Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Maurizio Cardaci.
This paper raises some methodological problems in the dual process explanation provided by Wada and Nittono for their 2004 results using the Wason selection task. We maintain that the Nittono rethinking approach is weak and that it should be refined to grasp better the evidence of analytic processes.
This study examined whether it is easier to reason in terms of frequencies or with percentages for simple numerical tasks. Research on probabilistic reasoning has shown that humans can draw correct inferences when problems are presented in terms of natural frequencies but not when in percentages. Whether the same effect can be observed in other numerically simple tasks which are not probabilistic was studied with 40 undergraduate students who volunteered for the experiment (13 men, 27 women; M age of 23 yr.). In a simple numerical task involving frequencies or percentages (N=20), their performance showed representation in frequencies facilitates the task.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of short-term memory and attention in time estimation. For this purpose we studied prospective time verbal estimation in 21 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and compared their performance with that of 21 matched normal controls in two different conditions: during a digit span task and during an attentional task. Results showed that the performance of AD patients was significantly worse than that of the controls; the interaction between group and condition was significant. We suggest a role of attentional-executive functions in prospective time estimation.
The paper reviews the first attempts to study the educational and psychological usefulness of robotics: (1) the social and cooperative dimensions involved in the robot-building activities; (2) the reasoning strategies implied in building and programming robots; (3) the influences of robotics on mathematical and scientific achievement; (4) the use of robotics in modification of social skills of autistic children.
The present research explored empirically the factorial dimensions of self-efficacy and self-esteem and associations among self-esteem, self-efficacy, and scholastic achievement as measured in 151 subjects (M age = 13.4 yr.). Five factors emerged from factorial analysis: two factors reflected the self-esteem feelings (and were, respectively, named as self-referential self-esteem and comparative self-esteem). The remaining three factors reflected the self-efficacy beliefs in the three different scholastic domains considered, linguistic-literary, logical-mathematical, and technical-practical. All self-efficacy scores were significantly correlated with scholastic achievement while no associations between self-esteem scores and scholastic performance were found. Nevertheless, self-efficacy and self-esteem dimensions shared some common aspects. In particular, each different self-esteem factor showed different magnitudes of association with domain-specific self-efficacy beliefs.