Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a specific register that adults use to address infants, and it is characterised by prosodic exaggeration and lexical and syntactic simplification. Several authors have underlined that this simplified speech becomes more complex according to the infant's age. However, there is a lack of studies on lexical and…

The State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory--Trait Version (STCI-T60) measures the temperamental basis of sense of humor involving theoretically derived personality dispositions of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood. The reliability and validity of the newly developed STCI-T60 Italian version were assessed in a sample of Italian speakers (N =…

In this article, we discuss the discursive processes that surround storytelling of traumatic experiences in the case of minor asylum seekers involved in the recent migration flow to Italian ports. We argue that in order to understand not only how traumatic experiences are told but also how they are overcome, it is necessary to focus on the…

Toddlers from low-income and language-minority immigrant families are at risk for language difficulties due to early disparities in the quality of their home language environment. The present longitudinal study extends previous research by investigating nursery teachers' communicative modalities and functions, and their relations with the…

The increasing popularity of radical right, anti-immigrant, neo-nationalist movements can be seen as a response to super-diverse and complex migration and globalization processes challenging the ideology of the 'nation-state' and the traditional education system. Based on the question of how English is increasingly viewed as a threat to Swiss…

Conversely to plenty of studies describing how L1 transfer affects L2 systems, where the two grammars, L1/L2, often only come to interact later in life, less is known of dominant language transfer in heritage language grammars. Unlike in L2 speakers, the dominant language of the heritage speaker potentially affects its weaker language already from…

Purpose: Pragmatics is receiving much attention in both the fields of developmental and clinical psychology; however, there is a dearth of instruments to assess pragmatic abilities specifically among young toddler-age children. The aim of the current study was to test the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Language Use Inventory…

This article claims to provide evidence on whether content-subject and cognitive achievement vary in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and non-CLIL classrooms in the framework of a newly introduced CLIL programme in Italy. A standardized and validated science test (TIMSS) was administered to a sample 988 fourth-grade students. The…

This study aims to evaluate phonological competences and their correlations with lexical abilities in 2-year-old Italian-speaking children. Eighty-eight children (46 females) aged 25-32 months participated in the study. From the total sample, three subgroups of children with different lexical skills were extracted to identify phonological…

Based on a database composed of 1500 pictures, belonging to 401 analytical units from the Linguistic Landscape (hereafter: LL), and representing mainly the signs on the shop of migrant traders in two multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in Milan, this paper will describe the positioning strategies of Latin American (hereafter: LA) communities in a…

The majority of words in most languages consist of derived poly-morphemic words but a cross-linguistic review of the literature (Amenta and Crepaldi in Front Psychol 3:232-243, 2012) shows a contradictory picture with respect to how such words are represented and processed. The current study examined the effects of linearity and structural…

In this study, we investigate whether co-referential processing across sentence boundaries is driven by universal properties of the general architecture of memory systems and whether cross-linguistic differences concerning the number of anaphoric forms available in a language's referential inventory can impact the process of inter-sentential…

While research on language learner autonomy and Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is abundant, few studies have sought to systematically explore the relationship between the two. By adopting a rigorous approach that identifies transparent inclusion and exclusion criteria, this paper presents a systematic review that seeks to identify: (1)…

This study explores the effectiveness of podcasting as an approach to project-based and experiential learning implemented in an intermediate Italian studies unit at an Australian university. In the project, students are asked to write and record a podcast script on a topic related to their experience as university students or to events concerning…

The present contribution aims at describing the main phases of implementation of a Transformative Action-Research project named 'L'AltRoparlante'. This project began in school year 2016/2017 and is still being implemented in five Italian multilingual schools. Its main purpose is to acknowledge students' individual and collective multilingual…