Hand preference for the original items proposed by Oldfield (1971) and information concerning age, sex, familial sinistrality were obtained from a population of 1694 subjects. An item analysis was performed which resulted in the elimination of some of the items. Handedness distribution derived on the basis of the selected items was compared with the distribution obtained on the basis of the Oldfield's selection. Results show that handedness distributions depend on item selection, familial sinistrality and age, while no effect of sex is found.

Context. AGILE is an Italian Space Agency mission dedicated to observing the gamma-ray Universe. The AGILE's very innovative instrumentation for the first time combines a gamma-ray imager (sensitive in the energy range 30 MeV-50 GeV), a hard X-ray imager (sensitive in the range 18-60 keV), a calorimeter (sensitive in the range 350 keV-100 MeV), and an anticoincidence system. AGILE was successfully launched on 2007 April 23 from the Indian base of Sriharikota and was inserted in an equatorial orbit with very low particle background. Aims. AGILE provides crucial data for the study of active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts, pulsars, unidentified gamma-ray sources, galactic compact objects, supernova remnants, TeV sources, and fundamental physics by microsecond timing.Methods. An optimal sky angular positioning (reaching 0.1 degrees in gamma-rays and 1-2 arcmin in hard X-rays) and very large fields of view (2.5 sr and 1 sr, respectively) are obtained by the use of Silicon detectors integrated in a very compact instrument. Results. AGILE surveyed the gamma-ray sky and detected many Galactic and extragalactic sources during the first months of observations. Particular emphasis is given to multifrequency observation programs of extragalactic and galactic objects. Conclusions. AGILE is a successful high-energy gamma-ray mission that reached its nominal scientific performance. The AGILE Cycle-1 pointing program started on 2007 December 1, and is open to the international community through a Guest Observer Program.

The theoretical distinction between an articulatory control process and a short-term phonological store was supported in five experiments on immediate serial recall. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the word length effect but not the phonemic similarity effect. In Experiment 2, the two latter effects were found to be independent with auditory presentation. In Experiment 3, the effects of irrelevant speech and word length were found to be independent with visual presentation. In Experiment 4, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the phonemic similarity effect with a slow presentation rate. Nevertheless, in Experiment 5, articulatory suppression with a conventional presentation rate did not reduce the effect of phonemic similarity, even when a lO-sec interval was interposed between presentation and recall. These results indicate that the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of spoken material within the phonological store do not depend on a process of articulatory rehearsal.Recent theoretical developments in the field of working memory have depended on the identification and investigation of converging operations that rule out competing hypotheses about different hypothetical components (Baddeley, 1986, p. 114;Hitch, 1980; cf. Gamer, Hake, & Eriksen, 1956). In immediate serial recall, performance is reliably affected by a number of properties of the stimulus items or of the procedure under which they are learned: (1) the degree of phonemic confusability among the items to be remembered (the phonemic similarity effect); (2) the articulatory duration of the items to be remembered (the word length effect); (3) the modality of presentation of the items to be remembered; (4) requiring the subjects to engage in the concurrent vocalization of irrelevant speech sounds (the effect of articulatory suppression); and (5) the concurrent presentation of irrelevant speech sounds that are to be ignored (the effect of unattended speech). The specific pattern of interrelationThe authors' collaboration was made possible by travel grants under an agreement between the Royal Society and the Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerche. They are grateful to

Experimental evidence and meta-analyses offer some support for gender-related differences in visuo-spatial ability. However, few studies addressed this issue in an ecological context and/or in everyday tasks implying spatial abilities, such as geographical orientation. Moreover, the relation of specific strategies and gender is still unclear. In the present investigation, we compared men and women in a newly designed battery of spatial orientation tasks in which landmark, route and survey knowledge were considered. In addition, four visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) tasks were presented. Significant differences favouring men in VSWM tasks were reported, supporting existing evidence. However, men and women did not significantly differ in orientation tasks performance. The patterns of correlation between working memory and spatial orientation tasks indicated that men and women used somewhat different strategies in carrying out the orientation tasks. In particular, active processes seem to play a greater role in females' performance, thus confirming the importance of this variable in interpreting gender effect in VSWM tasks. Altogether, results indicate that gender effects could well result from differences in cognitive strategies and support data indicating that adequate training could reduce or eliminate them. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A hand-preference questionnaire was administered to 1694 Italian adults. Analysis indicates no relationship of sex and handedness and a percentage of 6.4 left-handers. The difference in percentage of left-handers across different populations is discussed in terms of cultural differences.