Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects…

Prior research on implicit mind-reading skills has focussed on how infants anticipate other persons' actions. This study investigated whether 11- and 17-month-olds spontaneously attribute false beliefs (FB) even to a simple animated geometric shape. Infants were shown a triangle chasing a disk through a tunnel. Using an eye-tracker, we found that…

Four experiments investigated phonemic and visual similarity effects in 5- and 10-year olds. Results suggested that young children rely on modality-dependent codes, which are probably automatically activated, and do not use a speech-based memory code for drawings and words. This pattern of findings appeared to be independent of culture and…