Pietro Spataro
Biographic Data
| ID | 4602780 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pietro Spataro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pietro |
| FAMILY NAME | Spataro |
| SIGNATURE | SPATARO P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Mercatorum University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3204-4449 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Attentional boost effect and pattern separation with visual and verbal materials
Mindful attention awareness reduces binge watching engagement: The mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties
Mindful attention awareness (MAA) has a protective role on the development of a wide range of problematic behaviors. Yet, no data is available on the relationship between MAA and binge watching (BW) - broadly defined as consecutively watching multiple episodes of TV series. To fill this gap, 442 adults completed an online battery of questionnaires measuring MAA, emotion regulation difficulties and BW engagement and symptoms. The results of the co…
Parents’ reflective functioning and stress: The associations with preschoolers’ social understanding
Social understanding competence develops in sensitive and co‐regulating caregiver interactions. Parental reflective functioning (PRF) and parenting stress can affect children's social understanding. This study investigated if children's social understanding was associated with PRF and parenting stress. Parents of 305 Italian children aged from 24 to 72 months ( M = 48.2, SD = 13.9; 47.9% girls) completed an online survey. Parents completed the fo…
Positive and negative effects of collaboration on suggestibility and false memory in online groups
Previous studies demonstrated the positive and negative effects of collaboration on memory (both veridical and false recall) and suggestibility in face-to-face contexts. However, it remains unclear whether the same results can be observed in a virtual context. To clarify this issue, the present study examined the performance of 10 nominal triads and 10 collaborative triads in a fully online setting. Participants interacted live, in videoconferenc…
Exploring the relations of executive functions with emotional, linguistic, and cognitive skills in preschool children: Parents vs. teachers reports
This study investigated the executive functions (EF) of preschool children and their associations with emotional, linguistic, and cognitive skills, using parent and teacher reports. A total of 130 children aged 34 to 71 months participated. The preschool version of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF-P) was completed by both parents and teachers to assess behavioral difficulties in the use of EFs, while children were admini…
Why collaboration reduces suggestibility: The role of source-monitoring processes and retrieval strategies
Previous research found that collaboration reduces the tendency to yield to misleading questions. Here, the aim was to determine whether this occurs because collaboration induces a conservative change in response criterion or because it promotes more efficient error-checking strategies. To this purpose, we compared the performance of collaborative and nominal triads in the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Critically, we recorded conversations dur…
Exploring the roles of distinctiveness and performance anticipation in the Attentional Boost Effect
We tested the validity of two alternative accounts of the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) – the finding that words associated with to-be-responded targets are recognized better than words associated with to-be-ignored distractors. The distinctiveness hypothesis assumes that, during recognition, participants probe their memories for distinctive information confirming that a word was studied (e.g., “I remember having pressed the spacebar, so I must …
Memory and attention: A double dissociation between memory encoding and memory retrieval
Trust in science and belief in misinformation mediate the effects of political orientation on vaccine hesitancy and intention to be vaccinated
In previous studies, anti-vaccination attitudes have been attributed either to far-right voters or to both far-left and far-right voters. The present study investigated the associations of political orientation with vaccine hesitancy and intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and the potential mediating roles of trust in science and belief in misinformation. A total of 750 Italian respondents completed an online questionnaire in the period …
Maternal mind-mindedness and communicative functions in free-play and mealtime contexts: Stability, continuity and relations with child language at 16 months
The present study aimed at investigating the contextual stability, the contextual continuity and the concurrent associations between maternal measures (general language, communicative functions and mind-mindedness) and child measures (total number of word types and tokens) in two different contexts, free-play and mealtime. To this purpose, the interactions occurring between 25 mothers and their 16-month-old children in each context were video-rec…
Predictors of Covid-19 risk perception, worry and anxiety in Italy at the end of the 2020 national lockdown
The present study examined the psychological predictors of four measures assessing the cognitive and emotional reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of Italian respondents (N = 497). Using a snowball sampling strategy, an online questionnaire was disseminated through various social media between 29th April and 29th May 2020, that is at the end of the period of national lockdown. Correlational and regression analyses indicated that a) cog…
