0000000000304883
AUTHOR
Maria Guarnera
showing 4 related works from this author
Training of Attention in Children With Low Arithmetical Achievement
2014
This study focuses on the role of attentional processes in arithmetical skills and examines if training of basic attentive skills may improve also working memory abilities reducing arithmetic difficulties. In order to study the efficacy of attentional treatment in arithmetic achievement and in enhancing working memory abilities a test-treatment-retest quasi experimental design was adopted. The research involved 14 children, attending fourth and fifth grades, with Arithmetical Learning Disabilities (ALD) assigned to experimental and control conditions. The numerical comprehension and calculation processes were assessed using the ABCA battery (Lucangeli, Tressoldi, & Fiore, 1998). Attenti…
Exploring working memory in children with low arithmetical achievement
2005
Abstract This research aimed at exploring the working memory functions in children with low arithmetical achievement and normal reading, compared to age matched controls (mean age 9 years). All the children completed a series of working memory tasks, involving the central executive functions (using both linguistic and numerical material), the phonological loop (using words, pseudo-words and digits) and the visual sketchpad (using both static visual-spatial patterns and visual-spatial sequences). Results indicated that poor arithmeticians performed worse than age-matched controls in all the visual sketchpad tasks and in all the central executive tasks, whether they used linguistic or numeric…
Mental Images and School Learning: A Longitudinal Study on Children
2019
Recent literature have underlined the connections between children’s reading skills and capacity to create and use mental representations or mental images; furthermore data highlighted the involvement of visuospatial abilities both during math learning and during subsequent developmental phases in performing math tasks. The present research adopted a longitudinal design to assess whether the processes of mental imagery in preschoolers (ages 4–5 years) are predictive of mathematics skills, writing and reading, in the early years of primary school (ages 6–7 years). The research lasted for two school years; in the first phase, the general group of participants consisted of 100 children, and al…
Development of the Mental Imagery Scale for Preschool Children using Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory
2020
This study aimed to develop a measure of mental imagery evaluation in preschool children. Three studies were conducted: Study 1 focused on the exploration of the factorial structure, reliability, and Item Response Theory (IRT) discrimination on a sample of children from 4 to 5 years old (N = 100; 50% males and 50% females); Study 2 focused on the confirmation of results about dimensionality on a sample of children from 4 to 7 years old (N = 170; 50% males and 50% females); and Study 3 focused on verifying criterion validity on a sample of children from 4 to 5 years old (N = 70; 47.1% males and 52.9% females). The results confirmed the hypothesis of three reliable factors underlying the scal…