The spread of digital technologies (DTs) on the planet has been remarkable. In this regard, psychological research has mainly focused on technological addiction and pathological behaviors. In our view, existing research failed to consider the fundamental drive of success for… Leggi tutto DTs for the largest part of the population, the need for social connections. This need is also evidenced by the tendency to anthropomorphize non-human agents, such as DTs. When can DTs satisfy our species’ innate need for belonging, favor social bonds and social cohesion? And when can DTs hinder them, increasing loneliness, exclusion, aggression, and social isolation? Even when the effects on sociality were considered, existing research remained anchored to a dichotomous view of DTs’ positive vs. negative effects, failing to appreciate a digital transformation’s paradigm shift on human connections that might be occurring. Moreover, although such a revolution affects all ages and contexts, adolescents might be the most involved in this technological revolution. This implies the need for special attention to two settings, family and school, which influence how young people grow. However, especially in Italy, parents and teachers often lack the necessary digital skills and guidelines for teaching their children and students healthy interactions with DTs. In this scenario, the primary goal of CONNECT is to investigate the influence of DTs on social connectedness and isolation. The impacts of various DTs will be considered, including already widespread (e.g., smartphones, social media) and frontier ones (e.g., social chatbots, social robots, and virtual reality). Adopting multiple methods (secondary analyses, surveys, sentiment analysis, experimental research, field research, qualitative studies, randomized controlled trials), CONNECT aims to provide a deeper understanding of (1) the impact of DTs on social connectedness and isolation across different ages and social groups, (2) how DTs can interfere, foster, and change social connectedness, (3) the key role of (de)humanizing processes with and through DTs, (4) factors that can promote healthy use of DTs in adolescents, parents, and teachers, developing research-based interventions, and (5) how we can engage stakeholders on healthy use of DTs. CONNECT will be coordinated by a team of young psychologists at the University of Milano-Bicocca and jointly implemented by two closely collaborating research units (University of Genova and University of Padova), each with distinct project-relevant expertise and facilities. Given the high practical relevance, our findings will be communicated to distinct audiences, including academic researchers and key stakeholders: end-users of DT, community frontline groups (including teachers and parents), treatment and welfare providers, industry, and policy-makers.

The project aims to evaluate the diagnostic validity in early primary school years of a computer-based, Reading-Free Screening Tool (RFST) for Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and other reading difficulties, which we have recently developed. The project is conceived as a longitudinal… Leggi tutto study covering a range of behavioural, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging indices, to identify neurocognitive markers capable of detecting risks and signs of DD and other reading difficulties before they become clinically manifest, thus permitting more timely interventions in the early phases of the learning process. The focus on a reading-free assessment of the neurocognitive prerequisites of literacy is motivated by the necessity to have a screening tool that can be equally applied in young monolingual children and in minority language children (MLC) with diverse language origins. This is of fundamental importance, since DD may be initially confused with subtler reading difficulties that can generally resolve if promptly treated, as may be the case with MLC. We therefore need new screening tools that can effectively distinguish neurodevelopmental reading deficits, as in DD, from reading difficulties due to environmental and linguistic factors. These objectives will be achieved by the collaboration of three units. We will collect multiple cohorts of primary school children who will be longitudinally assessed by means of the RFST in grades 2 and 3, and will also undergo a standardised clinical evaluation of reading skills in grade 3 to discriminate typical from atypical readers. Unit 1 will sample 30 children with familial risk for DD, and collect additional behavioural and neuroimaging measures; Unit 2 will sample 100 children, either monolingual or MLC, and validate additional reading-free tasks; Unit 3 will sample 30 prematurely born children, collecting neuroimaging measures. Units 1 and 3 will also jointly collect 30 control children born at term and without familial risk for DD. These diverse populations cover a broad range of risks for reading difficulties, and reflect the added value of the project, aiming to elucidate the multifactorial nature of reading deficits along a neurodevelopmental continuum. Cohort-specific and pooled analyses of the multivariate longitudinal data will leverage semi-automatic methods able to classify typical versus atypical readers at grade 3, based on RFST indices and other neurobehavioural and neuroimaging measures at grade 2. We thus aim to identify a set of discriminant neurocognitive markers of DD and other reading disorders, hence providing evidence-based grounding for the predictive power of our RFST. Discriminant RFST tasks will be implemented in a web-app (based on preliminary work by Units 1 and 3), which will be released and tested during the project, aiming for a freely available tool that can support primary school teachers and clinicians in the early recognition of children at risk of developing reading difficulties.