Papers by Chiara Meneghetti
Brain Sciences
Down syndrome (DS) is the most common syndromic cause of intellectual disability, so it has long ... more Down syndrome (DS) is the most common syndromic cause of intellectual disability, so it has long been of interest to researchers [...]
Relazione tra aspetti della comprensione del testo e prestazione di studio in studenti di prima superiore
RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA, 2010
Numerosi studi hanno evidenziato che varie abilitŕ cognitive e metacognitive sono implicate nella... more Numerosi studi hanno evidenziato che varie abilitŕ cognitive e metacognitive sono implicate nella comprensione del testo, come ad esempio la capacitŕ di fare inferenze o la capacitŕ di monitorare il livello di comprensione. La ricerca si č proposta di verificare se le abilitŕ di comprensione possano essere distinte in "aspetti di base" (vale a dire aspetti legati al testo come individuare un personaggio, la sequenza degli eventi ecc.) e "aspetti complessi" (che si riferiscono ad abilitŕ cognitive e metacognitive come ad esempio utilizzare strategie flessibili di comprensione in relazione al tipo di testo); inoltre č stata analizzata la relazione tra questi aspetti della comprensione e la prestazione di studio. I partecipanti alla ricerca sono 183 studenti frequentanti il primo anno della scuola media superiore a cui sono state somministrate le seguenti prove: 1. le prove di una batteria standardizzata in Italia che misura 10 aspetti della comprensione e 2. una pr...
Psychological Research, 2019
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
Analyzing navigational abilities and related aspects in individuals with Down syndrome (DS) is of... more Analyzing navigational abilities and related aspects in individuals with Down syndrome (DS) is of considerable interest because of its relevance to everyday life. This study investigates path learning, the conditions favoring it, and the cognitive abilities involved. A group of 30 adults with DS and 32 typically-developing (TD) children matched on receptive vocabulary were shown a 4 × 4 Floor Matrix and asked to repeat increasingly long sequences of steps by walking on the grid. The sequences were presented under two learning conditions, one called Oral instructions (participants received verbal instructions such as “turn right” or “turn left”), the other Observation (participants watched the experimenter's moves). Participants were also assessed on verbal and visuospatial cognitive measures. The results showed a similarly better performance in both groups when the Floor Matrix task was administered in the Observation as opposed to the Oral instructions condition. As for the rel...
Studenti universitari in difficoltà: esperienza di un percorso per la promozione delle abilità di studio
Training on mental rotation abilities in primary school children
Quando gli studenti universitari chiedono aiuto per lo studio. Esperienza di percorsi di potenziamento sulle abilità di studio in un servizio di counseling e psicoterapia per studenti universitari
Ciencias Psicológicas, 2015
El objetivo del presente trabajo fue verificar la eficacia de un entrenamiento sobre la habilidad... more El objetivo del presente trabajo fue verificar la eficacia de un entrenamiento sobre la habilidad de base de identificar “personajes, lugares y tiempos” (PLT) utilizando una prueba de evaluación inicial, una de evaluación final y el programa de tratamiento propuesto en la Nuova Guida alla Comrpensione del Testo (De Beni et al., 2003a), posteriormente adaptada al español por Abusamra y colaboradores (en prensa). Participaron de esta investigación 119 estudiantes de tercero (43), cuarto (30) y quinto grado (46) de escuelas primarias de los cuales 59 fueron incluidos en el grupo control y 60 en el grupo expe- rimental. Todos fueron evaluados con pruebas estandarizadas de comprensión de textos y con la prueba específica de PLT antes y después del entrenamiento. El entrenamiento tuvo una duración aproximada de cuatro meses y fue implementado con una frecuencia semanal tomando como base la ficha de PLT. Los resultados evidenciaron un efecto beneficioso de la intervención en todos los grup...
