Academic literature on the topic 'M-PSI/04'

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Parent stress and coping impacts reward and motivation circuits during child development which influence self-regulation. One well known maladaptive coping response is alcohol or drinking-to-cope (DTC). This study assessed differences in stress and child behaviors among DTC parents as compared to non-DTC parents. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Baseline data was used from parents of a 2-5-year-old who were screened for a larger study assessing a mindfulness-based parent stress reduction intervention to improve healthy choices for themselves and their families. The sample included 172 parent-child dyads, mean parent age was 34.4 (6.1) years old, 56.3% white, mean child age was 3.6 (1.2) years old, 52.3% male. Subjective stress was assessed using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), parent-specific stress was assessing using the Parenting Stress Index (PSI), DTC was assessed using the COPE inventory, and child behaviors were assessed using the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment. To investigate the differences in stress and child behaviors between DTC parents and non-DTC parents independent samples t-tests were conducted. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: DTC was significantly correlated with PSS (r= 0.23, p<.01), PSI (r= 0.26, p<.01), child self-control (r= -0.16, p= .03), child attention problems (r= 0.22, p<.01), and total behavioral concerns (r= 0.16, p=.04). After excluding those who do not drink alcohol at all, we found significantly higher perceived stress among DTC parents (M= 27.83, SD= 9.79) compared to non-DTC parents (M= 23.79, SD= 8.40), t(80)= 2.02, p= .02. For children, we found significantly higher aggression scores for children of DTC parents (M= 47.16, SD= 31.69) compared to children of non-DTC parents (M=35.83, SD=25.72), t(84)= 1.83, p= .04. And greater attention problems among children of DTC parents (M= 73.97, SD= 26.77) compared to children of non-DTC parents (M= 56.71, SD= 34.09), t(84)=2.63, p=.01. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Stress and DTC may contribute to negative behaviors in children. An intervention designed to decrease stress and increase adaptive coping mechanism in parents could benefit health child socioemotional and behavioral development. Future analyses will examine third variable effects in the relationship between stress, coping, and child behaviors.

Abstract 'Pungo' potatoes were planted 4 Apr near Powells Point, N.C. Three row plots, 6.1 m long and 1.06 m apart were replicated 4 times in a randomized complete block design. Granular treatments were applied using shaker jars to broadcast the material or place it in the furrow before planting. DZN AG500 was applied over the row with a CO2 pressurized backpack sprayer with a flat fan nozzle (80 04 E) operating at 40 psi to deliver 61.3 liter/ha. Broadcast materials were incorporated to a depth of 5 cm with a hand rake. Potatoes from the middle row of the plots were harvested 25 Jul, yields recorded, and the amount of wireworm-damaged tubers was recorded by weight and number of tubers. If at least 25 tubers were not found, potatoes from one of the other rows of a plot were harvested and evaluated.

Field evaluation of 44 mungbean Vigna radiata (L.) germplasm was carried out during kharif and rabi 2012 for screening against resistance to pod borer complex. The population of legume pod borer, Maruca vitrata (Geyer) larva was assessed at flowering stage. The damage in the pods were estimated in the harvested pods for different borer pests viz., M. vitrata, gram pod borer Helicoverpa armigera (Hub.), blue butterfly Lampides boeticus L., pod bug Riptortus sp. Based on cumulative pod damage, Pest Score Index (PSI) was worked out for all the germplasm. The results revealed that population of legume pod borer larva were more during kharif (0.33- 3.75/plant) than rabi (0.13-1.50/plant) season. The damage based scoring, PSI indicated that none of the mungbean germplasm was recorded as resistant. However, five entries were moderately resistant with PSI 3 during kharif. In rabi season two entries were recorded as moderately resistant. Four germplasm viz., KM 2-B, NPM 3-1, VGG 90, VGG 04-016 grouped as moderately resistant in both seasons with consistency in their level of resistance against pod borer complex.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior and interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). These key characteristics of autism each create a number of difficulties for individuals with autism and also their parents. It is well established that parenting a child with ASD is stressful, impacting on mental health and overall quality of life (Baker-Ericzn, Brookman-Frazee, & Stahmer, 2005; Davis & Carter, 2008; Eisenhower, Baker, & Blacher, 2005; McStay, Dissanayake, Scheeren, Koot, & Begeer, 2013). However, there are some doubts or gaps in the literature of parenting children with ASD which we addressed in this thesis. Two main goals of this thesis were: a) examining well-being of parents of children with ASD, b) focusing on the parents’ responses to cries of infants with ASD and typical development, considering two types of responses: emotional and physiological. Therefore, this thesis is composed of two parts. The first part in which we aimed to examine well-being of parents of children with ASD has been divided into two sections. The first one dealt with similarities and differences between mothers and fathers in terms of parenting stress, parental mental health and attitude (Chapter 