Research Topics

Human Interaction

In our daily social interactions, the way we perform actions is crucial for communication and promoting relationships. This dynamicity of action has been termed by Daniel Stern “Vitality Forms” (VFs) by Daniel Stern and allows people to express their own state and understand that of others.

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Human-Robot Interaction

The study of VFs also finds application in the robotic field, where it is used to improve the kinematics of humanoid agents (such as iCub) by making them increasingly human-like, and to study human-robot interactions.

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Autism

Children with autism spectrum condition show significant difficulties in both understanding (Rochat et al., 2024; Di Cesare et al., 2017) and expressing (Di Cesare et al., 2024) vitality forms (VFs) compared to neurotypical children. We are currently studying these aspects of communication in depth to develop personalized clinical interventions that improve social interaction among children, caregivers, and parents

fMRI scanner illustration

This video example illustrates the same action i.e. passing a bottle to another individual, carried out in both gentle and rude manners by a neurotypical child and five children with autism.

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References

Di Cesare, G., Bruschetta, R., Vitale, A., Pelosi, A., Leonardi, E., Famà, F. I., ... & Ruta, L. (2024). Exploring divergent kinematics in autism across social and non-social vitality forms. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 24164.

References

Di Cesare, G., Sparaci, L., Pelosi, A., Mazzone, L., Giovagnoli, G., Menghini, D., ... & Vicari, S. (2017). Differences in action style recognition in children with autism spectrum disorders. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1456.

Psychiatric Disorders

Ongoing studies are exploring the capacity for recognizing and expressing VFs in individuals with psychiatric disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Bipolar Disorder (BD). A key hypothesis is that these abilities may be impaired due to the social interaction difficulties often associated with these conditions.

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