Stefano Federici

University of Perugia. Italy · Department of Philosophy, Social & Human Sciences and Education

The study challenges Freud's view of human development as a male-centered process and for its focus on the presence or absence of the penis. In pamphlet style, the study traces the critiques of patriarchalism, androcentrism, and phallocentrism raised by feminist thinkers Lonzi, Irig-aray, and Rubin, and psychoanalysts such as Torrey, in light of Fe...

Una tradizione orale umbra che mi fu riferita dal filosofo Massimiliano Marianelli, quando mi fece da guida tra le opere di Burri alla Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini di Città di Castello (PG), narra di un incontro dell'artista con una scolaresca. Burri mostrò agli scolari la sua tecnica della plastica trasparente bruciata. Nel vedere ciò, uno scolaro...

Italian adaptation of the Fraser and Dixon’s (2010) Sexual Knowledge and Behaviour Assessment Tool (SKBAT).

Smartphones and tablets now offer consumers unique advantages such as portability and accessibility. Developers are also working with a mobile-first approach, and are prioritizing mobile applications over desktop versions. This study introduces eGLU-box Mobile, an application for performing a drive usability test directly from a smartphone. An expe...

Chatbot-based tools are becoming pervasive in multiple domains from commercial websites to rehabilitation applications. Only recently, an eleven-item satisfaction inventory was developed (the ChatBot Usability Scale, BUS-11) to help designers in the assessment process of their systems. The BUS-11 has been validated in multiple contexts and language...

Chatbot-based tools becoming pervasive in multiple domains from commercial websites to rehabilitation applications. Only recently an eleven-item satisfaction inventory was developed (the chatBot Usbaliy Scale, BUS-11) to help designers in the assessment process of their systems. The BUS-11 has been validated in multiple contexts and languages i.e.,...

Working from home (WFH) remotely is a modality of working that requires the careful design of systems of rules and tools to enable people to exchange information and perform actions. WFH is expected to expand after the COVID-19 pandemic. How to assess and compare in a reliable way the experience of workers with different (sociotechnical) systems of...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought several changes in everyday life, one of them being the application of Remote Working (RW). RW is the new way of working, thanks to this new modality all workers, with certain work requirements, were able to carry out their work from home without having to go to the office. Given the strict rules relating to lockdo...

To fully model the perceived experience of a user, practitioners should include a set of repeated objective and subjective measures in their evaluation protocols to enable satisfaction and benefit analysis as a “subjective sum of the interactive experience.” It is also well known that if the UX of a product is assessed at the end of the design proc...

According to previous ethnomethodological and cognitive studies on sex assignment, if a figure has male sexual characteristics people are more likely to think it is a man than they think it is a woman when the figure has female sexual characteristics. This bias in favor of male attribution is strongly reinforced when a penis is apparent in human nu...

Purpose: A contribution to the Italian adaptation of the original English version of the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 for children and youth (WHODAS-Child), proxy-administered among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual disability. Materials and methods: Observational and retrospective...

From March 11 to April 26, 2020, the Italian government imposed a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, a quarantine that resulted in significant restrictions on the movement and social contacts of the population, with a view to limiting the pandemic outbreak. The quarantine forced people to experience distorted social distance in two contrasting ways. For...

The present study aimed to replicate Kessler and McKenna’s (1978) ethnomethodological study that investigated how an individual attributes gender to a person. By administering figures depicted on overlays (Overlay Study), Kessler and McKenna found that the penis more than the vulva and the male sexual characteristics more than the female ones were...

When asked to estimate the number of items in the visual field, neurotypical adults are more precise and rapid if the items are clustered into subgroups compared to when they are randomly distributed. It has been suggested that this phenomenon, termed “groupitizing”, relies on the recruitment of arithmetical calculation strategies and subitizing. H...

According to previous ethnomethodological and cognitive studies on sex assignment, if a figure has male sexual characteristics people are more likely to think it is a man than they think it is a woman when the figure has female sexual characteristics. This bias in favor of male attribution is strongly reinforced when a penis is apparent in human nu...

According to the medical model of disability (as explained also in the ICF), conceiving sexual activity by a person with a disability for a "normal body" population would mean admitting imagining an abnormal (monstrous) sexuality. It follows from this that "abled" people see the person with physical impairment as asexual, because their body conditi...

