Papers by Cristina Romani
Neuropsychology (journal), Oct 1, 1994
This study examined the influence of phonological working memory on sentence comprehension in chi... more This study examined the influence of phonological working memory on sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Fourteen children with SLI and 13 with normal language (NL) participated in two tasks. In the first, a nonsense word repetition task (index of phonological working memory), subjects repeated nonsense words varying in length from one syllable to four. In a sentence comprehension task, subjects listened to sentences under two conditions varying in linguistic redundancy (redundant, nonredundant). On the nonsense word repetition task, between-and within-group analyses revealed that subjects with SLI repeated significantly fewer 3-syllable and 4-syllable nonsense words. On the sentence comprehension task, betweenand within-group analyses determined that subjects with SLI comprehended significantly fewer redundant (longer) sentences than nonredundant (shorter) sentences. A positive correlation was found between subjects' performance on the nonsense word repetition and sentence comprehension tasks. Results were interpreted to suggest that children with SLI have diminished phonological working memory capacity and that this capacity deficit compromises their sentence comprehension efforts.
Models of speech production differ about whether articulatory planning occurs online or offline a... more Models of speech production differ about whether articulatory planning occurs online or offline and about whether a separate articulatory buffer is needed. The hypothesis that most articulatory planning is completed before articulation starts (offline) assumes a buffer where articulatory plans are accrued and kept ready before articulation starts. The hypothesis that articulatory planning can occur after the beginning of articulation (online) does not need a proper buffer but only limited memory resources encapsulated within articulatory processing (not independently available). We have tested these alternative hypotheses by comparing onset RTs that measure offline processes, and word durations that measure online processes. We tested young control speakers, an aphasic speaker, CS, and an age and education matched speaker, using repetition, reading and picture naming tasks. Our results support the view that articulatory planning occurs mostly online and that articulatory plans canno...
Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases, 2020
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2016
Molecular Genetics and Metabolism
Background: A subset of patients with phenylketonuria benefit from treatment with tetrahydrobiopt... more Background: A subset of patients with phenylketonuria benefit from treatment with tetrahydrobiopterin (BH 4), although there is no consensus on the definition of BH 4 responsiveness. The aim of this study therefore was to gain insight into the definitions of long-term BH 4 responsiveness being used around the world. Methods: We performed a web-based survey targeting healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of PKU patients. Data were analysed according to geographical region (Europe, USA/Canada, other). Results: We analysed 166 responses. Long-term BH 4 responsiveness was commonly defined using natural protein tolerance (95.6%), improvement of metabolic control (73.5%) and increase in quality of life (48.2%). When a specific value for a reduction in phenylalanine concentrations was reported (n = 89), 30% and 20% were most frequently used as cutoff values (76% and 19% of respondents, respectively). When a specific relative increase in natural protein tolerance was used to define long-term BH 4 responsiveness (n = 71), respondents most commonly reported cutoff values of 30% and 100% (28% of respondents in both cases). Respondents from USA/ Canada (n = 50) generally used less strict cutoff values compared to Europe (n = 96). Furthermore, respondents working within the same center answered differently. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest a very heterogeneous situation on the topic of defining long-term BH 4 responsiveness, not only at a worldwide level but also within centers. Developing a strong evidence-and consensus-based definition would improve the quality of BH 4 treatment.
Molecular Genetics and Metabolism
American Psychological Association eBooks, 2023
Molecular Genetics and Metabolism, 2021
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
PLOS ONE, 2020
Conclusion Learning a language with inconsistent orthography is associated with better lexical le... more Conclusion Learning a language with inconsistent orthography is associated with better lexical learning skills in children at different stages of primary school; the pattern of cognitive skills associated with lexical learning skills is also partially modulated by orthographic consistency.
protocols.io, 2019
Lexical learning" is the ability to set up stable and accurate mental representations of words in... more Lexical learning" is the ability to set up stable and accurate mental representations of words in the lexicon (Di Betta & Romani, 2006). The task allow to test the ability of Italian and English subjects to learn written pseudowords in an explicit paired associate learning task, through corrective feedback. For more details see Marinelli, Zoccolotti & Romani (in revision).
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2019
Introduction: Mental health, physical health and cognitive skills have been scarcely investigated... more Introduction: Mental health, physical health and cognitive skills have been scarcely investigated in the same sample of adults with PKU (AwPKU). This is striking since emotional difficulties may potentially contribute to cognitive impairments and vice-versa. Here we aim to fill this gap. Method: Thirty-six early-treated AwPKU and 40 controls were given an extensive battery of cognitive tasks assessing complex executive functions, inhibitory control, short-term-memory, sustained attention, visuospatial attention, language production (reading and naming), visuomotor coordination, spoken language and orthographic processing. In addition, participants were given tasks tapping emotion recognition and completed questionnaires to assess depression (BDI-II), empathy (IRI) and mental/physical health-related quality of life (SF-36). Results: As a group, AwPKU performed significantly worse than controls especially in tasks tapping complex executive functions and across tasks when speed was measured but did not differ for emotional-health and physical health. In the PKU group, cognitive measures and measures of physical health-related quality of life were inter-correlated (differently than in the control group), and both measures were associated with metabolic control: better metabolic control, better cognition and better physical health. Instead, cognitive measures and measures of emotional-health/ mental-health related quality of life did not correlate with one another and better metabolic control was not associated with better emotional health. Instead, some negative correlations were found. Better metabolic control was associated with worse perspective taking and more distress in socially stressful situations. Furthermore, difficulties in keeping the diet were associated with less emotional well-being. Conclusions: Taken together, these results indicate the advantages, but also possible emotional difficulties related to maintain a PKU diet, suggesting the importance of developing alternative therapy options.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2012
Aphasiology
Background: In aphasia, impairments affecting stages after lexical access have been subdivided in... more Background: In aphasia, impairments affecting stages after lexical access have been subdivided into three types: 1. impairments specifying a sequence of phonemes after lexical access (the reproduction variety of conduction aphasia, CA); 2. impairments holding on to these representations during articulatory planning (the shortterm memory (STM) variety of CA); and 3. Impairments specifying integrated articulatory/motor plans for clusters of phonemes (apraxia of speech, AoS). Models of speech production, however, suggest more articulated possibilities (i.e., different subtypes of articulatory impairments). Aims: We investigated the impairment in a person with aphasia whose preliminary assessment revealed mixed speech characteristics, combining features typically used to identify CA-phonological errors across tasks and repeated attempts at the target-with features typically used to identify AoS-phonetic errors and word dysfluencies (phoneme elongations and syllabifications). Our preliminary hypothesis was that there was a difficulty transferring information from an (intact) phonological output buffer to articulatory planning. Slow/noisy transfer would predict dysfluencies, errors selecting motor programs, but also repeated attempts (RA) at revising the output in the face of intact feedback and intact original representations. This hypothesis also predicts effects of position and phonological complexity. Method and Procedure: We tested CS's word and nonword repetition, word reading, and picture naming. We quantified lexical and non-lexical errors, repeated attempts, phonetic errors, and syllabifications. We assessed effects of word frequency, word length, phoneme position, and syllabic and phonological complexity. Results: CS made similar errors across tasks, consistent with a postlexical impairment. His RAs most often built up a correct target from fragments and/or previously incorrect attempts, similar to a conduite d'approche. He also produced more errors in later positions, and more repeated attempts on longer words. However, inconsistent with decay from an output buffer, phonological errors did not increase with word length. Finally, frequency mattered, ARTICLE HISTORY
Trends in South Asian Linguistics, 2021
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010
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Papers by Cristina Romani