Elena Carbone

University of Padova | UNIPD · Department of General Psychology

This study investigated the relationship between personality (particularly emotional stability [ES] and conscientiousness [C]), subjective sleep-related factors (dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep, and metacognitive beliefs about sleeping difficulties), and self-reported and objective sleep quality. A sample of 122 healthy participants...

Evidence in the literature suggests that listening to music can improve cognitive performance. The aim of the present study was to examine whether the short- and long-term gains of a working memory (WM) training in older adults could be enhanced by music listening—the Mozart’s Sonata K448 and the Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor—which differ in tempo a...

Aims: Personality traits are suggested to influence adults’ cognitive performance, but little is known about their association with visuo-spatial competence, in terms of those visuo-spatial abilities and inclinations crucial to remaining autonomous, especially with aging. This study newly investigated whether, and to what extent, major traits and n...

This study examined the efficacy of a strategy-based memory training for older adults at short- and long-term with two (5- and 11 months) follow-ups. We also explored whether booster sessions (additional training before the first follow-up) facilitated the maintenance of benefits. Thirty-three older adults received a training based on the teaching...

Introduction One of various non-pharmacological treatments for people with dementia (PwD) is horticultural therapy. The aim of this double-blind, pre- and post-test, pilot study was to examine the effects of horticultural activities (HA) for PwD at a residential and daytime care facility. Whether combining HA with elements drawn from other psychoso...

Cognitive Reserve (CR) is often assessed with surveys spanning demographic, lifestyle, and socio-behavioral variables. The role of both past and current life experiences on CR has, however, rarely been examined. We developed the Current and Retrospective Cognitive Reserve (2CR) survey to assess classical CR proxies (socio-economic status, engagemen...

Introduction Exposure to nature is known to support psychological wellbeing, and can support People with Dementia (PwD). Here we describe a case study conducted at a care facility for PwD to examine the effect of their exposure to nature after intervention to renovate an existing Therapeutic Garden (TG). Changes in frequency of attendance and behav...

Background and objectives: Navigational skills display clear signs of decline with increasing age, especially in pathological ageing. Therefore, navigability-the extent to which destinations can be reached with reasonable effort and time-should be considered in residential care home design. We aimed to develop a scale assessing environmental featu...

This study newly explored the relationship between individual characteristics (i.e., connectedness to nature, a preference for natural rather than built environments, personality, visuospatial preferences) with perceived restorativeness, as well as affective and memory-related benefits of exposure to the nature. Eighty adults were individually expo...

This study examined the associations between thought control strategies and subjective and objective sleep quality, across the adult lifespan. One hundred forty-nine individuals without insomnia (age range 18–86 years; M = 45.35, SD = 20.53) completed the Thought Control Questionnaire Insomnia–Revised for assessing sleep-related thought control str...

This study newly investigated the joint contribution of metamemory and personality (traits and facets) in explaining episodic memory (EM) performance in typically aging older adults. Forty-eight participants (age range: 64–75 years) completed a self-paced word list (SPWL) recall task, a metamemory questionnaire assessing perceived control and poten...

Working Memory (WM) training has shown promise in supporting cognitive functioning in older adult populations, but effects that generalize beyond the trained task have been inconsistent. Targeting cognitive processes in isolation might be a limiting factor given that metacognitive and motivational factors have been shown to impact older adults’ eng...

Background Loneliness is a major health issue among older adults. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between loneliness, in its social and emotional facets, and the cognitive (language), and behavioral/psychological functioning as well as quality of life (QoL) in people with mild and moderate dementia, i.e., considering dementia s...

Objectives: This review examined the evidence about training interventions targeting metacognition in improving memory and cognitive performance, metacognitive functioning, and well-being in healthy older adults. Methods: Studies were identified in the PsycInfo, PubMed, and Scopus databases. The risk of bias was assessed using tools based on the...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive form of electrical brain stimulation popularly used to augment the effects of working memory (WM) training. Although success has been mixed, some studies report enhancements in WM performance persisting days, weeks, or even months that are actually more reminiscent of consolidation eff...

Introduction: This study examined the role of individual characteristics in predicting short- and long-term benefits of the Italian version of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST-IT), an evidence-based intervention for people with mild-to-moderate dementia. Materials and Methods: Data were drawn from a sample ( N = 123) of people with dementia (PwD)...

