-words, or unpronounceable non-words. The group differences in letter recognition were clearly distinguished from those present in typical word and pseudo-word reading conditions (Experiment 1B), as a global factor was present only in the latter case. In Experiment 2, the two-alternative forced choice task required the child to search for the target letter in the subsequent multi-letter string (i.e., words, pseudo-words, or non-words), thus reducing the memory load. Detecting the target letter was more difficult in a word than in a pseudo-word or non-word array, indicating that the word form’s lexical activation interfered with the target’s analysis in both groups of children. In Experiment 3, children performed the two-alternative forced choice task with symbols (Greek letters) either in the Reicher–Wheeler mode of presentation (Experiment 3A) or in the search condition (Experiment 3B). Children with dyslexia performed identically to typically developing readers in keeping with the selectivity of their orthographic difficulties. Conclusions: The present data indicate that children with dyslexia suffer from an early deficit in making perceptual operations that require the conjunction analysis of a set of letters. Still, this deficit is not due to an inability to scan the letter string. The deficit is confined to orthographic stimuli and does not extend to other types of visual targets.

We compared reading acquisition in English and Italian children up to late primary school analyzing RTs and errors as a function of various psycholinguistic variables and changes due to experience. Our results show that reading becomes progressively more reliant on larger processing units with age, but that this is modulated by consistency of the language. In English, an inconsistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs earlier on and it is demonstrated by faster RTs, a stronger effect of lexical variables and lack of length effect (by fifth grade). However, not all English children are able to master this mode of processing yielding larger inter-individual variability. In Italian, a consistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs later and it is less pronounced. This is demonstrated by larger length effects which remain significant even in older children and by larger effects of a global factor (related to speed of orthographic decoding) explaining changes of performance across ages. Our results show the importance of considering not only overall performance, but inter-individual variability and variability between conditions when interpreting cross-linguistic differences.

Background. Skill learning (e.g., reading, spelling and maths) has been predominantly treated separately in the neuropsychological literature. However, skills (as well as their corresponding deficits), tend to partially overlap. We recently proposed a multi-level model of learning skills (based on the distinction among competence, performance, and acquisition) as a framework to provide a unitary account of these learning skills. In the present study, we examined the performance of an unselected group of third- to fifth-grade children on standard reading, spelling, and maths tasks, and tested the relationships among these skills with a network analysis, i.e., a method particularly suited to analysing relations among different domains. Methods. We administered a battery of reading, spelling, and maths tests to 185 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade children (103 M, 82 F). Results. The network analysis indicated that the different measures of the same ability (i.e., reading, spelling, and maths) formed separate clusters, in keeping with the idea that they are based on different competences. However, these clusters were also related to each other, so that three nodes were more central in connecting them. In keeping with the multi-level model of learning skills, two of these tests (arithmetic facts subtest and spelling words with ambiguous transcription) relied heavily on the ability to recall specific instances, a factor hypothesised to underlie the co-variation among learning skills. Conclusions. The network analysis indicated both elements of association and of partial independence among learning skills. Interestingly, the study was based on standard clinical instruments, indicating that the multi-level model of learning skills might provide a framework for the clinical analysis of these learning skills.

The \" \" suggests that automaticity relies on acquiring specific instances that enhance performance, preventing the slower application of procedures. It has been proposed that a low ability in instance acquisition may be the key cause of the comorbidity among learning disorders. We investigated performance on a learning task to test the hypothesis that difficulties in acquiring and consolidating instances would be linked with comorbid learning disorders. We examined the individual rate of learning of 143 young adults with typical development (32M, 111F, mean age: 20.3) and 59 with specific learning disorders (SLD; 12M and 47F, mean age: 20.9). Both groups significantly reduced their response times across learning trials (following a power trend) without generalization to untrained items, indicating that learning occurred through instance acquisition. Initially, participants with SLD performed worse than the controls. However, they reduced their times by about 96 sec with practice, even though their \"endpoint\" (asymptote) remained slower than controls. Group differences were related to these two scaling values, not the power curve coefficient. Subsequently, we reclassified the sample into three groups based on the type of deficit: one without procedural/instance deficits (\"Control\" group), one with selective deficits in \"procedural\" tasks (\"Poor procedural\" group), and one with deficits in instance-based tasks (\"Poor instance\" group). The poor instance group not only showed deficits across all tasks requiring instance retrieval (i.e., arithmetical facts and lexical representation retrieval) but was also slower (86 s) in the learning task compared to the other groups (58 and 70 s, respectively; at least < 0.01). The \"Poor procedural\" group behaved similarly to the \"Control\" group. Results support with the notion that a low ability to acquire and consolidate instances may contribute to the comorbidity of learning disorders.