1,723,278 research outputs found
Familiarity and environmental representations of a city: a self-report study.
No full text"Sense of direction" is usually assessed by self-report. Several internal factors contribute to proficiency in navigation: spatial cognitive style, respondent's sex, and familiarity with the environment; however, questionnaires assessing sense of direction do not include all these factors. In a recent study, Nori and Piccardi reported that environmental familiarity was crucial for topographical orientation. Regardless of a person's spatial cognitive style (i.e., landmark, route, or survey), the greater their familiarity with the environment, the better their performance. In this study, a questionnaire was used, the Familiarity and Spatial Cognitive Style Scale, to measure 208 women's sense of direction and knowledge of their city of residence. Analysis showed that Spatial Cognitive Style predicted sense of direction but not town knowledge. By contrast, familiarity played a crucial role in both areas, confirming the importance of having a tool to assess this factor
The Walking Corsi Test (WalCT): standardization of the topographical memory test in an Italian population
No full textSelective visuo-spatial memory deficits can seriously affect many aspects of daily life; for example, an individual may not remember where he put an object or which path he took to reach his destination. In general, visuo-spatial memory is assessed through pen-and-paper tests that mainly assess memory components in periper- sonal space. Recent studies (Piccardi et al. in Exp Brain Res 206:171–177, 2010; Piccardi et al. in Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn 18:362–384, 2011) have shown that brain-damaged patients selectively fail on navigation memory tasks but not on other tests of visuo- spatial memory ability. These findings underline the need for a standardized test that measures memory in navigation separately from other types of visuo-spatial memory. Here, we report the validation of the Walking Corsi Test (Wal- CT: Piccardi et al. in Neurosci Lett 432:127–131, 2008) on 289 individuals aged 15–86 years. The WalCT is a new instrument that assesses topographical memory in real environments and reproduces on a large-scale version the Corsi Block-Tapping Test (CBT: Corsi in Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, 1972). The WalCT has been used in clinical practice and has proven sensitive in detecting navigational memory deficits even in individuals who have no other memory impair- ments (Piccardi et al. in Exp Brain Res 206:171–177, 2010; Piccardi et al. in Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neu- ropsychol Cogn 18:362–384, 2011; Bianchini et al. in Neuropsychologia 48:1563–1573, 2010)
The Walking Corsi Test (WalCT): standardization of the topographical memory test in an Italian population
No full textSelective visuo-spatial memory deficits can seriously affect many aspects of daily life; for example, an individual may not remember where he put an object or which path he took to reach his destination. In general, visuo-spatial memory is assessed through pen-and-paper tests that mainly assess memory components in peripersonal space. Recent studies (Piccardi et al. in Exp Brain Res 206:171-177, 2010; Piccardi et al. in Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn 18:362-384, 2011) have shown that brain-damaged patients selectively fail on navigation memory tasks but not on other tests of visuo-spatial memory ability. These findings underline the need for a standardized test that measures memory in navigation separately from other types of visuo-spatial memory. Here, we report the validation of the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT: Piccardi et al. in Neurosci Lett 432:127-131, 2008) on 289 individuals aged 15-86 years. The WalCT is a new instrument that assesses topographical memory in real environments and reproduces on a large-scale version the Corsi Block-Tapping Test (CBT: Corsi in Unpublished doctoral dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, 1972). The WalCT has been used in clinical practice and has proven sensitive in detecting navigational memory deficits even in individuals who have no other memory impairments (Piccardi et al. in Exp Brain Res 206:171-177, 2010; Piccardi et al. in Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn 18:362-384, 2011; Bianchini et al. in Neuropsychologia 48:1563-1573, 2010 ).Selective visuo-spatial memory deficits can seriously affect many aspects of daily life; for example, an individual may not remember where he put an object or which path he took to reach his destination. In general, visuo-spatial memory is assessed through pen-and-paper tests that mainly assess memory components in peripersonal space. Recent studies (Piccardi et al. in Exp Brain Res 206:171–177, 2010; Piccardi et al. in Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn 18:362–384, 2011) have shown that brain-damaged patients selectively fail on navigation memory tasks but not on other tests of visuospatial memory ability. These findings underline the need for a standardized test that measures memory in navigation separately from other types of visuo-spatial memory. Here, we report the validation of the Walking Corsi Test (Wal-CT: Piccardi et al. in Neurosci Lett 432:127–131, 2008) on 289 individuals aged 15–86 years. The WalCT is a new instrument that assesses topographical memory in re
The walking corsi test (WalCT): A normative study of topographical working memory in a sample of 4-to 11-Year-Olds
No full textWe report normative data on topographical working memory collected through the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT; Piccardi et al., 2008 ) for developing a standard administration procedure to be used in clinical and educational practice. A total of 268 typically developing Italian children aged 4-11 years performed both WalCT and Corsi Block-Tapping Test (CBT; Corsi, 1972 ) a well-known visuo-spatial memory test. WalCT has already been validated in adults, demonstrating sensitivity in detecting topographical memory deficits even in individuals who have no other memory impairments. Our results showed that age, but not sex, affected performances. Both girls and boys had a larger span on the CBT than the WalCT. The youngest group did not differ in performing WalCT and CBT, but from 5.6 years of age children performed better on CBT than WalCT, suggesting that memory in reaching space develops before topographical memory. Only after 5 years of age do children learn to process specifically topographical stimuli, suggesting that this happens when their environmental knowledge becomes operational and they increase environmental independence. We also discuss the importance to introduce WalCT in the clinical assessment.We report normative data on topographical working memory collected through the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT; Piccardi et al., 2008 ) for developing a standard administration procedure to be used in clinical and educational practice. A total of 268 typically developing Italian children aged 4-11 years performed both WalCT and Corsi Block-Tapping Test (CBT; Corsi, 1972 ) a well-known visuo-spatial memory test. WalCT has already been validated in adults, demonstrating sensitivity in detecting topographical memory deficits even in individuals who have no other memory impairments. Our results showed that age, but not sex, affected performances. Both girls and boys had a larger span on the CBT than the WalCT. The youngest group did not differ in performing WalCT and CBT, but from 5.6 years of age children performed better on CBT than WalCT, suggesting that memory in reaching space develops before topographical memory. Only after 5 years of age do children learn to process specifically topograp
Bilingual Frequency in a Favorable Context (BFFC) in the Italian dialectal area. Theoretical preliminaries to the analysis of geminate lateral retroflexion and voiceless plosives aspiration in Antona (MS)
Full text linkThe paper builds a theoretical framework for the application of the Bilingual Frequency in Favorable Context (BFFC) formula to the peculiar Italian linguistic setting. BFFC was first devised as a usage-based tool to weight the frequency effect of non-varying cognate words against the probability of variation phenomena in bilingual settings. Since Italian dialects are sister languages of the standard variety, speakers can be considered bilingual. However, no dialectal frequency corpora for the extraction of essential BFFC components are available. The paper suggests overcoming this hurdle using subjective frequency estimates and testing BFFC effectiveness through a picture-naming task and acceptability ratings. A critical overview of the phonetic features of interest is also presented, advancing proposals for future analyses
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