Executive Functions (EFs) are crucial top-down processes characterized by cool and hot aspects, required for goal-directed behaviour. Only a few studies evaluated and trained concurrently cool and hot EFs. Therefore, we promote a training aiming to enhance both EFs components. A total of 91 children attending the second year of kindergarten were…

The present study evaluated: (1) the effects of two training programs designed for promoting Theory of Mind (ToM) skills in children aged 7/8; and (2) the relations between second-order recursive thinking (II-order-RT), advanced-ToM (Adv_ToM) and metacognition. Ninety-one 7- to 8-year-old children were assigned to one of three training conditions:…

Verbal working memory resources may impact syntax comprehension. Thirteen Italian children with cochlear implants (CIs) were assessed in relative clause (RC) comprehension, digit span and nonword repetition and compared to 13 chronological age peers (CA) and 13 younger controls (LA) with normal hearing (NH). The RC comprehension task tested…

Several theoretical proposals tried to account for the meaning open-endedness of metaphors in literature and for the effortful process they trigger in readers. However, very few experiments have tackled the neurophysiological underpinnings of literary metaphor. Here we used Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) to explore the temporal dynamics of…

The present study aimed at investigating whether L2 learning affects phonological short-term and working memory and first language (L1) development. The performance of a group of 31 4- to-5-year-old sequential bilinguals attending an International School on tasks assessing phonological short-term and working memory and linguistic performance in L1…

The current study investigated the capacity of a new test assessing phonological awareness to detect differences between Italian children with and without developmental dyslexia. Specifically, the task involves blending of a list of pseudo-words, and excludes lexical knowledge as a source of task performance. Fifty-four third to fifith Italian…

Although metaphors are essential tools in everyday communication and educational settings, the literature lacks evidence of effective training tools to promote metaphor comprehension in typical development. Grounding in theoretical pragmatics, we developed a novel metaphor comprehension training (MetaCom) for school-age children that focuses on…

This study analyzed the potential transfer effects on reading comprehension skills of two different training programs administered to 9- to 10-year-old children attending fourth grade classes. One training program was based on a working memory updating paradigm (i.e., words, digits, sentence and text updating working memory tasks). The other…

This study investigated the roles of different executive function (EF) components (inhibition, shifting, and working memory) in 2-step arithmetic word problem solving. A sample of 139 children aged 8 years old and regularly attending the 3rd grade of primary school were tested on 6 EF tasks measuring different EF components, a reading task and a…

The purpose of the present study was to test the efficacy of a visuospatial working memory (WM) training in terms of its transfer effects and maintenance effects, in the young-old and old-old. Forty young-old and 40 old-old adults took part in the study. Twenty participants in each age group received training with a visuospatial WM task, whereas…

Difficulties in inhibitory processes have been shown to characterize the performance of poor comprehenders. However, the inhibitory inefficiency of poor comprehenders is most often assessed by their resistance to proactive interference, that is, the ability to suppress off-goal task information from working memory (WM). In two studies tasks…