2). Results indicated that mothers of children with ASD reported higher level of depression than fathers and considerable percentages of both mothers and fathers had scores above the clinical cut-points of stress showing that they experience clinically significant levels of parenting stress. Moreover, in terms of parental attitude, mothers engaged with their children in more social exchange than fathers do. 8 The final chapter in Part 1 (Chapter 3) evaluated whether maternal well-being and sense of competence are affected by the outcomes of children receiving intervention. The results suggested that child and family factors, including mothers’ age, were linked to maternal well-being. However treatment-related changes in children’s communication, and parenting satisfaction contributed to well-being above and beyond other factors. A mediation analysis indicated that mothers whose children make treatment gains in communication skills experience a reduction in their level of negative well-being as a consequence of increased parental sense of competence with regards to parenting satisfaction. The second part of the thesis aimed to evaluate emotional and physiological responses of parents of children with ASD during infant crying. This part begins by laying out the theoretical dimensions of the research, and then proceeds as follows: a) the first experiment was concerned with the preparation and validation the cry episodes as unpleasant acoustic stimuli (Chapter 4); b) the second one examined emotional and physiological responses of non-parents adults while listening of infant crying (Chapter 5); c) the last experiment focused on parents of children with ASD and parents of typically developing children, examining their emotional and physiological responses during the listening of crying of children with ASD and of typically developing (TD) children (Chapter 6). Findings from Chapter 4 indicated that all cry episodes, regardless of the types (e.g., cries of children with ASD or cries of typically developing children) were perceived as unpleasant by non-parents adults. The following study in Chapter 5 showed that cries of children with ASD (ASD cry) were reported more stressed, aroused and less pleasant compare to cries of typically developing children (TD cry) by non-parents adults; however, similar pattern was not seen in the physiological responses of listeners. Results 9 from the final experiment (Chapter 6) showed that parents of children with ASD and parents of TD children were not differentiated in their self-reports of stress, arousal and valence levels for ASD cry and TD cry. However, their physiological responses showed that parents of children with ASD have higher heart rate than parents of TD children during ASD cry and TD cry. Moreover, the analysis on the comparisons between ASD cry and TD cry suggested both parents perceived ASD cry more stressful, aroused and less pleasant, but physiological responses of parents of children with ASD did not show the differences between ASD cry and TD cry. The overall structure of the thesis takes the form of seven chapters, including a general introduction (Chapter 1). The importance of those findings for future theoretical and clinical work is considered in detail in the end of related chapters and in the general discussion chapter (Chapter 7).

Mother child relationship is the first and the most important social relationship as it has implications on psychological and neural development of the individual. Here we investigated mother child relationship focusing on different aspects and using a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging techniques. In the first study we addressed the association between brain connectivity and interpersonal competences which are at the basis of every social interaction including the ones involved in mother-child relationship. Several studies suggests that higher White Matter (WM) integrity - an index of increased brain connectivity - , is associated with better cognition and behavioural performance. To test the hypothesis that higher WM integrity is associated with higher interpersonal competence we used Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), a neuroimaging technique which allows to study in vivo the anatomy of boundless of axons conveying information in the brain. Then we correlated this information with a self-reported measure of interpersonal competences: the Adolescent Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire (AICQ). Results indicate that Interpersonal competence is associate with higher WM integrity in several major tracts of the right hemisphere, in specific the uncinate fasciculus, the cingulum, the forceps minor, the infero-fronto occipital fasciculus, the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, and the superior longitudinal fasciculus. These results provide the first direct analysis of the neuroanatomical basis of interpersonal competencies and young adult self-reported skills in social contexts. In the second work we used the same paradigm to test one of the main assumption of the attachment theory which states that social skills highly depends on the quality of attachment relationship. Results show higher integrity in four white matter association fibers in the left hemisphere: Uncinate Fasciculus, Cingulum, Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus and Inferior Fronto Occipital Fasciculus. This result supports the idea that the quality of the attachment relationship influences the emotional and social life of the individual from childhood to adulthood. Furthermore, the research represents an explorative approach to the study