Purpose: With the advance of globalization the competitive chances of industrial districts depends increasingly on their ability to connect to the cognitive circuits of the global economy. This challenge demands the presence of local actors capable of acting as cognitive interfaces between the district context and the global environment. The paper…

According to multicomponent models (Oakhill & Cain, 2007a), text comprehension is a complex process that requires the processing of explicit (i.e., information presented in the text) and implicit information (i.e., information inferable from the text or from previous knowledge), and involves various components. This study investigated (a)…

Digital competences amongst the younger generations and the role of schools faced with the spread of new youth practices are topics of increasing interest. Some commentators state that, thanks to the intensive use of digital media, young people are developing significant competences that also correspond to important cognitive processes and new…

This contribution explains the connection between spatial intelligence and spatial competences and by indicating how the first is the cognitive matrix of abilities necessary to move in space as well as to represent it. Indeed, two are principal factors involved in the spatial intelligence: orientation and representation. Both are based on a close…

The field of education is a vital component of today's society, enriching and facilitating the attainment of new knowledge. Progress continues to be achieved in this area as new methods are envisioned that increase education's value. "Transforming the Future of Learning with Educational Research" brings together diverse perspectives that…

The current study reports on the use of Wiki as an online didactic tool to develop knowledge management (KM) processes in higher education. This study integrates social constructivist principles to learning where learners are pro-active and collaborative through higher order cognitive processes. The study was administered in two countries, namely…

Investigations of people's understanding of the evolution of species have focused mainly on secondary school and university students. Very few investigations have taken into consideration younger students, and none have related children's ideas about the origin of species to formal instruction on this topic. To help fill this gap, the present…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between early mathematical skills and cognitive processing abilities for two samples of children in Italy (N = 40) and the Netherlands (N = 59) who completed both a cognitive test that measures Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) processing and an early mathematical…

Emotional and cognitive factors were examined in 18 children with mathematical learning disabilities (MLD), compared with 18 normally achieving children, matched for chronological age, school level, gender and verbal IQ. Working memory, short-term memory, inhibitory processes, speed of processing and level of anxiety in mathematics were assessed…

In this article, the authors investigated unimodal and cross-modal processes in spatial working memory. A number of locations had to be memorized within visual or haptic matrices according to different experimental conditions known to be critical in accounting for the effects of perception on imagery. Results reveal that some characteristics of…

Evaluations of gaming simulations and business games as teaching devices are typically end-state driven. This emphasis fails to detect how the simulation being evaluated does or does not bring about its desired consequences. This paper advances the use of a logic model approach, which possesses a holistic perspective that aims at including all…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the factor structure and convergent validity of an Italian translation of the Identity Style Inventory (ISI). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed a clear three-factor structure of identity style and a mono-factor structure of commitment, not only in the overall sample, but also in gender and age…

Do some forms of student (and school) assessment hinder the introduction of innovative educational practices and the development of innovation skills in education systems? This report focuses on the impact of high-stake summative assessment on innovation and argues that it is possible to reconcile high-stakes assessments and examinations through…

The present study examined the validity of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES) [Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006a). Development and validation of the Basic Empathy Scale. "Journal of Adolescence," 29, 589-611; Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006b). Examining the relationship between low empathy and bullying. "Aggressive…

The present study focused on changes in volunteering over time among Italian adults and examined a model in which motives from self-determination theory (SDT) were hypothesized to influence a series of social-cognitive processes including self-efficacy judgments and constructs from the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The study was conducted with…