This study compared individuals from two first language (L1) backgrounds (Italian, Mandarin) to determine how they may differ in their perception of Japanese consonant length (i.e. singleton vs. geminate) according to the phonemic status of length in L1 and experience with Japanese. The participants included two groups of non-native learners of…

A recent study has shown that congenitally blind adults, who have never had visual experience, are impaired on an auditory spatial bisection task (Gori, Sandini, Martinoli, & Burr, 2014). In this study we investigated how thresholds for auditory spatial bisection and auditory discrimination develop with age in sighted and congenitally blind…

Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects…

The aim of this paper is to focus reader's attention on "mobile" use of iTunesU and USiena model, as future compensatory tools. Starting from multimedia learning theories, a mobile course model has been designed (USiena model) and the experimental method has been used to carry out a "pilot study" with 32 dyslexic students. The…

In human adults, visual dominance emerges in several multisensory tasks. In children, auditory dominance has been reported up to 4 years of age. To establish when sensory dominance changes during development, 41 children (6-7, 9-10, and 11-12 years) were tested on the Colavita task (Experiment 1) and 32 children (6-7, 9-10, and 11-12 years) were…

The early relationship between children's emerging articulatory abilities and their capacity to process speech input was investigated, following recent studies with English-learning infants. Twenty-six monolingual Italian-learning infants were tested at 6 months (no consistent and stable use of consonants, or vocal motor schemes [VMS]) and at the…

We asked 22 right brain-damaged (RBD) patients and 11 elderly healthy controls to perform hand-pointing movements to free-field unseen sounds, while modulating two non-auditory variables: the initial position of the responding hand (left, centre or right) and the presence or absence of task-irrelevant ambient vision. RBD patients suffering from…