of mother-child relationship in healthy population, demonstrating the feasibility of using neuroimaging tools coupled with clinical investigations. Together those studies show that efficient structural connectivity is linked with secure attachment, improved social cognition and cognitive ability. Similarities and differences emerged in these studies will be discussed at the end of Chapter 3 in particular regarding left and right hemisphere specialization. In the second part of the thesis we switched the focus on parenting behaviour. Evidence from the literature suggest an association between Axonal Integrity measured with FA and functional connectivity measured with TMS in two region involved in preparing ad executing actions: premotor and motor cortex. Moreover neuroimaging reveals that infant cries activate parts of the premotor cortical system. In line with this evidence we linked parenting and brain functional connectivity conducting a study on motor cortex excitability in response of infant cries. We used event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigated the presence and the time course of modulation of motor cortex excitability in young adults who listened to infant cries. TMS was delivered from 0 to 250 ms from sound onset in six steps of 50 ms in 10 females and 10 males. Motor Evoked Potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the biceps brachii (BB) and interosseus dorsalis primus (ID1) muscles. Results indicate an excitatory modulation of MEPs at 100 ms from the onset of the infant cry specific to females and to the ID1 muscle. This modulation is considered as automatic response to natural cry as it was not present in response of control sounds and the effect is found at 100-ms latency which make this modulation not compatible with a voluntary reaction to the stimulus but suggests an automatic, bottom-up audiomotor association. These results indicate that the brains of adult females appear to be tuned to respond to infant cries with automatic motor excitation. This effect may reflect the greater and longstanding burden on females in caregiving infants. The second part of the thesis continue with a study addressing the natural condition in which baby cries arise when the parent is not attending for infant stimulation. In this study we investigated how infant crying, compared to control sounds, captures adults’ attentive resources. Participants were all nulliparous women and men, we investigated the effects of different sounds on cerebral activation of the default mode network (DMN) while listeners engaged in two different kind of tasks: one designed to activate the DMN ( self-referential decision task) and one designed to deactivate the DMN (syllabic counting tasks). We found a strong deactivation of DMN in woman during baby cry which suggest a shift of attention from self-referential thinking toward the baby cry stimuli. In men we found instead a weaker deactivation of DMN during woman cry while their attention was directed toward an external task and simultaneously a sudden woman crying arise. Gender differences found in our studies and in the literature will be discussed. In the third part of the thesis we investigated the ability to discriminate synchrony and asynchrony during interaction between mother and child with typical or atypical development. We tested two kind of population: in the first study we compared parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to parents of children with Typical Development (TD). In the second study we used the Autistic Quotient questionnaire to divide the sample in two groups according with their autistic traits. The relevance of this task is due to the extreme importance to promptly individuate cues of abnormal social behavior in those cases in which the child might shows deficit in the social development. We hypothesized that individual related with a child with ASD or an individual with high autistic traits, might show similar social difficulties as the individual with ASD finding more challenging to detect cue of appropriate or unappropriated social behavior. To test this hypothesis we asked parents of children with ASD and parents of children with TD to judge video of interactions between mothers and child with ASD and mothers and child with TD. Each video were 20s long and depicted either a synchrony or asynchrony interaction, as categorized by an expert clinician. Contrary to our initial hypothesis results indicate that parents of children with ASD are as accurate as parents of children with TD in discriminating synchrony and asynchrony interaction with ASD, however they are less accurate than parents of children with TD in judging interaction with TD. In the second study by testing individual with higher autistic traits (HAQ group) versus lower autistic traits (LAQ group) we confirmed this trend. Using the same paradigm we found that both groups were less accurate during asynchrony interaction. However HAQ was more accurate in judging synchrony interaction with ASD while LAQ was more accurate in judging synchrony interaction with TD. This result indicate a facilitation effects in understanding interaction which include people that share similar characteristic with the observer disconfirming the hypothesis that people with higher autistic traits would have more difficulties in understanding social interactions and pointing the attention on other factors which might contribute during this process. A discussion on the need of further investigation using neuroimaging techniques to understand similarities and differences on neural processing of social interactions is provided at the end of Chapter 4.

