Understanding the individual qualities sustaining students with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) is key to supporting their academic achievement and well-being. In this study, we investigated the differences between students with and without SLDs in terms of intraindividual factors (soft skills and study-related factors), academic and nonacademic outcomes (achievement, academic and life satisfaction), and the relationships between such intraindividual factors and the three outcomes. A total of 318 students (79 males; Mage = 22.7; SD = 3.56; age range = 19–45 years; 147 with SLDs) filled in self-reported questionnaires and a measure of fluid intelligence. The results showed that students with SLDs reported higher creativity but lower academic self-efficacy, study resilience, and academic achievement, with small-to-medium effect sizes. In both groups, achievement significantly positively related to academic self-efficacy and negatively to creativity. Life satisfaction was positively related to study resilience; and academic satisfaction was related to critical thinking, curiosity, and academic self-efficacy. Nurturing such intraindividual factors can benefit students with and without SLDs.

The extent to which impaired visual and phonological mechanisms may contribute to the manifestation of developmental dyslexia across orthographies of varying depth has yet to be fully established. By adopting a cross-linguistic approach, the current study aimed to explore the nature of visual and phonological processing in developmental dyslexic readers of shallow (Italian) and deep (English) orthographies, and specifically the characterisation of visual processing deficits in relation to orthographic depth. To achieve this aim, we administered a battery of non-reading visual and phonological tasks. Developmental dyslexics performed worse than typically developing readers on all visual and phonological tasks. Critically, readers of the shallow orthography were disproportionately impaired on visual processing tasks. Our results suggest that the impaired reading and associated deficits observed in developmental dyslexia are anchored by dual impairments to visual and phonological mechanisms that underpin reading, with the magnitude of the visual deficit varying according to orthographic depth.

Letters and numbers are different domains, and their differentiation increases with schooling. It has nonetheless been argued that reading alphabetic and numerical materials partly involves the same processes, even in adults. Whether individuals with dyslexia have difficulty reading and writing numbers remains to be established. This study examined this issue in a group of 30 young adults with a diagnosis of dyslexia, without any concurrent specific difficulty in processing quantities compared with a typically developing group matched for gender, age, university attended and course of studies, and approximate calculation ability. The results showed that adults with dyslexia also have severe difficulty in reading and writing numbers. It emerged that their number reading speed correlated moderately with word reading speed. We concluded that dyslexia is specifically related with difficulties in reading and writing not only alphabetic material, but also numerical material. Our findings suggest that these abilities should be considered more carefully when assessing and supporting individuals with dyslexia.

L'Imagery Rescripting (IR) è una tecnica emotivo-esperienziale, particolarmente applicata nella Schema Therapy, che collega problematiche affettive attuali a memorie infantili dolorose, ri-scrivendo, tramite l'appagamento di bisogni emotivi frustrati nel passato, il loro contenuto doloroso. Diversi studi evidenziano che a seguito dell'applicazione dell'IR in popolazioni cliniche si osserva anche una riduzione dell'intensità delle convinzioni nucleari disfunzionali associate al ricordo traumatico. Scopo dell'attuale ricerca è indagare l'efficacia dell'IR nel ridurre l'intensità di alcune delle principali convinzioni nucleari disfunzionali in un campione non-clinico. Quarantatré psicologi specializzandi in psicoterapia hanno indicato l'intensità con cui si identificavano in venti credenze negative. Quindi, una parte del campione è stata sottoposta a una sessione di IR, mentre l'altra metà rientrava nella condizione di controllo, senza IR. A distanza di uno (t1) e 40 giorni (t2) sono state raccolte ulteriori misurazioni circa l'intensità delle loro credenze. I risultati mostrano una riduzione significativa dell'intensità di metà delle convinzioni nucleari disfunzionali misurate, in t1 e in t2, nel gruppo sottoposto ad IR, a differenza del gruppo di controllo. È emerso, inoltre, un effetto di interazione significativo (gruppo × tempo) per alcune credenze specifiche. I dati evidenziano come l'IR riduca, a breve e a lungo termine, l'intensità di convinzioni nucleari disfunzionali in una popolazione non clinica.

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