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Francesca Meneghello

Publications and source records attributed to Francesca Meneghello.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

When Ciarli Ciaplin drives a Pejio' in Itali: writing loan words in a shallow language.

With increasing frequency the lexicon of every language incorporates words taken from other languages (loan words) that become of common use, but whose orthography does not necessarily conform to the rules of the native language. This is particularly true for languages like Italian, where most words can be correctly written by the application of a sublexical phonology-to-orthography conversion procedure. Here we report the case of a neurologically unimpaired, highly educated Italian person, with a specific deficit in writing loan words. The aim of the study is to clarify the nature of her dysgraphic impairment, if linked to a semantic deficit, or alternatively reflecting an acquisition deficit, present both in the phonological and orthographic output lexicons, or specific only for the orthographic lexicon. A qualitative analysis of her errors and a comparison with the performance of a group of age and education matched subjects showed that her error pattern was not an amplification of the task difficulty effect observed in the control subjects, but rather an expression of an impairment in acquiring specific writing procedures.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Explicit versus implicit processing of representational space in neglect: dissociations in accessing the mental number line.

The present study investigated the effects of left hemispatial neglect on two tasks activating the mental number line (MNL). Six patients with left neglect performed a mental number bisection task and a modified version of the Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) task. Effects of left neglect were observed in the number bisection task, but not in the SNARC task. We argue that the dissociation between number bisection and SNARC resembles, in the representational space of the MNL, previously reported dissociations on neglect between explicit knowledge (assessed by direct tasks) and implicit knowledge (assessed by indirect tasks).

Adult↗
PubMed2005

The spatial representation of numerical and non-numerical sequences: evidence from neglect.

Psychophysical and neuropsychological studies have revealed that humans represent numbers along a continuous, left-to-right oriented mental line. However, it has been recently claimed that this format of representation is not special to numbers because non-numerical sequences would be spatially coded in the same way. To test this hypothesis, the present study investigated the effects of left neglect upon the bisection of numerical and non-numerical intervals. Eight patients with left neglect performed a visual line bisection task and three mental bisection tasks with number, letter, and month intervals. The error pattern in the number bisection task, indexed by the modulating effect of interval length, mirrored that of the visual task and confirmed the left-to-right spatial orientation of the mental number line. In contrast, the bisection of non-numerical intervals showed a very different pattern. The results suggest that the spatial layout characterizing numerical representations constitutes a specific property of numbers rather than a general characteristic of ordered sequences.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

A lexical stress effect in neglect dyslexia.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of word stress location in neglect dyslexia. An assessment was made of stress assignment in reading Italian words in 13 patients with neglect dyslexia and 13 matched normal individuals. The correspondence in stress location between target and neglect errors was preserved in 9 patients. Moreover, the proportion of words with stress on the penultimate syllable was about 50% and that on the antepenultimate syllable was also about 50%. This pattern is significantly different from the distribution observed in the Italian lexicon, in which the majority of polysyllabic words are stressed on the penultimate syllable. This result cannot be expected from the application of a "regularization" strategy associated with the operation of a nonlexical reading pathway. Taken together, these findings lead to the conclusion that lexical stress is part of the lexical information preserved in neglect dyslexia.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Long-lasting amelioration of visuospatial neglect by prism adaptation.

It has been shown that unilateral left neglect can be significantly improved for a short time after a short period of adaptation to a prismatic shift of the visual field to the right. In neuropsychological studies, however, there is no evidence demonstrating long-lasting effects following treatment by prism adaptation (PA). The first aim of the present study was to find out whether the short-term amelioration found after prismatic adaptation could be converted into long-term therapeutic improvement. Secondly, we investigated whether the improvement of neglect in standard tests could be generalized to ecological visuospatial tests. Thirdly, the effects of prism adaptation on different spatial domains (far, near and personal space) were evaluated. Fourthly, the influence of PA on high-order visuospatial functions, such as spatial representation, and on a low-order factor, i.e. sensory--motor bias, was investigated. Finally, we investigated the possible correlation between neglect amelioration, the adaptation effect and the visuomotor after-effect, as assessed by a pointing task during and after PA. Seven patients with right hemisphere lesion and left visuospatial neglect were treated with prismatic lenses in twice-daily sessions over a period of 2 weeks. In each training session, patients were required to perform a pointing task wearing base-left wedge prisms inducing a shift of the visual field to the right by 10. The presence of visual neglect and the duration of the amelioration achieved were assessed before the treatment and 2 days, 1 week and 5 weeks after treatment by using a standardized battery that included a series of behavioural and ecological visuospatial tests. Six control, untreated patients, matched to the experimental group for gravity and duration of illness, were submitted to the same tests at the same intervals as the experimental patients. The results showed an improvement in the experimental patients' performance after PA, which was maintained during the 5-week period after treatment. The amelioration of neglect was found in standard as well as in behavioural tests and in all spatial domains. In contrast, control patients did not show any improvement in neglect. The amelioration of neglect occurred only in patients who showed the adaptation effect and the after-effect in the pointing task. Neglect amelioration did not occur in one patient who did not show the adaptation effect and had an unstable after-effect. In conclusion, these findings show that prism adaptation is a productive way of achieving long-lasting improvements in neglect treatment.

Adaptation, Physiological↗