The present study aimed to explore if social judgments are influenced by concomitant somato-senso... more The present study aimed to explore if social judgments are influenced by concomitant somato-sensory stimulation. 40 participants were asked to judge 30 faces for trustworthiness in two different "comfort" conditions in both a between - and a within- subjects paradigm. Faces were presented very briefly and were specifically selected to look: trustworthy, untrustworthy or neutral. Findings suggest an overall higher tendency for participants to evaluate faces as trustworthy in the physically comfortable compared to the uncomfortable condition. Moreover, the increase in trustworthy responses was affected by the type of face, being larger for neutral than for untrustworthy and trustworthy faces. More generally, our findings provide evidence that prior sensory experience can influence unrelated social-emotional evaluations based on first impression. The possible mechanisms underlying this effect are discussed.
La scienza medica segue da tempo un approccio evidence based grazie al quale è avanzata empiricam... more La scienza medica segue da tempo un approccio evidence based grazie al quale è avanzata empiricamente per prove ed errori ottenendo innegabili risultati. Tale approccio ha incontrato grande fortuna in ambito medico ma non ancora in ambito educativo. Questa discrepanza viene spiegata sulla base della legge dell'effetto per cui, data una certa situazione, solo le risposte seguite da una ricompensa sono rafforzate e hanno buone probabilità di essere registrate come risposte abituali a quella situazione. L'approccio evidence based funziona bene quando applicato in ambito medico ma non (o perlomeno in misura molto minore) in ambito educativo. In effetti, la pratica medica in tutto il suo processo dallo sviluppo delle conoscenze alla soddisfazione dei bisogni del paziente risponde alla legge dell'effetto. La stessa logica non pervade il processo della formazione e trasmissione del sapere educativo destinato a tradursi in proposte didattiche. Si auspica qualcosa cominci a cambi...
Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica. Journal of Theories and Research in Education, 2021
The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) is a program specifically addressed to studen... more The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) is a program specifically addressed to students aging from 6 to 12. It consists of a series of exercises of different types (verbal inferences, understanding of graphs and tables, series of digits, etc.) and increasing difficulty, properly devised to activate and train the abilities of logical reasoning. Hopefully, such an enhancement should result in an improvement of academic achievements, especially in low proficiency learner students. Here we report on a study carried out on a large cohort of fifth-grade students. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of LIEP in improving students’ cognitive abilities and abstract reasoning.
Despite its unquestionable interest from a theoretical and practical point of view, so far there ... more Despite its unquestionable interest from a theoretical and practical point of view, so far there has been little research on online reading and there is a lack of attention paid to this topic in most European educational institutions. In particular, primary and secondary school teachers are not adequately trained on how and when to intervene to support students’ proficiency in the online reading comprehension. After presenting a rationale demonstrating why students may struggle with online reading comprehension and the importance to adopt a self-regulated reading, this study proposes a Teacher’s Guide that could support late primary and secondary school teachers in planning online reading lessons with the ThinkAloud (TA) metacognitive technique.
The present study aimed to investigate the value of the teacher Think Aloud (TA) instructional te... more The present study aimed to investigate the value of the teacher Think Aloud (TA) instructional technique in providing young readers with effective strategies to enhance the comprehension of online texts. Eighty-nine participants from 10 to 14 years of age were sorted into two groups based on the type of training they had received: the experimental group (n = 47) had been taught with the TA strategies, while the control group (n = 42) had not received any specific training. Both the experimental and control groups were examined twice, before and after the period of training. Pupils had to find the correct answer to a specific question (Access) and to critically analyze online texts, expressing different opinions on a topic (Analysis). The findings indicate a positive effect of the TA technique, mainly in the transferal of strategies aimed at a more correct evaluation of the websites’ reliability. Indeed, while for the control group only a marginal, if any, improvement was recorded fr...
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2018
ABSTRACT This paper describes the attitudes of pupils ranging from late childhood to adolescence ... more ABSTRACT This paper describes the attitudes of pupils ranging from late childhood to adolescence towards diversity expressed as disability, other gender and race in a context of full inclusion. For the study, two experiments were carried out asking a large sample (i.e. 764 + 160) of participants to choose a hypothetical classmate to share a series of different activities with. The hypothetical classmate could be chosen between: same gender pupil; other gender pupil; same gender pupil of the prototypical racial minority; same gender pupil using a wheelchair. In turn, activities included: an outdoor, highly motor demanding, game; an indoor board game; a purely social activity; a scholastic activity; and a gesture of solidarity and good-will. Results clearly demonstrate that pupils’ decisions are strongly modulated by the activity itself rather than by ethnic factors. Pupils aged 9–14 appear to have developed a finely tuned sense of ‘what works in which situations’. Accordingly, while a visible disability turns out to be very effective in gaining sympathy and eliciting pity, it results in a serious obstacle for the development of a close friendship between peers.
