Vittore Perrucci

Children's performance in mental rotation tasks: orientation‐free features flatten the slope

Studies of the development of mental rotation have yielded conflicting results, apparently because different mental rotation tasks draw on different cognitive abilities. Children may compare two stimuli at different orientations without mental rotation if the stimuli contain orientation-free features. Two groups of children (78 6-year-olds and 92 8-year-olds) participated in an experiment investigating development of the ability to mentally rotate and the ability to recognize and use orientation-free features. Children compared two stimuli, one upright and one rotated, and responded as quickly as possible indicating whether the stimuli were the same or different. The stimuli were either two panda bears or two ice-cream cones with three scoops of ice-cream of different colors. The panda bears were either identical or mirror images. The cones were either identical, mirror images, or non-mirror images. Response times increased linearly as a function of the angle of orientation when stimuli were the same and when the stimuli were mirror images. But response times were much less dependent on angle of orientation for non-mirror image stimuli. Children as young as 6 years recognized orientation-free stimulus features and responded without mentally rotating when the task permitted this strategy.

Sense of community in online courses and students with disabilities: Development of a questionnaire for university students

The sense of community in online courses may contribute to the success and the satisfaction of all the students and the integration of the students with disabilities. Therefore, a valid scale to assess sense of community must be used. For this purpose, a questionnaire for the evaluation of all the dimensions of the MacMillan and Chavis (1986) sense of community model, the main theoretical reference in the field, is being developed for use with students of university online courses. The usefulness of such a questionnaire for the planning of interventions to promote the feeling of being a member of a group in online courses is discussed.

Children and marmots: a pilot study in mountain primary schools

In future years climate change will affect many areas of the planet, in particular delicate environments such as high elevation habitats at any latitude where most marmot species dwell. Thus all conservation efforts should be multiplied in the future and research aimed in understanding motivations of the public regard for species and/or habitat protection should be enhanced. In fact public opinion is an important part of the multiple layers involved in conservation issues that include many aspects: administrative and political, scientific, mass-media and educational (especially toward young generations). In the present pilot study we present an investigation aiming at understanding both cognitive and affective relationships between children and alpine marmots and their habitat. Two primary schools located in a mountain area were chosen, 4 teachers and 28 children participated. According to the research-action paradigm we tested different integrated approaches. Results relating to childrens informal knowledge investigated by means of semiotic field and drawing, expert encounter, and enhanced essay suggested they were context dependent, and elicited different responses in children. Informal knowledge about the fauna was much influenced by media: it is noticeable that many mammals from the African fauna but not from the local fauna were mentioned by children in their semiotic fields, nevertheless drawings and habitat descriptions showed a detailed knowledge of the marmot, suggesting an active naturalistic intelligence based on direct experience. Results are discussed also in term of the possibility of extending similar research-action techniques across different countries and cultures in order to understand the effect of the cultural environment as regards the marmot genus.