According to the medical model of disability (as explained also in the ICF), conceiving sexual activity by a person with a disability for a “normal body” population would mean admitting imagining an abnormal (monstrous) sexuality. It follows from this that “abled” people see the person with physical impairment as asexual, because their body conditi...

Raw data regarding the study on contribution to the Italian adaptation of the original English version of the WHODAS 2.0 for children and youth (WHODAS–Child), proxy-administered among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual disability.

People with spinal cord injury (SCI) must battle cultural and personal attitudes and stereotypes that reduce sexuality to genitalia's physiological functions. These psychological and social restrictions stem from cultural and models of disability that emphasize phallocentric primacy and the sexual appeal of beautiful bodies when it comes to sexual...

Introduction: Working from home (WFH) remotely is a modality of working that requires the careful design of systems of rules and tools to enable people to exchange information and perform actions. WFH is expected to expand after the COVID-19 pandemic, and how best to reliably assess and compare the experience of workers with different (sociotechnic...

A metà aprile 2020 il 94% degli studenti di tutto il mondo è stato colpito dalla pandemia da Covid-19. Un miliardo e seicento milioni di bambini e giovani di 190 paesi del mondo, dalla scuola dell’infanzia alle scuole secondarie fino all’università, hanno subito la più grande interruzione dell’istruzione della storia (United Nations Sustainable Dev...

This paper shows a chatbot solution for eGLU-box Pro, a usability testing platform for Italian Public Administration (PA). eGLU-box Pro is a web-based tool designed to help PA practitioners in creating remote usability tests and analyzing participants’ answers and interaction data after they complete the usability tasks. The impact of the chatbot s...

From March 11 to April 26, 2020, the Italian government imposed a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, a quarantine that resulted in significant restrictions on the movement and social contacts of the population, with a view to limiting the pandemic outbreak. The quarantine forced people to experience distorted social distance in two contrasting ways. For...

Assistive technologies are products that enhance the functioning of people with disabilities who have mobility, communication, sensory, and cognitive needs for support. Assistive technology products include wheelchairs, walkers, and other mobility devices; speech communication devices; products for hearing and vision enhancement; and memory aids. T...

Il presente studio—condotto da una équipe di psicologi sperimentali e clinici dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia, della dall’Istituto di Psicoterapia della Gestalt Espressiva di Perugia—ha voluto indagare cosa stesse succedendo in Italia, cioè anche per gli adulti italiani la salute e i comportamenti sessuali (attività, desiderio, eccitazione,...

People with disabilities or special needs can benefit from AI-based conversational agents, which are used in competence training and well-being management. Assessment of the quality of interactions with these chatbots is key to being able to reduce dissatisfaction with them and to understand their potential long-term benefits. This will in turn hel...

Sexually explicit material (SEM) is easily accessed by adolescents. This cross-sectional study examined the characteristics of 413 Italian adolescents (aged 17-22, 55% female) who use SEM. We examined the associations of SEM use with relationship status, religiosity, and emotional intelligence. All of the respondents reported accessing SEM while un...

Data regarding the study entitled "Gender Attribution: When the Penis Makes the Difference" by Stefano Federici, Dr. Alessandro Lepri, and Dr. Eleonora D'Urzo

Introduction: People with disabilities or special needs can benefit from AI-based conversational agents (i.e., chatbots) that are used for competence training and well-being management. Assessing the quality of interactions with these chatbots is key to being able to reduce dissatisfaction with them and to understanding their potential long-term be...

The main purpose of this research is to investigate the complexities of sex and gender attribution. This study is part of the line of research initiated by Kessler and McKenna (1978) and their theoretical background. In that seminal work, the authors showed that male and female characters do not have the same salience in the process of recognition/...

People with paraplegia have to fight their own and societal attitudes and stereotypes that reduce sexuality to the physiological functions of genitalia. These psychological and social limitations arise from cultural and disability models that focus sexual pleasure on phallocentric primacy, and sexual attractiveness of perfect bodies. In this chapte...

Supplementary Material to the Study 2 of the work on "Psychological Sexual Health of People with Paraplegia", where the codebook and detailed qualitative data analysis of each meeting are reported.