La ricerca indaga due aree delle cognizione sociale: la Teoria della Mente (ToM) e la valutazione sociale. Nella prima parte è stato indagato quando e come emerge il ragionamento psicologico, inteso come l’abilità di inferire gli stati mentali altrui. Nel primo studio gli esperimenti valutano la capacità negli infanti di attribuire le false credenze attraverso lo sguardo anticipatorio (misure implicite) e anche negli adulti, attraverso compiti verbali (misure esplicite). I risultati hanno rivelato nei bambini di 17 mesi il possesso di un implicita TOM e danno quindi sostegno alle teorie modulari che prevedono una precoce attivazione di capacità metarappresentazionali. Nel secondo studio, sono stati condotti due esperimenti e confrontate due popolazioni di infanti, udenti e sordi. I risultati hanno mostrato il ruolo della precoce esperienza comunicativa, verbale o dei segni, sullo sviluppo della ToM. Un terzo studio condotto sui bambini prescolari bilingui e monolingui, ha rivelato migliori abilità di ragionamento inferenziale e pragmatico nei bambini bilingui. Il quarto studio ha indagato il substrato neurale, sottostante la ToM, per verificare l’ipotesi modulare, analizzando le prestazioni a compiti di ToM di pazienti neurologici, con lesione prevalentemente focale nella corteccia prefrontale, e controllando la co-azione di altri processi cognitivi, come le funzioni esecutive e l’intelligenza generale. I risultati hanno confermato l’ipotesi modulare e del dominio specifico della Teoria della Mente, esaminando una delle regioni neurali, ritenuta specializzata nelle rappresentazione degli stati mentali altrui: la corteccia prefrontale ventromediale. Nella seconda parte del lavoro è stata studiata la valutazione sociale delle azioni distributive nella prima infanzia. Sono stati condotti due studi che hanno indagato le inferenze delle disposizioni altrui, anche in seguito a giudizi su comportamenti distributivi operati da diversi agenti. I risultati hanno rivelato nei bambini di 16 mesi la capacità di inferire le disposizioni degli agenti, quando queste sono successive ad un processo di valutazione sociale dei comportamenti altrui. Le conclusioni hanno implicazioni teoriche che sostengono le nuove proposte sull’origine evolutiva del senso morale.

Growing up as bilingual seem to exert some positive and negative effects on general cognitive functioning. Positive gains concern a earlier maturation of the attentional system in childhood and its later decline in adulthood. Bilinguals have been shown to be advantaged , compared to their monolingual peers in tasks requiring control of attention: they are more accurate in judging the grammaticality of sentences (Bialystok et al.1986); faster in the Attentional Network Test and in the Simon task (Costa et al 2007; Bialystok et al.2005).On the other hand bilinguals are disadvantaged in t asks requiring speech production : they are slower in acceding to the lexical representation of words (Ivanova, Costa,2007); they exhibit more tip of the tonguge states (Gollan & Silvenberg, 2001) and they show lower rates in retrieving verbal stimuli (Gollan,2002).If bilingualism can exert these influence sin boosting and hampering these so general cognitive functions, bilinguals children might also show these effects across domains.We surveyed the presence of these advantages and disadvantages in a domain so relevant as it is speaking two languages that is the number field. Bilinguals and monolinguals children were asked to perform three different number tasks: number Stroop, verification and dot counting.Unlike in the study of Bialystok et al. (2004; 2005) who employed a classical Stroop task, no difference was found between mono- and bilinguals as for the number Stroop effect. In the verification task, an associative confusion effect was found in the bilingual but not in the monolingual group. Finally, when children were asked to count, bilinguals performed equally well as their monolingual peers in counting items in the subitizing range only, whereas they were slower than their peers when they counted from 4 to 9 dots. This latter result, in particular, is consistent with many psycholinguistic studies claiming that bilinguals are disadvantaged in tasks requiring lexical access (Costa & Caramazza, 1999), and extend them to the number processing domain.