Background: The traditional paper and pencil tests are often inadequate to detect the mild forms ... more Background: The traditional paper and pencil tests are often inadequate to detect the mild forms of Unilateral Spatial Neglect (USN). Objective: To verify the effectiveness of a touchscreen-based cancellation test in assessing individuals with USN. Methods: Seven individuals, six with right and one with left brain damage, who showed moderate to severe USN at admission, were involved in the study. Besides classic paper and pencil tests, participants were presented with a new, “user-friendly”, device consisting of an interactive “table” that integrates the principles of ecologic interaction and sophisticated technology. Such a touch screen table made possible to analyse the spatial and temporal evolution of the participants’ performance, providing a set of indices related to “how” the different tasks have been fulfilled, rather than simple raw scores. Results: This new technological approach turned out to be much more sensitive than the classic paper and pencil tests to detect the sli...
Patients with naturally occurring lesions involving the anterior cingulate cortex are rare and th... more Patients with naturally occurring lesions involving the anterior cingulate cortex are rare and there thus exist very few reports of focal lesions in this area. We report a longitudinal study of a new case of selective anterior cingulate damage due to the presence of an angiocavernoma at the junction of the anterior third with the middle third of the right gyrus cinguli. Before surgery, the results of several, different tests suggested a significant impairment of executive functions, including deficits in planning, monitoring of ongoing behavior, and strategy shifting, as well as an exaggerated susceptibility to retroactive interference. Most of these symptoms disappeared completely or almost completely after the surgical removal of the angiocavernoma, although exaggerated susceptibility to interference was found to persist four months after surgery.
Inhibition of return (IOR) has been described as a hallmark of externally controlled orienting of... more Inhibition of return (IOR) has been described as a hallmark of externally controlled orienting of attention using extrafoveal cues and targets. This paper describes an IOR like inhibition of reaction time for the detection of targets at the fovea that cannot be explained by shift of covert attention. This foveal RT inhibition adds to the evidence that challenges the view of IOR-like phenomena as obligatory expressions of orienting and attentional control.
The present study aimed to explore how the sense of trustworthiness is in uenced by age and gende... more The present study aimed to explore how the sense of trustworthiness is in uenced by age and gender. Participants were to judge computer-generated faces for trustworthiness in two different experimental conditions according to the orientation of the virtual stimuli: canonical (i.e. upright) and inverted (i.e. upside down). Experimental stimuli were presented very brie y and were speci cally selected to look: trustworthy, untrustworthy or neutral. The results showed that the tendency to evaluate faces as trustworthy was modulated by both age and gender. In particular, young participants were more prone to judge faces as trustworthy than adult, elderly and child participants. In turn, males were more prone to evaluate faces as trustworthy than females, but this difference was not found among children.
The present study aimed to explore if social judgments are influenced by concomitant somato-senso... more The present study aimed to explore if social judgments are influenced by concomitant somato-sensory stimulation. 40 participants were asked to judge 30 faces for trustworthiness in two different "comfort" conditions in both a between - and a within- subjects paradigm. Faces were presented very briefly and were specifically selected to look: trustworthy, untrustworthy or neutral. Findings suggest an overall higher tendency for participants to evaluate faces as trustworthy in the physically comfortable compared to the uncomfortable condition. Moreover, the increase in trustworthy responses was affected by the type of face, being larger for neutral than for untrustworthy and trustworthy faces. More generally, our findings provide evidence that prior sensory experience can influence unrelated social-emotional evaluations based on first impression. The possible mechanisms underlying this effect are discussed.
La scienza medica segue da tempo un approccio evidence based grazie al quale è avanzata empiricam... more La scienza medica segue da tempo un approccio evidence based grazie al quale è avanzata empiricamente per prove ed errori ottenendo innegabili risultati. Tale approccio ha incontrato grande fortuna in ambito medico ma non ancora in ambito educativo. Questa discrepanza viene spiegata sulla base della legge dell'effetto per cui, data una certa situazione, solo le risposte seguite da una ricompensa sono rafforzate e hanno buone probabilità di essere registrate come risposte abituali a quella situazione. L'approccio evidence based funziona bene quando applicato in ambito medico ma non (o perlomeno in misura molto minore) in ambito educativo. In effetti, la pratica medica in tutto il suo processo dallo sviluppo delle conoscenze alla soddisfazione dei bisogni del paziente risponde alla legge dell'effetto. La stessa logica non pervade il processo della formazione e trasmissione del sapere educativo destinato a tradursi in proposte didattiche. Si auspica qualcosa cominci a cambi...
Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica. Journal of Theories and Research in Education, 2021
The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) is a program specifically addressed to studen... more The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) is a program specifically addressed to students aging from 6 to 12. It consists of a series of exercises of different types (verbal inferences, understanding of graphs and tables, series of digits, etc.) and increasing difficulty, properly devised to activate and train the abilities of logical reasoning. Hopefully, such an enhancement should result in an improvement of academic achievements, especially in low proficiency learner students. Here we report on a study carried out on a large cohort of fifth-grade students. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of LIEP in improving students’ cognitive abilities and abstract reasoning.
