Psicologia e neuroscienze
“Is it funny?” or “Is it strange?” Investigating humor through cognitive psychology
Cristian Romaniello1, Anna Sedda2, Alessio Toraldo1
1. Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy; 2. Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland (UK)
Humor is a multifaceted function unique to human beings, like language and symbolic thought. Theories of humor propose different frameworks to investigate this function empirically; here, we applied a cognitive-psychology approach, focusing on a specific humor task. We asked 32 participants to listen to 30 jokes intermixed with 30 non-jokes that had an implausible ending, and to decide whether or not each stimulus was funny (Humor Decision Task, HDT).
Measuring and diagnosing unilateral neglect: a standardized statistical procedure
Alessio Toraldo, Cristian Romaniello & Paolo Sommaruga
Unilateral neglect has been widely investigated both for theoretical and clinical reasons
across many decades. This enterprise has involved a huge variety of clinical and experimental
tests. The most common paper-and-pencil test is cancellation, which is administered in several different forms (Albert, 1973; Diller & Weinberg, 1977; Edgworth, Robertson, & MacMillan,
1998; Gauthier, Dehaut, & Joanette, 1989; Friedman, 1992, etc.). On these tests, the patient
is asked to search for specific visual stimuli (targets), that are homogeneously distributed
across (typically) a landscape-oriented A4 or A3 paper sheet, and cross them all out with a
pencil.