The attentional boost effect enhances the recognition of bound features in short-term memory
In the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE), images or words encoded with unrelated to-be-responded targets are later remembered better than images or words encoded with to-be-ignored distractors. In the realm of short-term memory, the ABE has been previously shown to enhance the short-term recognition of single-feature stimuli. The present study replicated this finding and extended it to a condition requiring the encoding and retention of colour-shape…
Long-lasting positive effects of collaborative remembering on false assents to misleading questions
Previous studies showed that collaborative remembering can reduce false memories through a process of mutual error checking, although conclusions were limited by the nature of the memory tasks (very few errors). The present experiments extend these findings to eyewitness memory by using a paradigm designed to increase the frequency of memory errors. Collaborative and nominal pairs viewed a video-clip illustrating a bank robbery, provided an immed…
Indices of social knowledge in Italian-speaking children: Relations between personal pronouns, verb conjugations and mental state language
This cross-sectional study investigated the use of four verbal indices of social knowledge (personal pronouns, verb conjugations, people words and mental state language) and their concurrent relations in a sample of 287 Italian-speaking children between 18 and 36 months. Results showed that the production of all indices increased with age. Mental state language (MSL) was positively associated to the use of personal pronouns and verb conjugations,…
Do early noun and verb production predict later verb and noun production? Theoretical implications
Many studies have addressed the question of the relative dominance of nouns over verbs in the productive vocabularies of children in the second year of life. Surprisingly, cross-class (noun-to-verb and verb-to-noun) relations between these two lexical categories have seldom been investigated. The present longitudinal study employed observational and parent-report data obtained from thirty mother–child dyads at 1;4, 1;8, and 2;0 to examine this is…
Children's acquisition of nouns and verbs in Italian: Contrasting the roles of frequency and positional salience in maternal language
Because of its structural characteristics, specifically the prevalence of verb types in infant-directed speech and frequent pronoun-dropping, the Italian language offers an attractive opportunity to investigate the predictive effects of input frequency and positional salience on children's acquisition of nouns and verbs. We examined this issue in a sample of twenty-six mother–child dyads whose spontaneous conversations were recorded, transcribed,…
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Children's acquisition of nouns and verbs in Italian: Contrasting the roles of frequency and positional salience in maternal language
Because of its structural characteristics, specifically the prevalence of verb types in infant-directed speech and frequent pronoun-dropping, the Italian language offers an attractive opportunity to investigate the predictive effects of input frequency and positional salience on children's acquisition of nouns and verbs. We examined this issue in a sample of twenty-six mother–child dyads whose spontaneous conversations were recorded, transcribed,…
Do early noun and verb production predict later verb and noun production? Theoretical implications
Many studies have addressed the question of the relative dominance of nouns over verbs in the productive vocabularies of children in the second year of life. Surprisingly, cross-class (noun-to-verb and verb-to-noun) relations between these two lexical categories have seldom been investigated. The present longitudinal study employed observational and parent-report data obtained from thirty mother–child dyads at 1;4, 1;8, and 2;0 to examine this is…
Indices of social knowledge in Italian-speaking children: Relations between personal pronouns, verb conjugations and mental state language
This cross-sectional study investigated the use of four verbal indices of social knowledge (personal pronouns, verb conjugations, people words and mental state language) and their concurrent relations in a sample of 287 Italian-speaking children between 18 and 36 months. Results showed that the production of all indices increased with age. Mental state language (MSL) was positively associated to the use of personal pronouns and verb conjugations,…
The attentional boost effect enhances the recognition of bound features in short-term memory
In the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE), images or words encoded with unrelated to-be-responded targets are later remembered better than images or words encoded with to-be-ignored distractors. In the realm of short-term memory, the ABE has been previously shown to enhance the short-term recognition of single-feature stimuli. The present study replicated this finding and extended it to a condition requiring the encoding and retention of colour-shape…
Long-lasting positive effects of collaborative remembering on false assents to misleading questions
Previous studies showed that collaborative remembering can reduce false memories through a process of mutual error checking, although conclusions were limited by the nature of the memory tasks (very few errors). The present experiments extend these findings to eyewitness memory by using a paradigm designed to increase the frequency of memory errors. Collaborative and nominal pairs viewed a video-clip illustrating a bank robbery, provided an immed…
