Abstract
In western world old age is often conceived as a condition marked by loss and decline. Aged people, excluded from work, have difficulties to find a positive social role and cultural purposes useful to themselves and the community. Many prejudices contribute an inactivity status, an unavoidable rest and a passive waiting; aged people appear as inert spectators in time. The aim of the research was to explore the self-image of a sample of 60 subjects, aged over 65 years, who live in two different towns. A questionnaire and a personality test (Adjective Check List) were used. Unfavourable cultural environment and negative events seem to restrain choices and possibilities. However creativity enhances a positive attitude toward opportunities, and stimulates the development of new interests, especially in an urban context. Men exhibit a greater self evaluation, but women seem to accept better entirely life experiences as a whole. Although with many prejudices, old people recognise their personal value, have persisting willingness to express their own skills, and actively propose their knowledge, that reflects their images.

Abstract
Coronary hearth disease is the first cause of death and disability in Italy and in all the industrialized countries.Empirical evidence, even if not in an univocal way, underlines the importance of some psychological characteristics among type A personality, anger and hostility, stress, vital exhaustion, lack of social support, anxiety and depression by heredity, sex, age, fatness, hypercholesteremia, smoke, diabetes and hypertension like risk factors to develop cardiovascular problems.At the moment there is lack of evidence about the way in which these behavioural or personality traits are linked and the way in which they can influence the genesis of vascular diseases. The Cloninger’s personality model based on temperamental and behavioral traits could be useful to this purpose.The aim of this research is to analyse the temperament and the behavior of a group of acute myocardial infarction patients to identify possible peculiar traits. The sample is composed of 100 patients hospitalised for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and of a control group (100 people) without cardiovascular problems. The Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) has been administered to all the sample. The questionnaire of 240 “true-false” items is composed of four temperament evaluation scales (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, persistence) and three character evaluation scales (self-directness, cooperativeness, self-transcendence). The two groups are significantly different to the reward dependence temperament scale (p<0.05), and to self-directness (p<0.01) cooperativeness (p<0.01) character scale, with minor scores in AMI patients.According to literature, in our results AMI patients mean a major difficulty to express emotions, if not hostility and anger, a major tendency to retire into themselves and the use of a self-centred perspective to analyse problems. The results show the importance of Cloninger’s model to understand the cardiopath personality pointing out the behavioral traits of the AMI patient, and because of this changeable with a right support.

Abstract
The aim of the research was to study the interactions between reading disabilities and basic functions as attention, uditive and visual memory, phonological skills and mental imagery.Reading abilities were assessed, using MT test, in a wide sample composed of 524 pupils, age 9-11. Significant gender differences were found in the first phase of the research; girls were more competent in reading than males, and this result confirm previous epidemiological and neuropsychological evidence. In the second phase of the research 200 subjects, 107 boys and 93 girls, were divided in two groups, ‘good’ and ‘poor’ readers, and both the groups were submitted to a pool of test including visuo-spatial and verbal memory, phonological competence, visual and uditive attention, and imagery. Testing of differences between groups showed that, among the boys, poor readers have lower performance in mentally representing letters, in visualization and memory of position, and in phonetic fusion; among the girls differences were significant in the mental subtraction task and in visual attention. In both sexes memory of words was lower in poor readers. A structural equation analysis (LISREL model) was performed; attention, visualization and memory were found more linked to the formal decoding of the text, whereas memory was more connected with comprehension. The reading process is strongly influenced, differently for the semantic and deciphrative components, by the effectiveness of the attentional, visuo-spatial and phonological abilities, and also by the capacity to generate and process mental images.

Abstract
The contribution shows the characteristics and the potentialities of the Family Life Space, a graphic-symbolic instrument aiming to investigate family relations. Its main characteristic consists in being an interactive instrument which involves in a graphic joined task all the family members and which allows, this way, to obtain information on the overall family organisation. The attention focuses, in particular, on the metric analysis procedure of the information that can be obtained using this instrument: it is a very innovative try to connect the qualitative and the quantitative analysis of the family relations. It can be done by using a particular algorithm that converts the family symbolic drawing to a series of mathematical and geometric indicators which consider both its elements composition (lines, dots, space occupation density, etc.) and its global shape (the picture overall gestalt).One of the most interesting opportunity offered by the FLS metric analysis is to allow comparative exams of a great quantity of graphic-symbolic productions, which refer to families being in very different situations, both under the life circle phase and under the structural and functional profile. What is interesting and absolutely innovative, in this prospect, is the opportunity to run extensive studies on family relationships by an instrument that is respectful of the investigated object specific nature. It is, in fact, well known how one of the most critical and problematic element in family research methodology refers to the need of maintaining a group analysis unity and of respecting the relational nature of family as a study object. The FLS metric analysis thus answers to a relevant solicitation, which is a constant in recent years methodological reflection; that is the need, especially in family ambit, to build research devices consistently integrating qualitative and quantitative elements. What is unique in this analysis procedure is that it does not contrast with a clinical use of the instrument. On the contrary, it represents a support and an integration to the qualitative analysis of the collected information.The FLS metric analysis, in fact, forces the researches to code and make a complete and rigorous inventory of all the basic elements that compose the graphic-symbolic representation the family produces. This way we gain a lot of information and of measures which are easily checkable between subjects. The automatic processing, using the mathematical and geometric algorithm, gives a great amount of information, that is mainly obtainable on the researcher’s choices basis. Nevertheless, it thus protects the inferential process from the most common subjective distortions, that are inherent each interpretative behaviour, risks. All the outputs the metric analysis produces, both in the numeric and in the graphic version, turn thus out to be a precious guide to the following clinical interpretation of the information the family produces. They also offer to the researcher an easy comparison basis with other family situations. In order to reach such a purpose, it is extremely appreciable the use of metric indexes to evaluate the family transforming processes existence and size; this can be done comparing two representations that refer to different times or to the real vs. ideal situation.

Abstract
The paper reports the experimental analysis of a case of Developmental Dyslexia whereas visual deficit, located at the earlier stages of Orthographic Analysis, apparently plays a major role in determining the reading disorder shown by Z.M.. Following the “dual route” model of reading (Coltheart, 1987), it is suggested that a deficit functionally localized at this particular processing stage might have extremely disruptive effects on the whole reading process, since it affects both the “Lexical” and the “Phonological” route. Some theoretical issues, concerning the role of visual deficit in Dyslexia and the generalization from Acquired to Developmental Dyslexia, are raised and examined in light of the results obtained by Z.M. in the different tests which have been undertaken.

Abstract
The aim of this review is to report the most recent researches about hemispheric specialization in relationship with the age of onset of the damage, the gender, the localization of the lesion or of the epileptic anomalies and manual dominance. The complications of the cerebral dysfunction can be limited by mechanisms of compensation and cerebral plasticity that allow almost partial recovery of the functionality of the damaged neurones, according to the extent of the damage and to the complexity of the function involved. The possibility to compensate the functionality of damaged areas is correlated with an early age of onset of the damage, that represents one of the most severe risk factors in prognosis of epilepsy. Regarding the gender factor, the proportion of left – handedness is also greater in males with epilepsy and mental retardation. Then, various authors have found that cerebral dominance of an hemisphere for some functions can shift on the contralateral hemisphere, as a consequence of a series of factors that are for example typical dominance for the specific function and localization of the damage. Furthermore, hemispheric localization can be disturbed by the presence of ictal and interictal paroxysmal abnormalities in the EEG. With regard to manual dominance, some studies report evidences on a prevalent left or ambiguous dominance in subjects with epilepsy, Down syndrome and autism, compared to normal subjects.