Background: This work is an exploratory study to investigate the relation among three main psychosocial factors measured after an Assistive Technology (AT) system provision: (i) the user’s satisfaction, (ii) the perceived effectiveness, and (iii) the psychosocial impact of the assistive solution. The main objective is to understand whether the corr...

Background: Knowing which elements could guide the development of policies, systems, and service delivery procedures is essential to develop an assistive technology (AT) provision standard, to connect services and outcomes, and compare data for AT in Eu-rope and across the world. As stated by the GREAT conference in Geneva (Global Research, Innovat...

This paper illustrates the heuristic evaluation of a web-based tool for usability testing for Public Administrations called eGLU-box. eGLU-box is an online platform aiming at supporting practitioners in the process of designing usability tests, analyzing data, and helping step-by-step participants to complete assessment tasks. Web users of Public A...

A recent contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the concept of usability and its measures proposed that usability reached a dead end – i.e. a construct unable to provide stable results and to unify scientific knowledge. Extensive commentaries rejected the conclusion that researchers need to look for alternative constructs to measure the qual...

The purpose of this study was to validate a self-administered 36-item Persian (Farsi) version of the World Health Organization (WHO) Disability Assessment Schedule II (now referred to as WHODAS 2.0) for assessment of psychiatric patients' perceptions of their functioning and disability. WHODAS 2.0 items were analyzed using two approaches. Reliabili...

Like the slogan of the American Consortium for Spinal Cord Medicine says, “No injury, no matter how serious, can take away your ability to have a relationship, experience love, and experience the attraction between two people.” However, people with spinal cord injury (SCI) have to fight with their own and societal attitudes and stereotypes that lim...

This work shows the user experience (UX) assessment of a web-based platform for the semi-automatic usability evaluation of websites, UTAssistant, which is primarily addressed to workers in public administration (PA). The study is part (Phase 1) of a multiple assessment methodology which consists of four phases in total: (1) UX in laboratory conditi...

Objective: Based on the biopsychosocial model, we developed a paradigm to explore if music therapy (MT) is effective in increasing the well-being of persons with dementia. Method: A randomized controlled trial, mixed method design was used. Twenty-seven persons with moderate/severe dementia split into an experimental (n = 16; MT and standard care)...

Il confronto tra i recenti risultati ottenuti dal gruppo di neuroscienziati della University of California di Berkeley guidati da Alex Huth (2016) sulla rappresentazione del linguaggio nel sistema semantico cerebrale e quelli, oramai consolidati, degli effetti sulla salute della narrazione emotivamente coinvolgente (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999), perm...

Objectives Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III) is a brief cognitive screening tool to assess five cognitive domains: attention/orientation, verbal fluency, memory, language, and visuospatial abilities. This study aimed to provide normative data (for total score and subscale scores) of the Italian version of ACE-III for gender, age, an...

Since 2012, usability testing in Italian public administration (PA) has been guided by the eGLU 2.1 technical protocols, which provide a set of principles and procedures to support specialized usability assessments in a controlled and predictable way. This paper describes a new support tool for usability testing that aims to facilitate the applicat...

In the framework of the AVI 2018 Conference, the interuniversity center ECONA has organized a thematic workshop on "Digital Interaction: where are we going?". Six contributions from the ECONA members investigate different perspectives around this thematic.

Premessa. Secondo l’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità [1,2] la salute sessuale è uno stato di benessere fisico, emotivo, mentale e sociale in relazione alla sessualità, che non si caratterizza solo come un’assenza di malattia, di disfunzioni o infermità. Per raggiungere o mantenere la salute sessuale i diritti sessuali di tutte le persone devono...

Features Proposes an international evidence-based ideal model of the assistive technology assessment based on experimental research and experiences in assistive products service delivery Brings together in one handbook all the assessment tools needed in an assistive technology service delivery center Describes the professional profiles, skills, and...

Features Proposes an international evidence-based ideal model of the assistive technology assessment based on experimental research and experiences in assistive products service delivery Brings together in one handbook all the assessment tools needed in an assistive technology service delivery center Describes the professional profiles, skills, and...

Heterogeneity in the health status of elderly patients requires a particular care approach and geriatric medicine is the answer. In order to cope with frailty, disability, and diseases, the geriatric assessment approach guides the geriatrician into considering the interaction between functional status and cognitive, medical, affective, environmenta...

