Pragmatic refers to the ability to communicate intentions in a given context, going beyond the literal meaning of an expressive act. Not only language but also other expressive means, such as extra-linguistic and paralinguistic, contribute to the realization of such capacity in a multimodal perspective. The interest of the research group focuses on determining the role of neural correlates and cognitive skills such as inferential ability, i.e. the ability to go behind the literal meaning of an utterance, executive functions, and theory of the mind, in allowing a communicative interaction and in understanding and producing different types of pragmatic phenomena, such as direct and indirect communicative acts, ironies, deceits, and communicative failures. We adopt a life span and clinical perspective: from the development of such skills in typical and atypical development to their decay in healthy aging and including people with acquired brain lesions, i.e. traumatic brain injury and vascular brain damage, and psychiatric disorders, i.e. schizophrenia and autism. 

Moreover, the interest of the GIPSI research group in this domain addresses the assessment of communicative disorders affecting patients in the above-mentioned pathological conditions. In particular, some of the members of the GIPSI contributed to the creation of the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCO), and its equivalent  Forms https://www.giuntipsy.it/catalogo/test/abaco, a clinical tool for the evaluation of pragmatic deficits in different pathological conditions, i.e. traumatic brain injury, vascular brain injury and schizophrenia.  

The members of GIPSI also contributed to the creation of the Cognitive Pragmatic Treatment, a rehabilitative program aimed at improving communicative ability in patients with traumatic brain injury and schizophrenia. Recently the treatment has been adapted for adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (see below for a description of the adapted Italian version) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1p3mUDjd-Uxmb_iYivAMeYnC4bKmg-0tv&usp=drive_fsopen_in_new 

More recently, a further area of interest is the development of pragmatic ability from a cross-cultural perspective.

A specific domain of research is also the development and decay of Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM is a complex cognitive skill that allows people to attribute mental states to oneself and others, and to use this knowledge to regulate one's behavior and that of other people. We developed and validated the Theory of Mind Assessment Scale a clinical tool able to investigate different ToM (cognitive, affective, first and third person, first and second order) aspects. Within the Cognitive Science perspective, the interest of the research group focuses on the study and the evaluation of ToM during its developmental trajectory from newborn to infant and adolescent, to healthy aging as well as its deficit in people in different clinical conditions, such as schizophrenia,  Traumatic Brain Injury, Mild Cognitive impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder.

In order to investigate these areas of research we use different techniques: behavioral observation, fMRI, eye trackers, and machine learning. 

The group belongs to XPRAG.it - An Italian Network of Experimental Pragmatics (https://www.xpragit.comopen_in_new) and organized the: “XPRAGIT - 4th International Conference”, Italian Network for Experimental Pragmatic, Turin, 8-9 July 2021. https://www.intobrain.it/it/xpragit2020-21/.

The research group also belongs to UNITA, Universitas Montium, an alliance of six European comprehensive research universities from five countries with different  trajectories gathering together  students and staff members: https://univ-unita.eu/Sites/