Biomedical subjects

Sergio Chieffi

Publications and source records attributed to Sergio Chieffi.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

Brief report: error pattern in an autistic savant calendar calculator.

Special ability in computing the day of the week from given dates was observed in a 18 years old male, L.E., suffering from autism. Neuropsychological testing revealed severe deficits in all cognitive domains and poor explicit knowledge of calendar structure. The subject scored well above the chance level on dates of the past and future decades. Error rate and response latency increased with temporal remoteness of dates. Most of errors were in indicating the weekday before or after that of date stimulus. The performance and error pattern suggest that L.E. used "encapsulated" computation algorithm(s) for the day of week task.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Gesture production and text structure.

In the present pilot study, we examined the relationship between gesture and verbal production. Subjects were asked to read a story and then to narrate what they remembered. We analyzed verbal production according to Kintsch's procedure and obtained a list of hierarchically organized propositions that represented the meaning of subject's narration. Propositions were subdivided into High- and Low-level propositions. Further, we analyzed gesture production by identifying hand or arm movement that accompanied subject's narration. Each gesture was associated with the word simultaneously produced, and then with the proposition to which the word belonged. Analysis showed subjects were more likely to produce gestures in association with High- rather than with Low-level propositions. High-level propositions may elicit the production of gestures which, in turn, mark the importance of verbal meaning conveyed simultaneously.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Influence of contextual stimuli on line bisection.

The influence of contextual stimuli on line-bisection performance was investigated. Subjects were required to bisect lines flanked at one end by one pair of solid black rectangles. Bisection was performed along three orthogonal axes (horizontal, radial, vertical). The results showed the presence of a bisection bias in the direction opposite to the location of flanking rectangles. This finding suggests that the presence of rectangles beside one end of a line interfered with representation of the line as a whole and induced the subjects to neglect the flanked part of the line.

Adult↗