My PhD project mainly focused on understanding how a child or adolescent copes with pain associated with a disease, intended in a broader sense (i.e. procedures, treatments and disease-related). I tried to prove an innovative perspective that can help understand the wide variation in children’s pain experience, by considering intra-interpersonal influences, contextual factors, and intrapsychic factors that focus on needs, defenses, and self-structure. Overall, the whole project involved three pediatric units in Italy: the pediatric wards of Trento and Rovereto hospitals and the pediatric clinic of San Gerardo hospital, Monza (Milan). This doctoral thesis has achieved five goals: 1. Providing a selective overview on current relevant topics in the pediatric pain research and state of the art regarding the existing models of pediatric pain. 2. Developing a multi-dimensional protocol with an intra-method design for the assessment of pediatric pain in several chronic illnesses (cystic fibrosis, rheumatic diseases, cancer), by using also a battery of projective tests (drawings) to screen the emotional adjustment. 3. Validating the protocol by extending the methodology of projective drawings’ scoring with a control group and adding other assessment variables on a single cohort of patients (with malignant hematologic cancer) to test the new model that I developed. Quantitative analysis phase preceded qualitative analysis phase within the same framework to yield a parallel mixed analysis. 4. Planning specific training modules about pain management, starting from a bottom-up process concerning the local health professionals’ needs. I investigated these training needs through a series of open-ended questions, analyzed by a thematic analysis method. 5. Evaluate treatment’s feasibility, acceptability, and satisfaction of a problem-solving skills training for parents of children who have received an intensive pain rehabilitation from one pediatric pain rehabilitation program (Seattle Children's Hospital). I provided a methodological contribute within the mixed-method approach (statistical analysis and grounded theory). The results presented and their implications, are discussed in a clinical perspective since the rationale of this dissertation is that effective pain assessment must be multidimensional, multidisciplinary and at the same time feasible and practical to meet each pediatric patient’s needs.

People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties in dealing with social interaction (DSM V, 2013). From long time, it has been reported deficit in recognizing gaze, face and intentions of others. Besides that, in the last decade numerous finds have showed an impairment in coding the human body movements. During my PhD I have explored the ability in recognizing the emotional valence of human movements in people with ASD and with typical development. In order to understand developmental changes, I have initially compared this ability between children and adults. In order to understand the role of intelligence, I have included people with high and low functioning ASD, either in children and adults samples. In the first study, we compared TD children and children with ASD with different level of functioning to investigate i) whether the difficulties in ASD population were associated to emotion comprehension or related to a more basic visual processing of biological motion, and ii) to explore whether this ability improves according to the age and to the non-verbal IQ. To this purposes, we presented point-light (PLDs) and full-light (FLDs) version of human movements with three different emotional valence (Happy, Fearful, Neutral). Our main findings showed that: -TD children were more accurate in recognizing the emotional content of body movements when the shape of the body was visible (i.e. FLDs), compared to the view of pure motion information (i.e. PLDs), but there were no differences in RT across display conditions. This result suggests that school-aged children are able to correctly identify the emotional valence of dynamic bodily expression, also when the form information is minimized by presenting PLDs. -According to the emotional content, we found that the valence had an effect on the performance of TD children. In particular, TD children recognized happy bodily expressions with lower accuracy than fearful and neutral movements. Besides, fearful movements were identified more rapidly. We hypothesized that, from an evolutionary point of view, it is more important to recognize fearful signals when they are far from us. Body movements are particularly relevant to convey other people’s state and intentions from a distance, hence bodies are preferential channels to convey fearful signals. -Comparing typical and atypical children, we found that TD were more accurate and more rapid than children with ASD in recognizing the emotional valence of body movements. Moreover, children with HF ASD outperformed children with LF ASD and their performance was significantly predicted from age and nonverbal IQ. This results suggest that the nonverbal abilities have a role in body movement comprehension, probably underpinning the development of compensatory mechanisms which improve with age. -Compared to TD children, children with ASD were impaired not only in understanding the emotional expressions, but also in recognizing the neutral actions. Irrespectively to their IQ level, children with ASD did not benefit from the richness of visual information, and their ability to recognize BM did not change according to the emotional valence. This finding suggests that the difficulty encountered by individuals with ASD in social interaction could be more generally related to biological motion elaboration, rather than being specific for the emotions comprehension. Hence, the lack in emotion recognition in ASD seems to be attributable to a deficit in elaborating motion cues rather than emotional information. To