This chapter discusses the relationship between the accessibility and usability constructs and how they relate to the user experience (UX) theoretical approach. We present an integrated model of interaction evaluation, a new evaluation perspective based on UX that is intended to be used as a framework for evaluating users’ interactions with assisti...

Features Proposes an international evidence-based ideal model of the assistive technology assessment based on experimental research and experiences in assistive products service delivery Brings together in one handbook all the assessment tools needed in an assistive technology service delivery center Describes the professional profiles, skills, and...

An assistive technology assessment process model that is consistent with the ICF, in that it emphasizes the individual’s well-being and the best match between the user and the AT solution, is needed, and is thus proposed in this chapter. This requires a user-driven process through which the selection of one or more technological aids for an AT solu...

Features Proposes an international evidence-based ideal model of the assistive technology assessment based on experimental research and experiences in assistive products service delivery Brings together in one handbook all the assessment tools needed in an assistive technology service delivery center Describes the professional profiles, skills, and...

We faced a twofold open question regarding the measurement of individual functioning, i.e., what individual functioning measures and how it should be measured. These issues arise from the nature of the concept of disability; in other words, it is a complex construct and a “multidimensional experience [that] poses several challenges for measurement....

Features Proposes an international evidence-based ideal model of the assistive technology assessment based on experimental research and experiences in assistive products service delivery Brings together in one handbook all the assessment tools needed in an assistive technology service delivery center Describes the professional profiles, skills, and...

This chapter introduces the reader to brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), providing an overview of the different applications of these systems as assistive technology for different patient populations. First, we provided a definition and description of BCI systems, and we described different electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques through wh...

An exoskeleton is an active mechanical device that is anthropomorphic in nature, is “worn” by an operator, fits closely to his or her body, and works in concert with the wearer’s movements. Generally, the term “exoskeleton” is used to describe a device augmenting the performance of an able-bodied wearer. In contrast, the term “active orthosis” is d...

The present chapter deals with the role and the competencies of the psychologist in a center for technical aid. The lapse of the psychologist’s role in assistive technology (AT) assessment is probably due to the non-coding of personal factors in the ICF. In viewing the psychologist as the “specialist” on personal factors, the authors call for a rev...

Assistive technologies are products that enhance the functioning of people with disabilities who have mobility, communication, sensory, and cognitive needs for support. Assistive technology products include wheelchairs, walkers, and other mobility devices; speech communication devices; products for hearing and vision enhancement; and memory aids. T...

Il confronto tra i recenti risultati ottenuti dal gruppo di neuroscienziati della University of California di Berkeley guidati da Alex Huth (2016) sulla rappresentazione del linguaggio nel sistema semantico cerebrale e quelli, oramai consolidati, degli effetti sulla salute della narrazione emotivamente coinvolgente (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999), perm...

Even if the benefits of the usability testing are remarkable, it is scarcely adopted in the software development process. To foster its adoption, this paper presents a Web platform, UTAssistant, that supports people, also without skills in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), in evaluating Web site usability.

Purpose: This systematic review examines research and practical applications of the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS 2.0) as a basis for establishing specific criteria for evaluating relevant international scientific literature. The aims were to establish the extent of international dissemination and use of WHODAS 2....

Play is a natural mode of children’s expression and constitutes a fundamental aspect of their life. Cognitive, affective, and social aspects can be assessed through play, considered as a “window” to observe a child’s functioning. According to Russ’s model, cognitive and affective components and their reciprocal connections can be assessed through t...

Le emozioni sono programmi di azione complessi e in larga misura automatici, messi a punto dall’evoluzione e attivati da specifici stimoli (Damasio, 2012). Quando uno stimolo appreso, la strega di Cenerentola, o innato, un serpente strisciante ai nostri piedi, viene percepito dai nostri sensi, questo attiva un processo di risposta che coinvolge il...

Supplementary Table S1 summarizes the information extracted from the 810 selected studies ON WHODAS 2.0; Supplementary Table S2 displays frequencies (number and percentage) for the six main study characteristics of the included studies: year of publication; study design; country where the study was conducted; research field; WHODAS 2.0 version used...