Maternal mind-mindedness and communicative functions in free-play and mealtime contexts: Stability, continuity and relations with child language at 16 months
The present study aimed at investigating the contextual stability, the contextual continuity and the concurrent associations between maternal measures (general language, communicative functions and mind-mindedness) and child measures (total number of word types and tokens) in two different contexts, free-play and mealtime. To this purpose, the interactions occurring between 25 mothers and their 16-month-old children in each context were video-rec…
Predictors of Covid-19 risk perception, worry and anxiety in Italy at the end of the 2020 national lockdown
The present study examined the psychological predictors of four measures assessing the cognitive and emotional reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of Italian respondents (N = 497). Using a snowball sampling strategy, an online questionnaire was disseminated through various social media between 29th April and 29th May 2020, that is at the end of the period of national lockdown. Correlational and regression analyses indicated that a) cog…
Why collaboration reduces suggestibility: The role of source-monitoring processes and retrieval strategies
Previous research found that collaboration reduces the tendency to yield to misleading questions. Here, the aim was to determine whether this occurs because collaboration induces a conservative change in response criterion or because it promotes more efficient error-checking strategies. To this purpose, we compared the performance of collaborative and nominal triads in the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Critically, we recorded conversations dur…
Exploring the roles of distinctiveness and performance anticipation in the Attentional Boost Effect
We tested the validity of two alternative accounts of the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) – the finding that words associated with to-be-responded targets are recognized better than words associated with to-be-ignored distractors. The distinctiveness hypothesis assumes that, during recognition, participants probe their memories for distinctive information confirming that a word was studied (e.g., “I remember having pressed the spacebar, so I must …
Memory and attention: A double dissociation between memory encoding and memory retrieval
Trust in science and belief in misinformation mediate the effects of political orientation on vaccine hesitancy and intention to be vaccinated
In previous studies, anti-vaccination attitudes have been attributed either to far-right voters or to both far-left and far-right voters. The present study investigated the associations of political orientation with vaccine hesitancy and intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and the potential mediating roles of trust in science and belief in misinformation. A total of 750 Italian respondents completed an online questionnaire in the period …
Positive and negative effects of collaboration on suggestibility and false memory in online groups
Previous studies demonstrated the positive and negative effects of collaboration on memory (both veridical and false recall) and suggestibility in face-to-face contexts. However, it remains unclear whether the same results can be observed in a virtual context. To clarify this issue, the present study examined the performance of 10 nominal triads and 10 collaborative triads in a fully online setting. Participants interacted live, in videoconferenc…
Exploring the relations of executive functions with emotional, linguistic, and cognitive skills in preschool children: Parents vs. teachers reports
This study investigated the executive functions (EF) of preschool children and their associations with emotional, linguistic, and cognitive skills, using parent and teacher reports. A total of 130 children aged 34 to 71 months participated. The preschool version of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF-P) was completed by both parents and teachers to assess behavioral difficulties in the use of EFs, while children were admini…
Attentional boost effect and pattern separation with visual and verbal materials
Mindful attention awareness reduces binge watching engagement: The mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties
Mindful attention awareness (MAA) has a protective role on the development of a wide range of problematic behaviors. Yet, no data is available on the relationship between MAA and binge watching (BW) - broadly defined as consecutively watching multiple episodes of TV series. To fill this gap, 442 adults completed an online battery of questionnaires measuring MAA, emotion regulation difficulties and BW engagement and symptoms. The results of the co…
Parents’ reflective functioning and stress: The associations with preschoolers’ social understanding
Social understanding competence develops in sensitive and co‐regulating caregiver interactions. Parental reflective functioning (PRF) and parenting stress can affect children's social understanding. This study investigated if children's social understanding was associated with PRF and parenting stress. Parents of 305 Italian children aged from 24 to 72 months ( M = 48.2, SD = 13.9; 47.9% girls) completed an online survey. Parents completed the fo…
Psychology (16 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Cognition (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Developmental psychology (6 works) · Memory Processes and Influences (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Language Development and Disorders (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (4 works)