interpret the body movements, children with ASD may adopt compensatory mechanisms, which acquisition seems to be mediated by the nonverbal IQ and improving with age. If this was the case, we should expect an improvement in the ability of recognizing the BM in adults with ASD, with respect to children with ASD, and this improvement should have been correlated with the non-verbal IQ level. To explore this hypothesis, we run a second experiment, were we asked to a group of TD adults, a group of adults with high functioning Autism matched for age and non-verbal IQ, and a group of adults with low functioning Autism matched for age, to performed the same BM recognition task that children did in our first experiment. Results with adults confirmed what we found in children: the emotional valence and the richness of visual information did not modulate the Accuracy and the velocity in recognizing the BM stimuli in ASD, suggesting that the whole body movement is elaborated differently in ASD than in TD adults and that the impairment in ASD is more related to the processing of body movement, rather than being specific for the emotion comprehension. In a third study, we explored the developmental changes in the ability of recognizing the emotional meaning of human whole-body movements from childhood to adulthood. To this aim, we compared the performance between children and adults in each group of Functioning. Results showed that TD adults were more accurate and faster than TD children; FLDs were recognized with higher accuracy and quicker than PLDs; and fearful and neutral movements were recognized significantly better than happy ones. In participants with ASD, adults were significantly more accurate than children, but not faster. Also, we did not find any difference between displays or emotional categories. This results suggest that the understanding of body movements in individuals with ASD improve with age but the mechanism underpinning this ability works differently. In a fourth experiment we investigate whether the impairment in understanding social relevant signals in individuals with high functioning autism (HF ASD) was restricted to body movements or widespread to other social cues, such as facial expressions. Also, we investigated the role of movement in perceiving bodily expressions. To this aim, we explored whether there was a difference in recognizing the body expressions represented by dynamic or static stimuli. Finally, we investigated whether the vision of the body form, compared to the sight of pure motion information, could influence the identification of the emotional content of body movements. We did not found any group differences in accuracy, but there was a group difference in RTs specific for dynamic stimuli (TD were significantly faster than ASD in recognizing PLDs, and marginally in FLDs). These results suggest that HF ASD adopt compensatory mechanism to understand the meaning of facial and bodily expression that allow them to correctly recognize the emotional valence conveyed by face and body movements. However, this mechanism has a cost in terms of rapidity. In particular, ASD seems to need more time to identify dynamic body stimuli but not images of body expressions, suggesting a deficit in processing the actual body motion. In particular, the comprehension of happy body movements result difficult and time consuming. Indeed, happiness was better recognized from facial expressions and was harder to be identified when expressed by body movements. In the fifth experiment we used TMS-adaptation paradigm to explore the existence of a neural system specialized for the elaboration of emotional body movements. We first behaviourally investigated the existence of an adaptation for emotional PLDs. TD adult participant were adapted with point-light video clips depicting fearful, happy or neutral actions and then asked to recognize point-light with same/different emotional content. Results showed an adaptation after-effect only for incongruent stimuli, suggesting the existence of a neural mechanism for perceiving the body emotion specifically. Subsequently, in a TMS experiment we explore the possible brain location of this mechanism. The sites we stimulated are nodes of the neural network responsible for the human motion understanding, and they are reported to be abnormally activated in ASD. We found a reversed after-effect following TMS over aIPS, while the adaptation was still present after stimulation over pSTS and the control site. These results demonstrate that aIPS contains neurons that specifically code for the emotional body expressions, suggesting that the difficulties encountered by individuals with ASD in understanding the emotional signal during social interaction might rely to deficit in this mirror area.

Finding the way home, orienting into familiar and unfamiliar environments, computing our place and position with reference to internal and external cues are essential everyday tasks for animals. It is generally acknowledged that these tasks are accomplished by the brain by means of the internal formation of complex spatial representation, the so called “cognitive maps†. How the brain can form these cognitive maps is a very debated issue in the field of neuroscience. An important stream of research tried to find out what the main environmental features the brain tends to store while navigating are. In order to investigate this, researchers have observed the behavior of animals after being disoriented in a familiar environment. The reorientation paradigm turned out to be a very interesting tool to study spatial cognition because it allows researchers to figure out which environmental components the animals remember and rely on in order to find their way after they have lost track of their heading and position. Experiments with both human adults, children and nonhuman animals have shown that an important feature of the environment the subjects tend to store to reorient