Il presente lavoro è stato effettuato presso il Centro di diagnosi e terapia dell’obesità e della grave obesità dell’Azienda Ospedaliera San Camillo Forlanini di Roma, allo scopo di osservare e descrivere la relazione tra i livelli di funzionamento e disabilità autopercepiti e il Binge Eating Disorder (BED) in un campione di persone gravemente obes...

http://atlasofscience.org/how-much-does-abandonment-of-assistive-technology-cost-italys-national-health-service/

Background: This study was an extension of research which began in the Umbria region in 2009. Aim: To investigate the extent to which assistive technology (AT) has been abandoned by users of the Italian National Health Service (ULHS) and the reasons for this. Design: Observational study. Setting: Users who received a hearing device (HD) or m...

Purpose: The study brings together three aspects rarely observed at once in assistive technology (AT) surveys: (i) the assessment of user interaction/satisfaction with AT and service delivery, (ii) the motivational analysis of AT abandonment, and (iii) the management/design evaluation of AT delivery services. Methods: 15 health professionals and...

The exoskeleton is a robotics-assisted, powered device that enables paralyzed patients to stand up and walk. This chapter examines the state of art concerning the use of active, powered, and wearable lower limb exoskeletons for aiding and rehabilitating paraplegic patients’ gait disorders resulting from serious central nervous system lesions. A qua...

Il presente studio nasce dall'esigenza di individuare un paradigma di valutazione dell'efficacia della musicoterapia sulla salute delle persone affette da demenza. In un'ottica biopsicosociale, la metodologia utilizzata consente di raccogliere indicatori di variazioni del benessere a livello biologico (concentrazione di cortisolo salivare), a livel...

Objective: This review examines the utility of current active, powered, wearable lower limb exoskeletons as aids to rehabilitation in paraplegic patients with gait disorders resulting from central nervous system lesions. Methods: The PRISMA guidelines were used to review literature on the use of powered and active lower limb exoskeletons for neu...

Background: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow persons with impaired mobility to communicate and interact with the environment, supporting goal-directed thinking and cognitive function. Ideally, a BCI should be able to recognize a user's internal state and adapt to it in real-time, to improve interaction. Objective: Our aim was to examine st...

This special issue focuses on assistive technologies for cognition/cognitive support technologies as well as the ways in which individuals are assessed and trained in their use. We provide eleven diverse articles that give information on products, why they are used and not used, and best professional practices in service provision. Our goal is to h...

In a telephone interview users were asked to respond to a three-section questionnaire consisting of both open and closed questions. The questionnaire included the Italian versions of the Assistive Technology Use Follow-up Survey (ATUFS) 1.1, adapted to collect data on use and non-use of AT, and the Quebec User Evaluation of Satisfaction with Assist...

Short scales of user satisfaction analysis are largely applied in usability studies as part of the measures to assess the interaction experience of users. Among the traditional tools, System Usability Scale (SUS), composed of 10 items, is the most applied quick evaluation scale. Recently, researchers have proposed two new and shorter scales: the Us...

The Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination Revised (ACE-R) is a brief cognitive screening instrument also proposed to detect mild cognitive impairment, a high-risk condition for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. In this study, we report normative data on the ACE-R-Italian version, collected on a sample of 264 Italian healthy subjects ag...

Nowadays, practitioners extensively apply quick and reliable scales of user satisfaction as part of their user experience (UX) analyses to obtain well-founded measures of user satisfaction within time and budget constraints. However, in the human-computer interaction (HCI) literature the relationship between the outcomes of standardized satisfactio...

Nowadays, practitioners extensively apply quick and reliable scales of user satisfaction as part of their user experience (UX) analyses to obtain well-founded measures of user satisfaction within time and budget constraints. However, in the human-computer interaction (HCI) literature the relationship between the outcomes of standardized satisfactio...

Traduzione italiana di un questionario di indagine sull'uso e abbandono di tecnologie assistive per utenti a cui è stato assegnato un ausilio per la comunicazione da almeno 12 o 24 mesi.

Traduzione italiana di un questionario di indagine sull'uso e abbandono di tecnologie assistive per utenti a cui è stato assegnato un ausilio per la mobilità da almeno 24 mesi.

The present research tested whether children's disability representations are influenced by cultural variables (e.g., social activities, parent education, custom complex variables) or by cognitive constraints. Four questionnaires were administered to a sample of 76 primary school aged children and one of their parents (n = 152). Questionnaires incl...