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Cross-linguistic similarities and differences in early lexical and grammatical development are reported for  English-speaking children and  Italian-speaking children between  ;  and  ; . Parents completed the English or Italian versions of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory : Words and Sentences, a parent report instrument that provides information about vocabulary size, vocabulary composition and grammatical complexity across this age range. The onset and subsequent growth of nouns, predicates, function words and social terms proved to be quite similar in both languages. No support was found for the prediction that verbs would emerge earlier in Italian, although Italians did produce a higher proportion of social terms, and there were small but intriguing differences in the shape of the growth curve for grammatical function words. A strikingly similar nonlinear relationship between grammatical complexity and vocabulary size was observed in both languages, and examination of the order in which function words are acquired also yielded more similarities than differences. However, a comparison of the longest sentences reported for a subset of children demonstrates large cross-linguistic differences in the

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This study investigated the basic mechanisms of the impairment of memory for actions to be performed in a group of 16 chronic survivors of severe closed-head injury (CHI). The experimental paradigm allowed discrimination between the deficit in spontaneously remembering the intention at the appropriate moment (prospective component of the task) and the deficit in remembering the specific actions to perform (retrospective component). The experimental procedure also contrasted a condition in which the time expiration was marked by the ringing of a timer (event-based condition) and one in which the time expiration was not marked by any event and the patient had to monitor the passing of time and completely self-activate the recall of the intention (time-based condition). Two other experimental manipulations were concerned with the duration of the delay interval from the examiner's instructions to the time expiration (10 vs. 45 min) and the fact that the three actions to be performed could be functionally related or not. With respect to a group of 16 normal controls, the patients with CHI were impaired in both the prospective and retrospective components of the memory for actions. Although an impairment of episodic memory is a plausible explanation for the poor retrieval of specific actions to perform, it is unlikely that this deficit played a major role in the CHI patient's reduced accuracy in spontaneously recalling the intention when the event occurred or the time expired. Instead, reduced frequency and less strategic utilization of time monitoring and/or self-reminding likely played a significant role in this sense.

A total of 7,389 dementia-free elderly (60-102 years old) enrolled in the "Faenza Project" (Northern Italy) were clinically evaluated by nurses and physicians with the aim of detecting the independent and combined association of medical and social factors with cognitive status. Cognitive Impairment No Dementia (CIND) was defined for MMSE scores 2 standard deviations than the age-and education-corrected mean score obtained by the non-demented persons of the Faenza cohort. Logistic Regression analysis was used to estimate Odds Ratios and 95% Confidence Intervals (OR, 95%CI) for CIND. The diagnostic procedure identified 402 (5.4%) CIND cases. Diabetes (OR, 95%CI = 1.6, 1.2-2.2), stroke (OR, 95%CI = 1.9, 1.4-2.6), and depressive symptoms (OR, 95%CI = 1.9, 1.4-2.7) emerged as the most relevant medical comorbidities of CIND. Low education (OR, 95%CI = 1.8, 1.1-2.9), low Socio Economic Status (SES) (OR, 95%CI = 1.5, 1.1-2.1), and unmarried status (OR, 95%CI = 1.7, 1.2-2.5) were associated with CIND. Medical and social factors were independently related to CIND occurrence. In comparison to subjects without any of the above mentioned conditions, subjects with one medical and one social factor had an OR, 95%CI for CIND equal to 6.0, 2.9-12.4. The strength of the association increased when more of those conditions occurred in combination, suggesting a synergistic effect. Despite some methodological limitations, data from this cross-sectional population-based Italian study show that low education, low SES, unmarried status together with diabetes, stroke, and depressive symptoms are related to cognitive impairment in the general population. The interaction of medical and social factors further increases the probability of CIND.