is the geometry of the boundaries’ layout (e.g., room shape). Children from as early as 2 years of age have been shown to be able to use the geometric shape of the spatial layout by searching an object hidden in one corner of a rectangular enclosure both in the correct corner and in its geometric equivalent. But which perceptual and physical factors define spatial boundaries? Which geometric components of boundaries are children most sensitive to? How are the same geometric components used in other spatial tasks such as map reading? In our studies we tried to answer these fundamental questions. In our first study we investigated whether children are sensitive to boundaries that constitute either physical or visual obstacles. To this aim we tested children in a reorientation task with both an arena made up of transparent surfaces and an arena made up of opaque surfaces. By using transparent surfaces, we were able to minimize the visually occlusive component of the boundaries but leave intact its physical component. Opaque boundaries presented, instead, both the visual and physical components. In our second study, we further investigated how does the material and visual appearance of boundaries affect navigation by testing children in an arena made up of 20 closely-aligned objects. In this experiment we made the surfaces visually discontinuous, but the configuration of objects was made sufficiently dense to prevent movement and to underline the geometric structure. In our third study, we asked which components of the Euclidean geometry are children most sensitive to while navigating by geometric boundaries and making a map task. In particular we investigated the use of distance and length both in a reorientation task and a map-placement task. The results showed that important developmental changes occur in children’s representation of spatial boundaries and of their geometric components. In particular children became proficient at using transparent surfaces only at the age of five and they start using boundaries made up of closely- aligned objects at the age of seven. At the same time, we showed that the young children (36 to 42 months) reorient correctly in a disorientation task by using the geometric property of distance, rather than length. The same group of children were shown not to be able to use distance nor length in a map task, while they showed the ability to use angle. These results suggest that not all kinds of boundaries are processed equally by children and that their visual aspect might be more important that their property of being obstacles to movement, particularly early in development. They are important because they inform of which material and physical properties of boundaries children are most sensitive to and they can help understanding how to design and build safe environments for children. Moreover, they suggest the geometric property used by young children to reorient is distance, essentially contributing to the wide debate on how children and animals could solve the reorientation task. Finally, they showed that the use of geometric properties in a reorientation task and in a map task might have two different developmental trajectories, suggesting these two competences might be mediated by two different systems and providing an important insight into the development of geometric competences in children.

Linguaggio e numero rappresentano due aspetti centrali nella storia del genere umano, dal momento che competenze precoci sono già descritte a partire dalla preistoria, accompagnano l’uomo durante la sua esistenza e non sono condivise pienamente da altre specie. I neonati mostrano già delle predisposizioni per gli stimoli linguistici e numerici, queste abilità si sviluppano precocemente nei primi anni di vita e accompagnano il bambino durante l’iter scolastico e l’adulto nella vita di tutti i giorni. Linguaggio e numero condividono, quindi, molte caratteristiche e lo studio di tali competenze e delle loro relazioni aggiunge importanti riflessioni alle teorie dello sviluppo. Inoltre lo studio di questi aspetti in popolazioni con sviluppo tipico, atipico e a rischio permette una migliore comprensione della complessità dinamica dello sviluppo all’interno di una prospettiva neurocostruttivista interessata ai processi sottostanti e non agli esiti finali. La tesi analizza la letteratura sulle competenze linguistiche (orali: cap. 1; scritte: cap. 2; relazioni: cap. 3), numeriche (sistema numerico approssimativo: cap. 4; sistema numerico esatto: cap. 5; relazioni: cap. 6) e sulle loro relazioni (cap. 7), descrivendo le ricerche che si sono occupate delle popolazioni con sviluppo tipico, atipico e a rischio. In ogni singolo capitolo sono confrontate le competenze linguistiche e numeriche e le loro reciproche relazioni in bambini con sviluppo tipico (nati a termine) e bambini nati pretermine sani, caratterizzati da un’elevata immaturità neonatale. I dati sono stati raccolti alla fine della scuola dell’infanzia e dopo due anni di scolarizzazione per comprendere le traiettorie evolutive in due momenti rilevanti di transizione. I risultati emersi hanno aggiunto nuove considerazioni interessanti per i bambini con sviluppo tipico, soprattutto rispetto alle relazioni tra linguaggio e numero che rappresentano un campo non ancora esplorato. I dati emersi con i nati pretermine hanno mostrato che questi bambini non presentano un ritardo cognitivo generalizzato, ma difficoltà specifiche e relazioni diverse da quelle descritte nello sviluppo tipico, indicando la presenza di una traiettoria che possiamo definire atipica. I risultati ottenuti aggiungono importanti considerazioni teoriche rispetto alle relazioni tra competenze innate ed apprese e tra fasi di acquisizione e di consolidamento delle abilità. Al tempo stesso emergono importanti indicazioni cliniche per la programmazione di interventi specifici per il recupero delle competenze maggiormente compromesse nei nati pretermine.