Daniela Traficante

Background: The present study aimed to clarify the neurocognitive processes through which blood levels of omega-3 LCPUFAs affect reading and writing abilities. Methods: A total of 74 school-age children whose reading and writing skills varied from normal to largely below normal underwent an assessment of reading and writing abilities, auditory and visual processing, phonological awareness, attention, and executive functions. Exploratory factor analysis extracted three neuropsychological factors whose roles as mediators between omega-3 LCPUFAs and reading/writing abilities were tested in GLM mediation models. The possible interactions with other PUFAs were further investigated. Results (on 73 participants): Omega-3 LCPUFA levels (EPA and DHA) correlated with reading and writing abilities and with the three extracted factors. Auditory–phonological processing skills were found to be significant mediators of the effect of PUFAs (especially EPA) on reading and writing abilities, whereas DHA and AA/ALA significantly moderated some of these effects. Conclusions: The link between omega-3 LCPUFAs and reading and writing abilities seems to be mediated mainly by the effects of LCPUFAs on auditory–phonological processing skills. These effects are especially linked to EPA, but they are modulated by DHA and AA/ALA levels. Hypotheses about possible molecular mechanisms at the basis of these effects are discussed.

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.

Based on the simple view of reading (SVR), we investigated factors associated with reading comprehension in Second Language (L2) minority children learning a highly consistent orthography through a network analysis. Bilingual and monolingual children participated in the research. Consistent with prior findings, reading speed supported reading comprehension for L1 learners, whereas, for L2 learners, correct decoding carried greater weight than reading speed. In monolingual children, vocabulary and morphosyntactic comprehension contributed jointly and independently to reading comprehension success. However, only vocabulary facilitated reading comprehension in bilingual children, with morphosyntactic skills showing no influence. While monolinguals benefitted from a rich vocabulary and good morphosyntactic knowledge for reading speed and accuracy, in bilingual children, only L2 reading speed was affected by linguistic skills.

A new dyslexia screening test for Italian, Tiltan-IT, is presented. The test was developed based on an integrated dual-route model of reading, which describes in detail specific mechanisms underpinning early visual processes as well as the lexical and the sublexical routes. The principle according to which the test was developed is that each dyslexia type is manifested in different kinds of errors and in different kinds of stimuli, and we therefore included stimuli sensitive to each dyslexia type in the test. Tiltan-IT is a reading aloud test that includes word, nonword, and word pair lists. The test was administered to 618 Italian-speaking children (2nd–8th grade). Each error produced by the children was classified through the coding scheme developed to detect the different types of dyslexias described by the reading model. The Tiltan-IT was able to identify 110 children with dyslexia. The identified dyslexia types included letter position dyslexia, attentional dyslexia, letter identity dyslexia, surface dyslexia, vowel dyslexia, consonant conversion dyslexia, multi-letter phonological dyslexia, voicing dyslexia. The results confirm that the selection of items in the Tiltan-IT enabled the detection of the wide variety of dyslexias in Italian, some of them for the first time, adding evidence for the cross-linguistic validity of multiple types of developmental dyslexias and for the dual-route model of reading.

The current exploratory study aimed to offer a description of the learning skills and well-being of multilingual adolescents with Italian as L2, a population regarded as vulnerable with respect to their academic achievements and psychosocial profile. We compared the performance of L2 participants with that of their monolingual peers with and without Specific Learning Disorders on a range of tests and questionnaires to define their learning skills and well-being within the school context. Results confirm greater reading difficulties in the L2 group compared to monolingual peers with Specific Learning Disorders. This pilot study offers one of the first investigations into the learning skills and well-being of a scarcely studied population, namely L2 adolescents. Additionally, it discusses practices that can be implemented within the classroom to promote inclusion.

We explored the relationship between a visual scanning strategy and a facial emotion recognition deficit in Parkinson's disease (PD). Thirty nondemented PD patients (balanced for symptom side at onset) and 20 age, education and gender-matched healthy controls (HC) were enrolled. The PD group underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological battery also exploring the executive functions. In both groups, eye movements were recorded while subjects categorized facial emotion from Ekman's 60-faces test. We were particularly interested in the location of fixations on facial pictures (top vs. bottom) and in emotional valence (positive vs. negative). We also compared performance of the two groups on a verbal emotion attribution task. Compared to HC, PD patients performed worse on visual recognition of negative emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness (where the upper part of the face is more informative than the lower part); the two groups did not differ on the verbal emotion attribution task. HC modified their visual scanning strategy (both number and overall time duration of fixations) according to the valence of the emotion; by contrast, PD showed the same pattern regardless of the valence. In the PD group, accuracy in the visual recognition of negative emotions and fixation pattern correlated with performance on tasks exploring executive functions; however, no associations were observed with severity of motor state. Our results suggest that visual scanning strategy contributes significantly to the facial emotion recognition deficit of PD patients, especially at a "high level" related to cognitive control of eye movements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Technology innovation has been leading to the development of an increasing number of applications that aim to support the rehabilitation of cognitive functions

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.

Reading and writing skills influence the social status of students, exerting effects not only on learning, but also on wellbeing. This study aimed to assess the impact of diagnosis of specific learning disorder on well-being in secondary-school students, comparing students with a diagnosis of specific learning disorder (SLD-group), students showing learning difficulties without diagnosis (LD-group) and students without learning difficulties (control-group). Students were tested with neuropsychological screening tests in order to identify learning difficulties and were further assessed by means of psychological and school well-being questionnaires. The results show that LD group perceive themselves as having a low sense of mastery and autonomy, less interest and engagement in daily activities and low peer social support than their schoolmates. This result highlights, for the LD group, a low well-being experience, which is not observed in the SLD and control groups. On the contrary, SLD group students do not differ from control group students in any dimensions except for the perceived parents’ support and involvement in school life, in which the SLD group show the highest scores. This work underlines the importance of having a diagnosis as it seems to work as a protective factor for both the psychological and school well-being of the student.