Backgrounds: The relationship between linguistic difficulties and cognitive impairments in children with developmental language disorders (DLDs) is receiving growing interest in international research. Executive functions (EF) appear to be weak in these children. The current investigation aims at exploring the relationship between difficulties in two components of EF (i.e., updating and inhibition) and the linguistic and narrative skills of 16 DLD preschoolers matched with 24 typically developing peers. Methods: Updating skills were tested by administering the forward and backward digit recall subtests of the Wechsler Scales, while children’s inhibition abilities were assessed by completion of Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment (NEPSY-II) inhibition tasks. Information on the linguistic skills of the participants was collected through a set of subtests included in the Batteria per la Valutazione del Linguaggio in bambini dai 4 ai 12 anni (Batteria per la Valutazione del Linguaggio; BVL_4-12), assessing articulatory and phonological discrimination skills, lexical production/comprehension, grammatical production/comprehension, and narrative production skills. Results: Findings revealed that DLD children performed significantly lower than their peers on both updating and inhibitory tasks. Linguistic difficulties were found in the DLD group on articulatory/phonological skills, grammatical production/comprehension, and lexical informativeness on narrative production. Measures of EF correlated with linguistic and narrative measures. Conclusion: The current study confirms a significant association between DLD’s performances on EF and displayed linguistic skills, suggesting the need to include the assessment of executive functions to target early intervention rehabilitation programs for children with DLDs.

This research revealed the children with difficulties in attentional functions among healthy children attending primary school and aimed to identify the possible sociodemographic factors, such as the child’s age, gender, and school grade, that could influence attentive performance. The participants were 105 children aged 6–10 years (M age = 8.6; SD = 1.04), attending primary schools. Family economic condition was mostly at a medium level (63.5%), and parents most frequently had 13 years of schooling. The computerized test KiTAP was administered to children to assess their attentional functions. Results showed a higher frequency of omissions and false alarms and a reduced speed in alertness, go/no-go, and sustained attention tasks compared to Italian norms. Hierarchical regression analyses were run with school grade, gender, and current age as independent variables and mean reaction times (and standard deviation), number of omissions, and false alarms as dependent ones. The results showed that male gender and attending a lower grade impacted on lower attentional performance in several subtests. Girls showed the best performances in tests of distractibility and impulsive reaction tendencies, while higher school grade positively influenced divided and sustained attention. These results could be useful to identify children with major attentional difficulties, and some recommendations for future studies and the implementation of attention empowerment programmes are proposed.

Adolescents with cancer may demonstrate problems in their self-esteem and schooling. This study aims to screen the preadolescents and adolescents more at risk in their self-esteem perception and schooling difficulties post-five years from the end of therapy. Twenty-five paediatric ex-patients healed from leukaemia were recruited at the Haematology-Oncologic Clinic (University of Padua). The mean age of the children was 13.64 years (Standard Deviation (SD)) = 3.08, range = 10–19 years), most were treated for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) (84%) and relatively equally distributed by gender. They filled in the Multidimensional Self-Esteem Test, while parents completed a questionnaire on their child’s schooling. Global self-esteem was mostly below the 50 percentile (58.5%), especially regarding interpersonal relationships (75%). An independent sample t-test showed significant mean differences on the emotionality scale (t = 2.23; degree of freedom (df) = 24; p = 0.03) and in the bodily experience scale (t = 3.02; df = 24; p = 0.006) with survivors of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) having lower scores. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed significant mean differences in the bodily experience scale (F = 12.31; df = 2, p = 0.0001) depending on the survivors’ assigned risk band. The parent reports showed that 43.5% of children had difficulties at school. Childhood AML survivors with a high-risk treatment were more at risk in their self-esteem perceptions. Preventive interventions focusing on self-esteem and scholastic wellbeing are suggested in order to help their return to their normal schedules.

The evolution of digital media has changed the patterns and motives for its use among adolescents and has impacted their communication choices within their family and social networks. The objectives of this study are to understand whether peers communicate through a social network (SN) or by voice and their view of the relative social desirability of these alternatives. After the informant’s consent signature, adolescents completed a series of self-report questionnaires on the use of SN, communication preferences, and social desirability online. Most of the adolescents belonged to the 17–19 age group (83.6%) and were female (68.9%). Adolescents spent more than 3 h/day on Whatsapp and more than 2 h/day on Instagram, while the use of Facebook was on average only 35 min/day. Females used digital media longer than males. Adolescents aged 17–19 years choose more Facebook and voice modes compared to adolescents aged 14 and 16 years. Alternative modes of Whatsapp and voice were chosen more than social networks in their communication strategies, especially for negative topics. Motives for use were, in addition to boredom, related to maintaining one’s social sphere with peers. Some educative considerations were made based on these results.

On account of a series of unique historical events, the present-day denizens of South Tyrol inhabit a cultural, political, and linguistic autonomous region that intercalates Italians and Austrian/ German Italians. The authors compared contemporary Italian and Austrian/German Italian girls’ and boys’ adaptive behaviors in everyday activities in this region. Using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, the authors first interviewed mothers about their children’s communication, daily living, socialization, and motor skills. Main effects of local culture (and no interactions with gender) emerged: Austrian/German Italian children were rated higher than Italian children in both adaptive daily living and socialization skills. Next, the authors explored ethnic differences in childrearing. Austrian/German Italians reported fostering greater autonomy in their children than Italians, and children’s autonomy was associated with their adaptive behavior. Children living in neighboring Italian and Austrian/German Italian cultural niches appear to experience subtle but consequentially different conditions of development that express themselves in terms of differing levels of adaptive behaviors.

This study was aimed at comparing adolescent and young adult (AYA) Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) paediatric cancer survivors and a control group of healthy peers in terms of Health‐Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) and frequency of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). The participants were 32 AYA HSCT survivors and 28 matched healthy peers. The survivors were, on average, 19.4 years old (SD = 3.8), with an average age of 8.1 years (SD = 4.3) at diagnosis, and with a mean time, since treatment was completed, of 8.5 years (SD = 3.2). The majority of survivors (78.1%) did not show clinical PTSS, with intrusion symptoms most frequently reported in those who had undergone autologous HSCT (F = 3.3; df = 2; p = 0.05) and relapse presence in their treatment associated with more PTSS avoidance symptoms (r = 0.4; p = 0.002). Women reported more problems in the SF‐36 pain scale (t = 2.1; df = 31; p = 0.04) than men. Additionally, 87.5% of survivors fell below the 25th percentile in the SF‐36 general well‐being scale, and 70.8% had the same trend for the SF‐36 fatigue scale. Survivors reported better emotional well‐being (t = 2.6, df = 27, p = 0.01) and fewer limitations than their healthy peers (t = 2.5, df = 27, p = 0.02), while they perceived a lower life satisfaction referring to the past (t = −2.8, df = 27, p = 0.009).