Online Self-Regulated Learning Strategies, Study-Related Emotions, and Psychological Distress in University Students During COVID-19 Lockdown: The Role of Personal Dispositions
EDULEARN Proceedings, 2021
Learning from navigation, and tasks assessing its accuracy: The role of visuospatial abilities and wayfinding inclinations
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2021
Abstract How individual differences in visuospatial thinking relate to environment learning from ... more Abstract How individual differences in visuospatial thinking relate to environment learning from navigation is of growing interest and needs to be approached systematically. Here, a sample of 292 undergraduates learnt a virtual path (desktop-based), and their learning accuracy was assessed with recall tasks, i.e. route retracing, shortcut finding and landmark locating tasks. Several individual visuospatial measures, tasks and questionnaires, were administered. Relations between individual measures and recall tasks were estimated with regression models taking quantitative evidence available in the literature into account, and treated as Bayesian informed priors established by a meta-analysis. The results provide robust evidence of visuospatial abilities and wayfinding inclinations (composing two distinct factors) both affecting recall task performance, particularly the former. A different contribution of individual measures as a function of recall task is envisaged. This study offers new insight on the role of individual visuospatial measures in environment learning (navigation-like) and how they are related.
Are Wayfinding Self-efficacy and Pleasure in Exploring Related to Shortcut Finding? A Study in a Virtual Environment
Spatial Cognition X, 2017
The analysis of individual factors supporting wayfinding ability is attracting increasing interes... more The analysis of individual factors supporting wayfinding ability is attracting increasing interest in the spatial cognition domain. The present study aimed to investigate whether two variables, wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring, relate to shortcut-finding performance. A group of 124 university students were led along a route through one of two virtual environments that differed only in that one contained landmarks, while the other did not. Then they were asked to find a shortcut from the start to the end of the route they had learned. Two questionnaires were also administered to assess their wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring. The results showed a better performance in the shortcut task for the environment containing landmarks. Individual differences correlated with shortcut-finding ability, but their predictive power was stronger in the without- than in the with-landmarks condition. The authors concluded that individual variables, such as wayfinding self-efficacy and a positive attitude to exploring, interact with environmental features (landmark availability) and relate to wayfinding performance.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
Cognitive Development, 2020
Environment learning in individuals with Down syndrome
International Review of Research in Developmental Disabilities, 2019
Abstract This chapter presents a review of environment and spatial learning in individuals with D... more Abstract This chapter presents a review of environment and spatial learning in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). Some theoretical background on environment representation is introduced, describing the role of input sources and recall modalities, and how individual cognitive abilities relate to environment representation. The review shows that most studies have focused on navigation and wayfinding abilities using virtual environments with different environment features (e.g., regular or irregular, landmark positions along a path). Other studies have examined real movement in controlled settings. Overall, research indicates that individuals with DS are able to acquire egocentric knowledge (i.e. from the person's viewpoint) expressed by their ability to learn routes, though they may require more practice than age-matched typically-developing children or other atypical populations; and they learn as well as controls from actually completing sequences of moves or reaching clearly-identified places. Individuals with DS show poor allocentric (i.e., viewpoint-independent) knowledge compared to controls, however, expressed by the ability to find a shortcut or using external features of the environment to reach places. Other studies show that individuals with DS can also use indirect sources for environment learning, such as verbal descriptions of the environment. Some evidence suggests that individual cognitive abilities, such as non-verbal skills, are related to spatial performance, and that the visuo-spatial skills of individual with DS can be improved. This review outlines what is currently known about environment and spatial learning in individuals with DS, encompassing the theoretical background and practical implications.
Research in Developmental Disabilities, 2018
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2017
Learning and Individual Differences, 2017
Learning and Individual Differences, 2015
Environment Learning from Spatial Descriptions: The Role of Perspective and Spatial Abilities in Young and Older Adults
Spatial Cognition IX, 2014
The present study investigated age-related differences between young and older adults deriving me... more The present study investigated age-related differences between young and older adults deriving mental representations from survey and route descriptions, and the involvement of spatial skills in their representation. A sample of 34 young (aged 20-30), 34 middle-aged (50-60) and 32 older (61-80) adults listened to survey and route descriptions of an environment and their recall was tested with a free recall task, a verification test, and a map drawing task; several spatial measures were also administered. The results showed that: i) middle-aged and older adults performed worse than young adults in all recall tasks; ii) all participants formed a perspective-dependent mental representation after learning a route description, but not after learning a survey description (as shown by the verification test); iii) age and spatial abilities predicted recall performance (in relation to type of task and the perspective learnt). Overall, spatial perspective and spatial skills influence the construction of environment representations in young, middle-aged and older adults.
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Papers by Chiara Meneghetti