Introduction: The study examined age-related differences between young and older adults’ emotional and psychological experience as well as cognitive functioning throughout different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Materials and Methods: Participants were interviewed by phone when confined at home during the national lockdown (T1-May 2020;...

IntroductionThe present pilot study examined to what extent the COVID-19 lockdown affected the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in people with dementia and worsened their family caregivers’ distress. The associations between changes in the BPSD of relatives with dementia (RwD) and in their caregivers’ distress, and sense of...

Objective This study examined changes due to COVID-19 lockdown in young and older adults’ self-reported sleep quality and dysfunctional sleep-related beliefs. Methods Adults involved in studies prior to the pandemic were contacted during the COVID-19 lockdown. Seventeen young adults (age range: 18-35 years) and 21 older adults (age range: 65-90 ye...

Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) is one of the most popular evidence-based interventions for people with dementia. The aim of the present study was to assess the effectiveness in the short and long term (on completing the treatment and 3 months later) of an Italian adaptation of the CST protocol (CST-IT). Older adults with mild-to-moderate demen...

This study newly explored the relationship between personality (also considering its facets) and an environmental ability as crucial to day-to-day living, and sensitive to age-related decline, as route learning, in young and older adults. Thirty-five young adults (Mage = 24.06, SD = 3.29) and 35 older adults (Mage = 68.34, SD = 3.26) completed the...

Older adults typically show poor performance in tasks assessing working memory (WM), a crucial cognitive mechanism. The present study examined the electrophysiological correlates of a classic complex WM task often used in studies involving older adults, the Categorization Working Memory Span task (CWMS), by means of event-related potentials. Thirty...

This study newly assessed visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) in young and older adults with an extended version of the backward Corsi Blocks Task (CBT): the backward Walking Corsi Test (WalCT). It involves recalling sequences of spatial locations while moving in an indoor space (2.5 × 3m) in which the CBT layout is recreated on the floor. The spec...

Objectives: Route learning is an everyday spatial ability important to individuals’ independent living, and is known to decline with age. This study aimed to investigate the benefit of using an imagery strategy to support route learning in young and older adults. Methods: Forty young adults and 40 older adults learned a path from a video. Twenty of...

Objectives: Cognitive and mood changes can affect postoperative recovery in hospitalized older adults undergoing major surgical procedures, but few studies have considered postoperative cognitive interventions to sustain such patients' cognitive functioning and mood. The aim of this pilot study was to assess the efficacy of working memory training...

Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) is an internationally used, evidence-based psychosocial intervention for people with mild-to-moderate dementia. The present review thus aimed specifically to examine the reliability of the findings and the strength of the evidence obtained in studies on the CST protocol concerning any benefit in terms of cognitiv...

There is evidence of mental rotation (MR) abilities responding to training even in older adults, but it is still not clear whether such training would have generalized and maintained effects. The aim of the present study was to examine the specific short- and long-term gains, and any transfer effects, induced by rotation training in healthy older a...

Background: Cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) is an evidence-based psychosocial intervention for people with mild-to-moderate dementia due to various etiological factors. Objective: The aim of the present study was to assess the efficacy of the CST program, Italian adaptation -CST-IT-, in individuals who have vascular dementia (VaD). Methods: O...

Individual differences in visuo-spatial factors play an important part in environment learning when it comes to mentally representing environments, but little is known about how visuo-spatial factors (in terms of abilities and self-assessments) are related to an individual's representations of familiar environments. A group of 273 female undergradu...

Background The effects of age on the ability to manage everyday functioning, crucial to ensure a healthy aging process, have been rarely examined and when, self-report measures have been used. The aim of the present study was to examine age effects across the adult lifespan in everyday functioning with two performance-based measures: the Everyday P...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to explore whether individual characteristics such as age, education, vocabulary, and baseline performance in a working memory (WM) task—similar to the one used in the training (criterion task)—predict the short- and long-term specific gains and transfer effects of a verbal WM training for older adults. M...

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the efficacy of a route-learning training in a group of older adults living in a residential care home. We verified the presence of training-specific effects in tasks similar to those trained - route-learning tasks - as well as transfer effects on related cognitive processes - visuo-spatial short-term memory...

This study examined age-related differences between young and older adults in the involvement of verbal and visuo-spatial components of working memory (WM) when paths are learned from verbal and visuo-spatial inputs. A sample of 60 young adults (20-30 years old) and 58 older adults (60-75 years old) learned two paths from the person's point of view...