Despite its unquestionable interest from a theoretical and practical point of view, so far there ... more Despite its unquestionable interest from a theoretical and practical point of view, so far there has been little research on online reading and there is a lack of attention paid to this topic in most European educational institutions. In particular, primary and secondary school teachers are not adequately trained on how and when to intervene to support students’ proficiency in the online reading comprehension. After presenting a rationale demonstrating why students may struggle with online reading comprehension and the importance to adopt a self-regulated reading, this study proposes a Teacher’s Guide that could support late primary and secondary school teachers in planning online reading lessons with the ThinkAloud (TA) metacognitive technique.
The present study aimed to investigate the value of the teacher Think Aloud (TA) instructional te... more The present study aimed to investigate the value of the teacher Think Aloud (TA) instructional technique in providing young readers with effective strategies to enhance the comprehension of online texts. Eighty-nine participants from 10 to 14 years of age were sorted into two groups based on the type of training they had received: the experimental group (n = 47) had been taught with the TA strategies, while the control group (n = 42) had not received any specific training. Both the experimental and control groups were examined twice, before and after the period of training. Pupils had to find the correct answer to a specific question (Access) and to critically analyze online texts, expressing different opinions on a topic (Analysis). The findings indicate a positive effect of the TA technique, mainly in the transferal of strategies aimed at a more correct evaluation of the websites’ reliability. Indeed, while for the control group only a marginal, if any, improvement was recorded fr...
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2018
ABSTRACT This paper describes the attitudes of pupils ranging from late childhood to adolescence ... more ABSTRACT This paper describes the attitudes of pupils ranging from late childhood to adolescence towards diversity expressed as disability, other gender and race in a context of full inclusion. For the study, two experiments were carried out asking a large sample (i.e. 764 + 160) of participants to choose a hypothetical classmate to share a series of different activities with. The hypothetical classmate could be chosen between: same gender pupil; other gender pupil; same gender pupil of the prototypical racial minority; same gender pupil using a wheelchair. In turn, activities included: an outdoor, highly motor demanding, game; an indoor board game; a purely social activity; a scholastic activity; and a gesture of solidarity and good-will. Results clearly demonstrate that pupils’ decisions are strongly modulated by the activity itself rather than by ethnic factors. Pupils aged 9–14 appear to have developed a finely tuned sense of ‘what works in which situations’. Accordingly, while a visible disability turns out to be very effective in gaining sympathy and eliciting pity, it results in a serious obstacle for the development of a close friendship between peers.
Background: The traditional paper and pencil tests are often inadequate to detect the mild forms ... more Background: The traditional paper and pencil tests are often inadequate to detect the mild forms of Unilateral Spatial Neglect (USN). Objective: To verify the effectiveness of a touchscreen-based cancellation test in assessing individuals with USN. Methods: Seven individuals, six with right and one with left brain damage, who showed moderate to severe USN at admission, were involved in the study. Besides classic paper and pencil tests, participants were presented with a new, “user-friendly”, device consisting of an interactive “table” that integrates the principles of ecologic interaction and sophisticated technology. Such a touch screen table made possible to analyse the spatial and temporal evolution of the participants’ performance, providing a set of indices related to “how” the different tasks have been fulfilled, rather than simple raw scores. Results: This new technological approach turned out to be much more sensitive than the classic paper and pencil tests to detect the sli...
Patients with naturally occurring lesions involving the anterior cingulate cortex are rare and th... more Patients with naturally occurring lesions involving the anterior cingulate cortex are rare and there thus exist very few reports of focal lesions in this area. We report a longitudinal study of a new case of selective anterior cingulate damage due to the presence of an angiocavernoma at the junction of the anterior third with the middle third of the right gyrus cinguli. Before surgery, the results of several, different tests suggested a significant impairment of executive functions, including deficits in planning, monitoring of ongoing behavior, and strategy shifting, as well as an exaggerated susceptibility to retroactive interference. Most of these symptoms disappeared completely or almost completely after the surgical removal of the angiocavernoma, although exaggerated susceptibility to interference was found to persist four months after surgery.
Inhibition of return (IOR) has been described as a hallmark of externally controlled orienting of... more Inhibition of return (IOR) has been described as a hallmark of externally controlled orienting of attention using extrafoveal cues and targets. This paper describes an IOR like inhibition of reaction time for the detection of targets at the fovea that cannot be explained by shift of covert attention. This foveal RT inhibition adds to the evidence that challenges the view of IOR-like phenomena as obligatory expressions of orienting and attentional control.
The present study aimed to explore how the sense of trustworthiness is in uenced by age and gende... more The present study aimed to explore how the sense of trustworthiness is in uenced by age and gender. Participants were to judge computer-generated faces for trustworthiness in two different experimental conditions according to the orientation of the virtual stimuli: canonical (i.e. upright) and inverted (i.e. upside down). Experimental stimuli were presented very brie y and were speci cally selected to look: trustworthy, untrustworthy or neutral. The results showed that the tendency to evaluate faces as trustworthy was modulated by both age and gender. In particular, young participants were more prone to judge faces as trustworthy than adult, elderly and child participants. In turn, males were more prone to evaluate faces as trustworthy than females, but this difference was not found among children.
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Papers by Andrea Peru