Ricerc@Sapienza

Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate topographical working memory in individuals with motor disabilities. Methods: Topographical working memory was investigated using the Walking Corsi Test in 89 participants with motor disability, mean age 11.5 years, of which 40 with cerebral palsy, 31 with spina bifida, and 18 with orthopaedic or peripheral symptoms. The participants were grouped according to everyday mobility, i.e. walking outdoors, walking indoors, and using wheelchair. A control group constituted 120 typically developing participants, mean age 9.9 years.

BACKGROUND: Reading a map requires the ability to judge one ’ s position in a large-scale space from information presented in a
small-scale representation. Individuals are more accurate and faster in making judgments when the “ up ” direction on the
map is the same as the “ forward ” direction of the environment, which is when a map is aligned with the perspective of
the spatial layout they have learned (alignment eff ect). The aim of this study was to explore whether military pilots, who

Exposure to environmental contextual changes, such as those occurring after an earthquake, requires individuals to learn novel routes around their environment, landmarks and spatial layout. In this study, we aimed to uncover whether contextual changes that occurred after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake affected topographic memory in exposed survivors.

Forty children with cerebral palsy (CP) and 120
typical developing children (TD) performed a topographic
working memory (WalCT) test requiring to move their body in
a walked vista-space and a visuo-spatial test (CBT) requiring
just reaching movements. WalCT score was significantly higher
in GMFCS II/III than in TD. CBT score was significantly
lower in GMFCS I than in III/IV but lower than TD in all CP
groups. Similar results in WalCT between GMFCS I and TD
and GMFCS II and III/IV respectively indicate that mobility is

Field independence (FI) has been found to correlate with a wide range of cognitive processes requiring cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring, that is going beyond the information given by the setting, is pivotal in creating stable mental representations of the environment,the so-called "cognitive maps," and it affects visuo-spatial abilities underpinning environmental navigation. Here we evaluated whether FI, by fostering cognitive restructuring of environmental cues on the basis of an internal frame of reference, affects the learning and retrieval of a novel environment.

BACKGROUND: Endogenous ovarian hormones as well as exogenous oestradiol and progesterone play an important role in cognitive processing. Specifically, these hormones play a role in different aspects of memory, both in terms of storage capacity and temporal duration of the mnemonic track. These hormones also have various effects on different types of memory (i.e., verbal, visuo-spatial, prospective).